I was watching Snow White on vid the other day, for the nth time (where n=2), marvelling at all the irritating...
I mean cute and loveable little woodland creatures, and it brought back to mind some advice I gave young Freddy Moore:
I said, "Freddy, you can draw pretty well, but you'll never make a living out of it". And of course I was right, he
stopped right there and then (right in the middle of Grumpy's walk into the woods. Which is why you can see he slips
from Grumpy into Bashful before falling down a manhole or something) and went off to form camp, stadium rockers "Queen" with Brian Eno and
Roger Moore. And someone else. He didn't have what it takes to make it in the dog-eat-dog world
of computer animation. The point is you see, you have to constantly adapt to keep ahead of the game. Walt himself- talking of
Disney- knew this. That's what made him successful. Prior to Walt's involvement animation had been made by painting silhouettes
on lampshades and spinning them round really fast. That's fine as far as it goes but it's not going to reach a mass audience
unless you use a really big lampshade and hang it in space or from a crane. But around that time pencils were invented
and Walt took full advantage of that. He said "Right you nine old guys....use these from now on and we'll make loads of
money. And when they make colour ones we'll be sorted". And bless them, the old guys tried to use them, but pencil sharpeners
didn't get invented for another 10 years and they were reduced to scraping holes in the paper when the first
few millimetres of exposed lead had been used up. Then of course the four Warner brothers came over and beat them all up, trapping Walt in the freezer
section and putting the animators in the Light Cycle game from Tron. Their Penny Farthings were no competition for
the likes of Jeff Bridges' futuristic, wall-creating speedster. And that's how they died. And that is where the "Myth of Disney"
comes from. It is actually recorded in The Illusion of Life, if you take a thick black marker and delete every three words
out of four. For those without access to a black marker it goes like this: "And there will come a time, when animators will
fight fellow animators, when software fails to materialize in a reasonable timeframe, when the confused will clutter
up the Internet with pointlessly open questions. And lo, Walt of the line of Disney will be thawed by the Sun of
Justice, and he will walk among the people on the earth and slay pirates, resellers and hobbyists alike, and the Nine will rise again
and gibber ineffectively but quite atmospherically, and the true 3D software will be made available and lo...the
question
of maintenance will be naught heard on the lips of man for the software will work properly straight away and
be installable by a mortal man."
Anyone who wants to buy a copy of the Illusion of Life with the pertinent deleted bits can send me a check for 120 quid. Offers considered.
I will be taking questions for a special Q&A page soon. If you have anything you would like the answer to, write to The Sarcastic Bastard c/o [email protected]. Your name WILL be included if published.
Last month's tutorial: The Devilled Rotoscope Argument
Next month:I will be snowboarding