New Mexico Mercury

Editor's note: This is the first installment of brief dialogues with some of the colorful spirits who occupy the New Mexican universe.

Even if your consumption of animation is limited, there's little chance the work of David Tart has escaped your view.  For over 20 years he's been working in various capacities in the animation world with credits that include: Toy Story, A Bugs Life, Toy Story 2, Monster's, Inc., and Finding Nemo.  David has worked for numerous animation studios around the world and his filmography includes, Robots, The Ant Bully, Tinkerbell, The Three Little Pigs, Tortoise V. Hare, Goldilocks and the Three Bears and Dorothy of Oz.  His short film The Story of Animation won him "Best Director/Best Producer" at the Tokyo Anime Festival.  He works with PivotVFX here in Albuquerque as well as with the Animation Workshop, an internationally acclaimed animation school in Viborg, Denmark.  His latest short film, Into the Animation Factory is a followup to his previous award winning work.

Mercury: You've been in the animation business for 20 years and participated on some of the biggest animation features in that time span.  Can you give us a feel for your upbringing and what drew you to drawing and animation?

David Tart: I grew up in the 1970's, in Berkeley, California.  I usually don't have to tell people that this in and of itself implies a lot about my childhood, but let's just say it was a little out of the ordinary.  Probably a few experiences that contributed to my ultimately choosing animation as a career were 1) attending an alternative, arts-based junior high school.  At this junior high students studied printmaking, photography, drawing, mural painting, etching, and a number of other arts (along with a little bit of academics, and a lot of politics).  I don't think I appreciated my instructors at the time, although later I was to stumble across an exhibition at the NYMOMA featuring my photography instructor’s photo essays.  At another gallery I saw works feature by our print-making teacher.  Unbeknownst to me, I had some quality art instruction!  2) The San Francisco Bay Area was a hot-bed for the burgeoning home computer technologies . . . my father, who was working at Stanford, brought home a "computer" that was in a make-shift wooden box (this was a first generation apple).  When we plugged it into the television, I instantly became interested in the power of programming.  I was drawn to its logic, its clarity, and also the "amazing graphics".  Well, not so amzaing then, really, but at the time it seemed pretty amazing.

I didn't do much with my art skills for a number of years, instead focusing on programming.  It wasn't until apple computers released a version of their "Macintosh" that came with the Postscript language that I realized I had found the perfect combination of interests:  Art and Technology.  With postscript I could manipulate printed imagery by controlling the printer - the way the lines were drawn, and how detailed the shading was.  Up until that time art was out of the question on computers - all you could print were crude, dot-matrix style images, which were funny, but certainly not art.

I worked as a "desktop publisher" all throughout my 20s - a version of graphic design brought about by the computers continuing evolution into the world of art.

Merc: Was there animation that was catching your eye or inspiring you during that time?

DT: To be honest, I had never planned, or desired to go into animation until my late 20s.  After returning to school, presumably to pursue a career in Journalism, I found my way back into the computers and art world, vis-a-vis an instructor named Jane Veeder.  Veeder had been working in "high-end" computer graphics for several years, and was well connected in the industry.  It was with her that I began studying 3D computer graphics.  Eventually I was drawn to animation.  I saw this as the perfect evolution from my career as a graphic designer, where images were static, non-moving compositions. This would be my opportunity to make those images really come alive.

More than any other singular event that pushed me into my career was a seminar I attended entitled "How to be a Computer Animator."  This was hosted by a number of the experts in the field, one of whom was John Lassiter.  Lassiter, who's short films were taking the computer graphics community by storm, suggested that if one really wanted to be a computer animator, studying traditional, 2D animation was the way to go.  Needless to say, this was quite counter-intuitive to the rest of the panelists and attendees, but I was convinced.  I had one year of study left at school, and put all my effort into learning film and traditional animation techniques, including hand-drawn, sand, cut-out, and stop-motion animation.

Luckily for me, this gamble paid off, and within a year of graduating I was working for John on the world's first entirely computer-generated movie Toy Story.

Merc: Has the evolution of computers and processing speed drastically affected how you work?  Can you describe your process twenty years ago compared to today?

DT: The interesting thing is that my work process is not much different now than it was 20 years ago.  This is something I'm asked about a lot - people comment on how much faster, how much easier it must be, with the progress in technology, to animate a scene.  But in fact, quality animation is no faster than it was 20 years ago, and no faster than it was 60 years ago.  A typical Disney animator working on "Snow White" might be able to produce 5 to 7 seconds of animation per week.  And this quota has remained steady, at least in the feature animation business.  In fact, my last project Smurfs 2 (partially animated here in Albuquerque at PivotVFX), we were only responsible for finishing 2 seconds of animation per week.  And although the computers we were working on were hundreds, if not thousands of times faster than those we used for "Toy Story", each scene and character took just as long, if not longer, to animate.  Partially this is due to what's called "feature bloat" and "storage bloat".  It's true that the level of detail for characters and backgrounds has gotten better and better over the last 20 years, but all that detail negates the gains in available memory and processor speeds. 

Merc: You've lived all over the world and worked at a number of top-notch animation studios and now you reside in Albuquerque.  How did you end up here and what's it like working remotely on projects?  Is there a lot of travel or is it not really necessary these days?

DT: As an animation director, I generally have to travel for work, and I often do work remotely.  Since this is the case, I'm pretty much able to live anywhere in the world.  At one time this wasn't true.  If I'd wanted steady work as an animator or animation director, I was going to have to choose between Los Angeles, New York, or the San Francisco Bay Area.  But now work can be done "virtually", or "on the cloud".  On my short film, The Story of Animation, I worked entirely from Albuquerque with artist based in several locations, including South Africa, England, Texas, and Denmark.  There are several great software applications that facilitate this type of collaboration, and in the end, it doesn't really feel that much different from being in a studio, working side by side. 

The Story of Animation

Merc: Do you find that with so much accessible technology and less of a barrier to entry to the field that there's a flooded market now with people willing to do work for less?

DT: The industry is in fact going through a huge transition. I'm currently conducting an industry-wide survey on working conditions, compensation, and job satisfaction.  In a nutshell, yes, there are thousands of new animators being pushed into the system every year, thanks to numerous quality educational opportunities (30 years ago there were 3 animation schools in the US.  Today there are at least 300).  Additionally, accessible technology has allowed productions to spread across the globe, which promotes international competition in pricing.  Finally, local governments are giving huge incentives to entertainment and technology companies to locate within their states, providing co-production incentives of 25 to 45% funding.  This keeps animation companies moving, looking for the best deal.  Sony is a good example of this - they used to have a production facility right here in Albuquerque - brought about because of a 25% tax incentive provided by the state of New Mexico.  They stayed here for 3 + years until they got wind that in Vancouver, BC, they could get a 43% incentive.  And there you have it. 

Let's suffice to say it's very rough out there for CG artists.  This is in fact one of the topics I'm going to address in my next short film Into The Animation Factory.

Merc: I particularly liked your film The Story of Animation because if it educates people about your business while entertaining them.  Animators, filmmakers, graphic designers and other artists constantly battle with clients either not knowing the hours it takes to produce quality work, or belittle the trade by thinking they can get the goods for free or at a budget.  Can you tell us a little bit about how that film came to be?

DT: This is really the 4th reason the industry is in turmoil - animation clients have seen too many "making of" DVD trailers that depict the process of animation as fun, goofy, and somewhat simple.  Furthermore, the advent of technology makes clients think it's as easy to re-animate a scene as pushing the "undo" button, which is furthest from the truth.  A lack of understanding of the process, the complexity, and the hours that go into making an animated VFX shot is what really killed the company Rhythm and Hues.  R&H were responsible for the Oscar-winning effects on last years Life of Pi.  They've been in business for years, and have done amazing effects for any number of box office hits.  So why did they have to file for bankruptcy while they were simultaneously being awarded an Oscar?  One of the primary reasons is that any single VFX shot may take a team of artist anywhere from 6 to 20 weeks to create.  That's a lot of time for a 6 second shot!  Directors who are used to shooting live-action think "Oh, we'll just do a re-take", just like in live action film.  There is no such thing as a retake in VFX.  But VFX and animation companies have to stay pliable, if they want to remain in business, so naturally they will try to please the director, no matter what.  But these retakes aren't usually in the budget . . . and therefore the company sacrifices man-hours to deliver the shot . . . and in the process eat away at any potential profit, often going into the red just to deliver the shot.

Merc: You've already got a trailer for your new film Into The Animation Factory.  Is this a sequel to The Story of Animation?  How has the pre-production and initial production stages been going?

DT:  Into the Animation Factory is indeed a sequel to The Story of Animation.  Short films being somewhat limited in how much detail they can show, The Story of Animation had to breeze through the actual process of animation, we which had to show as a montage sequence.  But I kept getting feedback from people who enjoyed the film saying "we want to see what's going on in that factory sequence".  And so did I!  And it occurred to me not only that I could elaborate on the process for clients, but for students, and industry professionals as well. 

The pre-production has been fantastic - we've got the full script about 90% locked, we've gotten a lot of new characters designed, some of the new environment concepts, and an animatic that contains about 70% of the finished storyboards.  Now comes the hard part - obtaining funding!

Merc: What would you say to a person who’s interested in, or already pursuing, animation but is unfamiliar with the actual industry working environment? Is it important to hone in on a particular niche area early, or to focus on a well-rounded skillset?

DT: There are many different job titles in the field of animation, as no one person could really "do it all".  The most successful studios break their companies up into different departments, each with a specific focus.  Typically, in an animation studio, there will be a storyboard department, and concept and character design department, a modeling department, a custom software department, a layout or "previs" department, an environments or backgrounds department, shading and texturing, lighting, editing, compositing, and post-production department . . . so there are really many different disciplines that combine to make the finished product.  So first you've got to decide what you're really interest in.  If you love drawing, and think you're a pretty funny person, storyboarding might be best for you, in which case you want to focus your education on traditional art skills.  If you really enjoy working with complex 3D software, you might enjoy modeling or texturing, and therefore should split your education between programming, computer graphics, and traditional arts.  If editing is what floats your boat, you'll want to enroll in a film program.  Essentially, for whatever you're interested in, you'll need to do some research as to what skills are needed, and then tailor your education to fit those requirements.  I've found that interdisciplinary arts programs work quite well, since they allow you some flexibility in a course of study.  I'm currently adjunct faculty at the University of New Mexico's Interactive Film and Digital Media program, which offers quite a range of focuses, all of which could be utilized to zero in on a particular aspect of computer graphic filmmaking.

One thing to keep in mind, though, and that is this:  Just because you love animation, or video games, doesn't mean you'll have the skills, or even like becoming a digital artist.  It's a competitive field, and you have to work very, very hard to be successful!

We’d like to thank David for his generous insight.  Take a look below at the trailer for his latest project, Into The Animation Studio and make sure to check out the Kickstarter page also.