Journal of A. Waters

I remember seeing Ed Hooks in-person in 2018.

I was lucky enough to be studying abroad in Germany for a few months, during my undergrad, and part of that included attending the FMX conference, where Ed Hooks was giving a talk.

He talked about “power centers” – animators need to find a character’s power center when they animate – is their power coming from their head? Are they leading with their hips? Something like that.

But what I remember most vividly was his face when he exclaimed, tears in his eyes, wiping them away under his glasses: “Don’t you see? Don’t you see the world needs…” Something like that.

But I knew what he meant. In the animation powerhouses, where the money is in technological advancements, the priceless humanity of stories is often thrown by the wayside for render power.

(Not to insult VFX artists, jesus. Who doesn’t appreciate realistic simulation? Who doesn’t want the water in their animation to look like real water? Who doesn’t want the food to look good enough to eat in their favorite animated movie?)

But I knew then, as I’ve always known, my calling as an artist was for people like Ed.

I want to be an ANIMATOR. Bring LIFE and CHARACTER expressed through performance. Tell HUMAN stories through pretty, moving pictures. Then one day, when I know better than everyone else in the room, I’ll become a director, haha!

I’ll never REALLY know better than everyone else, thank god, but, maybe I can get pretty wise.

It remains to be seen.

Animation is uniquely situated to portray the effects of the atom bomb, fire bombs of WW2.

Could GOTF be made in live action successfully? No, he says. Its power depends on vivid, plausible, pathetic child characters. Child actors are very hit and miss, and these children have to go through a whole range of emotions from trauma, to depression, to normal happiness. With animation you have total control over the performances, and with mastery, were able to portray them realistically. With the help of the voice actors of course.

GOTF broadened the horizon of what animation could do for this man. … Naturalistic animation as an end of itself.

He found what Takahata and thought of the film, which prompted him to start his book. Takahata intended to convey a political, almost polemical critique of Japanese society.

After being orphaned, the children move into an Aunt’s house who does not treat them very well. She nags them, blames Seita for not contributing to the war effort, and so they leave. As a result of living on the streets, Setsuko dies. Seita bears some responsibility for his sister’s death. He is only 14, but his proud and somewhat spoiled upbringing led him to make the bad decision.

In my opinion however, 14 is far too young to fully understand the dangers of homelessness, especially in Japan where children grow up much more independently (allowed to walk to school alone, left alone at home no problem), even for wartime. The Aunt is most responsible. But that is not the point of the film. Seita is a metaphor for Japanese society?

There is actually a live action adaptation of GOTF.

Doesn’t come off quite as successfully.

On the film production: trying to capture the authenticity of time and place and characters of Japan in 1945. Huge burden for production and created problems down the line.

Fanatical line of research. Tint of soil, direction fighters approached city, observing nursery of 4 y/o girls, returning to “scene of the crime”.

Needed more gentle colors compared to traditionally flashy anime colors. Created 250 colors, used about 100. Takahata had an insistence on authenticity. The voice actors were recruited from Kobe and did not have experience with anime before. The actors for Seita and Setsuko were actually children, not adults. The 4 y/o was the youngest voice actor in dubbing history? The runtime of the film expanded from 60 to 80 minutes, delaying the finish of the film. This put Takahata on bad terms with the producers, making GOF come out on time with unfinished section. Very embarrassing and bad for Takahata’s reputation. He was effectively blacklisted until Miyazaki offered to produce his next film.

Q&A

Balance between realism and romanticism. What do you think about his later films? GOTF was criticized for exploring animation techniques without considering the audience’s ability to enjoy it. Viewed as almost propaganda? The idealized rural area did not seem at al realistic to actual rural Japanese residents. As for emphasis on the characters, in Pompoko, we cannot empathize with the raccoons so well. They kill humans, have an unfixed shape – sometimes manga, sometimes great beasts, sometimes raccoons. After GOF, Takahata was called a public intellectual (‘kusso oite” – put that shit away) by Hiroshi? more preoccupied with jamming a meaningful message down audiences’ throats rather than entertaining them.

Takahata has a tendency to be didactic in making his points. For example, the farmer saying how much organic farming is better, basically speaking for Takahata’s political views which may turn off audience members who don’t agree with him. (Or people who don’t like to be spoon-fed the point you’re trying to make.

 Maybe I’m exposing myself as a pseudo intellectual but I think packing one’s work with meaningful messages is the best thing you can do with animation, especially these days when a lot of people seem to only care about being entertained. Of course, if you have a character just explain your viewpoint and the “message” of the film, that’s rather lacking in storytelling mastery. I think the best animations have a message that is subtly presented and open to a bit of interpretation.

Takahata was not just a filmmaker, also kind of a public intellectual. He wrote essays, books, gave speeches, talked in schools and radios. (Pacifist) Can be a little pedantic. Contrast with Miyazaki who is also a bit intellectual, but presents it a little more softly and anecdotally.

Personally, I do not think there is any justification for war. Yes, good things can sometimes come out of war – technological and medical advances, the economic turnaround of Japan after WW2… But how can you listen to the story of starving children, comfort women, prisoners who are brutally tortured, and thing that anything on god’s green earth justifies that? Is it possible for war to not include such brutalities? No. As humanity stands now, the nature of war dictates that men will act savagely, tragedies will happen, and until we have all-robot wars or VR wars this won’t change.

Reactions to GOTF in other countries:

In Western countries, the commentary on Japanese society is largely lost and GOF is more seen as a simple tragedy. (Although this happened everywhere, even in Japan – “kawaiso – how pitiful”) In some East Asian countries like Korea, there was significant backlash for a film that shows the Japanese as victims in WW2 without mentioning the various crimes they had committed in other countries.

This last point I think is a very good criticism. Online there is a bit of discussion about how Japan “likes to play the victim” but they have not paid reparations for the comfort women of Korea and the atrocities committed in China. On the other hand, however, you can’t say that Seita and Setsuko, and many of the Japanese civilians were not victims – they most definitely were. That is the thing about war. It makes victims of all those involved. Some bear more responsibility than others, and you should not avoid that responsibility, but in a film you of course have to pick and choose what to represent in order to best tell your story. I think it is right for the Japanese administration to apologize, but Grave of the Fireflies is not the place for that to happen. GOTF was the work of a small group of Japanese people telling a specific story about the struggle of two orphaned children. It doesn’t mention anything about what Japan did in WW2, but it does display the faith the Japanese people had in the “great empire”. From the perspective of Seita and Setsuko who we follow, it would not make any sense to make space for Japan’s war crimes.

Or maybe that’s not quite right. There is room, but it would have made a very different film. Would it have made a better film? I’m not so sure. And in this world, like one commenter said, there is room for all true stories.

Disclaimer: I wrote this after watching a lot of Christopher Hitchens and it’s supposed to be really funny and ironic but I think I kind of lost myself in the nonsense.

Three incredibly intelligent beings are all that is left in the universe.
Armed with millennia of knowledge and technology, they attempt to re-evolve their species from scratch and create a new universe.
Their new intelligent creations are called humans.

A: How are the humans coming along?
B: Pretty good, I just taught them the concept of Gods.
A: Good. … Wait, why would you do that???
B: Look how well they’re all getting along. There’s so many of them in one place now!
A: That was because of the agriculture C introduced earlier! And there’s not enough for everyone yet.
They’re already killing each other over food, and now they’re going to kill each other over God!
B: I don’t think it’ll get that bad…
C: What’s up guys?
A: B taught God to the humans.
C: Oh shit! What the fuck is wrong with you?
B: (defensive) SORRY! I just got tired of the acting like assholes so I told them to stop or else they’ll die in eternal suffering.
It’s not actually true, I just made them believe it.
C: Oh my god. This is going to set us way fucking back. Let me fix this.
Ok. Why the fuck is this guy hanging on a cross?
B: What? Um, I honestly don’t know. It looks like he was calling himself God’s son? That doesn’t make any sense. Why…
C: Jesus Christ, this is bad. A, how the fuck do we deal this?
A: Shit, we could nuke the universe and start over, but it would take literally billions of years to get back here.
I think we’re better off trying to salvage what we got.
C: Ok, so how do we spin this? We’re going to have to intervene somehow.
B: What if we bring this cross guy back to life and use him to write some new rules, better ones?
A: Shut up! You’re the reason we’re in this mess.
C: I wish we could just undo the last millenia. We can’t just convince them gods aren’t real, we just told them they were.
And to intervene just to tell them we don’t exist would confirm that we do exist!
B: Why is is bad that they know? I told them we created them in our image. It gives them comfort. They’re kinder and more thoughtful.
A: No. They’ll use this to kill and control others unless we stop them. But we can’t stop them all the time, it defeats the purpose of
recreating intelligent beings with free will. If they know we control everything they’ll stop functioning as individuals and we might as well start over.
B: But, if they just believe we’re watching over them without knowing….
A: They’ll still use that belief for their own gain. You’ve seen what B made them capable of.
B: Hey, I think heads on pikes are edgy. Gotta stick it to the system sometimes am I right?
A: Exaxtly. What happens when they know we’re responsible for everything they are? There’s gonna be hell to pay.
C: Ok, so we’ll introduce the idea that maybe Gods don’t exist for some people, and give them NO MORE EVIDENCE that we exist.
Hopefully that will be enough to rid baseless faith in a few thousand years. We can keep influencing them through art and dreams and shit.
A: Subtly!
B: …
C: B?
B: Ok, so can cross guy’s new rules be a part of this journey? I thought of a really great way he can to break it to them.
A: I’ll give you a fucking rule. Thou shalt not kill. That should have been rule number one when we made this place.
B: Um, no, rule number one is to believe in me above all else.
A: Oh for God’s sake!

So for some reason instead of working on animation I felt the need to work this out instead.

I have never pretended like I knew much about the Middle East or the recent wars which have taken place there in the last century. I remember as a kid in Texas with good old President Bush, we, the US were fighting Saddam Hussein. Who was he? Why did he do what he did?

So if you don’t remember, Saddam Hussein was a war criminal and generally considered evil man who was born in Iraq. For some reason this documentary I’m watching about him makes his mother seem like a terrible person who knew how evil he was before his birth because he had somehow, as a fetus, killed all the men in his family so he could be born as the alpha. Sounds like a great origin story for a villain, but the real story is much more depressing. Saddam’s father and brother died of cancer, leaving his pregnant mother alone. Which, being a woman in Iraq in 1937? Without a husband or son? She became suicidal and did want an abortion, but instead had the baby and left him in the care of his uncle.

So Saddam grows up with his Nazi-sympathizer uncle and ends up joining the Ba’ath Party (pronounced bath party) which all you need to know now is, it was a secular, nationalist, socialist party that overthrew the coup which overthrew the monarchy which was effectively working for the British who were doing an Imperialistic Colonialism. He has dreams for a homogenous Iraq which would be a world power under his totalitarian rule, and he had no qualms of being a war criminal to do it.

I went into this rabbit hole thinking searching reasonable answers to questions I had simply never bothered to ask in-depth. I wanted to find meaning for these horrible tragedies. I thought, what would make Saddam Hussein torture people and gas civilians? And I clung to every scrap of history that pointed to a disturbed childhood and other environmental factors that could give me any hope of thinking “Ah, well with a tragic background like that, it’s no wonder his moral compass was so screwed up.” That line of thinking worked for me until I started looking into what drove the people who influenced Hussein, like his nazi-sympathizing Uncle. I remembered the Holocaust and watched a video about the Nuremberg Trials. I learned about the Japan Trials that followed. I learned about the human experiments of Unit 731 and I was captured by newfound horror people could be so inhumane. I saw a lot of pictures I had never seen before, and now they haunt me. I went back and started thinking about terrorism. Even though Hussein was not linked to Al-Qaeda and Bush lied to the contrary to get us into war, terrorism and jihad and many countries near Iraq were related to his struggle. I thought, there is some legitimacy to denouncing America. After all, our soldiers and politicians have committed war crimes too. I read about the Vietnam war and the My Lai Massacre. Now YouTube was recommending to me news footage of the 9/11 attacks on the twin towers. I kept eating this shit up, futilely looking for an explanation, a reassurance that we have not forgotten our history and steps have been taken not to repeat our mistakes. With every revisited or new tragedy I swept through, there came even more of that hunger to find closure, some sign that the world was getting better despite it all. But with every tragedy, I learned of men who were never put on trial, men who were tried but got away, men who were convicted but still managed to live the remainder of their lives in freedom. Wars started in the name of humanity yet resulting in vast harm, the hypocrisy of governments, the absolute absence of justice and reason.

I definitely overdid myself in exposing myself to too much tragedy for my own mental health. In the end, I watched a true crime series about terrorist attacks that were thwarted and fell asleep to it. But I realize that that search for closure was essentially trying to fill a void that will never be satisfied.

There’s this line in Breaker Morant:

“The fact of the matter is that war changes men’s natures. The barbarities of war are seldom committed by abnormal men. The tragedy of war is that these horrors are committed by normal men in abnormal situations. Situations in which the ebb and flow of everyday life have departed and have been replaced by a constant round of fear and anger, blood and death.”

The reason men go to war, that people are tortured and subject to disease and on and on… There is no rational reason except the ego and survival instinct all living things are born with. The stories we tell ourselves are just that – stories. Sure they rationalize the decisions we make, they make some sense of the chaos, but it doesn’t change the fact that all of humanity is intrinsically capable of such madness.

Now might be a good time to mention that I believe every instinct humans have is a result of evolution. If we are violent, there was a survival incentive for that when we evolved. Whether this is according to the design of a divine being, I highly doubt but cannot fully denounce. More on this in another post.

Trying to give meaning to the suffering is a natural impulse, but it’s misguided. Great art that turns human suffering into meaningful stories is not a substitute for direct action, is it? That’s what bothers me the most – because what can one person do to make direct, positive impacts on the world? And there are so many issues. For now, locked in my little flat, I think making good art is all I have. I hope this makes the slightest bit of sense.

I don’t know what else to do.

Sources: (trigger warning for war and violence)

Any other sources you can find on Wikipedia. Honestly I don’t want anyone to go down the rabbit hole all at once like I did. I know most people already know about these events, so there’s not much reason to check the sources except to educate yourself further and coming to terms with them.

Additional reading/watching/listening:

For the purposes of this demonstration, I will be using this lovely Zelda rig by Christoph Schoch (pronounced “shock” – I checked!). You can find it for free here:

https://gumroad.com/l/aBcqX

So when you open most rigs, the arms and head will move like this:

As Zelda’s face expresses, this kind of setup is undesirable. The head and arms are locked to the torso and she moves like a wooden doll. In real life you usually don’t naturally move like this. Try moving your chest side to side. Do you do it like that, or do you do it like this?

Now she’s groovin. To achieve this effect with the previous setup, a lot of counter-animation would have to be done on the head and shoulders to make them appear to move independently.

Now how do we do this automatically by setting up our rigs in Maya?

First, it will depend on how your rig is made. To take the arms, neck, and head out of “body space” or “local space” (locked to the body), and put them in “world space”, some fancy tricks have to be implemented by the rigger. Usually, you can find these options in the shoulder, neck, and head controllers.

If no such options exist, you’ll have to make do with counter animating. As an animator, you will have to deal with a lot of rigs that are unoptimized, even if you work at a big studio. If you’ve ever attempted rigging, you know how hard it is to get rigs to do even the simplest things.

If you are able to set up your rig this way, I promise it will make your animation seem a lot more natural. Of course, you will want to bring those controllers back into body space if your character is ever doing the robot.

Sakuga is an anime term used to describe highly fluid animation for dynamic movements or dramatic expressions. (When the budget hits.) It is my absolute favorite type of animation.

Examples:

Key Animation: Toyoaki Emura (江村 豊秋)
Movie: Angel's Egg (天使のたまご) (1985)https://t.co/hmAnFGQNfU pic.twitter.com/xDL6uVSumq

— randomsakuga (@randomsakuga) November 8, 2020

https://twitter.com/randomsakuga/status/1326570546776182787

Key Animation: Masakatsu Sasaki (佐々木 政勝)
Movie: Ranma ½: Nihao My Concubine (らんま½ 決戦桃幻郷! 花嫁を奪りもどせ!!) (1992)https://t.co/sjRxE3KXTB pic.twitter.com/Jxr8IzmioP

— randomsakuga (@randomsakuga) November 21, 2020

Some good sakuga animators to follow:

• Norio Matsumoto
• Bahi JD
• Henry Thurlow

This post contains the research and development I went through before paring it all down for a 10 min powerpoint presentation. It might do well to present a more holistic picture in the form of a video essay…

Monty Oum

QUESTIONS

Who is Monty Oum?

• Animator, dancer, martial artist
• Creator of RWBY

How did Monty Oum become Monty Oum?

• The Globalization of Anime in the US
  • Cowboy Bebop, Soul Eater, Fullmetal Alchemist, Avatar: The Last Airbender
• Dance & Martial arts
• Otaku culture in the US

Why is Monty Oum important/What did he do?

• He was good at fight scenes which illustrated character.
• Some hallmarks of his animation were rhythmic timing and strong poses, all while developing a story through his characters’ motivations and personalities.
  • For example: analyze fight scene here

What were the specific virtues of Monty’s animation?

• Clear flow between actions
  • Convincing weight given to each hit
  • Rhythmic timing, like a piece of music
  • Gives the audience time to feel the impact of a hit, varying framerates
  • Character development (RWBY becomes a leader – train scene)
  • Good balance of wide and close-up shots to see the choreography and characters’ emotions
  • Is it too fast paced/dynamic? Does rising ADHD rates in children play into the pacing?

What is the legacy of Monty Oum?

• RWBY faced growing criticism in the seasons after Monty’s death, both for writing and animation quality
• His devotion to his work has inspired many artists but also may have perpetuated a culture of obsessive work which plagues many animation studios.
• It’s kind of weird because it’s admirable how many renowned artists are so focused and driven in their work. After all, great things come of it, but when it’s expected of an entire studio under the pressure of being replaced and an “Olympics of Suffering”, it becomes abusive.
  • Animation, whether done well or poorly, is hard to learn and takes a lot of time and practice. Monty happened to have a lot of prior knowledge having grown up as a dancer, martial artist, and fan of anime.
  • This is important because art does not exist in a vacuum. The most convincing and human stories you can tell are the ones that you yourself have some experience of.
  • The writers for RWBY did not have that background, and although they did research on anime, what they seemed to take from it was an amalgamation of tropes and aesthetics without a deep understanding of the medium.
  • To Monty, the vast amount of effort he put into his work was worth it, because he had a specific vision developed over years of experience and he was able to execute it well.
• In 2019, Rooster Teeth was facing growing criticism from its past and current employees for poor work conditions and crunch culture. The CEO and co-founder of Rooster Teeth Matt Hullum released a statement apologizing to those affected and assuring that steps had been taken to improve. Coincidentally, their Head of Animation stepped down at the same time.
• In recent years, studios all over the world have been called out for mistreating, not paying, and overworking their animators.

 Is Monty over-glorified? Was his writing/storytelling really that great and could it have saved the show?

• Apparently, Shane wrote a letter when he left about how RT ran Monty’s vision into the ground?!
  • I think Monty’s death cemented RWBY as his magnum opus and put a lot of pressure on the remaining showrunners that would not have been there, or at least existed to a lesser degree, if Monty had just left.

Did 9/11, the Bush era, and the Obama era affect Monty Oum or RWBY?

• Maybe mention something about American/Texas culture, American Individualism, the military complex
  • Atlas, arguably an allegory for American exceptionalism and its military complex – but does RWBY’s go much beyond “thing bad”? Yes, a bit.
  • Amongst RWBY’s themes in later seasons is that those in power should not keep secrets from the people and our main characters, even if its understandable that you don’t want to spread dysphoria
  • It DOES warn that in heavily leaning into right-wing ideologies (Capitalism, exceptionalism, nationalism, individualism, military complex), even for the “right reasons”, leads to fascism.

What are the main criticisms of RWBY from its fanbase?

• It used to be really badass, now it’s not
  • Characters have become superficial husks of themselves, their dimensionality removed, their development stunted (Qrow may be an exception? Probably not though.)
  • The fights are more generic and don’t reflect characters styles as much… Even if their styles changed, they are never explained. “It’s not like a character’s fight style can never change. In fact, it’s a common trope in shonen anime for our protagonists to observe and learn from their opponents’ styles. That never happens in RWBY, though. We have a big flashy fight, whose only objectives it achieves is to look cool and declare a winner. Sometimes they show some growth in character throughout the fight – Ruby becoming a leader, Yang learning that she’s overconfident, etc…. point obfuscated @-@
  • Ok, so to say that there is NO character development post-Monty is a bit of an overstatement. There are certainly attempts to put characters through arcs of growth (Yang’s PTSD, Qrow’s alcoholism), but the problems these characters face seems contrived because the writers don’t know how to write a teenage girl going through self-esteem issues. She loses her confidence which according to the writing, seems to have been completely stored in her right arm which was cut off, but because she feels bad for making her dad feel bad she overcomes it. This is not how girls overcome their issues. For fucks sake, let her cry in her dad’s arms and have her dad tell her she shouldn’t have to risk her life and limbs because she’s a fucking child, and then have her realize she’s not ready to stop fighting. Instead of a “get back up because that’s who I am” its…
  • The dialogue is horrible sometimes
  • Too much time wasted on slice of life instead of developing the plot (in early seasons?)
  • Lack of continuity between fights
  • The worldbuilding is ass after season 3 – The characters explore different nations which are expected to be different, but it’s more like they’re from different worlds altogether.
  • It really seems like the writers had a tenuous grasp of anime and didn’t know how to take settings and make them their own thing. They took a lot of stuff that FEELS like anime but to doesn’t acknowledge how those things worked in the first place.
  • The villages in AtLA were different but all felt like they were a part of a unified world. Omashu was a city with modern technology for its universe – it had a mail system and believable structure as a city. But in RWBY, you have a post-modern city Beacon with robot soldiers and mechs and some villages that look like they were taken straight out of AtLA, with no technology at all? Even small villages in the real world have cellphones and computers!
  • Bad animation – weak poses/silhouettes, characters changing fight styles for no reason,
  • The writers don’t seem to know where they’re going sometimes
  • BASICALLY, there’s a huge disconnect in worldbuilding, character development, fight choreography, between Seasons 1-3, when Monty was alive, and the seasons after
  • HOW COULD YOU NOT MENTION FANDOM CULTURE???
    • Because it’s not really relevant nor worth more than a passing mention

Was Yang’s “Lesson” Misogynistic?

• I get irrationally angry when I hear how Yang needed to lose her arm to learn a valuable lesson. She was overconfident in her strength and had to be taken down a notch, so an even stronger bad guy cut off her arm. It seems like the writers and most of the fans agree with this statement and don’t really question it at all, except to criticize how easily she got her arm back and didn’t go through much character development with her dad in regaining her confidence.
• It also served as a way to transition the story into a more serious tone with life and death stakes, but there are other ways to do that (which they did!).
  • Actually, it didn’t. Yang knew the whole time she was fucking risking her life, she learned that when she went looking for her mom as a kid and almost got killed by Grimm until Qrow saved them.
• This moral lesson in the writing completely misses the point of why girls (and Yang in particular!) finds confidence in physical strength in the first place.
  • Subverting gender stereotypes – being as physically strong/stronger as men are
  • Proving her worth to her mother, Raven
  • Totally fucking missed opportunity to develop Yang’s character through her relationship to her dad and mom. They sort of tried, but totally missed the point.
  • Who are you to tell a writer when the point of HIS writing should be? First of all, I’m not telling the writers what they should do, I’m using examples of what I would do as a basic example of other possibilities which would achieve the goals they seem to intend. I am analyzing their goals, what they might be, what they accomplish, and what they don’t.
• Think about it… How many overconfident shonen-type characters can you name which get taught a lesson? How many of them are made to feel helpless afterwards only to turn right back into their old selves once they showed some humility?
  • Ranma ½ Analysis – cat weakness arc, moxibustion weakness arc
• Therefore, is Yang’s lesson just a flimsy justification to put strength-minded girls “in their place”?

Did Sheena Oum kill Monty Oum?

• Some losers on Kiwi forums put forward the idea that Monty’s secret wife actually murdered him by bringing home a stray cat when he was allergic to cats
• Monty was getting regular allergy shots, so the theory is that the additional exposure to allergens via the stray cat triggered a severe reaction
• Except that’s not how allergies work. His allergies would have been getting better with repeated low exposure as long as they were not severe
• Sheena got a lot of donations after Monty’s funeral and purportedly got a boob job, making some believe she was exploiting her husband’s death for money
• There is not a single person who knows Sheena who has anything to say about her other than how good and cool a person she is so I’m going to put this one down to misogynist internet trolls…

Ask Shane:

• What exactly was Monty’s workflow?
• We all know Monty was a hard worker, and RT apologized last year for effectively overworking its animators. (fix) Do you think Monty perpetuated that kind of crunch culture or that his name was used to perpetuate it?
• Can you tell me about your experience with overwork in animation?…

OUTLINE

Setting the Stage – Cultural Context

• Globalization of Anime in the US in the 80s/90s
• Intro to the web animation boom of the 90s/2000s
  • Newgrounds
  • YouTube
  • Geek/otaku culture
  • Video games
  • The foundation of Rooster Teeth – development from small indie company to media corporation
• FANDOM CULTURE.
  • The rise of social media
  • Stans, simps, social media “armies”
  • RT, RvB, RWBY, and Monty all had their own fanbase, with some overlap

The Rise of Monty Oum

• Born in Rhode Island, moved to Texas
• Dropped out of high school, started doing web animations
• Hired at a couple of game companies, then Rooster Teeth
• Worked on RvB and created RWBY
• Animation & storytelling visionary, but he did not care about writing
• Died

Monty Oum’s Legacy

• Drop in quality on RvB & RWBY after his death
• Changes to RT’s pipeline, work practices as a result of the company being sold around the same time
• Known as a hard worker, but may have perpetuated Crunch Culture
• Comparison to Hayao Miyazaki
• Obsessive Work Ethic & Crunch Culture in Animation – Prioritizing Hard Work over Creativity
  • Passion, devotion, and sacrifice
• The movement away from crunch culture
• Fan discourse, Lettergate, lost opportunity

Conclusion

Work hard but do not over value hard work alone as it can become an abusive Olympics of Suffering. If the best stories come from real life, live a meaningful, healthy life so you have good stories to tell.

Notes

An Open Letter to All Who Treasured Monty Oum by Shane Newville

• May 2016
• Sparked both juvenile toxicity and mature discourse amongst RT, RWBY, and Monty fans – valid criticism and useless vitriol
• Shane suffers from crippling depression
  • As artists do
  • His journey to becoming an animator was fraught with extremely low self-esteem
  • Before working at RT, Shane was struggling to make ends meet with a wife and two kids
• The Ultimate Monty Simp
  • Shane obviously idolized Monty to the ..nth degree
  • Monty pulled him out of destitution and allowed him to become successful doing what he loved and getting better at it
  • He really wanted to keep Monty’s vision alive and was extremely upset that ideas of his were taken out/changed
  • You cannot blame Shane for idolizing Monty, but you can blame him for dogmatically clinging to the idea of “Monty’s way”
  • Also cringe: He 100% wanted to be the new Monty
  • Velociraptor – Shane seems to have a gatekeeping attitude with his reverence for Monty
• He had his workload doubled after Monty died and was fired for “poor performance”
• So Monty had ideas for RWBY character and worldbuilding, he brainstormed and came up with a structure
• Montourage: used in reference to the people who showed up for Sheena when Monty was hospitalized, but still kind of a funny moniker for Monty simps
• Sheena was an uncredited but essential influence in RWBY’s early seasons
• Monty’s office
  • So Monty and Shane would crack out shit at night in an empty studio, with no one to bother them and inspirational shit on all the surrounding monitors while they worked, that sounds so badass I can’t believe I never thought of that. I wish I had multiple monitors
  • “I made sure to keep all of his monitors rolling footage of fighting games, fight clips, anime / sakuga, k-pop videos, everything you’d see going while he was working.”
  • But apparently post-Monty, that shit wouldn’t fly. “What are you doing?? Masturbating to anime girls?? Don’t give me that WTF look, you can’t possibly be working on anything important at this hour!”
• “Monty’s behaviors are unacceptable”
  • Ok so it may be that some of Monty’s work habits were unprofessional and possibly antisocial – unorthodox to say the least. But he was the creator of the show and well-loved/productive/successful enough that he was allowed to work the way he wanted.
• Monty’s workflow
  • Monty did not storyboard his fight scenes. He preferred to work on the fly, choosing & changing the camera angles while animating. It might seem like a bad idea to write a story and leave a blank spot for “Monty scene here” but it allowed him to be spontaneous and lively in the fight scenes, rather than having it feel “scripted”.
  • Ok so apparently Poser was really essential to Monty’s workflow. A lot of people seem to get the impression that switching the production to a Maya pipeline automatically made the show worse, but I don’t get how that’s true. Shane describes a lot of tools like Monty’s facial rigging and parenting script, and mocap, but all that can still be done in Maya. You just have to learn how. It’s a steep learning curve and will be less efficient that more familiar methods while you are adapting, but once you have it down, you can do so much more with Maya. I honestly don’t believe Monty would have opposed the switch if given the chance to see what could be done with Maya.
  • (Blender is probably the future. You need to get on this shit.)
• Dillon Gu was an animator but not working at RT at the time. Though he was making a Monty Tribute animation.
• “Keep moving forward” – what Monty used to say, but isn’t that also in Meet the Robinsons??
• Shane’s main issue – RT has an obligation to honor Monty’s memory and keep his ideas in a show that he created
  • RT has no legal obligation to honor anything, it’s their IP
  • But yes, RT is morally expected to honor Monty’s wishes, which they attempted to do!
  • Is it disrespectful to a dead man to go against his wishes?
• Some RT fans are dogmatically devoted enough to be called a cult (As with any fandom.)
• Music was an important part of the workflow, they animated to music. (Of course that’s the best way!)
• Pipeline Troubles
  • Switching to Maya was the right choice. Switching to a pipeline was the right choice. In the long run, these choices would allow RWBY to grow in size, scope, and efficiency.
  • However, Shane faced immense inefficiencies and technical problems as a result of these changes. Why is that?
    • First of all, it takes time to learn any new process, during which time you won’t be as good or efficient at doing things as when you were using familiar processes.
    • On top of that, it seems RT did not have the experience or resources to adequately implement or manage the pipeline.
    • From how Shane tells it, a lot of the extra shit he had to do should have been given to TDs who handle the more technical aspects while artists could focus on the art. But they didn’t have TDs. The animators were their own TDs, as they usually are at smaller studios.
    • But why implement a big-studio practice like a network-based pipeline without the manpower/computing power to support it?

Tropes with Real-Life Impact/Social Commentary

• Faunus & The White Fang
  • Representing… oppressed minorities in general?
  • Accomplice by Inaction – The White Fang views all humans as complicit in the oppression of the Faunus, either directly or by their indifference
• The Schnee Dust Company
  • A big company with questionable business practices and associates
  • IRONIC, ISN’T IT???

Presentation

Setting the Stage – Cultural Context

During the 80s and 90s, anime started coming into the United States. Shows like Cowboy Bebop, Sailor Moon, and Naruto were really popular amongst children who would grow up using the internet, and inspired many of them to make their own animated creations.

Home-made animations soon became popular in the late 90s and 2000s with the creation of sites like Newgrounds and YouTube. Individually made content exploded online, featuring both original and fan-made animations which exhibited the geek and otaku culture of comic books, video games, and anime. A community of fans, artists, and game developers grew and spread over the internet until it was a part of pop culture.

Meanwhile, Rooster Teeth started out as a bunch of drunk gamers making a podcast. They moved their content to YouTube, started an animation studio, and expanded into machinima – animation made by moving a character in a video game and recording the screen. With this technique, Rooster Teeth started the web series Red Vs. Blue (RvB) in 2003 – an absurdist and actiony show based on the game Halo which is currently on its 18^th season. With the help of Monty Oum, they produced RWBY in 2012, the first American anime to be distributed in Japan.

The Rise of Monty Oum

Monty Oum was an American animator of mixed-Asian descent. He was born in Rhode Island but later moved to Austin, Texas. In his early days as an animator, Monty actually dropped out of high school and started doing animations of dynamic fights and dances for the web. (Haloid, Gee)

As a self-taught artist relying on his background in martial arts, dance, and film, he was hired as a combat designer for Bandai Namco and Afro Samurai. Eventually he started working as an animator at Rooster Teeth on seasons 8-10 of RvB and he created his original series, RWBY.

RWBY is a show centered around four girls – Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang. The young girls train to become “huntresses” and protect the world from monsters called Grimm. The show has a lot of combat, comedy, and it perfectly appeals to those who grew up around the internet and otaku culture.

RWBY’s initial success was due to the appeal of its characters and fight scenes. Some hallmarks of Monty’s animation were rhythmic timing and strong poses, all while developing a story through his characters’ motivations and personalities. As he was working in 3D, his detailed character designs could be handled by the computer while he focused on the motion and telling the story.

But despite his storytelling skills, Monty didn’t really care about the writing of RWBY, which was left largely (but not entirely) to Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross. In fact, the scripts and storyboards would often have holes reading “insert Monty Action Sequence here” where Monty would develop the fight scenes on his own while they the rest of the show was worked on separately. This resulted in some problems with continuity and character development in which the fight scenes were connected in a way that didn’t always make sense.

Then, as RWBY was in the middle of production for its third season, Monty suffered a severe allergic reaction to a routine allergy shot, which left him in a coma. About a week later, on February 1, 2015, he died at 33 years old.

Monty Oum’s Legacy

Monty happened to have a lot of prior knowledge of otaku culture having grown up as a dancer, martial artist, and fan of anime. This is important because art does not exist in a vacuum. The most convincing and human stories you can tell are the ones that you yourself have some experience of. The writers for RWBY did not have a background in anime, and although they did research by watching some of the more famous shows, what they seemed to take from it was an amalgamation of tropes and aesthetics that “felt like anime” without a deep understanding of the medium.

“We’re in a huge fan culture at the moment, where everything has spawned off of something. If you look at something and intend to use it, you have to emulate it, which means you have to understand it.”
– Monty Oum

To Monty, the vast amount of effort he put into his work was worth it, because he had a specific vision built on years of experience and it was executed well. In the seasons after Monty’s death, Rooster Teeth faced a lot criticism for both their animation quality and writing. It became clear that his talent was mainly responsible for the appeal of RvB and RWBY, and without him, many fans expressed their disappointment in the shows.

However, this would pale in comparison to criticism of the Rooster Teeth for its poor work conditions in its animation studio.

Monty was famously devoted to his work and inspired many artists to follow in his footsteps. In the description of one of his dance music videos, he says he wishes he could have done a creative intro for it, but he has episodes to make. He become known far having an incredibly focused work ethic. Sleepless nights, long hours of working without a break, and to him it was all worth it.

“It’s easy to forget to sleep when you’re working on something cool, so you just work as hard as you can, and still there’s never enough time. So the thing you’ve got to learn is to essentially let go.”
– Monty Oum

And watching his animation, you can tell he loves what he’s doing. The effort and passion put into his work comes out in the character design, animation, and cinematography. Unfortunately, he may have also indirectly perpetuated a culture of obsessive work at Rooster Teeth.

Crunch Culture – Prioritizing Hard Work over Creativity

Crunch culture is largely used in the videogame industry to describe a toxic labor practice in which developers and artists work long hours without pay for an extended period. This issue of worker exploitation is prevalent in every line of work to a varying degree, but it has gained a lot of attention in the entertainment industry in particular. The fact that the artists who create thousands of hours of content may be overworked and mistreated strikes a chord with a lot of people, especially online.

 “Working hard should be a matter of course. Our line of work is filled with people who work hard but are no good as human beings. Placing value on the act of working hard is an incredible mistake.”
– Hayao Miyazaki

We do expect artists to be passionate about their work – it’s considered one of the marks of a great artist. We and praise the exceptional devotion of artistic geniuses like Hayao Miyazaki, who sees hard work and sleepless nights as simply part of the animation process. On the other hand, he warns against overvaluing hard work alone. It’s not enough to work hard, you have to have vision and intelligence. This is an important piece of advice but it could be argued that it still normalizes overwork and social sacrifice as an inevitable part of the animation industry.

Animation studios under economic pressure hold up examples like Monty Oum, Hayao Miyzaki and others to perpetuate crunch culture and an “Olympics of Suffering” amongst their workers. There’s this harmful attitude in video games and animation where workers feel like they’re validated by their suffering, and if they’re not working hard enough to the point where they’re making great sacrifices, then there are others ready to replace them.

In recent years, studios all over the world have come under fire for mistreating, not paying, and overworking their animators. Luckily, not all studios suffer from this problem and the ones that do, are usually called out and make promises for change. In 2019, the CEO and co-founder of Rooster Teeth, Matt Hullum, released a statement apologizing to those affected by their crunch culture and assuring that steps had been taken to improve.

Conclusion

Monty Oum was a talented and dedicated animator whose death has illuminated problems within Rooster Teeth and the animation industry in general.

Passion in art is definitely important, but professional artists should not be pressured to sacrifice their wellbeing for their work. While putting in exceptional amounts of effort in one’s work is admirable and often necessary, allowing a healthy work-life balance will enable artists to be more productive and creative. If the best stories come from real experiences, live a meaningful life you have good stories to tell.

Opinions

This presentation is very near and dear to my heart, not least of all because I’m a Texan. I grew up in the web animation boom of the 2000s, and have been perpetually online all my life. That and anime are the main reasons why I got interested in becoming an animator. I was a part of various niche online communities which focused on art, gaming, and writing.

Obviously, I put a lot of my own opinions into analyzing Monty Oum, Rooster Teeth, and crunch culture. While I tried to research them to the best of my ability, it’s entirely possible that my conclusions are flawed. Maybe there’s some mystic virtue in working your heart out and crunch culture is just a way to find the cream of the crop.

There’s a lot more I would have liked to talk about, like how Rooster Teeth is owned by AT&T now (as of 2018), the people they’ve fired because of sexual harassment…

The discourse about RWBY, much of which is just angsty teenagers who like yelling about anime girls, but there is some quality critique and analysis out there.

The perceived lack of creativity amongst larger, more corporate animation studios like Disney… The impending monopoly on entertainment that they’re threatening to acquire…

I would like to say that prioritizing quality over quantity is the more profitable path for animation, but box office numbers tell a different story. As long as an animated feature is entertaining and marketable, it will sell. Spectacle will always be more consumable and easier to produce than substance. Honestly, we can’t stop the ubiquity of polished cash-grabs – they make too much money. And at the end of the day, who are we to silence some meaningless, but ultimately harmless fun if it makes people happy? I hate Minions as much as the next person, but if I had a kid who absolutely loved those yellow tic-tacs, I’m not going to kill that for them. We can only strive to put out more meaningful stories and support the ones that are already out there. Oh, and not treat artists like shit.

Works Cited

 Cote, Amanda C., and Brandon C. Harris. “‘Weekends Became Something Other People Did’: Understanding and Intervening in the Habitus of Video Game Crunch.” Convergence, Mar. 2020, doi:10.1177/1354856520913865. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1354856520913865

Draper, Joshua Michael. The Cool Japan Project and the Globalization of Anime and Manga in the United States. Diss. Appalachian State University, 2015.
https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/asu/listing.aspx?id=18361

Koike, Aki (2011/01/01). Working conditions of animators: The real face of the Japanese animation industry. Creative Industries Journal, 3, 261-271. doi: 10.1386/cij.3.3.261_1
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1386/cij.3.3.261_1

Sausage Party Pay Dispute
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/canadian-union-prevails-sausage-party-animators-pay-dispute-1196832

Rooster Teeth Apology
https://www.cartoonbrew.com/artist-rights/rooster-teeth-ceo-apologizes-for-poor-work-conditions-at-dallas-animation-studio-175948.html

Rooster Teeth Work Condition Complaints
https://www.popdust.com/rooster-teeth-crunch-2638895587.html

Hayao Miyazaki on the Overvaluing of Hard Work
https://soranews24.com/2019/07/10/hayao-miyazaki-talks-on-how-working-hard-isnt-something-to-be-proud-of-not-forgiving-yourself/

RWBY Is Disappointing, and Here’s Why
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81fdKWOHrdE

Why It Works: Red vs Blue’s Animation by Monty Oum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKchH5pjcM8

RWBY Just isn’t the same: The pillars of Monty Oum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxP3lBW7wm4

Animation Analysis – RWBY: Character
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm8faI5_TTM

Watch the 4-hour documentary that unravels Hayao Miyazaki’s obsessions
https://www.polygon.com/animation-cartoons/2020/5/29/21274485/10-years-with-hayao-miyazaki-documentary-streaming-studio-ghibli-nhk

10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/program/video/10yearshayaomiyazaki/

YouTube animation on the rise
https://www.thedailystar.net/shout/the-internet/news/youtube-animation-the-rise-1675993

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Oum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooster_Teeth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RWBY

The last few weeks have been a strain. I’ve been successful in pouring myself into my work, but only by completely reversing my sleep cycle. I’ve been way more active on social media since the election (Biden won!), which I’m sure isn’t as much an effective coping mechanism as the dopamine assures me it is.

Like many other forever-onliners, I have a heavy thumb on the pulse of meme culture. Not to be overly optimistic, but I look forward to being an old woman, telling stories of various absurdist memes that would take a section of the internet by storm and be forgotten weeks later. Recently, this has brought us to “copium”.

Copium has been used as a portmanteau of “cope” and “opium” since 2003, but it hasn’t seen popular use until October 2020. It’s been primarily used to describe the Trump administration’s over-rationalization of his defeat in the election. In short, it is a fictional drug used to cope with the feeling of being a loser. Funnily enough, it reminded me of a couple of digital paintings I did at the tail end of my tumblr-addiction days in high school, 2015.

The CO stood for Carbon Monoxide then. At the time I was constantly making angsty art to the point where college portfolio reviewers told me to cut it out. Public expression of angst whether in art or social media posts is often seen as a self-indulgent cry for attention. It might try to “start a conversation” about mental illness, but we all saw how well that worked out for Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why (not great). I personally think angst isn’t all that bad as a way for others to empathize with trauma, but a problem arises on social media when you see it constantly and it romanticizes suffering and mental illness. It becomes something that makes people feel unique for having suffered and keeps its consumers in a negative headspace without offering a more positive outlet. We honestly can’t stop it, and it was wrong of that portfolio reviewer to tell me that I should just take all angst out of my art as it’s an important form of self-validation. But we can redirect those feelings towards themes that are more conducive to personal growth.

Luckily, Millenials and in particular Gen Z have found hilarious ways to talk about angst in art and social media. We’ve gotten really good at playing off our negative issues as comedic in order to make them easier for others to process. And I can appreciate their sharp turn from the emo, edgy content I grew up on and emulated a lot in high school. I think most people realized that while validating one’s suffering is important, romanticizing the negative effects of mental illness is not a good look. Unless you’re Billie Eilish, or Lana Del Rey… ok, romanticization of loneliness and depression and the like is here to stay, but at least people are now generally more aware of their coping mechanisms than they were 10 or 20 years ago. Better yet, it’s a funny joke, which brings us back to copium.

If copium is the filmsy coping mechanisms we use to distract ourselves from modern day problems, the copium meme in its Pepe the Frog form is a joke that both indulges in and makes fun of how we partake in copium. On the one hand, the satirical take doesn’t get much deeper than laughing at our inability to tear ourselves away from it. But at the same time, it’s just not feasible to get closure on every anxious and depressing thought that plagues us snowflakes. Sometimes you need a break. And if taken responsibly, copium can power you through the things that really matter.

We can explore the concepts of angst and copium in a much more meaningful way through art. Netflix’s Bojack Horseman is an excellent example of a way to not just comedically reference suffering, but offer critical commentary and analysis on the way angst gives way to copium. It remains highly relatable without sacrificing authenticity or a path to growth. That is was I have tried to imbue into my more conceptual work, but time will tell how accurate or helpful my execution is.

“Good Damage” – Bojack Horseman Season 6 Episode 10

Sources:

“Copium” – Urban Dictionary
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Copium
“Copium” – Know Your Meme
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/copium
“Billie Eilish is giving a voice to angsty Gen Z — and making healthy teens wish they were depressed”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/red-alert-politics/billie-eilish-is-giving-a-voice-to-angsty-gen-z-and-making-healthy-teens-wish-they-were-depressed
“‘Romanticising’ Mental Health Is Not All Bad- Here’s Why”
https://www.cofounderstown.com/romanticising-mental-health-not-bad-heres-3b663
“Good Damage” – Bojack Horseman Season 6 Episode 10
https://www.netflix.com/watch/81026968

Disclaimer: political talk inbound, but I promise it links back to animation

As I’m sure you know, the presidential election is coming up in less than a week and it’s a doozy. I’m from Texas, the state with the most restrictive voting process. I still haven’t voted despite applying for an absentee ballot, but after a game of transfer-around-the-rosie with the county clerk’s office, I should still be able to. Anyone who’s talked with me at length knows I’m no fan of the Cheeto in Charge, and while Biden’s got my vote, he’s far from an ideal candidate. If we manage to get Trump out of office, there’s still a lot of work to do. Many of my peers seem to hate the Democratic (liberal) party more than the Republican (conservative) party because they believe the Dems give an air of liberalism without doing enough for marginalized groups and social welfare. I sympathize with this view, but unlike them I disagree with the notion that the “system must be destroyed and rebuilt from the ashes”. I believe the “system” can be fixed, and that artists have a big part to play in that by influencing public thought and action.

The problem for me is I take too long to make anything, and animation takes a long time in and of itself. By the time I have something to say and an interesting, artistic way to say it, Trump has already tweeted 6 offensive things and the news cycle has turned 100 times over. On the one hand, I am hoping to become more confident and quick in making art on recent happenings, but in the long run I hope to create animations with more universal messages that still hold relevance in every day politics and social issues. Maybe that is the key as animators – too look at the bigger picture and address things like racism which is in no hurry to leave human hearts. Maybe I do need to be faster – if YouTubers can do 15s animations about fleeting viral memes then why can’t I do an animation about the fly on Mike Pence’s head? How do I make meaningful animations in a world where media is consumed at lightning pace? Perhaps I’m overthinking and just need to CREATE, just PUT OUT WHAT I FEEL and hope something sticks. That feels like a step in the right direction, but hopefully I develop a more satisfactory answer.