Hellboy Animated

Canada Bound

As the last footage is streaming in I will be winging my way to Toronto for big Fan Expo which seems to have a thousand sub names.  Both Mike Mignola and I will be there.  Mike will have a panel on Saturday to answer all questions about Hellboy so those of you who missed having a Q and A in San Diego, email your questions to your Canadian friends! (Don't post them here please).  On Sunday I'll show the opening of Sword of Storms then Mike and I will take all queries about Hellboy Animated. 

Budgets are being formulated and plans discussed for 2007, let's hope they include more movies!  Meanwhile I'm tangled in technical crap about screen resolution, compression, file conversions, eeEEAARGhh!  I just want to make the dang movie!  So I feel a little like Hellboy here. 

It's strange, and a little scary, to think that I'll be doing the final sound mix of Sword of Storms in about four weeks and a month after that it'll be broadcast.

There's a possibility of some Hellboy mini-projects which I only mention to tease the hell out of you.  Just a little reminder that Starz Media (formerly IDT Entertainment) has all sorts of surprises in store in the coming year.  -- Tad (soon to be jet-lagged)

Music To My Ears

Hellboy composer, Christopher Drake, let me preview more music last night via the Mac's iDisk.  The score was for a sequence early in Sword of Storms where the legend of the demons, Thunder and Lightning, is told through Japanese woodblock prints or at least our approximation of same.   To give the sequence more life, Phil Weinstein had animated models made of the characters using the same print look so that the sequence wouldn't be just the panning of still pictures.  The sequence ended up with a great look.

The challenge for Chris was that I wanted the sequence to have the a traditional Japanese sound but be friendly to Western ears.  The writer, Matt Wayne, had researched Kabuki theatre and called for the characters to cross their eyes and hold their poses for three fast drumbeats.  That expression is used in the mei pose in kabuki.  Although I loved the idea of being culturally accurate, I felt the crossed eyes would appear silly instead of threatening so we skipped that visual.  Because this sequence is animated in cross dissolves and limited animation, holding for the drumbeats looked like a mistake.  If the sequence was fully animated we could have played the contrast of the held pose and the rush into the attack.

Now that I'm out of the craziness of production, I can consider the paths not chosen.  I can't do anything about it in Sword of Storms but alternatives are worth thinking about for use in similar sequences in the future.  I doubt it will be a series Japanese prints but the recap of a legend could be done in a bas relief, a storybook, paintings on a vase, German woodcuts, etc., all ways that will present similar problems while trying to convey the mood of the folklore.

But back to the music -- Chris did a great job on the score, surprising me with his treatment of some of the action.  I gave very few notes.  What notes can a non-musician give a composer?  Story notes.

For instance, there was a sequence where a character was about to open a box.  There's nothing evil looking about the box but the audience needs to get the sense that there's something very important about this mundane action.  Chris established a sort of low rhythm in the score which created a great musical bed for the higher pitched, traditional instruments to play against.  As the character starts to open the box, Chris started an atonal build but then fell back into his established rhythm.  To my ears, the return to that low rhythm felt like a release of tension. The earlier atonal build was so effective, I asked that he sustain it until the box is opened.   Now there may be a musical reason he can't do that but Chris got the my point that I wanted the tension to hang on, building, building until the box is opened and--

There was another moment where someone is revealed, a surprise to the villains, not the audience.  I first thought we needed more of a "sting."  I apologized that the narration sort of slid over the moment making it hard for Chris to put a button on the reveal.  Chris played the piece over the phone to make sure we were talking about the same moment.  Without the picture, I heard the reveal that I thought was missing.  Ironically, it was a fanfare that I had thought was the problem with the moment.  Instead, it seemed to be a matter of contrast, the preceding moment didn't quite set up the reveal, it muddied the waters by being sort of a preliminary reveal.  Chris would've solved the problem even if he hadn't played it for me over the phone.  The point is, I talk story, mood, set up, payoff, character type -- all story elements.  Chris translates that into music.

I may describe a change I want by humming or referring to a song or another score.  I never mean for the composer to take me literally.  Those are just clumsy ways of describing the moment I want.  People have wondered if there will be a soundtrack released for these movies.  It hasn't been talked yet but anything can happen if enough people express and interest.  As the premiere gets closer, I'll see if we can debut some musical pieces on the website.  --Tad

Off Topic

Actually, it depends on your definition of just what is the topic of this blog. This isn't about the production of the animated movies, it's about one of their spinoffs. Check out the story over at Dark Horse Comics and you'll find there will be a couple of Hellboy comics. What you see here is a mock up of the first of the digest comics. These will be about 80 pages long but about 5 x 7 inches. I wrote a back up story in the first one based on a concept of Mike's re: young Hellboy's fascination with THE LOBSTER! Even though it's a 12 page story there's only four or less panels per page so story-wise it's more like a six or eight pager. What's been talked is that one of these digests will be released around the time of each DVD.

In addition, there will be 32 page comics inserted in the DVDs themselves! The first has another fantastic cover by Jeff Matsuda which currently is my computer wallpaper. These are completely separate stories from the DVD movies or the digest stories... unless that changes. But for now, they are unconnected. Each of these will contain a pinup by Mike Mignola.

So I can now answer the question, "How can I break into comics?" The obvious answer is to have a 30 year animation career, take on a project with a top comic creator, do a good job so he wants to work with you more, and have no respect for your spare time.

The hardest thing to get used to is the digest format. The originals are smaller than a piece of typing paper so there's a limit to how much detail you can include and how small you can draw. I start thumbnailing the way I want it then quickly find that I have to increase the size of the characters. It's a new kind of storytelling so I'm excited... and so far on schedule.

CRASH! The building next door is being torn down. It used to be used to test jet engines so there's lots of concrete involved and it's not going down easily. Wrecking ball, bulldozers, guys with torches, all cool stuff and I forgot my camera. Sometimes the wrecking ball is so strong that if feels like it's hitting this building.

Meanwhile, the pencil footage has come in and I'll be diving into it in about an hour. -- Tad

Crunch Time

Oh, when is it not?  Crunch time is defined as "now until November 28."  Currently, late deliveries from overseas are causing chaos over here.  Aside from just trying to get the movie edited and post finished, there are people in marketing and promotions who need to build a new trailer.  As it is, they'll have to make do with the 38 second teaser.  That's a big deal.  We had a chance to create a trailer that would be presented to a much wider audience than comic fans.  The trailer was supposed to be on some of the Masters of Horror DVDs and the new anime releases from Manga.  But at least the teaser will direct them to the  official website which will soon be brimming with all sorts of information and glimpses of DVD extras so maybe it's not a huge deal afterall.

The upside for the DVD is that the studio is sending us lots of pencil footage so that we can continue editing, composing and spotting sound effects.  That's all stuff we'll try to jam into the DVD.  That's cool, even I don't usually get to see that stage except for a few tests at the start of the project.  It'll be one of those "click on a scene and see the storyboard and pencil versions" type extras.

The good news at the core of the animation delay is that the work has slowed down for all the right reasons.  The  overseas director is faced with some of the toughest sequences in terms of effects and sheer numbers of monsters, ghosts, and other yokai.  But he recognizes that it's part of the climax for the entire movie.  If the animators have to rush through the scenes it could undo all the great work of previous sequences.  The viewer could feel let down.  The fact that they want to do it right instead of hacking it out makes me feel great.  Doesn't change our deadline, but gives me a warm feeling inside.

Or is that the start of an ulcer?

-- Tad

 

 

 

 

Y'know, one of these days I'll have to figure out the right way to place these damn pictures.  Never looks like my preview.

Way Scary

The weirdest stuff you see in the movie is usually the most authentic Japanese folklore.

Editor Animator

Okay, I wanted to Photoshop this cool thing with overlapping drawings to illustrate a point about animation.  But I came out with this piece of crap.  Oh well, too much time spent on it.  But let's pretend it's a real cool looking thing showing how animation works... and doing it brilliantly.  And while we're pretending, let's say we're at the top of a windswept stone tower overlooking a Scottish moor, knocking back flagons of fine ale.

Wait.  Did anyone pretend a bathroom?  Damn.

Okay, presenting a creative person you might not have heard of-- the Editor Animator.  Here is what animation boils down to: drawings closer together move slower than drawings placed farther apart.  When a character throws a punch, the drawings of the fist are closer together at the start where the guy winds up, way far apart and sometimes even blurred in the middle as the fist speeds toward the victim, then close together where it's stopped by the jaw of the target.

Sometimes the drawings are evenly spaced through the action making the punch lethargic.  The first thing the editor might try is to put the middle of the punch on "ones."  Usually, even top quality 2D animation is filmed one drawing per two frames, "on twos."  By condensing the middle of the punch to single frames, the fist travels faster thereby making the action, well, punchier.  But most likely on a fast action like a punch, the editor will actually cut out drawings completely.  Sometimes it's a matter of holding the anticipation drawing on the screen for more frames so the punch seems faster in contrast.

In many ways, animation is much more forgiving than live action when it comes to editing tricks.  In live action, if you film a scene in the forest, the BG leaves are rustling or light patterns are subtly changing.  I suppose if you have a big enough CG budget you can fix anything, you hire effects experts like Rick Cortes to freeze all the leaves or erase the errant bug that flew through shot.  But in animation a forest in the background doesn't move which lets you snip or rearrange frames with abandon.

There are times you can go beyond just timing and actually adjust acting by holding or rearranging frames.  You can hold a character as if he's thinking, keeping him alive by recycling a blink from earlier in the shot.  It occurs to me this is a discussion best had in front of an editing screen so I'll stop.

Why try to adjust animation through editing, which is a much clumsier tool than a pencil?  To cut down on the number of retakes.  Remember retakes?  Right now animators are furiously trying to keep up with the new scenes while going back and making the changes we've asked for in previous sequences.

We've got about half the movie back, more actually, and it's looking good.  We're feeding it into the hands of Chris Drake as it comes in.  Can't wait to hear the music.  There are other things going on in the world of Hellboy Animated.  Check over at Dark Horse for news of a new comic!  Right now,it's off to a meeting about DVD extras.  --TAd

Heads Up

I wish I had more time to make the kind of Photoshop notes like you see on the left.  I was worried that all the detail of expression was lost in the mass of shadow so I changed the light areas on Hellboy's face.  I think the improvement is dramatic but it will entail a clean up or effects animator to redraw all the shadow areas of this scene.

When I say, "I wish I had the time," I really mean that I wish the production had the time.  If I went in and finessed every scene like this, for whatever reason, I'd be taking animators away from their work on other sequences or even the next movie.  I try to choose the scenes that will back the biggest difference with the least hassle.  That way I'm keeping up the quality of both movies.  It's not factor here but when I'm producing a series with multiple directors, I have to make sure one isn't being so picky with his retakes that the animators have to rush through the episodes of the other directors.

<>

Meanwhile, a few more screen caps from a sequence that should be familiar to all Mignola fans.  --Tad

DVD is the PLACE to BE

Short post, kinda off topic today.  You'll have to Google the various projects to learn more.  ULTIMATE AVENGERS 2 is coming out soon and Frank Paur showed me some cool scenes from his animated IRON MAN movie last month.  It looks like the animated Direct to DVD business is ready to leave the Disney sequel arena and stake out a place in the hearts of all fanboys and fangirls.  There are now images of Frank's DR. STRANGE online and an announcement in the Hollywood Reporter that Sony is releasing a new Spider-man series directly to DVD.  Over at Warner Brothers, it looks like Bruce Timm will be watching over several movies including Darwyn Cooke's NEW FRONTIER and a SUPERMAN/DOOMSDAY DVD feature.  Marv Wolfman and George Perez are also connected with an animated version of a NEW TEEN TITANS movie, based on their JUDAS CONTRACT.

I think there's plenty of room for three or four Hellboy movies a year.  The more quality work starts coming out, the better for all of us.  Cartoon Network has been a great partner for us on HELLBOY ANIMATED.  They are HUGE fans of Hellboy comics and hope these movies really take off for them.  But the people we deal with don't make the overall decisions about what type of programming defines the network so we could be affected by future changes.  It would be great to have a secure DVD market, separate from any broadcast or cable entity, where great animation can be aimed at whatever audience is appropriate for the subject matter and storyline.

So I'm not telling you to buy stuff you don't like, but if you like any of these DVDs consider buying them... or giving them as gifts!! :)   --Tad