Chimerical found this interview of Dave Spafford, who did the
flip book animation & opening titles for HOD. (It sounds like
someone else did the actual drawings, then he animated them):
http://www.vfxblog.com/vfx/2005/07/dave_spafford_t.html
Dave Spafford talks 'House of D' animation
Spaff Animation director Dave Spafford talks to vfxblog about the
opening titles and flip book sequence for David Duchovny's House of D,
and offers his thoughts on traditional versus computer animation.
Interview by Ian Failes
Q: Can you tell me about yourself and Spaff Animation?
We started the studio about 16 years ago after we had finished Roger
Rabbit, which was such a great experience. It was really difficult
to work at Disney after that because we had done the film in England
with Bob Zemeckis. So after doing that, coming back to Disney and
falling into the same routine, it just wasn't any fun, so we left
and my wife and I started a company; Spaff Animation. Debbie was
from England and we had met when we were working on Roger Rabbit.
We just started doing all types of things like commercials using
live action / animation combined like we had done in Roger Rabbit.
I had done all the Warner Bros characters and Disney characters
combined in the film. For instance, Donald and Duffy Duck
playing the piano together and Bugs Bunny falling from the sky
with Bob Hoskins and things like that. It was just so much fun,
so we started a studio and did that kind of work.
We've done a lot of commercials over the past 16 years.
We just recently started getting into doing film titles, which is so
much more fun than commercials. The people are a whole lot nicer.
Advertising agents are the biggest nightmare-type people walking on
the earth! The film people seem to be a little more easygoing with
allowing you to do your own thing, because they've been working on
the film the whole time and now it's the tail-end and they're ready
to be on vacation. So they allow you a lot more freedom because,
I feel, they're sort of spent.
So [the producers] called me up to do David Duchovny's film.
The film is about this guy who is an artist and he makes these little
flip books. In the film they made some crude kind of flip books.
So I had to match the style of those which isn't 'Disney' style
animation, which meant there was an effort to downsize everything
to match the quality of the flip books. I kind of had to throw away
everything I knew in order to do this very simple style flip book.
The guy isn't really an animator in the film -- he's an artist
-- but he makes these little flip books for his kid.
We ended the movie with the live action going into the flip book.
It worked out really well when we did the end credits.
The end credits roll up and everything.
Q: Did you also do the opening titles as well?
Yes. At first we were going to animate those. But then it seemed
like we were a little too much ahead of the game, because we wanted
to introduce the guy as an artist. So we pulled back from that and
I just did sort of artistic hand written titles. It was really fun
because it was done so quickly. It's probably some of the fastest
opening titles ever done! It literally took me probably 20 minutes
to draw out all the names, because I just wrote them out in freehand
as quick as I could as if that was the guy's writing, as if he was
writing his own name. It just worked out really well. I did it
with a big, thick PrismaColor pencil which is big and graphic.
Then we burned those in right over the live action and it worked out
really great. So they were just like normal titles but very graphic.
When you see it on the big screen, it almost looks like it's
down with charcoal. Very grainy, very loose, very artistic.
We saved the animation for later.
The people who did the end titles, Title House, they were like,
'Wow! How did you do this? How did you get the deterioration
of the line and everything?'. They all work with computers and
they just couldn't see how it worked out so well. It was kind
of funny how simple it was. I said, 'Well, you just draw it!'.
Q: How were you drawings put onto film for the flip book sequence?
Well, what we normally do is: you do the drawings, you scan them,
paint them in the computer and then you output that. That's how most
animation is done now. We don't use cells anymore and we don't use
cameras anymore. So, the idea of scanning images into a computer and
painting them gives you a lot of versatility and lets you do a lot of
effects. That's how we were going to do it. But what I did was, well,
the drawings were all done in pastel/chalk crayons for the animation.
So it was all real art. We were going to scan it, put it into the
computer and create a fake, flipping shadow that was falling on the
pages as if it was falling as a flip book. But it just didn't look
real enough. So we put up a desk and we printed out every single frame
of the images we created, after we had scanned it and put it on clean
paper. Then I flipped those in front of a 35mm camera. We just got
real tight on it and burned the end credit roll-ups right after that.
It really is a real flip book at the end of the film. We printed
out the live action frames, where all the characters are there
(Robin Williams and David Duchovny and his wife and his kid are
riding the bicycles down the street) and all of a sudden it just
cross-disolves into the animation of the flip book. I drew over
the printed frames of the live action for a couple of feet of film
and then faded that out and continued the animation on them and then
they started flying. We take them right up into the sky and once
they go past the Empire State Building and disappear into the sky,
then the roll-up titles at the end start coming in.
Q: Have you seen the final film?
Yeah, I really liked it. You know, the hard part about doing films is
that they'll give you a copy of it and you watch it a couple of times
to get a feel for it and sometimes, if it's not very good, it's kind of
a chore to watch the thing over and over. But I really liked this film.
It's very simple and everybody in it is great. Robin Williams is amazing.
He plays a handicapped guy and he's just great. David Duchovny is
great.
The kid is great. It was really fun. Everybody on this project was
very cool, especially in allowing us to do what we do. We had a blast!
We ended up doing another project later on for the same producers.
That really got into some animation. We got into some crazy stuff.
That project's called Sueno.
Q: How was your work reviewed by David Duchovny?
David Duchovny knew what he wanted. He had a lot of great ideas.
It was easy in a way. We actually did it several times in several
different ways. Usually when you work in animation, someone will
see something and it gives them more ideas about what they want.
Then they'll be like, 'How 'bout we do this?'. It's such a strange
thing to deal with at first if you've never dealt with animation.
You don't really know what you want until you see something.
But they were cool. We changed a few things after the fact,
but in the end everything that we did was for the better.
When you see it, every single frame is real artwork. There was
nothing in the computer. There was nothing done to anything.
It was a real flip book. It was like flipping a really,
really big book. Something like 11" by 10". They were
pretty good size drawings. I had chalk all over the place.
I was covered in it. The dust from working on it was just
everywhere. It was just millions of drawings -- crazy!
Q: Did you think originally it was going to be something
that could be achieved in the computer?
I don't animate in the computer at all. It's just not my thing.
It's like a piano player switching over to a guitar. I just have
no interest in it. There's plenty of people who like doing it.
For me, it's sitting in front of a plastic box that is going to
be gone tomorrow. It's a tem****ary thing. I just don't like the
computer as an artistic tool. I come from the 'real' stuff.
I was trained by the old guys at Disney. It was just you and a
piece of paper and a pencil. The technology is no different now
for me than it was for Steam Boat Willy. In fact, the desk that I
use is an old 1938 Disney desk. It's just as good as it was then.
I love the idea of that. Every time I sit in it I get like an
energy from it. I think, 'Wow, everything that has been done
on this is amazing!'. I just love that old style and look.
For me to sit at a computer with a mouse and a keypad and do animation
is just like -- that's not animation to me -- I don't know what it is.
I don't like it. Plus, you're always in school. You never,
ever learn it, because you're always chasing the new equipment.
So you can't really get it down and say, 'Right, finally I've figured
out this computer. Now I'm going to do my thing'. I mean, next year,
it's not going to be Maya for doing animation in the computer,
it's going to be 'Super Maya 3'. So you're constantly in school.
When I finished school I was done. I just want to be an artist now.
The idea of chasing this thing forever, well, it will always be
that way. It's just not my thing.
Plus, it's not that fun. I like to smear drawings. You do a drawing,
you go, 'Oh, that's horrible'. You throw it in the trash. You do
another one and then you say, 'You know what? I'm not finding anything
better than this. I'm gonna pull that out of the trash and use it'.
And that ends up being the best drawing you did. You threw it away
but it's still there. With the computer you go delete and it's gone.
It's just gone. I also don't like the idea that it's on a TV screen.
I can't touch it. I can't pick it up and walk into another room
and go, 'Hey, look at this, what do you think?'. I will always,
for the rest of my life, just do the real stuff. It's a lot more fun.
Q: So, are you a rare breed in the animation world?
Definitely, now. There are very few traditional animators around.
As far as animation studios that are out there still doing traditional
stuff, you can count them on half of one hand. It's kind of cool,
because at first all the work was disappearing. Everybody wants CG
because it's the new thing. But because everybody else jumped ****p,
it's actually made more work for us. We went through a slump but
now it's starting to pick up again because there's not very many
people doing it.
It's disappointing but what'll happen is, right before it dies,
some genius in the marketing department will say, 'Let's do a whole
campaign about going back to our roots!'. They'll get the guys back,
although some will be gone. Right now, the best guys that are in
traditional animation are the cream of the crop. That's because
animation is so hard to do, so the guys who can do it (and don't
want to do computer animation) are doing it. They love this.
It's a beautiful art form. So they're still around.
If you pool them altogether, you'd have this 'A-Team' of animators.
It's a like a ****trait painter, you know. All of a sudden the
camera's invented and everyone goes, 'Ooh, there's a magic eye thing'.
And a lot of ****trait artists died and had no work when the camera
was invented. They just shrunk down to nothing. It's too bad.
I mean, they're two separate things. But that's just the way it is.
It seems like every time something new is out there, they go,
'Oh, we have to get rid of the old and wow, look at the new thing.
Everything else is dead. This is the new thing!'.
It's probably part of the promotional thing when something new comes
out -- 'This is the new improved way, it's better than the old way'.
I myself would rather look at a John Singer Sargent ****trait of a
family rather than some stiff photograph. An artist can catch the
feeling of a kid, say, wiggling around that's not going to come
out in a photograph. They can hone in on the kid's attitude.
You can put in that little thing that you can't catch in the
camera onto the painting. And we've lost that.
It's the same thing with computer animation. To me it looks like
floating robotic movement stuff. It's so unappealing to me. We've
lost the really good performance that an actor with a pencil can do.
It's just not the same with the computer. What's happening now is
that everyone who's gone over to computer animation thinking that's
what they had to do, well, they're going to be replaced by people who
know nothing about acting who are just going to be moving characters
around over in India. Everybody is starting to do it now.
They don't really care about how it moves. It looks the same anyway.
They don't care. They just want the money. So if they can hire
someone for $4 a month to sit in some sweatbox pumping out CG
animation, they're going to do it. Someone's going to go,
'Why would we want to spend $150 million when we can spend
$15 million and do it in India?'. And they will do it. It's already
happening. So even the CG animators might be out of work soon.
You'll have designers and development people, but once that's done
-- well, once the characters are designed the CG animators aren't
creating those characters anymore. There's a library of stock moves,
eye blinks, certain gestures etc. Once it's done once they don't have
to do it again. So, all you're doing is, say, using the 'A' eye blink,
so you put that into the computer and now your character's doing
that blink. Those guys didn't have to draw that or do the shapes
-- they're just taking it. So everything sort of looks the same.
You can't tell the difference between one studio and another outside
of the design of the characters. There's no difference between the
movement that Pixar does or the acting that Disney does or by Blue Sky.
It all looks like it's been animated by the same guy. And it has -- the
computer. Well, 90% of it is computer generated. So it's no fun to me.
I just like to sit down and draw with a pencil and have some fun.
Q: Can you tell me about your experience on 'Roger Rabbit'?
That was such a great time. There was a moment there where we
thought we had pulled back animation. It was back in there.
Because it was dying. It really was sort of falling aside.
That was such a popular film, mainly because of Zemeckis.
He didn't know anything about animation outside of the idea
that he liked it and he knew what to ask for. So he would say,
'OK, I want you to do this: Daffy Duck comes in here and he
gets in a fight with Donald Duck'. And then you would do that
and he would say, 'Great! Now move on to your next scene'.
It was just so much fun. It was like being a real actor.
If you did what he said, you were done. You moved onto the next
scene, which kept your momentum going. That's very im****tant.
I mean, doing the same thing 15 times -- once you do it once -- it takes
so long to animate a scene. It's 24 frames a second, which means it's
24 drawings a second. Someone goes, 'Here's this scene. You know,
I looked at it and instead of him coming in this door, let's have
him coming in the other door'. And you're like, 'Oh man, why didn't
you think of that before! Now I have to go re-animate that thing'.
So you've already felt like you've done it. And obviously you have.
It's not as fun the second time around, especially when it takes you
a week to do the scene. It's not like you're in front of the camera
as an actor and they say, 'Well, let's try take two'. That might take
three seconds to do, but to animate three seconds takes a lot more time.
So to do it twice is kind of pain in the ass. Zemeckis was great.
We did so much work in such a little period of time, it was just
so hard to go back to Disney and get back into the same old thing.
We really thought this is going to be so great, and it was for a
while, but then the computers came in. They always like promoting
the 'new thing'. They would say, 'This is going to be great.
It's better than the old'. And the people who were saying that
didn't know beans about animation. They're just saying it
because it's all hype. Animation isn't supposed to look real.
When you watch Peter Pan or Alice in Wonderland and Pinnocchio,
those things just suck you in because there's nothing like it.
It's amazing. I don't want animation to look as if it's 'real',
you know. I don't like the backgrounds in CG films.
They just don't look right.
Your audience doesn't give a **** about it, you know -- 'Oh my God,
they made it look so real!'. They don't care about that. They
watch live action films and take it for granted. They don't care.
They just want to be entertained. So the idea that you can animate a
realistic human being; in animation you don't want it to look real.
You're doing a caricature. You're doing a stylised version of that.
You're cheating everything. You're playing with timing, colour,
moving images. It's not supposed to be real. CG looks like weird
floating puppets to me -- nothing to do with what I want to do.
When you animate something with a pencil, every single drawing is
different. You can cheat the shape of something to get an effect.
It might just be for that one drawing that you're going to push this
one image. Now to do that in CG you have to go in there and rebuild
that head and stretch it and do all kinds of weird stuff to it.
That could take you days. In traditional animation, it takes me two
seconds. It's like, 'Bam! I drew those eyes unique for the one frame.'
If I just wanted it to pop for one frame, they takes me two seconds
to do. With CG, you gotta go back in, dive into the wire structure,
build a model of it and all this crap. Then you find out that it
didn't work! And you spent two days messing around with an eye.
It's just not my thing.
Q: So 'House of D', then, is the kind of project that gives you
the scope to do what you want to do?
Oh yeah. The flip book is going right back to the beginning of
animation. Animation was a flip book before it was ever filmed.
The idea that we could combine the two was really cool, especially
with the live action. To have it just cross-disolve from these guys
riding down the street and going into this crude looking flip book
is really fun. The idea that we actually got to do it by making a
giant flip book and flip it was really cool. At first I didn't think
it was going to work. Because when you scan the drawings, you've got
total control of the lighting. If it doesn't work you can go back
in and fix it. I couldn't believe that we were going to do this live
with a camera. The cinematographer was looking at me like I was
crazy, which was kind of funny. I was thinking, 'This isn't going
to work and we're just going to go back to how we did it before',
but we projected it on the big screen and it was amazing.
A real flip book. We went back to the very beginning.
Q: How did you get involved in the project originally?
I got the job because the producer, Richard Lewis, is a Bill Peet
fan. Bill Peet is a storyboard guy who also left Disney and started
doing his own children's storybooks. He was the Disney studio.
No one knows that, but he was the guy who basically designed the
characters for all the films, did the storyboards for all the films
and wrote a lot of the stories. He was always my favourite artist.
So, Richard was looking for someone and he was talking to one of the
DreamWorks directors about the animated titles, and someone said,
'Well, go talk to these guys'. He called me up and we were talking
about Bill Peat and I said, 'Yeah, he's like one of my closest friends.
He's a really cool guy and I've know him for years. I learnt everything
from him'. So it took off from there and it was a lot of fun.
Related Links
Spaff Animation = http://spaffanimation.com/
House of D Official Site = http://www.houseofdthemovie.com/
Special thanks to Dave and Debbie Spafford for making this interview
possible.
Posted on 18 July 2005
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