Disney putting the screws to theaters (and Pixar) again with Turning Red

[Mike Blakesley]

Yep, it's going to go right to Disney + and skip the theatrical run.

If I worked at Pixar I would be spitting bullets, what with all of their recent output being denied the theatrical release just to wrangle in some more subscribers.

I'd write more but I'm going to be busy for a few minutes taking down every Disney onesheet we have. I'm sick of promoting their stupid movies only to have them yanked out from under us.

[Per Hauberg]

HEAR, HEAR ! In Denmark, only very few cinemas the last year have accepted the "Disney way", but it seems, Disney and the biggest chains are now beginning to find a way, whcih will just make things worse for the small cinemas, looking stupid, when parents asks us for the latest Disney movie... It is very, very sad. I really hope, further negotiations will bring Disney back in the cinemas - and giving us a bit of chance, before streaming. I CAN live without them, but would rather not.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

There is also a possibility that it's not worth releasing. I haven't been very impressed with the bits I've seen so far. I didn't care much for Wall-e either.

[Mike Blakesley]

Well on that note, I didn't really care for Onward, which was the last Pixar movie to get a theatrical release. Disney seems to have turned Pixar into the black sheep of the family, somehow. The last Pixar movie I saw that really seemed to have the old Pixar fire was Toy Story 4. I had high hopes for Lightyear (coming this summer) but I have taken down all promo for that one and will only put it back up when or if we get an actual booking. I've been screwed over by them, promotionwise, for the last time. I know I can't do anything that'll actually hurt their bottom line but it gives me small satisfaction to take down their posters and delete their shit from my playlists.

[Bobby Henderson]

If I worked at Pixar I would be spitting bullets, what with all of their recent output being denied the theatrical release just to wrangle in some more subscribers.

More and more jobs doing CGI work are being jobbed out overseas to places in India and China. Well, you might have some Americans creating the visual concepts. But more and more of the actual "grunt work" is getting sent overseas for people to do the work for less. As technology continues to improve the worker bees may end up having even less leverage.

Well on that note, I didn't really care for Onward, which was the last Pixar movie to get a theatrical release. Disney seems to have turned Pixar into the black sheep of the family, somehow. The last Pixar movie I saw that really seemed to have the old Pixar fire was Toy Story 4.

That's a pretty good way to put it.

I actually started to sour on Pixar's movies once they crossed the line into doing sequels. Now, Toy Story 2 was a pretty damned good sequel. But that saga has been going downhill since then. One Cars movie was enough. Pixar is typically at its best when doing NEW material.

For a pretty good run one of the charms about Pixar was that they didn't do sequels. Once they started doing that as well as mash-ups with Disney studio stuff some of that magic just disappeared. Now it all just feels like, um, business. I'm not going to apologize for whatever John Lasseter did to get booted out of Pixar (now he's in charge of Skydance Animation). But it does feel like the studio has suffered a fair amount of brain drain. I fear Pixar will soon by digested into the guts of the larger Disney organism.

[Mike Blakesley]

Well, you might have some Americans creating the visual concepts. But more and more of the actual "grunt work" is getting sent overseas for people to do the work for less. As technology continues to improve the worker bees may end up having even less leverage.

Animation and CGI work has been going overseas for decades. I was thinking more about the creatives -- directors, writers, artists, musicians, that are seeing their labor of love going into the straight to video pipe along with Lion King IV and crap like that. When your TV is full of thumbnails, it's hard for something to really stand out and be an event.

I don't think Disney will ever "digest" Pixar given the amount of name-recognition value in that name. But they are definitely giving their Disney-branded animation fare a higher profile these days than the Pixar material. I'll bet morale is pretty low at Pixar compared to, say, a decade ago.

Agreed completely about the sequels.

[Randy Stankey]

Pixar is old news. Nobody cares, anymore.

Back in the day, Pixar had a new technology for making movies. Today, any chump can do what Pixar does on their home computer, for free.
The only difference is the amount of money Disney can throw at things. They can pay top dollar to hire the best artists and build giant render farms where where your average Joe can't.

Some people are better artists than others. Disney-Pixar ("Dixar" ) can spend multiple millions of dollars to buy computers and build them into render farms.

Filter for those things and, yes! Any asshole can download the software for free and start making movies on Pixar's level, right this minute.

Pixar's best talent is all gone. They fired Lasseter. (Via the Weinstein effect.) Many of Pixar's other original talent have either retired or moved on. The studio is populated by zombies, now.

The last couple of Pixars that I saw were "cute" but "Meh..." Now, it's just reprocessed versions of the same pre-digested Pablum puke.

If Pixar doesn't get another reboot, it will be dead, soon.

[Mike Blakesley]

I don't know .... there are very few "studio names" that will draw people into a movie. Disney is one; Pixar is another. Most of the "studio names" that will draw people in these days, are, (sadly), owned by Disney.

I mean, nobody ever says "It'll probably be good....it's a Paramount film!"

[Bobby Henderson]

Animation and CGI work has been going overseas for decades. I was thinking more about the creatives -- directors, writers, artists, musicians, that are seeing their labor of love going into the straight to video pipe along with Lion King IV and crap like that. When your TV is full of thumbnails, it's hard for something to really stand out and be an event.

I don't think the creatives have very much leverage unless they're operating under dual roles as producers. And even then they're getting plenty of marching orders on how to do things from higher ups in the studios and the people above them in the parent companies. Hollywood movies are infected with so much template-driven formula that it seems very rare to watch a movie that isn't predictable as hell. If a writer or director wants to rebel against that he'll get quickly replaced by one of ten other people ready to play ball.

Back in the day, Pixar had a new technology for making movies. Today, any chump can do what Pixar does on their home computer, for free. The only difference is the amount of money Disney can throw at things. They can pay top dollar to hire the best artists and build giant render farms where where your average Joe can't.

Technically it's more possible today for anyone to download and install the software tools needed to produce high quality 3D animation, CG-based visual effects and professionally edited audio and video. There are professional level tools that are available for free or very cheap. Blender has come a very long way from over 20 years of development; version 3.0 has a hell of a lot of capability to produce great 3D animation. There is a free version of DaVinci Resolve and the studio suite can be purchased for under $300.

Still, technical prowess and real talent are both somewhat rare in the general public. Lots of people think they can be artists, but they're not. Learning how to click around in a software application is not enough. It's kind like singing, very few people can do that objectively very well. The myth is that the computer is creating the artwork and that anyone with a pulse can do great work.

I encounter so many people who use computers daily yet don't quite qualify as being computer literate. Not knowing how to organize and manage files is a widespread problem. That's basic stuff. Some mainstream graphics applications like Illustrator and Photoshop can be challenging. They're kids toys compared to applications for 3D modeling/animation or node-based compositing. 3D applications have a very difficult learning curve. Simple projects, like creating a logo fly-in for a TV commercial can be pretty time consuming. Some tasks may require scripting in Python or a scripting language specific to a given application. Anyway, the point of all that is one guy (even one with talent and expertise) armed with one computer can do only so much. Any feature production requires teams of people who are expert in specific areas, like writing code or creating artwork or modeling or animating.

It's currently a weird time for movie post production and CG animation. The on-going fads with crypto currency and NFTs have screwed up the computer hardware market pretty badly. It's difficult and costly just to buy a decent gaming rig, much less a workstation that can be really productive doing 3D work. Speaking of the gaming industry, it has been poaching away a lot of CG talent from the movie industry.

There is no shortage around the world for people who want to do 3D work. There is a finite supply of people who can do excellent quality work. Movie studios like to find such people who are willing to work for less money, which often means using overseas talent.

[Randy Stankey]

Y'know, Bobby, I would never think of walking into your sign shop, Adobe Illustrator file in hand and tell you to make me a sign from it.

I would, however, bring that Illustrator file to you and ask you what you think. I'd tell you what I need and why I did what I did.
I'd leave you the files, let you work on them and come back next week to find out what you did to fix things up.

I remember, when I was a kid, how my father designed the signs for his restaurant/bar business. He was a professional level artist. Before I was born, he worked for Walter Lantz. He drew up his designs on large paper. I don't know what they call that size but it was the size of paper that blueprints are drawn on.
I remember my father and the guy from the sign company sitting at a table next to the bar, discussing things. The guy said stuff like, "This is okay but we need to change that." (etc., etc.) About an hour (and several beers) later, Dad rolled up the blueprint and gave it to the guy. They shook hands and out the door he went.
A few weeks later, a truck rolled up, a bunch of guys hopped out and installed a new sign:

Skyway Tavern
Charcoal Grill Your Own Steaks.
You Can't Beat our Meat!

Swear to God! I am NOT making this up!

Crude slogan aside, that's the way things are supposed to be done.

I think it should be the same way for people who like to use Blender and other programs. (I happen to like making things in Blender, too. )
But I would never even begin to think that, because I can use Blender that I should be the next Pixar!

When my girlfriend moved from California to Pennsylvania, she missed her Dad and he missed her, too. Just for fun, I made some videos of her playing with her cat and sent them to her dad. A little while later, the guy made a point to call me up and tell me that he liked my videos.

Yes! The man who made Outlaw Josey Wales liked my cat videos!

Does that mean I should pack up and move to Hollywood? Sure, it's something to smile about but it's not "California, here I come!"

Neither would I make a movie with Blender and think that I should be knocking on Disney's door.

On the other hand, it is fair to say that the things Pixar did, decades ago, are no longer unique. Anybody with enough desire and willingness to work and learn can do the same thing Pixar does, right on their computer. If they are willing to study, learn, work hard and persevere it is possible for them to become the next big thing.

The thing that really blows it for Pixar is that perception, no matter how likely it is or isn't.

[Bobby Henderson]

Y'know, Bobby, I would never think of walking into your sign shop, Adobe Illustrator file in hand and tell you to make me a sign from it.

I would be pleasantly surprised to get an Adobe Illustrator .AI file containing vector-based artwork. All too often customers send in the first JPEG image they find of their DIY home-brewed logo and want various kinds of signage produced from that.

We're not going to critique design aesthetics of customer supplied artwork, but will warn them about practical issues. They may have artwork that doesn't fit the aspect ratio of something like an existing sign cabinet they want to re-use. Or the artwork has features that won't make it legible at all to passing vehicle traffic. Vector-based artwork is required for most projects. JPEG images or other pixel-based files are not acceptable. They'll either have to provide vector files or pay us to convert/re-create the artwork before anything can go into production. Some design-heavy projects such as vehicle wraps may require a design deposit. We don't usually charge customers anything up front just to create sketches and bids. But things like vehicle wraps are very different.

I remember, when I was a kid, how my father designed the signs for his restaurant/bar business. He was a professional level artist. Before I was born, he worked for Walter Lantz. He drew up his designs on large paper. I don't know what they call that size but it was the size of paper that blueprints are drawn on.
I remember my father and the guy from the sign company sitting at a table next to the bar, discussing things. The guy said stuff like, "This is okay but we need to change that." (etc., etc.) About an hour (and several beers) later, Dad rolled up the blueprint and gave it to the guy. They shook hands and out the door he went.

In the analog "BC" (before computers) days sign designs had to be hand drawn/painted in a set scale. It was common to use blueprint sized sheets. The two guys who started our sign company in 1955 were my boss' Dad and Uncle. We have a blueprint flat file cabinet with a bunch of the Uncle's drawings. Every once in awhile I'll get to "resurrect" one of those designs, such as a re-creation of the first Love's Country Stores sign. We re-made one of those old signs a few years ago for a museum exhibit in Oklahoma City about big companies from Oklahoma. I had to scan in the original pencil drawing and re-create the lettering as vector paths and then put together a digital version of the whole sign design.

In production those blueprint drawings could be scaled to full size either using a grid system or via a projector. Two of my co-workers paint murals around Lawton using the same methods.

Today with everything computerized the design-to-production process is sped up a great deal. Years ago I might hand-draw items on paper then scan them to manipulate in the computer. Now I tend to create any hand-drawn elements using my iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. Computer-based design and computer driven tools improve precision. Customers often want to see numerous options and revisions. That's easier to deliver when you don't have to sketch it all out by hand. Other stuff gets added though. Regulators may want to see section detail drawings of the electrical components or scale drawings of the sign on the building elevation. Lots of companies just try to get away with Photoshopping the sign onto a photo of the building. It's possible to incorporate a 3D image of the sign onto a photo using Blender or Blender in conjunction with Photoshop. But most projects aren't worth spending that amount of time. Maybe if I get a good bit better at using Blender that could change.

On the other hand, it is fair to say that the things Pixar did, decades ago, are no longer unique. Anybody with enough desire and willingness to work and learn can do the same thing Pixar does, right on their computer. If they are willing to study, learn, work hard and persevere it is possible for them to become the next big thing.

Even though there are several firms that can do excellent quality CG work similar to what Pixar has done Pixar will always hold the honor of having done a lot of ground-breaking things first.

One of the things that made Pixar great in its peak years was attention to detail, like making the highway signs look right in Cars. There's lots of little things they spent extra time and effort to include. Those subtle details might go unnoticed by 95% of the audience. Bean counters would probably tell them not to waste time on that. But that extra effort is often what makes the difference between something that is forgettable content vs something that pushes the boundaries and qualifies as art.

If CG firms turn into something not much different than an overseas sweat shop the quality of their content absolutely will suffer. When it comes to anything artistic it's pretty easy to feel the difference between content made by someone who really loves what he is doing versus someone phoning it in for a modest paycheck.

[Randy Stankey]

I would never submit a JPEG as final copy!
Maybe as an idea to be worked up but not for production.

Samuel Jackson voice: "Aw, HELL no!"

Those Blender guys really make some neat movies:
https://studio.blender.org/films/

I like "Big Buck Bunny" and "Sintel" but some of the other ones like "Elephant's Dream" are just plain weird.
Yeah, most of those guys are art students or programmers trying to showcase Blender's features. That's the point. Right?

If I was really inspired, I could hook up with those guys and help make their next movie. If I did good work, I could put that on my resume and use it to get work at Pixar or some other place. I know a guy who knows a guy from Weta Digital. No, I'd never be able to just walk in to a place like that but there are places like that which have opportunities for people with the right ambition.

I just do it for fun. Sometimes, I think, "Maybe..." but, for me, it's just a hobby.

The first time I saw "Monsters, Inc." I think I spent the first part of the movie just watching Sully's fur wave.

Today, I have a Blender file of Sully that I can call up on my computer and render almost at the same quality. The only real difference is that, on a single desktop machine, it takes all day to render one frame where the pros use render farms to do it in minutes. Just the particle physics, alone, would bring my computer to a crawl!

The problem is that there are a million guys out there like me, all thinking, "I can do THAT!"

Whether they are as realistic about it as I am doesn't matter. They are the same kind of people who watch a few episodes of "Penn & Teller's Fool Us" and think they know how magic is done.

Once they have a little bit of knowledge it all becomes just a "cheap trick."

[Bobby Henderson]

I applaud the people continually working on Blender. There is a fairly large community of people from all over the world working on the source code and improving the application to make it more competitive with commercial applications like Maya or Cinema4D.

Today, I have a Blender file of Sully that I can call up on my computer and render almost at the same quality. The only real difference is that, on a single desktop machine, it takes all day to render one frame where the pros use render farms to do it in minutes. Just the particle physics, alone, would bring my computer to a crawl!

The Sully character only has several million hairs and modifiers to control them. In 2001 that fur was one hell of an achievement in CG animation. In 2022 it still takes some brutal computing horsepower to render something like that, not to mention a good bit of engineering expertise to trouble shoot problems if a custom shader does a bunch of unexpected garbage. I remember an extra on the first Shrek DVD where they had glitched renders of Donkey. His fur blew out into some Chia Pet looking craziness leaving his eyes and teeth exposed.

[Randy Stankey]

Stuff like that happens with my models too.

I can render the fur fairly easily. I think I can make a model/character with a couple-few million particles with relative ease but when you start putting force fields like "wind" or "gravity" things start taking more time. If I turned on "particle dynamics" where every particle's direction/position gets recalculated every frame my computer would start slowing down dramatically. Full-blown dynamics, wind and gravity would grind my computer to a halt.

That's not the half of it! The physics is easy compared to materials and lighting! You have to put a good material on the base mesh and you need a good material on the hair particles, too. Color, shading, transparency and anisotropics are all important. Then, you need to light that material with the right light sources. In my experience, you need at least two light sources to get good looking fur. I often do the traditional key/fill/backlight method. The problem is that, if the character moves, you have to move the lights in relation to the character AND the camera. Bottom line: It can be a real can of worms.

Then, let's say you have two characters with fur/particle systems attached. Each one gets calculated separately but, if you have physics turned on, they interact with each other. You have to keep the characters and their physics modifiers on separate layers to keep them from interacting but, if the same modifiers act on both characters you can easily end up with "blow outs" like you said happened with Shrek.

Yeah, I often have characters "blow out" when I least expect it or, in one frame the fur materials and lighting look good but, in the next, it's either gone completely dark or totally burned out.

I can only imagine how much work those guys at Pixar put into making Sully look right and keep him looking good even before the animation process starts.

I think Blender is a pretty mature program and it can easily be used for production if you're willing to work. In my opinion the difference that makes people feel like it's not mature is the fact that the program doesn't hold the user's hand like some commercial software does.

Compare GIMP to Photoshop. In Photoshop you have the "Custom Filter" dialogue where you can apply math based modifications at on every pixel. GIMP calls it what it is, a "Convolution Matrix." The thing is that, underneath the hood, many filters use the convolution matrix to do their magic. The user just doesn't see it because most of that work is done for them.

You can do a Gaussian blur with one click in one filter or you can do the same thing with a convolution matrix:

[1 2 1]
[2 4 2] * 1/16
[1 2 1]

What most people don't know is that, when you apply that one-click filter, it's actually doing the matrix math behind the scenes.

Photoshop is a great program. No doubt. But, compared to GIMP, it's kind of the "dumbed down" version.
Sometimes, in business, things need to be dumbed down in order to get work done faster.

Maybe it would be better stated to say that Photoshop is more polished.

However, if you are willing to spend some time learning the principles behind the software's features, Photoshop and GIMP are very comparable.

In my experience, Blender and Maya, et. al., are comparable in the same way.

Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe it's better for people just starting out to learn the principles of how things are done. Then, if they learn and progress, they can move to commercial software and the skills they learned on the free software will help them progress even more.

I say the same thing with photography. If you really want to be a photographer, I say to put down that digital camera and learn how to use a manual, film camera.
If you do that for, say, a whole summer, when you go back to using digital, your skills will have progressed to the next level.

[Bobby Henderson]

I first learned photography the old fashioned, analog way, shooting film. It was definitely a much slower process but in some ways more rewarding. It's a challenge loading undeveloped rolls of film into cans and doing so in pitch black darkness and then successfully developing them. Working in a dark room with an enlarger to make prints is not the easiest thing to do either. But one can feel a greater sense of accomplishment when the negatives and enlarged prints develop successfully. People who have only taken photos digitally just don't have an appreciation for that. You learn a sense of discipline when shooting on film.

3D modeling and animation requires some of the same kinds of discipline. The user really needs a game plan when starting a project. So many technical things can go wrong. Without good planning the result can be a whole lot of lost render time.

One complex 3D character like Sully from Monsters, Inc. is one thing. Most CGI-heavy feature movies these days have scenes with dozens, hundreds or even thousands of characters or other active elements in the same frame. The balancing act going on becomes ever more delicate. Naturally it becomes necessary to have teams of people working on a scene and multiple firms carrying the work load for an entire feature. It has to be a hell of a challenge just keeping all the different teams on the same page.

Regarding Photoshop and GIMP, I vastly prefer using Photoshop. I don't think of Photoshop being dumbed down, as much as it is a lot more efficient than similar rival applications. I don't mind using a filter or plugin with various control sliders to adjust results. Even if I could hand-code something similar I don't have time for that. The only other pixel-based image editors I'll use are specialty apps such as Procreate on the iPad. Additionally, Adobe builds its real leverage with users over how applications like Photoshop integrate with various other Adobe applications, be it Illustrator, After Effects, InDesign, etc. No other mainstream graphics suite comes close to that. Then there's all the third party plugins available for Adobe's applications. I have the Astute Graphics suite of plugins for Illustrator; they're outstanding.