Independent Animation: Developing, Producing and Distributing Your Animated Films by Ben Mitchell

Author:Ben Mitchell [Mitchell, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: CRC Press
Published: 2017-04-21T04:00:00+00:00

Figure 12.1

Still from The Naughty List (Dir. Ben Mitchell). (Courtesy of Ben Mitchell, ©2010.)

Figure 12.2

Boxhead and roundhead creator elliot cowan. (courtesy of the artist.)

Certainly, the more authentic approach is to use a performer with enough vocal capabilities to not warrant any additional postproduction trickery, or to use different actors per role altogether, but as a means to an end, this approach can be an effective compromise. Even performers as gifted as the great Mel Blanc (the man who originated such iconic voice performances as Barney Rubble and Private Snafu, not to mention Bugs Bunny and the greater percentage of the entire Looney Tunes ensemble) made use of this technique—his characterization of Daffy Duck, for example, does not amount to a great deal more than a pitched-up version of his performance as Sylvester the Cat.

Taking the lead yourself can be achieved without the digital trickery of such a cheating little cheater as I, provided you have the chops for it. Hailing from Melbourne, Australia, animator Elliot Cowan* is another independent artist, on top of those discussed in Chapter 8, to have created a feature-length independent animation project with minimal resources. After having spent 11 years in Tasmania working on TV commercials, the call to return to something more animation focused saw him move to the United Kingdom for 18 months working for Uli Meyer before winding up in New York, where he, too, caught the bug to make his own animated feature (there must be something in the water).

Earlier in his career, Elliot had developed Boxhead and Roundhead, a concept for a book package that failed to generate much by way of interest (Figure 12.2). as it turned out, there proved to be some life and audience appeal in the characters when they were repurposed for a series of independently animated shorts. Embracing a time- and cost-effective approach to the animation, The Stressful Adventures of Boxhead and Roundhead would eventually gain enough momentum to warrant its own longer-form outing (Figure 12.3).

This ultimately led to a slight reworking of the main characters, who had previously been mute entities. Though the visual style of the shorts worked well enough without dialog, to carry anything longer than a few minutes, Boxhead and Roundhead would need voices and more thoroughly defined characteristics.

“They didn’t speak originally, although in the later shorts, they do what I call ‘indie speak,’” clarifies Elliot, referring to a nonsense language of murmurs and grunts. ‘They actually spoke to each other in the books that I had written, but at the time, I had no facility to record dialog, so I abandoned it initially.

“Originally, they were two very frightened characters that lived in this world where everybody hates them, but that also developed over time. One thing I was always trying very hard to avoid is, when you have the bossy character and the simple character, it resembles Ren and Stimpy. I tried very hard to make sure it was not that relationship, that they were very close, that they needed each other, and that it was a genuine friendship.

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