Creativity Why do we Animate?

Animator’s Eye Premise Sometimes I kiddingly tell people that I got into

animation to work out traumas I got from watching Snow White as a small child. But what if I’m not really kidding? Why do people go into animation? How do they acquire an animator’s eye? Are they born with one or two? Or is this something that can be taught?

When I look back over the years, I find that Snow White and her seven dwarves have haunted many of my drawings and paintings. Sometimes Snow White takes the form of a blonde Alice in Wonderland, but the dwarves still surround her, fascinated by her.

Why do we Animate? Why are we drawn to animate? What is the appeal of doing drawing after drawing in order to see an illusion of movement? Maybe some of us never forgot how much fun it was to watch cartoons when we were little. But then, what drove the first animators? Why did Winsor McCay create Gertie the Dinosaur? Why did Max Fleischer create Koko the Clown coming out of his inkwell? Why did Walt Disney create Oswald the Lucky Rabbit?

Let’s ask the visionaries. Where can I find a visionary? Do I look one up in the phonebook or on the web? And more importantly, what is a visionary?

A visionary is one who sees visions. Wikipedia . com broadly defines a visionary as one who can see the future. The visions can be political like those of Martin Luther King or John F. Kennedy. They can be religious like those of Mohammed, the Catholic saints or William Blake. They can be technological, like the vision for Apple from Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Visionary art is a genre spanning centuries including artists such as Gustave, Moreau, Ernst Fuchs, Henry Darger and the mysterious Hieronymus Bosch.

The visionary achieves this state from a diverse variety of sources including meditation, hallucinogenic drugs, lucid dreams, supernatural connections or art. Here we are going to be concerned with the latter item—the art of animation.

Dictionary.com defines a visionary as one given to audacious, fanciful, unpractical or idealistic schemes. They’re often referred to as dreamers. As John Lennon, the musical visionary, said in his song, “Imagine”: “You may say that I’m a dreamer but I’m not the only one.” You’re in good company because another definition of a visionary is one who has unusually keen foresight.

If the vision is powerful enough it can even shift paradigms.

What in the World are Paradigms?

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What is a paradigm and who cares if one shifts? What is it, like an earthquake? In a sense, yes, it is exactly like an earthquake; the whole world becomes radically different. The old rules no longer apply.

In his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Thomas Kuhn defined a paradigm shift as a change in the basic assumptions of a theory of science. A paradigm is the set of basic assumptions that the world of belief rests upon. A paradigm shift reframes the whole world.

This is kind of abstract so let’s look at some real-life paradigm shifts. Who creates a shift of this type? Often it is scientists who have these world-changing visions—visionary scientists, to be exact.

Copernican Revolution—The Earth is not the Center Prior to Copernicus, in the 16th century, everyone on earth had the belief

that the earth was the center of universe. Both the sun and moon appeared to revolve around the earth so their belief was that the earth was at the center. Copernicus found that the model did not fit the facts and this led to speculation of competing models. Copernicus had the vision but it was Johannes Kepler who proposed that the planets traveled in ellipses and not circular orbits. It was Galileo Galilei who used a telescope to provide astronomical observations that supported the new paradigm. This shift had implications far afield of the scientific community.

Darwin’s Theory of Evolution—Man is not the Center The next visionary assault on man’s vanity came with Darwin’s theory of

evolution. The idea of evolution, of one type of animal evolving into another, goes back as far as the ancient Greeks. In the 17th century the Greek model was replaced by one based upon the laws of nature. In 1859, Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species explained the process of natural selection and how species evolved to best fit their environment. It was Thomas Henry Huxley who adapted Darwin’s ideas to humans. Using comparative anatomy he discovered similarities in structure between apes and humans that suggested they had a common ancestry. This idea shook not only the scientific community, but the whole world, for it suggested that humans, like the earth, were not the center.

Freud’s Theory of Dreams—Consciousness is not the Center

The third visionary who shifted our world was the first psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud. Freud studied the mind and proposed the idea that the ego was not the center of our mind but rather just the tip of the iceberg. Most of our mental activity is actually unconscious.

IGGY: Be very quiet. We’re looking for a pair of dimes. The iceberg metaphor is very appropriate for each of these paradigm shifts.

You think you see the whole thing and you can’t imagine that things could be any different. What you don’t realize is that you’re standing on just the very tip of the iceberg.

So how does all of this relate to animation?

• Freud’s unconscious source of creativity. It works while you sleep. • Tex Avery and Chuck Jones both considered becoming psychoanalysts. • Believability of physics for illusion of life. • Paradigm shifts in animation: “It can’t be done. No one’s ever done it before.”

The people who say this sort of thing are not visionaries.

• An animator needs to know about everything. Expand your mind. • Scrat wants nuts. • Many fellow animators tell me that they used drawings to cheer up their parents .

Bateson’s Evolution of Ideas Gregory Bateson was another scientist who excelled in many scientific disciplines. It was actually a painting professor who suggested that I read Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of Mind . It was a dense book of over 300 pages with a new vocabulary and extraordinary ideas. At the time I had no idea why he had me read it, but it changed my life. In fact, I wish I could remember his name to thank him.

Bateson was interested in the meta-science of epistemology or the “how we know what we know.” He explored the idea that ideas themselves mutate, change

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and grow to survive, just like physical species do. This is a powerful way to look at ideas that we’ll explore further. In addition, he helped develop cybernetics and systems theory adding the idea of feedback. This is also important for the evolution of ideas.

The Nutty Universe In searching for a way to express my ideas about animation I came across a fascinating article that helped clarify my seemingly random thoughts. In other words, the article helped evolve my hunches. “The Nutty Universe of Animation, the ’Discipline‘ of All ’Disciplines‘, and That’s Not All, Folks!” by Dr. Alan Cholodenko, is a very “nutty” article—but in a good way.

He talks about the quantum world of subatomic particles and makes interesting comparisons to animation. It’s a topsy-turvy world where everything is upside down. What we take for our normal world is really a special case of the quantum world. We’re sitting on just the tip of the iceberg.

The quantum universe or the world smaller than atoms is “nutty.” It’s a world where “things” can be particles and waves at the same time or even two places at the same time. It’s a world where the observer affects what they’re observing. The quantum can only be imagined in unbearably complex mathematics—or as played out in cartoons.

Animation is the Universe of Childhood

The nutty universe of childhood is (isomorphic with) the nutty childhood of the universe. For ourselves, as for Heraclitus, the universe is ruled by the child and its play – its disseminative play – its seductive – do I dare say it: nutty – games, games for “children of all ages”. The universe is a child’s toy, Heraclitus tells us, what it plays games with – what it animates with its play!, its child’s play! – even as its narrative and destiny are a child’s: toy story. The nut was a child’s toy, too, in antique times, but something apparently considered of no value. Giving up the nut was to give up childhood for the serious, mature world of the adult.

—Dr. Alan Cholodenko

Animator’s Eye Dr. Cholodenko believes that, like our “reality” is a special case of the quantum, live-action film is just a special case of animation.

Animators are ones who still have their animator’s eye that connects them to the wacky, quantum world of childhood. They’re connected to the source of aliveness, play and joy and this allows them to bring back “relics” for the rest of the world to enjoy. And that’s what they bring to animation.

Why do we animate? Does it really matter why we animate, if we’re creating something of value to share with the world?

Visionaries Anybody see a Visionary?

What does it mean to have an animator’s eye? Is it different from a photographer’s eye or a painter’s eye or a writer’s eye? Each works in different mediums and underneath it all they are all similar. I believe having any of these eyes has to do with being visionary. What is a visionary?

Of or pertaining to a vision or visions; characterized by, appropriate to, or favorable for, visions. Affected by phantoms; disposed to receive impressions on the imagination; given to reverie; apt to receive, and act upon, fancies as if they were realities. Existing in imagination only; not real; fanciful; imaginary; having no solid foundation; as, visionary prospect; a visionary scheme or project. One whose imagination is disturbed; one who sees visions or phantoms. One whose

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imagination overpowers his reason and controls his judgment; an unpractical schemer; one who builds castles in the air; a daydreamer. ( Visionary- http: // www . brainyquote . com / words / vi / visionary237713 . html )

It actually doesn’t sound too good, does it? In fact, in the past visionaries were often persecuted or killed, as they were believed to be witches or in touch with evil powers.

However, if we look at some of the visionaries of history we may find

ourselves in pretty good company. Where would we be without Thomas Edison? In the dark. He attempted to create the lightbulb 11,000 times before succeeding, because he believed in the vision of his imagination. Albert Einstein certainly dealt with things existing only in his imagination. He used to imagine himself on a train chasing light beams. The implications and applications of his mathematical vision of E = mc 2 changed our world forever. Not only scientists, but artists and writers can be visionaries.

Other visionaries simply imagine what does not yet exist but might some day, as some forms of visioning (or gazing) provide a glimpse into the possible future. Therefore, visioning can mean seeing in a utopian way what does not yet exist on earth—but might exist in another realm—such as the ideal or perfect realm as imagined or thought. Examples are Buckminster Fuller in architecture and design, and some of the pioneers of personal computing such as Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, or Malcolm Bricklin automobile industry. Some people use mathematics to make visionary discoveries in the nature of the universe. In that sense, a visionary may also function as a secular prophet. Some visionaries emphasize communication, and some assume a figurehead role in organizing a social group. ( Visionary — Wikipedia . com )

The creators of the television series Star Trek imagined a little hand-held communicator that could reach a starship in orbit. This was decades before the cell phone was created. Jules Verne and Leonardo da Vinci were both artists who imagined scientific marvels like submarines and helicopters. Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception , Salvador Dali’s Paranoiac Critical method, Pablo Picasso, were all visionaries. James Joyce wrote literature where he punned in multiple

languages. Stan Lee created a whole alternate universe with his unique comic marvels. He asked a simple question no one dared before: “What if the superhero, Spiderman, was a nerdy teenager?” and grounded the story in real teenage emotions.

George Melies was a pioneering filmmaker who sought to learn about everything. He studied old languages, photography, magic, performance, showmanship, stunts, painting, drawing, piano, storytelling, movement, invention, literature. Melies wanted to make movies so he converted a movie projector into a camera. He shot his movies but later realized he didn’t have a projector to project his footage. He used everything he learned in his films. Magic performance taught him visual effects and illusions. He painted his own backgrounds. He even did his own stunts. Having a real understanding of the art of film, he even played piano while filming to give his performers a sense of rhythm to act to.

The field of animation itself has produced its own visionaries. What would animation be without the wonderful and terrifying world of Snow White ? This existed first in Walt Disney’s imagination, then he and his talented artists brought his vision to the light of day for the rest of us to see and enjoy in the form of theme parks, memorable characters, and wonderful stories with classic music. Walt truly was an entrepreneur, businessman, entertainer, inventor, artist, cartoonist, visionary, and animator. However, it is not true that he drew all the Disney cartoons himself. Believe it or not the public, myself included, had this perception. What they all had in common was that they expanded the vision of what’s possible with animation.

Winsor McCay and his dinosaur, Max Fleischer and the creatures of his inkwell were visionaries. Brad Bird’s The Incredibles and Eric Goldberg’s Genie from Aladdin were first products existing in their own imagination only, brought to life through their hard work and shared with the world. Miyazaki has almost created his own genre of imaginative heartfelt films like Kiki’s Delivery Service, Totoro, Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle. Their imagination has enriched our imagination and the frontier of what was once impossible is now part of our world view.

Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes fame offers his take on how his characters came to life.

When I first came up with the characters, Calvin was little more than a mischievous loudmouth and Hobbes was simply his somewhat more sensible friend. As the characters expanded, Calvin’s and Hobbes’ personalities became more like my own. Their worlds and actions are fictitious, sometimes the opposite of what I would say or do, but their emotional centers are very true to the way I think. Hobbes got all my better qualities (and a few quirks from our cats), and Calvin got my ranting, escapist side. Together, they’re pretty much a transcript of my mental diary. I didn’t set out to do this, but that’s what came out, and frankly it’s pretty startling to reread these strips and see my personlity exposed so plainly right there on paper. I meant to disguise it better. ( The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson, vol. 1 page 13 )

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Jeremiah Zagar was a visionary who covered whole buildings with murals, mirror, tile, drawings, and glass turning them into objects of beauty. They say architecture is frozen music. Maybe murals are frozen animation. Looking into his life might give us an idea why an artist creates and why we artists are driven to animate.

The short film Paints on Ceiling , about Jeremiah, describes why he became an artist. His mother saw him drawing on the ceiling and screamed. He felt that if he could get that kind of response, that’s what he wanted to do.

There often is an obsessive quality to art, that it must be done over and over to get it right. This is certainly true with animation. It may have to do with things buried in the past but it is also often the most alive thing in our lives right now that brings aliveness to others in the form of rich emotional entertainment, aesthetic experience, and/or instruction and information. (In a Dream, a film by Jeremiah Zagar, 2009 Indiepix films DVD)

On another front it was a group of computer scientists with animator’s eyes who had the imaginative vision that computers could actually create moving imagery. Dr. Ed Catmull wanted to be an animator but couldn’t draw that well. What he did know about was computer science, and he had the vision to believe that computers could create striking art and animation. He and the others followed this vision to bring the world the first completely computer-generated film, Toy Story . I was actually one of the artist “guinea pigs” who got to test their systems.

There were also the business leaders who believed in this animator’s eye computer vision. Dr. Alexander Schure, president of N.Y.I.T., had two passions: technology and animation. He created the Computer Graphics Lab in the 1970s and brought scientists together with artists to create the tools the artists would need to create animation on the computer.

To accomplish his goal he created a computer laboratory and a functioning animation studio. My first job was working on their film, Tubby the Tuba . It was an animated musical comedy. Unfortunately, the music was mediocre and there was no comedy. But, the lab brought forth computer creations that were the show-stoppers at SIGGRAPH for years to come.

Lance Williams, another scientist at the Lab, wrote a sci-fi script, The Works , which we began working on between commercial production. In 1980, we calculated that using all the available computer power that we had at the time, The Works would need 20 years of rendering time in order to premiere in the year 2000. (The real problem was that we would have been upstaged in 1995 with the release of Toy Story .)

Eventually, when computers got smaller, faster and cheaper, the expensive dinosaur computers of the lab in their air-conditioned rooms could no longer compete. My Macbook Pro laptop has more speed, memory and power than the whole Computer Graphics Lab had in their mainframe servers. Several scientists eventually left the Lab to create Industrial Light & Magic’s (ILM’s) digital editing process and later left ILM to create a very small company called Pixar.

Shamans Wanted Shamanism is the practice of communicating with the spiritual world in order to gain wisdom to bring healing and balance to our ordinary world.

A Mobius strip is a thin strip of paper whose ends are connected but with a single twist. Imagine an insect on a Mobius strip. Its experience is that of being on a flat surface. From our vantage point, we can see that they have traveled over the twisted space on both sides. Now imagine that we’re like the insects walking the surface of the Mobius strip: we see the world in our limited way. Now the shaman can step back and see other dimensions and bring back new insights for us.

Each culture has its own way of seeing the world, as reflected in the representations of their art. Australian, Eskimo, Egyptian, Greek, Cave, Renaissance, Medieval, Modern, Postmodern. Culture allows the participants unique ways to see the world; however, it also functions to limit other ways of seeing.

Art is affected by available technology. Technology creates feedback loops, which cause it to continually evolve and grow. Originally, artists went to nature for inspiration. What actually happened was that art grows out of nature and the man-made environment and especially previously created art. With the internet, our world feedback is almost instantaneous—this continually pushes the cutting edge of all the arts and sciences.

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Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words, images to achieve changes in consciousness. The very language of magic seems to be talking as much about writing or art as it is about supernatural events … This is why the artist or writer is the closest thing in the contemporary world, that you are likely to see, to a shaman. ( The Mindscape of Alan Moore DVD www . disinfo . com disinformation -myspace.com/disinfo)

In their bringing together all of the arts, the animators are modern day shamans. They are the visionaries who transport and transform us.

What can film tell us about ourselves? It’s your job to go and discover the answers for yourselves to share with the world.

Spychoanalysis There’s another visionary who saw amazing things that existed only in the mind’s eye, that was not an artist, who nonetheless shows us the royal road to creativity. This was Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis.

IGGY: I think it’s more like spychoanalysis ‘cause they spy on your brains. Didn’t we already talk about Freud? Ah, yes, but one of Freud’s key ideas was

that the unconscious is repetitive. So here we are again.

Freud’s Dream Theory Prior to Freud, dreams were taken to be either strange random ramblings of the

sleeping mind or messages from the gods. Freud demonstrated that the strange “manifest” contest of the dream could be interpreted as a distorted picture of the mind’s psychical structures, which Freud called the “latent” dream thoughts. Freud discovered that dreams were actually a kind of rebus language about undiscovered parts of ourselves. A rebus is a puzzle made of pictures and letters.

Jokes and other psycho-pathologies of everyday life could also be scrutinized with the same process of interpretation.

Free association was Freud’s technique for unearthing the unconscious stories of the mind. He would have a patient lie down on a couch and say whatever came to their mind. Then they would continue to say whatever associations came to those thoughts and so on. These meandering pathways would reveal material which Freud could then interpret and discover what obstacles the patient was dealing with unconsciously.

Free association works exactly because it is not exactly free. It’s unconsciously guided both in the adaptive brain functioning below consciousness level and the Freudian unconscious.

Freud knew that free association was unconsciously guided to reveal the patterns of behavior being repeated over and over. Could this concept of “repetition” have something to do with us animators doing one drawing after another after another after another after … ?

(CUE SINISTER MUSIC)

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Yes, Freud can get very deep, that’s why it’s called depth psychology. But Freud’s radical ideas inspired a whole school of art that has inspired many artists, including the surrealists. The surrealists in turn, inspired animators. Surrealism is key to understanding the animator’s eye.

As further proof, I offer you this interesting trivia about certain animation directors. I’ve read that both Chuck Jones and Tex Avery had considered becoming shrinks but went into animation instead. Can you imagine lying on the couch with Tex Avery sitting behind you?

Let’s try some amateur psychoanalysis. Walt Disney created Snow White . Max Fleischer created Gulliver’s Travels . Don Bluth created The Secret of NIMH . Jeffrey Katzenberg’s Dreamworks created The Prince of Egypt .

What do they have in common? They’re all their first films. So what do they say about their creators? Here are the facts and I’ll let you draw the conclusions. Snow White is a fantasy of a prince rescuing a beautiful young girl from the clutches of a jealous queen. Gulliver is a giant who saves a community from war. The Secret of NIMH is about rats who are sneaking out of a lab. The Prince of Egypt is about Moses leading the chosen people to the promised land. Here are some more interesting facts; Don Bluth hired Disney animators from Disney Studios to his own lab and Jeffrey led animators from Disney Studios to the new promised land, Dreamworks.

In an ironic twist, Pixar’s first film was Toy Story . Toy Story was about a cowboy toy who was jealous of the new toy, a spaceman. Toy Story was the first full-length feature completed with space-age computer graphics.

What in the World is Surrealism?

Surrealism was a reaction to the insanity of the rational world’s two major wars. Something about mankind’s view of rationalism was all wrong.

Surrealism is a cultural, social and political movement asserting that liberation of the human mind, and subsequent liberation of the individual and society, can be achieved by exercising the imaginative faculties of the ’unconscious mind‘ to the attainment of a dream-like state different from, or ultimately ’truer‘ than, everyday reality … In more mundane terms, the word ’surreal‘ is often used colloquially to describe unexpected juxtapositions or use of non-sequiturs in art or dialogue.

In Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto of 1924 he defines surrealism as: Dictionary: Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.

The radical aim of surrealism is to revolutionize human experience, including its personal, cultural, social, and political aspects, by freeing people from what is seen as false rationality, and restrictive customs and structures. ( Surrealism, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia )

I think Iggy is in repetition mode but in order to put this all in a more familiar context, surrealism is a Tex Avery cartoon. Dumbo ’s Pink Elephant sequence could have been designed by the surrealist painter, Dali. In fact, Dali did collaborate with Walt Disney on some projects. Bob Clampett’s Porky in Wackyland is pure psychic automatism. Chuck Jones, Max Fleisher, and Ward Kimball are all names of famous animation directors. They could

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also be a list of surrealists in the way they play with reality. turning it inside out and upside down. Animators certainly had a surrealist’s eye.

Let’s listen to what some of the surrealists have to say about creating life though art.

Miró’s Monsters

Joan Miró was a Spanish surrealist whose paintings appear very playful with bright vibrant colors. Listen to what he says about his work:

I never dream at night, but in my studio I dream all the time, it’s when I work that I am awake, that’s when I dream. The place is full of anarchy and violence. When I am in my studio and that’s most of the time and always alone, I am very ferocious. But when I leave, I relax.

Practice and exercise to learn how to see shapes. He would blindfold me and put things into my hands and then get me to draw them without having seen them.

Max Ernst Max Ernst was another surrealist who used the techniques of collage and

frommage combined with painting to create haunting images. This combined approach is now used digitally with Photoshop by concept artists on many films.

Collage technique amounted to a criminal offense, that is it did violence to nature. What is the technique of collage? I’m tempted to see in collage an exploitation of the chance meeting or artificially provoked meeting of two or more distant realities on an unfamiliar plane, and the flash of poetry which results from their mutual approach.

These works reverberate with the illogical and irrational qualities that are generally ascribed to dreams, though artists are fully aware that they represent the essential spirit of reality.

Salvador Dali Salvador Dali was a Spanish surrealist whose life was as surreal as his

paintings. I’m sure you’ve seen his most famous painting, The Persistence of Memory . You’d know if it you saw it by the melting clocks. Dali worked in film with Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney.

A true artist is not one who is inspired, but one who inspires others. The only Difference between Me and a Madman is I’m not Mad.

The Creative Process of Bringing Ideas to Life Creative life and taking calculated risks keeps us alive. Creativity is the process of making something new that people value. It might be something that never existed before or a new variant on something old that gives it new life. The product or process can take innumerable forms, subject only to the outer limits of our imagination.

The important thing is to remember what Thomas Edison wrote, “Genius is one per cent inspiration, and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.” Walt Disney had the inspiration to create the first feature animated film, Snow White . It took hundreds of artists years of study and about four years of production to bring it to the light of day.

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The Creative Process One of the most frequent questions that writers and artists are asked is where they get their ideas. The assumption is that only some people are creative. Actually, everyone is creative in different ways. As children our whole approach to the world is of creative play and exploration. Later, we learn the rules of how to act grown up and we lose some of our original spark of creativity. We have to protect our animator’s eye from becoming too grown up. Animation should be crazy, zany and fun, certainly not grown up. This doesn’t mean that animation can’t tackle serious issues.

Every culture throughout history has had creation myths that describe the origins of life and our world. How did it begin? As animation artists we are very lucky; if we don’t like the world we can use our animator’s eye to create our own.

So where do ideas come from? Actually, ideas are right in front of you—hundreds of them every minute. You just need to learn how to capture them and nurture them to fit your creative needs.

The Stages of Creativity Researcher Graham Wallas wrote about the creative process in his book, The Art of Thought (1926). He studied the steps of the creative process and broke it down into four stages: preparation, incubation, illumination and verification. Others have expanded and modified the process based upon their biases, some seeing creativity as something

mysterious involving the unconscious while others take a more cognitive approach viewing the process as something more purposive.

Many researchers have modified and evolved Wallas’s original description of the creative process. Each adds a richness to the process in their own way.

Barron’s variant called the Psychic Creation Model also has four stages modeled after the conception to birth of a baby: conception, gestation, parturition (suffering to be born) and picking up the baby (Barron, 1988).

Rossman questioned inventors to come up with his seven-step process: observation of a need, analysis of the need, survey of available data, formulation of solutions, critical analysis of the solutions for pros and cons, birth of a new idea, and finally experimentation to test the solution and perfecting it (Rossman, 1931).

Bandrowski tried to balance creative and analytical processes. He created a model for creative strategic planning consisting of five steps: analysis, creativity, judgment, planning and action (Bandrowski, 1985).

We’re going to look at our own version of the process. It is important to note that the creative process is

iterative. For those of you who are familiar with computer programming, that means that while you don’t have an answer or idea, continue the process until it finds the idea. In other words, it loops. So creativity is a sequence of looping stages.

Paul Plsek created a creativity model that explicitly uses the cycling process in his Directed Creativity Cycle. The stages define four quadrants of a circle: beginning in the upper left is preparation, followed clockwise by imagination, development and action. Preparation involves observation and analysis. Imagination involves generation and harvesting. Development involves enhancement and evaluation. Action involves implementation and living with it (Plsek, 1997).

The stages for animation that we’ll describe are:

1. Problem formation 2. Research. 3. Experimenting. 4. Incubation, 5. Inspiration 6. Production 7. Critical Evaluation

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The animated creative process is broken down in further categories as well: there is the concept stage, the design stage, the building stage and the using stage, and we also have the marketing and distribution stages.

There’s another aspect of the creative process that is the constraints that we work under. There is only so much time, energy, and money available to us, unless we use cheap Martian labor. And we also are stuck with the laws of physics. (Wait, in animation we’re not stuck to the laws of physics, but we’ll learn more about that later.)

Besides the idea of physics, we have the physics of ideas. Ideas can create momentum as if they have a real force that can accelerate the creative pace. Most people jealously guard their ideas for fear that someone might steal them. This, of course, is a real possibility. However, in my experience the more ideas we create, the more come our way. They become like the proverbial snowball rolling down the hill, growing in size as it rolls. The other secret to keep in mind is that the more ideas you create the better they will become.

A second physics concept related to ideas is that of friction. Friction slows things down. Technically, friction is a force that acts opposite to the direction of an object’s motion. Fear acts like friction to the creative process, grinding it to a halt.

We’ll also learn about one more mysterious stage that most writers on creativity don’t talk about.

Problem Formation STAGE 1. Problem Statement Formation What are we trying to do? Creating an animated film is our goal. But are we are trying to entertain or educate or persuade an audience with our animated film? We want to tell a good story that will keep our audience interested whether we’re making a comedy feature or a commercial to sell a product.

While this is our main goal, we will have many sub-goals during our journey. We might want to design new characters or a novel look for an animated world, or we may want to find a new way to tell a story. In making an animated film, we might want to create a pipeline out of available software tools or create our own plug-ins to accomplish specific tasks. We might want to find out the best way to distribute and market a web cartoon series.

Often the problem statement comes from factors outside of our control in the form of constraints.

Problem Definition and Constraints

Clearly state the problem you’re facing in very specific terms. What do you want? What would the solution accomplish? How do you know when you find it? When you define a problem it takes away a lot of its negativity. When you name and define it, you know what you’re working with rather than it being some horrible unknown. Don’t worry about how you’ll solve it. That comes later.

Life continually presents us with problems. However, how we define the problem for ourselves constrains the possible solutions that we may find to address them. Constraints are limitations or restrictions that affect our ability to accomplish things. How we define a problem unconsciously adds constraints. So part of the problem we have with problems is that we unknowingly place our own limitations on the possible solutions available to us.

Constraints can also be looked at as rules. I remember when I was first learning filmmaking, I was faced with numerous restraints. We were working

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with Super 8 mm film allowing us only three minutes of grainy film without sound. Money was a constraint even then, as it was also very costly for a child in school without a job.

We were making sci-fi and horror films. One of the constraints that bothered me was that all of our actors were kids! Somehow it made the films seem less serious. However, in spite of the constraints, we learned a lot about filmmaking and had a lot of fun.

On Pomp and Circumstance , in Fantasia 2000 , we had some challenging constraints when we had to make a change, to make a gag funnier or a story point clearer. Since the music was locked, we had to make the change in exactly the same number of frames. This was a real challenge. Sometimes constraints do make it harder, like when there’s a lack of time or money.

One of the problems we had during Pomp and Circumstance involved the dove not wanting to leave the ark. We tried making it afraid of heights, but that didn’t read. We tried having giant sharks in the water, which was really funny but didn’t fit into the world. Finally, I realized that all the animals on the ark were in love. This was a great contrast for Donald Duck missing Daisy. But it also solved our problem. The dove was so in love with its mate that it didn’t want to leave her. So it forced Donald to struggle with the dove, including kicking it off the ark. It became my favorite sequence.

Constraints can also be our friend in that they limit the field of infinite possibilities down to a manageable range of choices. Constraints can serve as a guide for us within the context of the story problem that we’re given. When we really know a character, this serves as a constraint as to how they’ll act in any given situation. In this way constraints make our job easier.

Another more positive word for problems is “challenges.” Challenges don’t weigh us down like problems; instead challenges can be seen as opportunities to help us grow. In writing this book I had many challenges, like deadlines. Other challenges I gave myself, like writing the best instructional and most fun book that I could. Once I let Iggy and Bunny into the flipbooks they sort of took over. They added extra life, so I gave myself a new challenge to include them whenever possible. I think they’re actually pretty good teachers—well, at least Bunny is.

IGGY: I heard that.

Research STAGE 2. Go on a Search for Knowledge

In order for the creative process to work we need to gather research. Think of research as eye and brain food. Your body needs healthy food to live and grow. Well, your brain needs to be fed too. Continuing the metaphor, your body needs exercise and so does your brain.

Part of your job to nurture your animator’s eye is to watch movies! How cool is that? However, we don’t just watch movies like “normal” people do—we seek to learn from them. We want to watch to learn the secrets of how they’re put together, how they achieve their effects, how they tell their story and how they affect us emotionally. We need to watch movies to train our animator’s eye. Walt Disney encouraged his staff to watch movies. Here’s some interesting animation trivia. Disney’s artists used inspiration from Romeo and Juliet for the glass coffin scene in Snow White . Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde inspired the queen’s transformation scene.

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When I was storyboarding the farewell finale of Pocahontas , I watched every sad movie that I could find, including Romeo and Juliet , Ghost , West Side Story . The research led me to the surprising secret of making the scene work. We thought we were making Disney’s first tragedy. After watching Casablanca , I realized we were making a bittersweet ending, not necessarily a tragic ending. It changed the whole feel of the ending and if I hadn’t done my homework, I wouldn’t have created that solution.

In addition to watching movies you need to gather image files. You should keep your own reference to inspire you. Image files should include photos and art from all kinds of sources to nurture our animator’s eye. When you borrow from many sources, you can find your vision and make something that is uniquely yours.

One of the best and easiest ways to explore images is to surf the web. It’s really like magic. You simply type in what you’re looking for and tell it you want images. You can find hundreds of images on just what you’re looking for. At work today I searched for and found images of knife throwers, the colors of an archery target, porcupines, and chameleons.

You can even ask a question and people from all over the world have probably answered it, or something similar, posted pictures and sometimes given video demonstrations. For example, type in the search bar, “How can I animate a bouncing ball in Blender 3d?” Hit return and “presto!” Google returned 88,700 results in 0.32 seconds. It’s really like having your own genie in a bottle. If Google doesn’t return enough searches you can even go to other search engines such as Bing, Altavista, or Yahoo. Just search for “search engines.”

I personally like to be inspired by other’s artwork and you’ll find lots of artists posting their art on their own blogs and web pages.

The internet is like having your own library in your pocket. Digital file reference doesn’t take up bookcases of floor space. However, it’s easy to forget about an inspirational reference you have if it isn’t easily available in your bookcase. There’s also the danger of crossing the line between gathering research, and just procrastinating by surfing the web. You need to know when to stop, even if that next link might have just the answer you’re looking for, because if you don’t you won’t progress to the next stages of the creative process.

You should also do your own research with a digital camera and sketchbook.

In animation, you’re working within a context of what’s gone before. Learn about different types and styles of all kinds of art not just animation. Different animated features developed their style from various sources or technological changes.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame was inspired by the caricature art of Ronald Searle. Hercules was inspired by the sharp-edged caricatures of Gerald Scarf. Rhapsody in Blue , from Fantasia 2000 was inspired by the Broadway caricatures of Al Hirschfield. Pocahontas was inspired by Joseph Christian Leyendecker. Ice Age was inspired by German Expressionism and Looney Tunes layout and background painter, Maurice Noble.

101 Dalmatians ’s line style was affected by the recently developed technology of Xeroxing. Toy Story was paradigm-busting out of the 2D world into the new 3D world of computer graphics.

One final note on doing research is to go out and see real life in action. Personally, I don’t like to travel but when I do I find the experiences to be very rewarding. Go out and enjoy the sunshine and do some experiments.

Experimenting STAGE 3. Experimentation by Asking Questions in the Middle of Chaos

Problems and solutions both start with an idea Ideas don’t come out of thin air—they have roots. These roots go very

deep because they’re made of all of your previous experiences and memories. Memories are an interesting thing in that they seem connected in our brains like dominoes. You’d be surprised how much more you remember than you think.

Here are two experiments to try. First, listen to a song you heard when you were younger. Often you’ll remember that time in your life, where you were, when you heard it, who you were with. The second experiment is to remember a place you spent a lot of time in when you were younger. Let’s say it’s your room. Look around and see what you recall; in your mind go outside and travel down the street. See how much comes back to you.

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What is an Experiment Anyway? An experiment is a methodical process used to explore

and test a hypothesis. That’s the formal version of an experiment. As a teenager I used to experiment with my chemistry set. What would happen if I added this to that and some of this other stuff? This is a more random approach to experimenting. Both approaches provide valuable information. The benefit of the first method is that, if you achieve something worthwhile, you can do it again. If you used the random approach you’d have to guess how you arrived at the solution.

What is the Power of Questions? When you read that heading you already started thinking

about what is the power questions have, didn’t you? That’s just the way our mind works. Questions create tension. Our minds seek closure to reduce that tension. We want answers to questions—our questions. It will even answer rhetorical questions.

IGGY: Use questions to keep your audience interested in your story! Why? Why? What if? And then what if? Suppose … I

wonder … I wonder what would happen if … how? When, where, who? And back to why?

Questions are the most powerful tools an animator has in their toolkit. When we ask a question it’s like asking a question in a web browser, it sets off a search of answers. A question activates unconscious searches within our brain’s memory banks in search of patterns that match what we’re looking for.

Our minds are filters. We filter out a lot of what we don’t understand and filter out what we don’t like. This may feel good in the short term, but it can lead us to getting stuck in a rut. Questions break us out of ruts and our learned limitations.

There are no dumb questions. When I was in school we learned that atoms were made of electrons, protons and neutrons and that these were the smallest units of matter. I asked what they were made of and promptly got in trouble, with the answer that nothing was smaller than them. It wasn’t a dumb question to me; I sincerely wanted to know. Years later, I discovered my teacher was mistaken when I learned about the incredible world of sub-atomic particles. This science is so weird it’s mind boggling—in a good way. My intuition suspected something more like the quantum universe, that acts more like cartoons than reality. There are no dumb questions.

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Why are ideas attracted to questions? Questions are the way we think. Questions direct the creative process. You just need to learn how to drive the process. You don’t even need a learner’s permit. Just ask the right questions.

Document your Experiments and Process Experimenting requires that you document your process so you don’t lose

your ideas. Manage your information visually. Stories are often laid out with index cards. This way you can rearrange the plot points to see which order works best. It also makes it easy to add or delete scenes.

A sketchbook is like a scrapbook of your mind. Use whatever method works for you. Two things are important, that you don’t lose the idea and you know where to find it when you need it.

Experimental Techniques Let the project show you where it needs to go—let your unconscious be your guide.

Here are some experiments you can try to take you places you might not have imagined:

• Create a comic strip jam. You draw the first panel and then let your friends draw the second panel, then third and so on. The story will go in places you could have never imagined.

• Go for a ride in your pink submarine and take in the sights. • Deconstruct your ideas and images. Deconstruction began as a literary

theory that later was adopted by architects. As an approach to art it involves deconstructing pieces and reconstructing them in new ways. Here’s a “deconstructed” Iggy. I don’t think that he likes it.

The surrealists have given us cool techniques for artistic experimentation.

• Max Ernst practiced a technique called frommage. Frommage is a technique of transferring a texture by rubbing a pencil or other media over paper placed upon a textured surface. You can transfer tree bark, concrete, leaves, tombstones, any kind of textured surface.

• Salvador Dali explored images with multiple gestalts in a single image. It’s like the classic duck/rabbit illusion or woman/witch multiple images. You mind sees either/or but not both at the same time. Just ask this face in the clearing.

Remember to hit SAVE.

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• Anthropomorphism is where we see human traits everywhere. Betty Boop and KoKo the clown cartoons have everything teeming with life, bouncing to the beat of the soundtrack.

• A surrealist favorite was to randomly juxtapose images. Maybe try taking a pile of images and juxtaposing them in a sequence, like refrigerator magnet poetry. After you randomly juxtapose them, try rearranging them into a surreal narrative.

• Haiku is the juxtaposition of two ideas or images set to a verse structure of three phrases of 5, 7 and 5 sound units known as “morae.” Try telling your story as a haiku.

• Free association comes from psychoanalysis but works great for generating unexpected ideas. Just say whatever comes to mind without censoring yourself. Try creating with words first. Follow the associations and metaphors. Then re-imagine them as images.

• The digital method of surreal techniques is to use random art generation programs to generate material as source material. UI Software’s Artmatic, Synthetik Software’s Studio Artist and the free open drawing project, Alchemy, are great for generating and manipulating images.

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• Listen to the guided meditation on the DVD created by hypnosis therapist and special effects producer, Toni Pace.

Once you’ve gotten results from your experiments, you need to analyze the results to figure out what to do different in the next experiment and try again.

Metaphors What’s a Meta For? We think in metaphors. We think about one thing in terms of another. I’ve been comparing Frankenstein’s creation of life with the animator’s bringing characters to life. Metaphors allow us to understand our world. And share ideas about it.

We can experiment with our metaphors. I call it Chemistory. We experiment with different metaphors as if they were chemicals. Chemistory is a neologism. A neologism is a made-up word or expression. Disney’s Imagineering department is a good example, combining engineering and imagination.

How do we experiment with ideas? We treat them as metaphors. We treat one thing as if it’s like another and see what that yields us. Metaphoric seeing is seeing one thing in terms of another. Metaphors jump gaps between ideas just like lightning.

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In animation, our metaphors can come to life. Like the old Bray Studio’s Farmer Al Falfa cartoons, it can literally rain cats and dogs.

The second way that you can experiment with ideas is to explore the connection between the parts. It’s like a train of dominoes which represents our train of thoughts. One idea leads to the next.

Visualization Techniques How do You Map Your Mind? How do you jumpstart the process even when you’ve run out of gas?

Our minds are designed to find and see patterns. But first you need to give it something to look at to find those patterns. I’d suggest creating a mind map. Yes, map your mind so you don’t get lost.

The notebooks of Einstein, Martha Graham, da Vinci, Edison and Darwin suggest that one of the primary reasons they achieved greatness was their ability to represent their subjects visually by diagramming and mapping. ( Cracking Creativity: The secrets of creative genius. Michael Michalko, Ten Speed Press Berkley CA, 2001 )

What is a mind map? A map of your brain? A mind map is not a map of your brain but of the contents of your mind related to the project at hand. It’s a graphic visualization of the ideas you’re thinking about.

The traditional way is to start at the center and branch out in all directions with related ideas and branch out to smaller details from those branches. Imagine you’re looking at a tree from the top down; that’s the shape of a mind map. You can label the branches and add whatever graphic or iconic adornments you wish.

I don’t always like to have a center, and just put down ideas and move them around, grouping them into relevant clusters.

Its power comes from the way the information is displayed because it shows relationships. By juxtaposing the information visually in this manner, your mind can find unexpected patterns and relationships.

Combine your mind map with lots of questions and you’ve got a powerful tool. I have found that it works very well for finding and unifying themes within stories where we’re trying to tell a story with too many unrelated story lines.

There are many software packages that allow you to map your mind, just in case you get lost. These include Inspiration, Tinderbox, Diagrammatic, and the free VUE, short for Visual Understanding Environment.

For most of my mind mapping I use Inspiration. It’s lightning fast, easy to use, visually appealing and very flexible. It has the ability to hyperlink to other inspiration maps.

I like VUE for its ability to next child nodes within child nodes.

When I’m working on a large project, like this book, I’ll call out my big gun, Tinderbox. Tinderbox can be used as a simple mind mapping program but that is wasting much of

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its power. It is incredibly complex but to utilize that power requires learning its own internal syntax, which isn’t always intuitive. I love the program for what I do know how to do and am continually amazed at what its users find it capable of doing. Luckily, they have a wonderful forum and excellent tech help.

Diagrammatic I find useful for its playful style. Visualizing data offers information that pure text doesn’t. Here’s the creative process as text in a typical outline form. Creative Process

I. Problem formation II. Research III. Experimenting A. Techniques 1. Juxtaposition 2. Deconstruction IV. Incubation V. Inspiration VI. Production VII. Critical Evaluation A. FEEDBACK

Now compare the same content presented as a mind map.

The same content offers extra information because of the addition of spatial

organization, color coding, icons and arrows.

Incubation STAGE 4. Incubation & Dreaming When you’re tired, you’ve reached the next stage …

After you have been wracking your brain and running into deadends, you need to stop. Not stop the project, just stop working and take a break. When you take a break, your unconscious mind keeps working without you. It works while you sleep, when you nap, and when you find yourself daydreaming.

The unconscious mind needs time to make connections and discover patterns. The unconscious has a different sense of time than our everyday life. It also doesn’t respect the idea of negation. The surrealists knew that the unconscious mind thinks with a picture language, juxtaposing them in strange ways. It also plays with the sounds of words treating the sound as important as the meaning of the word.

There are actually several types of unconscious—the first is our natural unconscious that takes care of all of our automatic processing. We don’t need to think about our hearts beating, breathing, or how our digestion works. These things happen automatically. It’s called our autonomic nervous system.

We also don’t need to remember how to walk or ride a bike or type on a keyboard after we initially learn, we just do it. When we sleep we don’t need to do anything at all. Your unconscious mind does it all and it gives us wonderful dreams.

People have been using dreams to guide them for centuries. Some people even believed dreams could foretell the future. We already talked about Sigmund Freud and his Interpretation of Dreams. Freud discovered the dynamic unconscious.

Another explorer of the unconscious was Freud’s student, Carl Jung. Jung discovered what he called the collective unconscious and the world of archetypes. This is the unconscious that we all share just by being human. Joseph Campbell explored the collective unconscious by comparing stories from various cultures and religions and finding common themes. He discovered that there was a common structure underlying these diverse stories and called it the hero’s journey. This story structure has been an enormously helpful guide for many storytellers, not the least of which being George Lucas, which he used to help structure Star Wars .

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The medical doctor, Milton H. Erikson, also discovered a type of unconscious based upon our ability to process language unconsciously. The whole science of neuro-linguistic programming grew out of his work in the field of hypnosis.

You may again ask what this has to do with filmmaking. As filmmakers we’re really hypnotizing our audience to believe in the illusions that we present to them.

The best part about this stage of creativity is that you don’t have to do anything, your unconscious does the work. You don’t even need to know what the unconscious is or that we even have one. Define your problems, do your research, work hard experimenting on your project and just remember to take a break once in a while. When you do this, the creative process takes over at night. Just get a good night’s sleep and keep a dream journal.

Inspiration STAGE 5. Illumination, or as we Professionals Call it—Aha!

The result of the incubation process feels like magic. It’s when the light bulb goes on or lightning strikes, illuminating the darkness. It’s the “Aha!” moment. Some creators shout, “Eureka!” which, in Greek, means, “I found it!” The

story goes that a Greek philosopher named Archimedes was taking a bath and when he got in the tub he noticed that the water rose. He discovered that the volume of water displaced that made the water rise was equal to the volume of his body that was under water. This allowed him to solve a problem for the King, to be able to find out the purity of the gold in his crown. Archimedes was so excited he ran out screaming, “Eureka!” but forgot to put on his clothes.

“Eureka” is at the point that everything clicks. It all fits together in ways you might have never dreamed. Actually, it might have been exactly how you dreamed it. “Eureka” is when all your hard work comes together and it looks effortless, as if it was always meant to be that way. The truth is that all of your experiences and experimenting have now come together as a result of all of the hard work you and your unconscious mind have been doing. The “Eureka” moment is very exciting! Just don’t forget to put on your clothes.

After writing this section I came across a book that reframed the idea of the single flash of insight. In his book, Where Good Ideas Come From: the Natural History of Innovation , Steven Johnson compares ideas to networks much like our brain’s neural networks. In them lurk the seeds of future “Aha’s”. Networks can exist outside of our brain in groups, committees and even in books and the internet. He found that it helps to share not only good ideas but mistakes can be just as useful.

Johnson suggests that we have slow hunches that we may be working on for years, waiting for the right tools. He shares the story of Darwin’s “aha” moment for the idea of evolution as if it came in a flash. The actual story is more mundane, for if you look at his notebooks dated prior to the flash moment, they read like “A textbook on evolution.” His slow hunch was building in his neural networks awaiting their arrival.

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However, given all of Johnson’s insightful ideas about inspiration, the single flash of insight makes for a much better story!

You never know when or where a solution will emerge. Sometimes it’s just serendipity emerging out of random chance, chaos and noise. Find ways to invent creative noise for yourself.

Production Surprises STAGE 6. The Production Phase of Bringing the Idea to Life

At some point you just have to sit down and do the work. Authors Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen in their book Great by Choice write about what makes businesses and their leaders great. I think the animation community has its own share of people and companies that apply.

In terms of a leadership role they define three traits that surround a core ambition to create something bigger and longer lasting than themselves, in other words to be great. People are attracted to this quality so they get a team driven by the same dream.

Surround this by fanatic discipline, productive paranoia and empirical creativity, and Collins and Hansen describe this as a recipe for success.

I believe that you’re unlikely to succeed in animation if you don’t have some sort of discipline. There’s just too much work. Collins and Hansen define it this way: “Discipline, in essence, is consistency of action—consistency with values,

consistency with long-term goals, consistency with performance standards, consistency of method, consistency over time.” (2011, p.21)

“Utterly relentless, monomaniacal even, unbending in their focus on their quest,” is the only way Richard Williams could have animated The Thief and the Cobbler all by himself.

Their second trait, productive paranoia, is the quality of expecting the worst and incorporating that in the planning of a project. It’s looking for what can go wrong in order to head it off at the pass.

Their third trait, empirical creativity, is having the strength to go against conventional wisdom and the advice of experts by doing your own research using empirical evidence. What are the real facts of the matter? Listen to what others say but make sure the facts support it. Look at the facts and you might see something the “experts” missed.

You also might want to create a SMaC recipe for your production. According to Collins and Hansen, SMaC stands for Specific, Methodical and Consistent. It’s a set of operating procedures to create a replicable and consistent success formula. The production pipeline, production schedules, budgets and style guides (we’ll talk about these later) could all be part of your own SMaC recipe. One final note about SMaC recipes is that they also should contain things not to do. One I should have added in writing this book and creating the film is—not to take on more than you can chew.

Even the production stage can be infused with creativity at every step of the way. You’ll keep cycling through the various stages of the creative process.

Something new is introduced during production—the unexpected. It always happens and we need to be ready to adapt. It’s in the nature of the creative process that random chance intrudes.

Watercolorists have an expression called “happy accidents.” This is when the water’s absorption into the paper mixed with the paint creates an unexpected beautiful effect that couldn’t have been planned. We need to find ways to turn unexpected surprises or accidents during production into happy accidents.

Part of production is not just doing the work but managing it, even if you’re a one-person studio.

You have to track your progress and manage your time. It’s also very important to remember you have a body that needs good nutrition, exercise and sleep.

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Critical Evaluation STAGE 7. Critical Evaluation and Confirmation

This stage evaluates all the work that has gone on. We need to look at the work objectively and make decisions. Does it work? Does it meet the criteria? Does it solve the problems we defined?

• We need to make a checklist of what we’re looking for during our critical analysis.

• Does the story involve the audience emotionally? • Can you follow the story clearly? • Does the staging direct the attention to the action? • Does the animation feel lifelike? • Are the animation principles applied? • Do the colors support the emotions of the story? • Are there any errors that snuck through, such as poorly

aligned tangents or continuity problems?

This stage is about feedback. Now might be the time to have test screenings. Hopefully, you’ve been bouncing ideas off others to get feedback all through the creative process.

Large studios can spend thousands of dollars screening their films for test audiences. After the screening they have

the participants fill out a questionnaire about the film. They use this feedback to make changes before unleashing it to the public at large.

At one studio we once spent thousands testing a film at the storyboard stage but no one told the test audience that it wasn’t going to be the final film. They were confused as to what they were seeing and we didn’t really get any helpful information to improve our film.

When I directed Piglet’s Big Movie I chose a different tack. We invited my son’s second-grade class to view the film. This time we showed them how the stages of the animation process are completed to make the finished film. Then we showed them the story reels. While the children watched the movie we watched them. I could tell when they were engaged with eyes glued to the screen and when the story was moving too slowly, when they’d start fidgeting.

Afterward we served a pizza lunch and asked them questions about the film. Each child got to answer a question and got a prize. We learned what sections worked and which scenes needed to be tightened. We also learned that the kids loved Roo so we added more Roo in the story. For this very valuable information we spent about $500. One thing surprised us—one of the children asked us if they were going to get film credit.

Do it Again—Looping Keep repeating the process with new seeds from what you’ve learned.

Panic Stages They Don’t Tell you About—Despair, Panic, Failure and Frustration

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In most of the books that I’ve read on creativity they never seem to talk about what can go wrong. There are many potential dangers involved in the creative process.

We can end up in the doldrums, seeing blank pages everywhere, hearing critical, doubting voices that tell us to give up. They might tell us that what we’re doing is no good. In the last section of this book, you’ll see some of my early artwork. If I had listened to those critical voices, you wouldn’t be reading this book right now.

The last stage of the creative process is critical evaluation. But, we could call this stage the critical destructive stage. This stage is very tricky because it doesn’t want to be the last stage, so it keeps intruding into all the other stages.

Procrastination lures you into its lair by bewitching you with the idea that if you don’t even start, then you can’t fail. It is true we need rest but don’t let it turn into procrastinating. The stereotype is that procrastination prevents you from starting, but it can interfere at any stage of the process.

The worst critic is the one you hear in your own head. The problem with the internal critic is that it’s NOT very creative. It says the same old thing all the time like, “That’s stupid. You can’t do that. Who do you think you are? Nobody does it that way? That will never work. What makes you think you … ” One way to silence your internal critic is to tell it to be more specific. Or ask it to be more creative in its criticism. Most likely it will shut up, allowing you to get back to work.

Another way to deal with fear and silence your monster critic is to make best friends with it. Start simple, introduce yourself. Ask how it likes the weather. Ask what it would like to see. Ask what is it afraid of?

Turn your inner critic into an ally. The censor unconsciously promotes creativity. In order to get around the censor you have to be creative. It’s ironic, but true, that censorship actually can evoke more creativity.

In our modern world, fear comes from your own mind. We don’t have to worry about lions, tigers, bears or even flying monkeys.

I know, I’m really good at scaring myself. It’s your choice. You can either to tell yourself scary stories about how you’ll fail and be humiliated or a story of how you might creatively try out a new path.

Failures are not so scary if you realize that often you can learn more from mistakes than from successes. Why doesn’t something work? Search and you’ll find the answer. When something works smoothly you won’t even know what questions to ask to begin how to learn from it. I found this with watching Road Runner cartoons. The early ones directed by Chuck Jones with music by Carl Stalling were so carefully constructed they seemed to be effortless classics. In the later ones the timing felt off and the music didn’t function to support the cartoon. I learned more from the later ones on what not to do and how truly great the early ones were.

The Creative Art of Reframing Reframing is the process of seeing something in a new light. It’s finding a new

perspective that can change how a problem appears. How it appears is how we’ll react to it. Think about the common artist’s lament, “I’ve got a creative block.” Who cares about creative blocks, when you can use them to build castles like children’s blocks?

FLOW

There’s a quality of creativity when it’s working that’s a lot like surfing—it’s

an incredible ride. When you’re in the mysterious creative flow, you lose yourself. Even time changes; it doesn’t seem to exist anymore. I believe this is why one can accomplish the thousands upon thousands of drawings needed to create animation.

Losing yourself in your art can bring you to life, tapping deep resources within yourself you never knew you had. So remember, put yourself into your work—heart, soul and, last but not least, your funny bone.

Additional Dangers Is Creativity Dangerous? Creativity can also have a destructive side. Destruction is part of the creative process. Sometimes we need to clear out the old in order to make way for the new.

Don’t wait for inspiration you have to chase it. Work with whatever comes and use it to practice your craft.

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Eye-Laddin: Who stole my magic flying carpet? Sometimes your mind can come up with some pretty

weird stuff. However, since we’re so good at creatively imagining

things in our heads, the danger is that we can also imagine the worst. Just remember, it’s your mind that creates the images. There are probably more people who even imagine the same fears that you do. Why do you think we have so many disaster films? Use these darker visions to make your own films more dramatic and like life itself.

The Natural Selection of Ideas Ideas grow, change, and evolve like different species. Some die out while others thrive. They need an environment to work within. This process of playing with ideas is intuitive, we do it all the time without realizing that we’re doing it. If we understand the process, we can make it more under our control and spend less time “waiting for inspiration.”

The other thing to keep in mind is that creating ideas is easy. Making them play nice within the context of a movie story requires a lot of work.

Ideas “multiply,” they flow out in a stream of consciousness. Our mind continually creates a stream of ideas and thoughts. The job of the artist is to learn how to be like a grizzly bear capturing salmon from this stream and select the tastiest ideas that will be most useful, productive, entertaining and good with teriyaki sauce.

How do we decide which are worth keeping? First we need to identify the ideas. We have to refer back to our problem formation to know what to look for. Then we need a

best way to capture ideas by writing them down or drawing them in a sketchbook. Or sticking them with a sticky note. If you don’t keep track, ideas will disappear. In other words, they’ll die.

Ideas follow trains of thought. It’s like when you buy a new car, you start seeing that model everywhere, whereas before you might have never noticed it. This is good and bad for idea generation. On the positive side, ideas will be generated along the lines of what kind of ideas we’re searching for.

On the negative side, the idea train we want might be on another set of tracks. These tracks might lead to different ideas.

How to Play with Ideas Ideas change by going through almost mathematical-like permutations and operations. What do these consist of? What if you made the idea smaller? You’d get A Bug’s Life . What if you added life to lifeless things? You’d get Toy Story . You can take an idea and add to it, subtract from it, multiply it or divide it. The other useful operation is opposites. Ideas can merge. They can split.

We can think of ideas as living things. Ideas can “reproduce” themselves in variations to create new ones. If they’re treated as “living,” you can imagine them evolving by natural selection. Only in the case of ideas we make the selection, we choose which ideas survive. We select which idea fits our story best.

Sometimes you get an idea that takes over. That’s great if it’s a good idea. But what if it’s not? How do you get rid of bad ideas? Why do we get attached to certain ideas?

Ideas are web-like, just like the Internet. The trick is to know which tracks will lead to what we want versus which will waste our time. The problem with creativity is that you don’t know which ideas will evolve into something useful.

We need sleep to rest from all that work animating but sleep also serves another function. Sleep allows the brain to work uninterrupted by our usual stream of conscious chatter. Without interference, the brain can play its game of dominoes and linking patterns that are alike and solve creative puzzles. In other words, have fun playing.

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The Care and Feeding of Ideas It’s important that you don’t judge ideas too soon, as they often contain seeds of other ideas. Just document them, draw them or write them down. It’s like money in your bank. As you keep adding ideas, you’ll even get interest.

When working with your ideas to BRING THEM TO LIFE, trust them to lead the way. Do they play well with others? Do they fit the puzzle of your film? EVALUATION of ideas. NEVER THROW THEM AWAY. Sometimes ideas will become old and die off. This is part of the bringing to life process. It needs continual nurturing. They might be useful later, write them down, and then forget about them and let them go off to play.

When you have an idea you must make it yours. But that involves letting it find its own voice, not forcing it in ways that don’t fit it. It’s kind of like love: in order to grow you have to set them free. The work is sticking with it BRINGING THEM TO LIFE frame by frame. But this involves a lot of preplanning before you dive in drawing.

Capture ideas with sticky notes—ideas stick to them. Think in thumbnails. Think before you do anything. During the first pass, thinking plans the acting. During your second pass of thinking you plan staging positions, spatial relations, light-dark relations, and movements. When you animate you’ll incorporate the animation principles to bring your idea to life.

Operations and Permutations of a Dot of an Idea

Let’s look how our ideas can evolve visually. Just like the Koch snowflake from earlier, we’re going to use various types of mathematical operations. Very simply, you can take an idea and add ideas, subtract them, multiply or divide them. This then can be completed over and over, resulting in new, unexpected ideas.

This mathematical process can also be performed with stories. You’ll also notice how easily some variations appear to be human-like or anthropomorphic.

Let’s start with a simple point.

If we make it bigger and subtract the center we get a circle.

Here we have added the point and the circle.

Multiplying the outer circle yields this target shape.

Multiplying the circle with the dot center yields this result, and already anthropomorphism kicks in, it looks like two eyes.

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Adding a line makes the eyes tired. A line can be created

by tracing the path of a moving dot or by adding a bunch of dots together in a row.

Starting with the circle and multiplying the dot three

times gives us a bowling ball.

If we multiply the length then we get our circle to stretch.

If we divide the stretched version, we get a line. Another

way to get a line is to multiply the dot repeatedly.

If we add three or multiply by three we get a progression.

By dividing the spacing geometrically (multiplying by two each time) we get a movement that looks like an acceleration.

Here the circle is doubled and one is divided in half and

removed.

We’ve removed the opposite half of the second circle and

we get a wave shape.

Now we take the wave shape and add the circle with the

dot to each end.

Multiply the rings and dots and it yields a solar system of atomic structure.

We’re already starting to see how creating a whole world of variations can come from simple mathematical operations. Working in this way gives that world a sense of unity because all of the pieces are related to each other.

Style Guide Based upon Rules Add grammatical rules and figures of speech and our

possibilities expand into universes of ideas. Here are some further permutations that you can use to

figure out what kind of transformation took place.

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With this next image we’re back at the original dot. But one variable has changed the color.

What’s Next? Seeing Faces Everywhere Anthropomorphism is a tendency we humans have to see the world as if it’s like us. As you can see from the previous exercise it creeps in all over the place.

“Anthropo-” means human, and “-morphic” means shape or form; thus, anthropomorphic means having human shape or qualities. We all do it. We attribute human emotions to our pets. We even attribute human motivations to the weather, as in a balmy day or an angry storm.

The animator’s eye sees anthropomorphically too, but the difference is that the animator does something with it. They use it as a tool to tell stories. Anthropomorphism’s history goes back to ancient times. The Lion man of the Hohlenstein Stadel, in Germany, is an ivory sculpture of a lion’s head on the body of a man. It’s believed to be over

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32,000 years old. Many early religions represented their gods in the form of a man or woman.

Anthropomorphism is the main device in Aesop’s Fables dating back to 6th century B.C. in Greece. Modern cartoons kept the tradition alive with the “Rocky and His Friends” show—Aesop and Son. These made fun of the fables while retaining their anthropomorphic roots. Another Rocky show, “Peabody’s Improbable History,” used the device with Sherman and Peabody. Peabody was the show’s narrator and, surprisingly, the dog. Sherman was his pet boy. Peabody believed that every dog should have a boy.

Most Disney animated features star animals playing human roles. Blue Sky Studios Ice Age franchise and Rio also star animals. Warner Brothers Looney Tunes are actually very insightful psychological studies of human motivations in animal disguise. Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are always trying to top each other, with Bugs always winning. Daffy is a perfect narcissistic neurotic.

The characters we anthropomorphize don’t even have to be alive but we give them life. The Brave Little Toaster and Susie the Blue Coupe animated films star inanimate objects. Bill Peet’s children’s books anthropomorphize locomotives, steam shovels, cars, and houses. The tradition continues into the digital age with Toy Story , Cars , Robots and Monster House .

So we see faces everywhere. Leonardo da Vinci created an inspirational technique of finding interesting images in stone walls and other natural surfaces. Just let your mind wander as you scan the surface. I thought I’d try it out and found the following images. Some have been enhanced with before and after versions so you can see what I found.

These tissues came out of my pocket complete

with faces! Once I found the first one, then I consciously began looking and actually found several more.

You never know where you’ll find images. The first image here is a bathtub faucet. Changing the angle to look down on it turns it into a face, Mr. Chrome Banana Nose. When I looked at just the handle I found a streamlined chrome bunny.

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In this image, I tried the Leonardo da Vinci technique with fake marble. I couldn’t believe the number of face images I found within. It seems particularly good for finding monster designs. There’s a ghostlike quality to the process, as some of them I couldn’t find again when I looked back a second time.

In this illustration, which I call the outlet twins, you can see how we project psychology onto the world around us. The one on top looks happier while the one on the bottom looks sadder.

Without the anthropomorphic aspect of the animator’s eye, this book wouldn’t have come to life, as Iggy and Scared

Bunny are my anthropomorphic creations. You might also see a little flour sack running around.

Ig & Bun Catch Ideas Stealing Ideas

BUNNY: Iggy you’re replacing the bad one with the good one.

IGGY: Well, why would I steal the bad one? What is an idea? What does it look like? Where do they

come from? You’ve already met two of my ideas, Iggy and Scared Bunny. Be careful, once you create an idea, it can take on a life of its own and even take over. BUNNY: Welcome to the blank page. We all start out the

same—with a clean slate. IGGY: But wait. The blank page is not blank. BUNNY: How do you begin? You may notice shadows racing

across the page. IGGY: I did! BUNNY: What did it look like? IGGY: A shadow. It was too fast.

Ideas move faster than the speed of light. Every possibility is moving so fast they all appear dazzling white. Sometimes we can see the shadows. Just imagine your brain is faster. BUNNY: Now, what did it look like? IGGY: The shadow imagined it was faster. BUNNY: Well, imagine your brain is even faster. (Pause)

Well? IGGY: My brain’s tired of all this running. (Pause) I guess I’m

just not creative.

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BUNNY: I bet we can make you creative. Have you ever heard the story of Pygmalion?

IGGY: Is that a cross between a pig and an elephant? BUNNY: NO. Pygmalion was an ancient Greek sculptor who created a statue that

came to life. Then author George Bernard Shaw wrote a book about it and then they made it into a Hollywood movie.

IGGY: I never saw Pygmalion. Must have been at the art house cinema. BUNNY: It’s called My Fair Lady . IGGY: So you’re going to steal My Fair Lady ? BUNNY: No, we take pieces and recombine them in inventive new ways. There

are no new stories, only new combinations—yes, they speak to us now in a language we’re more familiar with.

IGGY: I thought this was about the birth of ideas. I think we’re mixing our metaphors. But you stole that story … but My Fair Lady stole it from Bernard Shaw who

stole it from the painter who painted the greek story who … thousands of years ago. We have to take raw materials and shape it to address our current concerns and hopefully, it will also appeal to generations to come.

Stealing versus Making it Yours Creative theft is not the same as being inspired by multiple sources. Take a

little here and a little there and suddenly something new is created. It comes out of the addition of your unique point of view to the process.

Art grows from observation of nature (which includes us) and the whole history of all the arts.

They say there are no new ideas, only new combinations—new patterns of putting ideas together.

Don’t steal; just learn from everything!

References Bandrowski, JF (1985) Creative Planning Throughout the Organization. New York: American Management Association. Barron, F (1988) “Putting creativity to work.” in Sternberg, RJ (ed.) The Nature of

Creativity. Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univ. Press. Collins, T and Hansen, MT (2011) Given By Choice. HarperBusiness. Plsek, Paul E (1997) Creativity, Innovation, and Quality. Quality Press. Rossman, J (1931) The Psychology of the Inventor. Washington DC: Inventor’s Publishing. Wallas, G (1926) The Art of Thought. New York: Harcourt Brace.