Daily News Flash Article
Alex Dobuzinskis, of The Daily News of Los Angeles, recently posted a brief article titled ‘Last holdout embraces the future,’ which focuses 
on Glendale, California’s Renegade Animation. The article also discusses ‘Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi,’ and the future of the 2D animation pipeline, in particular, how the industry is quickly veering towards an all-digital workspace. One of Renegade’s storyboard artists, Scott O’Brien, is currently making the switch to a digital tablet device (presumably a Wacom tablet), and the article boasts that this transition marks the end of Renegade’s pencil-holders.
Dobuzinskis also offers up some cost saving figures, which very well may reflect what’s happening at Renegade, but I’d hate to see the whole industry painted with this brush.
Ultimately, the cost of Flash animation — about four times cheaper than traditional animation because it requires only one-third of the staff — helps save the company from sending work overseas for “finishing,” as many other animation firms have done.
I applaud Renegade for keeping the animation work stateside, as many of my friends are amongst their crew, but unrealistic expectations about Flash production have been an albatross around the movement’s neck since the beginning. Animating with a vector-based software package like Macromedia’s Flash can surely help shave costs, but I’d imagine an apples-to-apples comparison would show aggregate, across-the-industry savings to be a little less exciting than ‘four times cheaper.’
Tags: Puffy, Renegade
July 7th, 2005 at 7:45 pm
The good new is the Renegade IS doing what we’ve always hoped…keep animation in house. Perhaps the flash model of production that the bigger studios uses isn’t the end-all-be-all method of production. And that bears great attention reguardless of how much savings (2x 4x) it may be. Keep in mind that Renegade is not only able to keep the work in house, but they are also keeping there employees happy by defying the union wage and exceeding it.
This doesn’t deserve a light applause…We should be jumping and screaming.
I’m sure Renegade has discovered. the Wacom as much as the next guy. Wacom has made a product called a Cintique. Also there are laptops with the capeability to give the feel of life like sketching on the monitors. I believe this is more on the lines of what they are striving for.
July 8th, 2005 at 1:15 am
I think we’re saying the same thing, ‘All in One.’ Renegade should be proud of what they’ve accomplished, and I think we can all appreciate their achievements, regardless of which side of the Union issue you stand on.
But my words of caution have nothing to do with Renegade’s recent success - I’m meerly pointing out that Flash is all too often considered a panacea for any and all 2D production problems. Whether you find yourself with a budget shortfal, a stylistic hurdle or a schedule crunch - Flash gets waved around as an elixir that will cure what ails ya! I’ll be the first to say that the Flash-option can often help a production crack some tough nuts, but I’m not looking forward to being known as a producer who can cut a studios costs by 4x.
And the Cintiq monitors are great! We use them on our team too - highly recommended.
-Aaron
July 12th, 2005 at 7:58 am
Renegade does stand out from the crowd. Unfortunaltely, too many other studios look at Flash as a ‘budget slasher’. One consequence of the ‘budget slashing’ that pains me the most, is that often animators are offered ridiculously low wages, on the premise that it is, indeed ‘only Flash’. As if it were a bad word. Yet, more and more, producers look for those traditional, experienced animators, who transitioned well onto Flash. They expect full, Disney style animation, without offering adequate reward. The excuse being that, otherwise, it will be shipped to China, Korea, Canada etc. Now a lot of Flash gets ‘layed-out’, like in 3D, where the characters are set up and posed onto each scene. Excuse me, but that’s what’s usually costing me the biggest effort: once a scene is nicely layed out and all the charcters are in place and ready to move, animating them is the real pleasure and it doesn’t take that long. If we, as Flash animators want to be respected, we need to make our argument stronger:
a) We need to be able to confront a producer with a clear idea of what they’re missing when sending work overseas. Could anyone figure out — and I mean a serious break-down with charts and figures – how much budget is actually being saved by this practice? When you factor in the losses due to misunderstandings (distance ,‘lost in translation’, etc) and all the re-takes and fixes that follow…really! I suspect the real figures might surprise us.
b) I think that – compared to the 3D world, we are still too fragmented –and that we would benefit tremendously by comparing notes and sharing our methods, so we can offer the very best. I have learnt some amazing things from some amazing people, not to be found in any book. At the same time I also come across totally ineffective (in my opinion) ways of doing things, which may weaken our argument form a production standpoint.