Hasta La Motion!

Aside from being a Creative Director and Designer at Psyop since 2008 and collecting a number of top honors (Clios, ADC, BDA, AICP and the Emmys, to name a few,)  Lauren Indovina has finally launched her web presence and it’s a goldmine.

Chocked full of detailed worlds and a wide range of style frames, lush paintings and drawings — including, of course, her creative direction and design work — Lauren has given us the go ahead to share her work at long last.

Lauren also wrote a compelling essay about her experience in the industry and how the road traveled is not always paved with love.  It is titled “10,000 Arrows to the Heart” (after Interview below). Her words offer us an honest and ardent look how she became a Creative Director at Psyop and what it means to work from the heart and excel through failure.

INTERVIEW

In your formative years, what did you excel in (artistically or not)?

My father is an architect. I grew up in his design: a Victorian home with modern interiors, stained glass, ornate staircases and floating walls. The halls were adorned with his paintings of oddly posed people, futuristic landscapes with eclipsed suns. Surreal. His imagination inspired mine. My parents encouraged me and led by example: independence, passion, curiosity.

I finagled situations so that day camps became art camps, study halls were studio time. At 16, I attended a competitive summer program, Pennsylvania Governors School for the Arts, where I studied Indonesian shadow puppetry and made 7-foot tall ceramic sculptures. As this was unusual behavior, I got a lot of attention, accolades and awards, which didn’t matter. I just really wanted to be in the studio.

Was socializing important to you?

I would have stayed indoors and sculpted clay my entire childhood, but I think someone in the upper ether had a different opinion, because I fell into a group of great friends. They broadened my perspective. When my eccentric artistic nature reared itself, these friends had no problem pointing this out. It made me tougher and able to laugh at myself.

When did you first call yourself an artist?

“Artist” always felt like a title I had to earn. I was an artist from ages 3-18, ages when I felt great passion without fear or regret about how others perceived me or my work.

Can you recognize when you make a fear-based choice?

The more fear you have, the safer the decision you make. I’ve stayed at bad jobs because I feared failing at better ones. I’ve made safe designs because I was afraid of taking risks. Terrified of public opinion, I kept my work secret and unpublished.

If yes, how do you handle that, or avoid that way of thinking?

What I’ve learned from my bravest colleagues is simple: “Get over it.” But I’m not that strong, and I’m just too crazy. For me, failure is like 10,000 arrows to the heart. Painful. Writing about this helped me to tame some demons and control my rampant thoughts.

Can you follow your own advice that you give to peers/protégés?

When I look back, I think of what could have been done differently. I want to tell others to avoid doing what I did wrong. But the truth is, everyone is going to stomp around in a puddle or revel in the magnificent allure of success when it comes. The only advice I can share and try to follow is a saying I saw on a wall someplace: Work Hard. Be Kind.

What tools/actions do you take to hurdle apprehension?

I was wise when I was 5. When I couldn’t draw a cat, I’d say to myself, “You know how to do this, just draw the cat.” If I kept at it, sure enough, there was my cat.

Where do you see yourself in 5 or 10 years?

“A film is — or should be — more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.” – Stanley Kubrick

If I could create something with so much craft, integrity and vision, I’d fall asleep happily at the age of 92.

What is your take on the change and advancements in the motion arts in the past 10 years, and where do you see it heading?

Storytelling. I’m pretty sure we’re going to be telling stories in a lot of amazing ways in the future.

Now that you’re a CD at Psyop, how often do you find yourself rolling up your sleeves and making boards/frames?

Psyop is an unique studio for a CD/Designer: We are expected to design our own projects. If another director needs design help, we are expected to join their team as well. This sounds awfully utopian to many people, but it really benefits everyone. We do what we love to do: get busy and design.

ESSAY

10,000 Arrows to the Heart : Excelling through Failure

Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk, “Your elusive creative genius,” posits that our expectations for ourselves as artists are impossible. She delves into the genesis of the word “genius” and lands on a topic we’re all familiar with: “Many artists die by their own hand.” The circumstances for each artist vary, but underlying themes are present: They abuse substances, are mentally undone by their talent and are afraid of failing.

Cobain, Winehouse, Joplin, Hendrix, Wolfe, Van Gogh. Even if they managed to maintain their fragile mental sanity and squeeze a few more banged up years out of their careers, we still see their suffering.

Gilbert’s anecdotes of the plight and pressure on artists to be brilliant all too familiarly summed up my life and career. Many of us who love the creative process have at some point been unhappy, undone and feared failure.

In other news, the youngest self-made female billionaire in history is a woman named Sara Blakely who invented Spanx. Spanx are pantyhose that suck in flab to look tidy and smooth. Neat invention, but the cool thing about Blakely isn’t only her success, but how she was taught to view failure:

Each day, her father would ask – “So, what did you fail at today.” And if there were no failures, Dad would be disappointed. Focusing on failing big allowed Sara to understand that failure is not an outcome, but involves a lack of trying — not stretching yourself far enough out of your comfort zone and attempting to be more than you were the day before.  Failing big was a good thing. — Forbes

This contradicts what I’ve been conditioned to believe about failure. If I had viewed failure as a way to improve, instead of damaging an artist’s fragile self confidence, I’d probably be braver and more adaptive.

Fearing failure can lead us to conform and sacrifice our creative ideals. Failure makes many women insecure: Those of us who are outspoken are often considered aggressive, competitive, unpleasant. Fearing failure softens our guts.

The stigma of failure is a construct of a culture obsessed with successful egos. It’s hard not to take this poison personally. Failing may feel like 10,000 arrows into my heart, but each represents a risk taken.

Conformity

The nail that sticks out the highest gets hammered down first
— Japanese proverb

When I started my career, I was that nail. I graduated from RISD at the top of my class and was recruited by all the top film animation companies. My thesis film was winning awards around the world, and I imagined my career as an easy ride to the top.

But it wasn’t: Bad timing and bad luck. Panic. This once rockstar didn’t have a direct route to the top and was in shock.

Once I got my foot in the commercial world, I was fired from two jobs almost immediately. I was noisy, raw and filled with arrogance. Fearing more failure, I began to make safer and safer decisions. I wasn’t a maverick; I conformed.

I see this often with young designers. They play it safe and end up with a mediocre design. Like me, instead of taking risks, they try and fit in.

But there was a lesson to be learned. Employers cherish the nails that stick out. Those nails end up taking the most interesting risks and often have the most prolific creative output.

What it took me 27 arrows to the heart to learn can be summed up in a few short sentences: Never conform. Focus. Be sensitive to your surroundings. Be professional. Try new techniques. Never fear failure. Trust in your enthusiasm.

Gender

I often find myself thinking about Kathryn Bigelow. As the only woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director, this naturally makes her something of a role model.

But Bigelow appeals to me not because she make films in line with my own vision, but because of her all-in persistence. Her perseverance goes against the norm for women. She doesn’t shy from being typecast. She follows her passion for film.

We are in a male-dominated profession. It’s damned if you do and damned if you don’t, or as my mom says, “Stuck between a rock and a hard place.”

Because we experience this cultural stigma of failure, women need to work harder to overcome these gender constraints that bind our creative talents.

Know this: You have earned your badges with hard earned hours. You have the right to believe in yourself and what you’re doing, even if it means getting in trouble for being a “b**ch”.

What it took me 55 arrows to the heart to learn can be summed up like this: Speak up. You’re going to get run over. Ignore it. Say what you want. You’re going to get emotional. Take a moment to listen. Stay passionate. Be professional.

Guts and Glory

When I started my career, a Senior Designer named Chris Saunders led several of my first jobs.

The pitch I remember most clearly was for Baskin-Robbins. It was bland. I was doing something safe. I looked at Chris’ screen. On it was a celebration of ballsy graphics that had nothing to do with ice cream but somehow made me want some.

I asked Chris, “How do you start a frame like that?” He looked at me and laughed. “Yo, I have no fucking clue what I’m doing. Sometimes I look at my screen and I think to myself, ‘How do I do this?’”

This guy was a rockstar. He wasn’t afraid to take risks. He dove in and did something electric.

Guts and Glory. More arrows to the heart.

Index

Paul Arden

It’s not how good you are, It’s how good you want to be
Whatever you think, Think the opposite

Elizabeth Gilbert

• http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

Sara Blakely

• http://www.forbes.com/sites/kathycaprino/2012/05/23/10-lessons-i-learned-from-sara-blakely-that-you-wont-hear-in-business-school/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Blakely

Sheryl Sandberg

• Lean In

Malcolm Gladwell

• Outliers

Sarah Berry

• Perfect Failures

Posted on Motionographer

First, a word about Shaun Tan. He is an amazing storyteller. His picture books are not only filled with rich, whimsical pictures, but also with stories that stay with you long after you finish reading the last page. Sometimes poignant, sometimes joyful, they are always elegantly pure and simple, yet in that simplicity lies their power. I am not sure if this is an accurate description, but I think his stories are special, because they reach that part of you that still believes in the goodness of other people, of this world, and of yourself.

The Lost Thing is one such story. (Trailer available on youtube, and on the official site). It is about a boy who stumbles upon a bizarre-looking creature, and “…having guessed that it is lost, he tries to find out who owns it or where it belongs, but the problem is met with indifference by everyone else, who barely notices its presence…”. It first came out as a picture book in 2000, and was made into a short animated film at Passion Pictures Australia. Andrew Ruhermann co-directed it with Shaun, and Sophie Byrne is at the helm as executive producer (full credits at the official site).

After touring the world, winning awards at Festivals like Palm Springs and Annecy, it finally became available on DVD late 2010– something which I have been eagerly waiting for. Pre-production began as early as 2001, and the film was finally completed in August 2009.

Myself and fellow author Jon Gorman both love the story, so we decided to catch up with Shaun to find out what took place in such a mammoth undertaking of turning this beloved fable into that award-winning short.

NOTE: A reader has emailed me with a very good question regarding voice talent. We don’t usually do this, but it was very relevant, so we reached out to Sophie and Shaun once more, and the answer to that (by Sophie Byrne), is now added to the interview below, right at the end.

What is The Lost Thing about? What’s at the heart of this story, and why do you think it resonates with so many people out there?

The story is about a fairly introverted boy who discovers a strange creature on the beach, one that nobody else seems to notice. That’s the premise at least; I originally became fascinated by this scenario without really knowing what it meant. I guess the concept of a ‘lost thing’ is quite philosophical, but not in any specific way, and I think this is the thing that others have responded to, as much as I did in the first instance. Is the lost thing metaphor for nature, childhood, art, disability or something political? Or is it simply about finding a lost animal, and the dilemma of being unable to just walk away? Even now, twelve years after writing and illustrating the first draft, I’m still speculating about possible interpretations.

Can you take us through the history of the project: how did the decision to turn The Lost Thing into an animated film come about? When did it happen? We’re aware that there were other companies along the way who expressed interest in the project, so can you tell us briefly how did the partnership with Passion Pictures come about?

The picture book was published to a very positive local reception, but was largely unknown outside Australia until it won an award at the Bologna International Children’s Book Fair. There it came to the attention of Andrew Ruhemann of Passion Pictures UK, who then brought it to the attention of Sophie Byrne, who then tracked me down in Perth, Western Australia, and asked ‘would you be interested in teaming up with Andrew to direct a short film adaptation?’. I was actually a bit reluctant at first and required some persuading, mainly because I saw myself as a painter first, a writer second, and a film-director, well, not at all. I’d also seen examples of book-to-animation projects which I found disappointing, had discussed one project previously (an adaptation of another picture book) which fell through, and so was not very optimistic about the prospect.

Sophie then sent me examples of animated work by Passion (at that time on VHS tapes!) and I was very impressed by it’s range and sophistication, and got interested, being able to actually imagine something very good. In spite of my inexperience as a director, I also recognised how my knowledge of illustrated narrative could translate into animation with the collaboration of a good team, especially in the case of ‘The Lost Thing’ which already looks quite cinematic in it’s illustrated form, almost like the condensation of an imaginary movie.

What were some of the most important aspects that you set out to achieve–that you knew were very important right from the start if you were to adapt the book successfully into animation? Or in other words, What are the difficulties in translating a book like The Lost Thing, which has such a specific tone, to animation? Do you feel it carried over, or did the shift in medium in to something else?

Sophie, Andrew and I eventually convened in Melbourne to start nutting out a storyboard, and I guess the first problem that we all recognised was that The Lost Thing is not a very dynamic story, and it’s emotional range is very subdued because it’s set in a quite unemotional world (I’ve even heard it described as an ‘autistic world’). It’ a static and desolate city, much like the paintings of Edward Hopper, steeped in a kind of a post-industrial boredom. This idea really lends itself to still paintings, but it was unclear how that translates to film. Additionally, the main human character does not necessarily have a transforming experience, or a huge expressive range: to what extent can an audience empathise with him? So the big question was how to keep audiences interested, while sustaining this very unusual atmosphere that is essential for the story, and this question of distance versus intimacy continued to be asked about every aspect of the production: design, animation, lighting, sound, voice and music. How to tell a story about apathy, without inspiring actual apathy?

I think in the end we managed to balance this successfully, in part by having very simple shots, and limited editing with minimal camera movements. The animation is fairly restrained, but also amusing as there is a contrast between quiet, expansive backgrounds and the lively oddity of this big, red, tentacled creature trotting about, building sand castles and so on. I also believe that most problems can be solved by good design – if a thing is interesting to look at, it almost doesn’t matter what it’s doing or what’s happening around it – it’s just plain interesting.

How involved were you in Directing/Art Directing the project? Was it a case of having final approval on each shot or were you heavily involved throughout?

I was quite involved throughout: writing, storyboarding, designing every object in the film from noses to chimney stacks, and hand-painting all the textures which were integrated into 3D artefacts constructed by our key digital artist Tom Bryant. I also produced rough soundtracks and foley (using household objects) as early reference for sound and music, and worked closely with our animator Leo Baker to perfect scene layouts and final animation, as well as solve compositional problems as they appeared, and needless to say, they were many and frequent. I’ve worked most of my life as a freelance illustrator, so I enjoy being very hands-on, and collaborating at the coal-face where possible, even hand-animating a 2D television ad that appears in the film. I’m not very technically trained, but I was able to previsualise as much as possible through pencil and colour pastel sketches, often taking a working screen shot, printing it off and drawing over the top of it to figure out how it might be improved.

Since production took place over the time frame of 3.5 years, was it difficult to maintain the momentum? Are there any specific things that you brought about to help smoothen the pipeline (considering the lengthy production timespan)?

I’m quite used to long projects, being a rather slow and meticulous illustrator. The trick seems to be to break it down into parts and treat them one at a time, while maintaining some grasp of an overarching aesthetic and purpose – which is the hard part. I think one very useful thing was simply having the original picture book to refer to; it acted as a reminder of what the story was actually about, and that it’s really fairly simple. There is always this tendency to stray from a core purpose, inventing lots of unnecessary ornament, so having this 32-page book always on the desk helped keep it it check. I think also having a good producer at the helm to reign it all in, know every aspect of the production, and keep everyone on schedule – no small task. I often refer to Sophie as the ‘conscience’ of the film, the person keeping everything in orbit around a central idea or spirit.

What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of having such a small sized core team (of 4 people)? And what are some of the challenges you experienced with having one of the team members in Edinburgh while the rest of you are here in Melbourne?

Well, the disadvantage of a small team is self-evident, our film taking so long to complete. On the upside, I’m a big fan of small-scale projects – I’m very wary of committees, or too many disparate opinions being thrown into the mix, and fond of the saying ‘no great idea comes from a big room’. What was great about our team is that we were all on the same wavelength, especially after so much pre-production (which happened intermittently from 2001 to 2006). As for Tom being in Edinburgh, I think it helped that I was able to work alongside him early on during a brief period in Australia, so we had some idea of each other’s sensibility. I think both of us are first and foremost visual communicators, and so we made much progress by simply exchanging drawn and digital renderings, successively editing each other’s designs. Tom is also incredibly intuitive (as well as having an excellent eye for detail) which greatly mitigated the problem of working in separate rooms.

Biggest creative challenges/reward? Biggest technical challenges/reward? What are some of the most unexpected stumbling blocks you encountered along the way?

I think the biggest challenge is simply trying to visualise something that doesn’t exist, knowing that a shot will be very costly to change if it doesn’t work! There’s not a great deal of room for trial and error. I think also the problem already mentioned – sheer duration – especially when the final product is meant to flow as if it is seamless and spontaneous. I guess the most rewarding thing is when you actually achieve that goal – a feeling of looking through the window of a screen into something that, just for a moment, seems absolutely real on its own terms, a strange but convincing reality.

Technical challenges: mainly lighting and texture, trying to make something look natural and ‘imperfect’ within a digital medium that tends to resist that, with all its clean edges and smooth gradations of movement. As far as stumbling blocks, there were some very late disagreements about musical score which indicates the vagaries of this aspect of film production. It relates to the problem mentioned earlier, of how one feels an audience becomes engaged, and whether emotional ideas are communicated explicitly or implicitly – always an interesting question. Of course, Sophie would convey that the biggest problem could be summarised in one word: schedule!

Any future plans to produce material/collaborate on future projects?

I’m spending a little more time returning to writing and painting.  Sophie and I are talking to a prominent US Producer about an adaptation of my graphic novel ‘The Arrival’ as a feature film, so it will be interesting to see how that pans out. At least I feel as though I know much more about film-making now; and I also realise of how little I know, which is no bad thing!

Voice talent Question (from our reader): How did you go about casting the voice for the boy?  Was it a difficult task because the way you imagine the character to sound is going to be different to every reader who is already familiar with the book and has their own ‘projection’ about how the boy would sound like…

The casting of the voice was actually quite a challenging task. We went through various lists of who to approach and who was the right fit to the point that  even at some stages throughout  pre-production we toyed with the idea of not having a voice at all.  I (Sophie Byrne) was actually a strong advocate for having a voice, as I consider the words as written by Shaun to be an essential part of the overall tone and subtle humour of the piece.  The VO is a very definite ‘character’ if you like.

We had to balance the need to cast a ‘name’, even an A-lister name, with how the voice needed to sound tonally, to be delivered and performed.  Our ‘Boy” is not an alpha male for instance!  There was never any question that the voice had to be an Australian voice, but we wanted one that had a gentler Australian accent.   We had often referenced a young Noah Taylor (specifically The Year My Voice Broke) in the early days of boarding.

Interestingly Shaun did read for the Boy for boarding and pre-vis stages.  But, great as it was, it was a little too deadpan to carry the film so we needed to cast an actor/performer.  Tim came to mind late in the day as he happened to be touring at the time.  He fitted our criteria perfectly.   By coincidence, he and Shaun had both attended the same university in Perth and Tim shared a respect and understanding of the character and his motivation and dilemma  and subsequently how he was meant to sound and that really was in essence to try NOT to perform!

Thank you Shaun and Sophie, for taking the time to answer our questions, and thank you Sophie for facilitating this interview. Our best wishes for your future projects together!

Posted on Motionographer

Greg “Craola” Simkins is an L.A based illustrator/painter, recently creating this cover for the latest Juxtapoz Magazine. Gallery1988 (7020 Melrose Avenue, L.A) will be hosting Greg’s “Story Teller” Solo Exhibit, starting Friday Nov. 5th. Plenty creative talent to see on his site: ImScared.com