Animation and Cyberfunded Creativity

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My partner Doug found a couple of entries on Cartoon Brew that hold some relevance for cyberfunded creativity.

Pixar’s Jim Capobianco Offers Advice on Short Filmmaking
Jim Capobianco, Pixar story artist and director of the short Your Friend the Rat, is nearing the end of production on Leonardo, a personal short of his own. He’s been documenting the production on a production blog at leoanimation.blogspot.com. Last week Jim started a series of blog posts called ” 10 things I’ve learned in making a short film.” The advice in these posts is wonderfully informative and in-depth.

This entry includes links to the first several posts that Jim has made, touching on such topics as motivating your assistants and managing your time. His advice applies to most creative projects.

The LA Times on the Future of Animation Production

The Mass Animation project headed by former Sony Pictures Animation exec Yair Landau continues to receive press, most recently in an editorial that ran in yesterday’s LA Times. To summarize the project via the Times:

Through Facebook, Mass Animation invited the public to create scenes for its first short video, “Live Music.” The company supplied the animation software, the story, backgrounds, characters and audio. Animators whose work is chosen will receive $500 per scene. All told, the project will cost about $1 million and take six months to complete, a fraction of the money and time required for a comparable Hollywood project.

This entry discusses a project based on innovative collaboration. As you can see from the post and its links, there is much controversy. The core concept, however -- creating the characters, setting, and story then inviting diverse people to render them -- has much potential for cyberfunded creativity. The issue of how much payment is "fair" is also of great interest to creative people everywhere.

What do you folks think about these issues?