Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1475662
20 KEYFRAME 20 KEYFRAME By Evan Henerson Yeah, this seems like a pretty basic function that anyone turning a book into a movie or TV show must perform. After all, in a favorite fairy tale, chapter book, or graphic novel, the author and/or illustrator lay all of the groundwork. But once you transplant that child, deer, ogre, mad scientist, or robot onto the screen, the character is going to have to move and speak within a world that you will have to create. On top of that, the whole package—characters and world—must be convincing or diverting enough so that your audience isn't sitting there for 12 to 90 minutes thinking, "But the book was so much better." If this sounds like a daunting proposition, the artists and writers who work in animation will remind you that it's a regular part of the job. As exciting as it is to bring a Raya and the Last Dragon or The Mitchells vs. The Machines into the canon, there are many more animated titles that began life in a different form. "I think Hollywood loves to stake claim to the general population's mental real estate, and the real estate you have in your mind contains a lot of different things you've read over time or stories you know," says Dean Wellins, a Character Animator and Story Artist on multiple Disney films and Lead Animator and Story Artist on The Iron Giant. "If they can do a new version of something so that they don't have to reintroduce brand new characters to people, they will. It's much riskier to try to get everybody on board with characters they've never heard of before." Filmmakers have been mining works of literature to turn into animation since the genre was invented. With contemporary adaptations, sometimes the author of the book is present to work on the project, offer creative advice, or just give their blessing. In other cases, they may have died decades or even centuries ago, allowing filmmakers liberty to rework the story as they see fit. Are there actually any Hans Christian Andersen purists out there who are angrily lamenting the transformation of Andersen's The Snow Queen into Disney's Frozen? First of all, the characters now have to talk and move in three dimensions. The fun and finesse of tr ansforming the written word into animation F E AT U R E The Bad Guys images courtesy of DreamWorks Animation LLC