I was reading through my Google Reader feeds this morning, as I usually do each day, and I came across an article that another friend of mine had shared. It was an article written by Kevin Koch and posted on his site SynchroLux.  It is a great read about the old saying that Story is King in animation. 

He makes some very valid points that story is important, but it is not everything when it comes to film, which I have to agree.  A large part of film is visual, so it is hard to say that you could have some really bad visual elements, but a great story and still have a wonderful film.  Kevin makes a great point when he mentions the number of remakes that have been done.  He asks the question, how many times have you seen a movie redone (i.e. Planet of the Apes or Psycho), and do the remakes have the same success just because the story is the same?  The short answer is no, because although the story is basically the same, the director and very importantly, the acting is different, along with many other parts of the film such as sound and cinematography. 

This is very important to keep in mind especially as it pertains to animation.  The story can be the same but the quality of the visuals can vary dramatically, which really changes a person’s opinon of a film.  Story is not necessarilly king.  Take the recent film Avatar for instance.  It has proven to be a very successful film and a film that I myself love.  Although, this is the case, I would argue that the reason for its success is not due to story.  The story is pretty good, but it is the visuals which make this movie stand out and is what brought so many people to the theaters to watch it.

To conclude, I just liked that someone brought up this topic and supported the claim so well.  I eagerly await what he will be writing for his continuation of this subject as it moves into how important quality animation is to the success of a film.

Well it has been quite a while everyone. I wish this was not the case as my hope is always to keep this updated bit alas I have been slacking.
Well I have been very busy with multiple things. I thought I was going to teach at our local college here in Columbus but that did [...]

So here is my first submission to Illustration Friday.  I am so happy to have been able to post this week.  I created this in Illustrator.  Its the first Illustrator piece I have ever shown publicly and can’t wait to show more.  I hope to have many other posts to IF as the weeks go [...]

Finally, after four days of moving, my wife and I are completely moved out of the old apartment and into our new house! We went over and picked up the last item (a futon) last night and drove it over in my little Honda Civic. That was a lot of fun driving over [...]