Disclaimer : Well for most of you, this post might sound like the usual useless rantings of a fanboy, but I can't help sharing the magical experience of reading this wonderful book : PLUTO 001 : Urasawa X Tezuka I came to know about PLUTO when Skottie Young (one of my fav. artists whom I follow on twitter) was tripping over it for over a month. With so many trashy manga titles around in the market, I generally keep a safe distance from most of them until its by my favorite artists, publishers or referred by somebody I can trust. Last it was (almost 2 years back), when Vikram introduced me to Lone Wolf & Cub series, which is really awesome. Before that it was Osamu Tezuka's Buddha series and some more titles by the maestro.
Anyway, after Skottie's non-stop praises and numerous reccomendations for the series, I really wanted to read it. Wiki said its Naoki Urasawa's take on one of the very old Astroboy stories by Tezuka - Astroboy and The Greatest Robot on Earth. A contemporary take on my most favorite manga artist's story! this one reason was more than enough for me to search for PLUTO. When I wasn't able to find the book at any bookstore, I ordered it from Flipkart (last entry).
I wanted to save the book for Sunday, but once I started flipping thru the pages, I couldn't help but finish it in one reading.
A wonderful book, which thankfully is presented in its original form (unlike other mirrored mangas published in America), so reading from right to left was a unique experience. Wonderfully planned narrative structure which takes a classic story and twists it with a contemporary story telling style. Brilliant use of imagery, compelling characters and careful selection of words while translating it from Japanese have made the book a worth read for anybody and everybody.
Urasawa is a master storyteller with very evolved sense of visualization which makes the book look as good as any aesthetically shot good movie. His command over emotions and dialogues is just outstanding and this humane story says it all. I can't wait to read more of his stuff especially - 20th Century Boys (which Skottie is tripping over these days) & his Monster series, along with other volumes of PLUTO.
Junot Diaz, winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (Brief Wondorous Life of Oscar Wao) aptly said, "Urasawa is a national treasure in Japan, and if you aren't afraid of picture books, you'll see why."
Now I am looking forward to read the original story by Tezuka and rest of the PLUTO Volumes, as and when my pocket allows.
Went to Landmark this afternoon, just to check if they have the Astroboy Story, which sadly was unavailable with them, but I ended up buying The Art of Up:
Yours Truly, The Fanboy (High on Books, Low on Bank Balance)
Bought some more books. Can't help it. I am addicted.
Sometime back I was searching for the book - Directing the Story, when I stumbled upon Flipkart.com.
After having some real bad experiences and some unimaginable adventures in online shopping, I am always a little skeptical about these kind of 'Bookstore at your doorstep' websites. Besides there are a couple of Book importers in Mumbai where you can order these books (that's what I did for this one).But the collection of Books (esp. Comics & Graphic Novels) on Flipkart was irresistible (which these book importers don't import comics for some reason known only to them. Finally when I couldn't resist the 'urge', I decided to give Flipkart a shot, by ordering just two books.
I am really impressed with their service. Flipkart is as good as amazon. (Wish they pay me for saying this).
It has all the features (which actually work) like tracking your order and getting prompt replies to your queries (which is very rare in the case of Indian Websites) and above all your order arrives in a neatly packed courier within the promised time (mine arrived much much earlier than the expected delivery date).
I was so excited with their prompt service (and the two comic books I recieved), that I logged in again to place an order for other comics I have been drooling over for a long time. Sadly most of them are out of stock now :(
After working round the clock for more than a month (without a single day break), life has started settling down.
May of the new year is almost half over and before we know it will be June.
June means- I'll be completing my one year with BIG Animation, one year in Pune, one year of many new things. Anyway, I'll be taking a month long (unpaid) sabbatical from work this June.
Have lots of unfinished stuff to work on and hazaar other things to do in June. I have been postponing almost anything and everything to June. Things are getting added almost everyday to the to do list, which means June is going to be a little tighter month for me.
Have loads to read & write. Unable to decide from where to start. I hope by god's grace I'll be able to sit back and plan things properly before June. Contemplations...Contemplations...
Meanwhile: Finished reading first two chapters (Dormant Beast & December 32) of EnkiBilal'sBeast Trilogy. Bilal is a master of sci-fi fantasy graphic stories, all his stories have a very strong emotional central thread which makes them stand apart from other sci-fis. This trilogy was later converted into Beast Tetralogy with the release of fourth installment in 2007. The two chapters I got to read were collected in Bilal Library imprint of DC. I am desperately looking for next two stories as the story was getting interesting when the book ended with a cliffhanger climax! I was looking for more of Bilal and finally downloaded Bilal's movie Immortel (Ad Vitam) based on his 1980 Graphic Novel The Carnival of Immortals. (Disclaimer : I don't download a movie till it's available, but Immortel is almost impossible to get anywhere). I have heard a lot of good and some not so good things about the film. I am yet to see the film so I'll keep my mouth shut till I see it.
Other books I am reading are: AshwinSanghi'sThe Rozabal Line. If you are a sucker for conspiracy theories, ancient cultures & civilizations with a lot of factual information hidden in fiction, this is the book for you. I am loving the research which went behind the book more than the story of the book.
Just saw Disney's Jungle Book (which is apparently the last movie supervised and produced by Uncle Walt). I liked it in bits & pieces. Disney's Animation is always of superb quality, but I wasn't very happy with the way Disney took liberty with Kipling's classic story.
After too much of naatakbaazi, which includes rubbing toothpaste on the scratched DVD, I got to see The Lion King on my Laptop & I immensly loved the movie, some of the sequences are simply mindblowing! This movie (and all the naatak, that went into getting and seeing it) deserves another post!
Things To Do :
Start finishing the work piling on my desk.
A back to back run of STAR WARS original trilogy on my khatara DVD player this weekend. IMHO the original trilogy rocks, I am simply blown with the narrative structure of it. It's like a text book for anybody who wants to write stories...
This is going to be the third consecutive post on Little Krishna. First Episode, which premiered this evening has got some real cool reviews, not only from the industry people but from the audience too. Seems like everybody loved it. Many more episodes to go... I know if I spoke a little more about animation, either it will start a debate or it's gonna result in a massive fall in visitors/comments count ;)
It happened to me once when I posted two posts back to back on Pixar. Though both of them are quite a hit with Google & one of them - 7 Creative Principles of Pixar by John Lasseter has been linked by many animation/non-animation educational sites, and it still fetches me a good number of visitors everyday thru those links & google. Anyway time to shut up and before I do that, I request you guys to see the show, if you haven't seen it already.
My DVD Player is again playing games, its either not playing some DVDs or giving some major scratches to the DVDs it is able to play. It gave some Khatarnaak scratches on the Lion King DVD & I can’t express my angst and frustration after I saw the scratches on the DVD.I have decided to throw it away and get a New DVD Player ASAP.
Anyway, recently somebody asked me, “You still see (animated) Films like Lion King…”
What followed was a 45 minutes long debate and the last message she sent was, “I don’t ever want to talk to you again…”
When will Indians (sorry to generalize us here) grow up/evolve as an audience and start understanding things (read animation & comics) properly?
Not all the Animation & Superhero Films are meant for kids. Thankfully our market doesn’t have a supply of Hentai DVDs or else the DVD stores would keep them in Kids Section (like they kept Hardcore Adult Vertigo Graphic Novels in Kids Section in Landmark, Chennai) and parents will buy Hentai* for kids or might take kids for some intense animated films like Ghost In The Shell or Grave of the Fireflies just because its animated.
Grow up guys! Animation doesn’t always means Tom & Jerry!
Recently I saw a father taking his kids for ‘Watchmen’. Thankfully the ticket vendor refused to issue tickets for the Kid who was 8 years old & I heard the Father mumbling – “Comics ke upar bani film bachche nahin dekh sakte to kya matlab hai phir…” (Why can't kids see a film based on a comic book?)
This reminds me of a scene from one of my most favorite Shyamalan movie Unbreakable. Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) who runs a Comic Art Store gets annoyed when a rich father wants to buy an original comic art for his four year old kid (comics are for kids, right?). Elijah shows him the door, but after giving him a piece of his mind :
Elijah Price: Do you see any Teletubbies in here? Do you see a slender plastic tag clipped to my shirt with my name printed on it? Do you see a little Asian child with a blank expression on his face sitting outside on a mechanical helicopter that shakes when you put quarters in it? No? Well, that's what you see at a toy store. And you must think you're in a toy store, because you're here shopping for an infant named Jeb.
(courtesy : imdb)
Anyway (changing the topic, otherwise I’ll go on & on & on…), talking of Watchmen, I recently got something which is real cool from a friend Alan Watts from UK. Alan stays in London and attends almost every book signing there, he has got a collection of Graphic Novels signed by great artists & writers like – Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, Art Spiegelman et al.
I always drool looking at the pics of signings he posts on his Facebook Profile. One fine day, he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse – He would get me Alan Moore’s autograph this free comic book day. Alan Moore was supposed to sign with longtime collaborator artist Kevin O’ Neill (they have worked together on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen).
I kept on making and changing the list of books I wanted to get signed by Mr.Moore and bugging Alan (Watts) almost everyday.
Just one day before signings Paypal played games and my credit card (yep yep the same infamous credit card of Exuberant Shopper’s Guide fame) also expired. I wasn’t able to get books signed. But Alan was really kind to get me Alan Moore’s and Kevin O’Neill’s personalized signatures on his sketchbook (I have the digital copy, hard copy is yet to arrive). Here are the pics:
The Que
Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill signing (Alan was wearing an Indian Kurta that day)
Alan Watts with Mr.Moore & Kevin (Kevin is signing for me in the pic) Signatures!!!! Yay!!
Just saw my credit card bill and almost had a heart attack... All the muhavras learnt in the Hindi Period of that small primary school danced before my eyes- 'Jaisi Karni Waisi Bharni', 'Paanv Utne Hi Failaane Chahiye, Jitni Lambi Chaadar Ho' et al. Have shopped like crazy the last month and the tax saving investment plans have already drained all my savings (whatever little I was able to save the whole year) so I am wondering How am gonna pay this HUGE Credit Card Bill?
Here is a 'How To' guide from an expert to turn your Credit Card Bill into a 'Big, Fat, How 'am gonna pay this Credit Card Bill'.
Book all the travel tickets online, using your Credit Card and just chill, you don't have to worry till next month. Going to travel, don't forget to buy a good Laptop Bag first, and yep, don't forget to use your Credit Card.
Laptop Bag (The Bag actually looks better than the image)
A friend is coming down from US to India, so order following DVDs from amazon and get them shipped to her address and save yourself the shipping charges, Jai Ho Credit Card Ki!
Visiting Chennai? Don't forget to check out The Landmark Store at Spensor's Plaza, they have some real cool books. Buy The Art Of Madagascar 2 & Will Eisner's Last Day In Vietnam, a rare graphic Novel. Swipe the trusted credit card again.
Sale in Crosswords, Sergio Aragones' Fanboy is available and is on sale. An unmissable opportunity. Credit Card just pops outta wallet and winks at you. Your library gets one more title to die for.
Ring Ring... "Sir, I am calling from Landmark, you've ordered The Visual Story Second Edition, that book has come..." Ohh how can I miss this one.
Rush to Landmark.
Just checking out the Graphic Novel Section...I am not gonna buy anything as I have already bought enough for this month. Wh...What's That Book....Is tha.....t....Will Eisner's Comics And Sequential Art...Have been looking for this book for years...
Wellllll...I can stretch my budget a bit...(but what was my budget? ehhh...leave it..just buy it!)
Credit Card again plays the friend in need...
No more shopping for this month but a little window shopping won't do any harm..right?
Enter Sports Planet, just to check out some shoes...Anyway most of the time I don't get shoes in my size...esp. in the designs I am looking for...
Ahhhh Finally....I am done with all my pending work in time. The most scary bit was Financial Planning and Tax Declaration stuff, which I somehow managed to do in time and now I am all set to go on my most awaited (can I say 'well deserved') Vacations. It's been almost one and a half year since I went on a Chhutti.
I'll be leaving for Chennai early morning tomorrow and as soon as I am back, I will be packing bags for My Long Awaited Rajasthan Trip. I might/might not be able to check my mails/comments/messages in between. So all of you who believe in V Day - A very happy Valentines Day. Those who don't care, a Very Happy V Day to you too. Those who are planning to send Pink Chaddis to M.Muthalik (Thanks Abha for introducing the Man & the mission to me) send him one on my behalf. Those who are getting Pink Chuddies, Bhagwaan Ram Unhein Sadbuddhi De.
A Peshull wala thanks to Trinaa, who called me A Gentleman on her blog. (Koi serious Galatfehmi ho gayi hai kahin, jo wapas aa kar theek karni hogi).
I'll be travelling by train after a long-long time, can't wait to sit on those blue seats and have moongfali, read the books I'll be carrying...borrow/lend newspaper...buy cheap film magz...have Nimboo-Kakdi, Chana-Masala, Jhaal-Mudi, Allam-Gallam...(Hawayi Safar Mein Wo Baat Kahaan Jo Chhuk Chhuk Gaadi Ke Safar mein Hai...)
Song of the moment : Gaadi Bula Rahi Hai...Seeti Baja Rahi Hai...
Poem of the moment : One of my most favorite poems
पथकीपहचान - कवि : हरिवंशरायबच्चनपूर्वचलनेकेबटोही, बाटकीपहचानकरले पुस्तकोंमेंहैनहीं छापीगईइसकीकहानी हालइसकाज्ञातहोता हैनाऔरोंकीज़बानी
Chalte-Chalte: For Indian Comic Book Lovers - Here is an interesting article in Time Out Mumbai on Sunny The Super Sleuth- The early 80s comic book series where Sunil Gavaskar played a Superhero. Besides I have started a Chitrakathaa Group on Google Groups here, you can join it and discuss/share your favorite Comic Books/Characters/Superheroes etc.
For all you Animation Enthusiasts and Professionals, this one is a must read: Design With A Purpose - An Interview with Ralph Eggleston. Oscar Winning Director*/Wall.E Production Designer Ralph is interviewed by Ron Barbagallo, Director, Animation Art Conservation. (Ron was genrous enough and permitted me to post a link to this wonderful interview on my blog.) *2002 - Best Animated Short Film - For The Birds
For those who love cute posts and lovely baby pics, check out Abha's Blog.
I am still confused whether I should/shouldn't post another great article I came across last weekend. I think motivational reads like these inspire me a lot and that’s why I would like to share this with the readers of my blog.
Innovation lessons from Pixar: An interview with Oscar-winning director Brad Bird
What does stimulating the creativity of animators have in common with developing new product ideas or technology breakthroughs? A lot.
Hayagreeva Rao, Robert Sutton, and Allen P. Webb
April 2008
If there’s one thing successful innovators have shown over the years, it’s that great ideas come from unexpected places. Who could have predicted that bicycle mechanics would develop the airplane or that the US Department of Defense would give rise to a freewheeling communications platform like the Internet?
Senior executives looking for ideas about how to make their companies more innovative can also seek inspiration in surprising sources. Exhibit One: Brad Bird, Pixar’s two-time Oscar-winning director. Bird’s hands-on approach to fostering creativity among animators holds powerful lessons for any executive
hoping to nurture innovation in teams and organizations.
Bird joined Pixar in 2000, when the company was riding high following its release of the world’s first computer-animated feature film, Toy Story, and the subsequent hits A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2. Concerned about complacency, senior executives Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull, and John Lasseter asked Bird, whose body of work included The Iron Giant and The Simpsons, to join the company and shake things up. The veteran of Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, and FOX delivered—winning Academy Awards (best animated feature) for two groundbreaking movies, The Incredibles and Ratatouille.
Ten days before Ratatouille won its Oscar, we sat down with Bird at the Emeryville, California, campus of Pixar, which is now a subsidiary of Disney. Bird discussed the importance, in his work, of pushing teams beyond their comfort zones, encouraging dissent, and building morale. He also explained the value of “b
lack sheep”—restless contributors with unconventional ideas. Although stimulating the creativity of animators might seem very different from developing new product ideas or technology breakthroughs, Bird’s anecdotes should stir the imagination of innovation-minded executives in any industry.
The Quarterly: What attracted you to Pixar?
Brad Bird: One thing that was unbelievably different about this company was that they were worried about becoming complacent. When I came here, they had made three movies—Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, and Toy Story 2—that had all been big hits. I was coming off a film called The Iron Giant that was a highly regarded financial failure.
Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull, and John Lasseter said, in effect, “The only thing we’re afraid of is complacency—feeling like we have it all figured out. We want you to come shake things up. We will give you a good argument if we think what you’re doing doesn’t make sense, but if you can convince
us, we’ll do things a different way.” For a company that has had nothing but success to invite a guy who had just come off a failure and say, “Go ahead, mess with our heads, shake it up”—when do you run into that?
The Quarterly: How did your first project at Pixar—The Incredibles—shake things up?
Brad Bird:The Incredibles was everything that computer-generated animation had trouble doing. It had human characters, it had hair, it had water, it had fire, it had a massive number of sets. The creative heads were excited about the idea of the film, but once I showed story reels of exactly what I wanted, the technical teams turned white. They took one look and thought, “This will take ten years and cost $500 million. How are we possibly going to do this?”
So I said, “Give us the black sheep. I want artists who are frustrated. I want the ones who have another way of doing things that nobody’s listening to
. Give us all the guys who are probably headed
out the door.” A lot of them were malcontents because they saw different ways of doing things, but there was little opportunity to try them, since the established way was working very, very well.
We gave the black sheep a chance to prove their theories, and we changed the way a number of things are done here. For less money per minute than was spent on the previous film, Finding Nemo, we did a movie that had three times the number of sets and had everything that was hard to do. All this because the heads of Pixar gave us leave to try crazy ideas.
The Quarterly: What sorts of things did you do differently?
Brad Bird: There are purists in computer graphics who are brilliant but don’t have the urgency about budgets and scheduling that responsible filmmakers do. I had to shake the purist out of them—essentially frighten them into realizing I was ready to use quick and dirty “cheats” to get something on screen if they took too long to achieve it in the computer. I’d say, “Look, I don’t have to do the water through a computer simulation program. If we can’t get a program to work, I’m perfectly content to film a splash in a swimming pool and just composite the water in.” This absolutely horrified them. Or I’d say, “You can build a flying saucer, or you can take a pie plate and fling it across the screen. If the audience only sees the pie plate very briefly and you throw it just right, they will buy it as a flying saucer.”
I never did film the pool splash or throw the pie plate, but talking this way helped everyone understand that we didn’t have to make something that would work from every angle. Not all shots are created equal. Certain shots need to be perfect, others need to be very good, and there are some that only need to be good enough to not break the spell.
We also made superelaborate storyboards. We even emulated camera movement in them, so everyone knew that “We only need to make things work between here and there.” Once I was able to commit to the camera angles, we could be very specific about how we built things. Something would look beautiful from one position, but if you moved five feet to the right, the image would disintegrate. I gave up the flexibility to move within a set, but in exchange I bought size and scope.
The Quarterly: Do angry people—malcontents, in your words—make for better innovation? Can you be innovative and also happy?
Brad Bird: I would say that involved people make for better innovation. Passionate involvement can make you happy, sometimes, and miserable other times. You want people to be involved and engaged. Involved people can be quiet, loud, or anything in-between—what they have in common is a restless, probing nature: “I want to get to the problem. There’s something I want to do.” If you had thermal glasses, you could see heat coming off them.
The Quarterly: How important is team dynamics to innovation and creativity?
Brad Bird: Making a film, you have all these different departments, and what you’re trying to do is find a way to get them to put forth their creativity in a harmonious way. Otherwise, it’s like you have an orchestra where everybody’s playing their own music. Each individual piece might be beautiful, but together they’re crazy.
The Quarterly: How do you build and lead a team that collaborates in the way you’re describing?
Brad Bird: When I directed The Iron Giant, I inherited a team that was totally broken—a bunch of miserable people who had just gone through a horrific experience on a previous film that had bombed. When the time came for animators to start showing me their work, I got everybody in a room. This was different from what the previous guy had done; he had reviewed the work in private, generated notes, and sent them to the person.
For my reviews, I got a video projector and had an animator’s scenes projected onto a dry-erase board. I could freeze a frame and take a marker and show where I thought things should be versus where they were. I said, “Look, this is a young team. As individual animators, we all have different strengths and weaknesses, but if we can interconnect all our strengths, we are collectively the greatest animator on earth. So I want you guys to speak up and drop your drawers. We’re going to look at your scenes in front of everybody. Everyone will get humiliated and encouraged together. If there is a solution, I want everyone to hear the solution, so everyone adds it to their tool kit. I’m going to take my shot at what I think will improve a scene, but if you see something different, go ahead and disagree. I don’t know all the answers.”
So I started in: “I think the elbow needs to come up higher here so that we feel the thrust of this action.” “I’m not seeing the thought process on the character here.” “Does anybody disagree? Come on, speak up.” The room was silent because with the previous director, anyone who dared to say anything got their head chopped off.
For two months, I pushed and analyzed each person’s work in front of everybody. And they didn’t speak up. One day, I did my thing, and one of the guys sighed. I shouted, “What was that?” And he said, “Nothing man, it’s OK.” And I said, “No, you sighed. Clearly, you disagree with something I did there. Show me what you’re thinking. I might not have it right. You might. Show me.” So he came up, and I handed him the dry-erase marker. He erased what I did. Then he did something different and explained why he thought it ought to be that way. I said, “That’s better than what I did. Great.” Everybody saw that he didn’t get his head chopped off. And our learning curve went straight up. By the end of the film, that animation team was much stronger than at the beginning, because we had all learned from each other’s strengths. But it took two months for people to feel safe enough to speak up.
The Quarterly: How does your experience with that team compare with your work leading creative teams at Pixar?
Brad Bird:When Pixar asked me to take over Ratatouille, the project had been in development for five years but was not in any shape to produce as a movie. There was a moment, at the very beginning of my involvement, when I was in a room full of about 30 people. At this stage, the rats in the movie had been articulated. Articulation is where they design how the muscles and controls work on the characters. Because people were worried about the audience’s reaction to rats, all of them were designed to walk on two legs.
I thought that was a mistake. I knew it would be an expensive use of resources, at that point in the process, to rearticulate the rats, but I said, “We have to get them so that they walk on all fours. And Remy, the protagonist rat, has to be able to walk not only on all fours but up on two legs.” Everybody said, “Ugh!” because they had spent a year making the rats look good walking on two legs. If you simply took those models, bent them over, and put them on all fours, their hips didn’t work and things just looked wrong. They were designed to be upright.
One of the guys challenged me. He said, “I want to know why you’re doing this.” Now, I had gone into this film reluctantly. It’s not what I was looking to do after The Incredibles. And there was a part of me that wanted to say, “Because I’m the director, that’s why. Do you want to take this problematic thing over?”
But I stopped and thought for a second. I thought, these guys have been sent down blind alleys for a couple of years. They want to know that I’m not doing anything lightly and that if I’m going to make them do a bunch more work, it’s for a reason. So I said, “This movie is about a rat who wants to enter the human world. We have to make that a visual choice for the character. If you have all of the rats walking on two legs, there’s no separation between him and the other rats. If we have this separation as a visual device, we can see the character make his transformation and choose to be on two legs, and he can become more or less ratty, depending on his emotional state. That brings the audience into the character’s mind.”
I spent six minutes saying all this and the guy was initially scowling. But gradually the scowl went away, and he said, “OK.” Once I gave that answer, everyone felt, “OK, we’re on this ship and we’re going toward a definite destination.”
The Quarterly: It sounds like you spend a fair amount of time thinking about the morale of your teams.
Brad Bird: In my experience, the thing that has the most significant impact on a movie’s budget—but never shows up in a budget—is morale. If you have low morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about 25 cents of value. If you have high morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about $3 of value. Companies should pay much more attention to morale.
Before I got the chance to make films myself, I worked on a number of badly run productions and learned how not to make a film. I saw directors systematically restricting people’s input and ignoring any effort to bring up problems. As a result, people didn’t feel invested in their work, and their productivity went down. As their productivity fell, the number of hours of overtime would increase, and the film became a money pit.
The Quarterly: Engagement, morale—what else is critical for stimulating innovative thinking?
Brad Bird: The first step in achieving the impossible is believing that the impossible can be achieved. There was a point during the making of The Incredibles where we had a company meeting. We have them about twice a year, and anybody can bring up concerns. Somebody raised their hand and said, “Is The Incredibles too ambitious?” Ed Catmull said, “I don’t know” and looked over at me. I just said, “No! If there’s one studio that needs to be doing stuff that is ‘too ambitious,’ it’s this one. You guys have had nothing but success. What do you do with it? You don’t play it safe—you do something that scares you, that’s at the edge of your capabilities, where you might fail. That’s what gets you up in the morning.”
The Quarterly: If you ask most companies how they innovate, they’ll say, “Know your customer. Find out what your customer really wants you to do.” It sounds like you think about innovation differently.
Brad Bird: Our goal is different because if you say you’re making a movie for “them,” that automatically puts you on an unsteady footing. The implication is, you’re making it for a group that you are not a member of—and there is something very insincere in that. If you’re dealing with a storytelling medium, which is a mechanized means of producing and presenting a dream that you’re inviting people to share, you’d better believe your dream or else it’s going to come off as patronizing.
So my goal is to make a movie I want to see. If I do it sincerely enough and well enough—if I’m hard on myself and not completely off base, not completely different from the rest of humanity—other people will also get engaged and find the film entertaining.
The Quarterly:What does Pixar do to stimulate a creative culture?
Brad Bird: If you walk around downstairs in the animation area, you’ll see that it is unhinged. People are allowed to create whatever front to their office they want. One guy might build a front that’s like a Western town. Someone else might do something that looks like Hawaii. Steve Jobs initially didn’t like this idea, but John Lasseter said, “We’ve got to let it go a little crazy where the animators are.” John believes that if you have a loose, free kind of atmosphere, it helps creativity.
Then there’s our building. Steve Jobs basically designed this building. In the center, he created this big atrium area, which seems initially like a waste of space. The reason he did it was that everybody goes off and works in their individual areas. People who work on software code are here, people who animate are there, and people who do designs are over there. Steve put the mailboxes, the meetings rooms, the cafeteria, and, most insidiously and brilliantly, the bathrooms in the center—which initially drove us crazy—so that you run into everybody during the course of a day. He realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen. So he made it impossible for you not to run into the rest of the company.
The Quarterly: Is there anything else you’d highlight that contributes to creativity around here?
Brad Bird: One thing Pixar does—which is a knockoff of old-school, Walt-era 1940s Disney—is to have all kinds of optional classes. They call it “PU,” or PixarUniversity. If you work in lighting but you want to learn how to animate, there’s a class to show you animation. There are classes in story structure, in Photoshop, even in Krav Maga, the Israeli self-defense system. Pixar basically encourages people to learn outside of their areas, which makes them more complete. Sometimes, people even move from one area to another.
The Quarterly: On the one hand, you are a leader here. On the other hand, you sound like a bit of a subversive. How do you do both things?
Brad Bird: I think the best leaders are somewhat subversive, because they see something a different way. And I’m not leading by myself. My producer, John Walker, and I are famous for fighting openly, because he’s got to get it done and I’ve got to make it as good as it can be before it gets done. If you look at the extra materials on The Incredibles DVD, there’s a moment where we’re fighting about something, and John says, “Look, I’m just trying to get us across the line.” And I say, “I’m trying to get us across the line in first place.”
I don’t want him to tell me, “Whatever you want, Brad,” and then we run out of resources. I want him to tell me, “If you do X, we’re not going to be able to do Y.” I’ll fight, but I’ll have to make the choice. I love working with John because he’ll give me the bad news straight to my face. Ultimately, we both win. If you ask within Pixar, we are known as being efficient. Our movies aren’t cheap, but the money gets on the screen because we’re open in our conflict. Nothing is hidden.
The Quarterly: We’ve been talking a lot about how you promote innovation. What undermines it?
Brad Bird: Passive-aggressive people—people who don’t show their colors in the group but then get behind the scenes and peck away—are poisonous. I can usually spot those people fairly soon and I weed them out.
The Quarterly: What kinds of leaders inhibit innovation?
Brad Bird: When I first started at Disney, the old master animators were slowly leaving, and there was an animator in his 40s starting to direct films there; management was sort of grooming him to take over animation at the studio. Anyway, he had taken over a film and had a bunch of us meet in his office. The first thing that came out of his mouth was, “I’m here to teach you. I’m satisfied with what I do.” In that opening statement, he lost me because I had already worked with the old Disney masters—and they were never satisfied.
It’s surreal to think about now, but my first real, formal teachers in animation were the best animators in the world. I’d started a film when I was 11, and a friend of the family knew the composer of the Disney films, who took me into the studio. I met a lot of the great old master animators. Their worst animation was 1,000 times better than this new director’s best, yet they would get to the end of a film and say, “I just started to feel like I was understanding the character, and I want to go back and do the whole thing over. Can’t wait for next time!” They were masters of the form, but they had the attitude of a student. This guy taking over the studio had only done a few pieces of pretty good animation, and he was totally satisfied. Could not have been less inspiring.
The Quarterly: How would you compare the Disney of your early career with Pixar today?
Brad Bird: When I entered Disney, it was like a classic Cadillac Phaeton that had been left out in the rain. It was this amazing machine that was beautiful but old and getting a little decrepit. Still, they had the best system on earth at that time. They had the best talent. The movies were still well executed, if uninspired.
But Disney at this time was pared down. They were making one film every three years rather than a film every year or year and a half, as they had at Disney’s height. Walt had been gone for more than a decade, and the old guys were leaving. The company’s thought process was not, “We have all this amazing machinery—how do we use it to make exciting things? We could go to Mars in this rocket ship!” It was, “We don’t understand Walt Disney at all. We don’t understand what he did. Let’s not screw it up. Let’s just preserve this rocket ship; going somewhere new in it might damage it.”
Walt Disney’s mantra was, “I don’t make movies to make money—I make money to make movies.” That’s a good way to sum up the difference between Disney at its height and Disney when it was lost. It’s also true of Pixar and a lot of other companies. It seems counterintuitive, but for imagination-based companies to succeed in the long run, making money can’t be the focus.
Speaking personally, I want my films to make money, but money is just fuel for the rocket. What I really want to do is to go somewhere. I don’t want to just collect more fuel.
About the Authors
Hayagreeva Rao and Robert Sutton are both professors at StanfordUniversity, where Rao is a professor of organizational behavior in the Graduate School of Business and Sutton is a professor of management science and engineering in the School of Engineering. Allen Webb is a member of The McKinsey Quarterly’s board of editors.
Posting something I came across sometime back, it was Pixar's chief creative officer John Lasseter's interview with the German newsmagazine Sueddeutsche Zeitung. Lasseter talks about seven creative principles behind the highly successful Pixar Story. The English version of these principles was publilshed in two parts in Bangkok Post with comments and translation by Dr Detlef Reis, who is a university lecturer for Business Creativity and Innovation Leadership at the College of Management, Mahidol University.
I find these principles highly motivating and helpful for anybody who is in any manner involved with any sort of creative work. So here are the Seven Golden Rules by Mr.Lasseter sans Dr Reis' comments. (Text Courtesy: Bangkok Post, Images Courtesy : Pixar) 1. Never come up with just one idea. "Regardless of whether you want to write a book, design a piece of furniture or make an animated movie: At the beginning, don't start with just one idea - it should be three. "The reason is simple. If a producer comes to me with a proposal for a new project, then usually he has mulled over this particular idea for a very long time. That limits him. My answer always reads: 'Come again when you have three ideas, and I don't mean one good and two bad. I want three really good ideas, of which you cannot decide the best. You must be able to defend all three before me. Then we'll decide which one you'll realise.' "The problem with creative people is that they often focus their whole attention on one idea. So, right at the beginning of a project, you unnecessarily limit your options. Every creative person should try that out. You will be surprised how this requirement suddenly forces you to think about things you hadn't even considered before. Through this detachment, you suddenly gain new perspectives. And believe me, there are always three good ideas. At least."
2. Remember the first laugh. "A big problem in the creative process is related to the enhancement of your ideas," cautions Mr Lasseter. "Revising, retouching, refining is very important, but it carries a danger. "If you have a story, a joke, a thought, which you write down, it loses its effect over time. It wears itself out. When you hear a joke for the second time you still laugh heartily, on the third or fourth occasion already less so, and when you hear it the hundredth time, you hate it. "I say to my authors: 'Take notice of the first laugh, write it down if necessary.' This may at times be bothersome, but it is important. Many times, good things got lost because people could not remember anymore how it felt when they heard the idea for the first time."
3. Quality is a great business plan. Period. "There is a crucial rule: no compromises. No compromises on quality - regardless of production constraints, cost constraints, or a deadline. If you get a better idea, and this means that you have to start again from scratch, then that's what you have to do. "In any creative industry, quality is the sole business plan that prevails in the long run. Many managers fail to understand that, but the spectators understand it. The process is only finished once the creative professional in charge says it's finished. That does not mean that there isn't to be any pressure - there's pressure all the time anyway - but the individual creator always needs to have the last word."
4. It's the team, stupid. "One of the most popular questions is always whether groups are more creative than individuals. My answer: In most cases, it's the team - provided you follow certain rules", says Mr Lasseter. "As a manager, it is my task to abolish hierarchies. It doesn't matter at all who has the idea; that's a very important rule for us. The group must be honest, direct, and endeavour to sincerely help the creative individual. But in the end, nothing that the group says is binding".
5. Fun invokes creativity, not competition. "There is this idea that you put two people, who cannot stand each other, into a room, hoping that all this negative energy leads to a creative result. I disagree. Co-operation, confidence and fun - that is the way", says Mr Lasseter. He emphasises the complex managerial challenge to successfully motivate creative employees, and to create a climate conducive for creativity. "Creative people must believe that all others support them in making a great movie. They need to believe that all people involved understand what they talk about. Creative people are easily bored, moody, a bit difficult to handle. You have to make it fun for them, care for them. Creative people only produce really good work if you creatively challenge them. They have to like what they're working on. They have to be damn proud of the fact that they're a part of a particular project. That is again the task of the manager. Each time, you have to give them creative challenges. That's difficult, but nobody said it is easy to lead creative people."
6. Creative output always reflects the person on top. "Poor managers harm the creative process," as John Lasseter knows from personal experience. After landing his dream job as animator at the Disney Animation Studios in the late seventies, his outspoken individuality and creative extravaganzas quickly made him enemies among mediocre middle managers at Disney. Within a few years, Mr Lasseter became a victim of internal politics and got fired. Committed to go his own way, Mr Lasseter became one of the founders of Pixar in 1986. Twenty years later, following Pixar's acquisition by The Walt Disney Company, Mr Lasseter returned in triumph as chief creative officer of both animation studios. "Laughter, being crazy, freaking out, behaving in ridiculous manner are hard work. A manager who spreads his bad mood and who forbids his employees to have fun impairs their creativity, and thus harms the enterprise. I would fire him. Animated movies are not least a bang-hard business. I cannot risk so much money, only because a manager indulging in his bad mood harms my business."
7. Surround yourself with creative people whom you trust. Being an accomplished creative leader, John Lasseter gives some direct advice to junior creative leaders in progress. "Bring only those new members into your creative team, whom you consider to be at least as talented as you. If they also have a pleasant and nice character - even better. Most managers don't follow this approach, as they are insecure. Insecurity and creativity do not get along with each other well. Most managers surround themselves with yes-men, and in result, the audiences get bad films to see," explains Mr Lasseter. These advices are priceless and can be translated into any position. It’s no surprise that Pixar makes such great films with a leader like John Lasseter.
PS. I hate copy-pasting somebody's work like this, but more often than not Bangkok Post moves all its old articles to its paid archives and it becomes difficult to access them after that.
I came to know about PLUTO when Skottie Young (one of my fav. artists whom I follow on twitter) was tripping over it for over a month. With so many trashy manga titles around in the market, I generally keep a safe distance from most of them until its by my favorite artists, publishers or referred by somebody I can trust. Last it was (almost 2 years back), when Vikram introduced me to Lone Wolf & Cub series, which is really awesome. Before that it was Osamu Tezuka's Buddha series and some more titles by the maestro.
Yours Truly,
