With the launch of a guild for South African animators, Tube’s cutesies on TV and Disney’s Hercules opening next week, we take a look at the world of animation
Andrew Worsdale
The South African Guild of Animators was officially launched a fortnight ago at this year’s Film and TV Market in Cape Town. Chairman Ron Major says: “For the first time in 80 years we’ve got all these animators in the same room without killing each other.”
Believe it or not, the local animation industry has had a long history. The first animated movie, The Artist’s Dream, was directed by Harold Shaw (he also made Die Voortrekkers) in 1916. Sarienne Kersh describes it in the latest issue of industry magazine Screen Africa as “a sophisticated drawtoon about an artist who draws a beautiful woman in a park. He then dreams a subsequent series of events in which his drawings come to life.”
Between 1917 and 1920, IW Schlesinger’s African Film Productions produced five more animated shorts, including The Adventures of Ranger Focus and Crooks and Christmas. There’s no record of cartoons made locally until the 1940s and the establishment of Killarney Film Studios, where with the most primitive of facilities animators produced titles for the studio’s projects and the weekly news programme African Mirror.
When Daryll Zanuck of 20th Century Fox bought the studio in 1955 many of the animators left to form their own companies. Kinecham was a leading producer of animated commercials during this time, as was Empire Films which had the largest traditional animation studio of the period. In 1956 the legendary Mr Oxberry, pioneer of the animation camera stand, came to South Africa and installed the first animation stand in the world that had an aerial image feature used for superimposition on live film.
Over the next 30 years Alpha Studios and Dave McKay Animation services produced more than 7 000 animated commercials a year. By 1976 and the introduction of television the SABC commissioned animated commercials and programmes, one of the first was the 26- part series Bobby Cat. But sanctions, disinvestment and cultural isolation stifled the industry which has only managed to resuscitate itself now.
The computer boom and the rise of digital imaging has meant an unparalleled increase in the amount of animation we see on our screens. Guild chairman Major, an ex professional motor racing driver who speaks really fast – much like a salesman – says: “I realised we needed to set up the guild when I got a fright if my company (Digital Arts) were ever to get a commission from overseas for a big series. We’d need a load of people to work on it so it makes sense for all the companies to work together.”
On a recent visit to the highly esteemed Annecy Animation Festival in France, Major met a producer from Reunion. “That tiny island has a population of 600 000 but they have an animation college and more than 200 animators. We in South Africa have a population of over 30 million and the same number of animators.”
Countries like Reunion and Korea have traditionally had animation service industries for major American studios. Bart Simpson’s sneakers, for example, are all coloured in by Korean technicians. “The potential for employment is staggering. animation is extremely labour intensive and a whole side of it doesn’t need specialist skills – even a paraplegic could ink in stuff.”
Major found that motor-racing and animation have an affinity. “You get the same rush of adrenaline,” he says. “In motor racing your biggest risk is death; in animation it’s not meeting the deadline.”
Local animation companies have been producing commercials and,, as Major says, there’s a lack of content-driven stuff – meaning companies or broadcasters developing cartoon series along the lines of The Simpsons. Part of the reason is the exorbitant cost. An American animated show will cost about R100 000 a minute . Major says candidly, “Our local broadcasters shit themselves at R3 000 to R4 000 a minute.”
Digital Arts recently funded a 13-minute series called Hollywood Hotline, a send-up of Showbiz written by Stephen Francis of Madam and Eve fame. they managed to bring it in at R12 000 a minute and Major is thankful that M-Net recently bought it and that negotiations with overseas broadcasters are proving fruitful. but the risk the company took was enormous.
With the aim of becoming the biggest animation company in Africa, Digital Arts is busy in pre-production on a 30-minute animated docu-drama about Nelson Mandela and a film that charts the history of animation in South Africa.
Other companies that have signed up to the guild include design innovators Delapse, perhaps best known for itswork on the SABC2 logo. They recently created Tube, Africa’s first virtual television slot, with computer generated presenters. It flights on SABC2 every day as part of its programming for kids (see story on facing page).
Possibly the most adventurous of traditional animation companies are two Cape Town-based outfits Quay Animation and XYZoo, who collaborate with each other on claymation and stop-frame animation based commercials. Some of their best-known work is the stampeding plasticine animals persuading viewers to become radio active, and the stunning new Citi Golf commercial featuring a young black driver who constantly changes features, never knowing whether he’s Arthur or Martha. The punchline is that the car is the only consistency in a world of change.
Lindsay van Blerk of XYZoo says they’ve produced seven animated commercials on the trot, but his company’s pertinent interest is in telling stories. And if local financiers and broadcasters can’t provide the finance, then Americans will do fine. The company has just finished a half-hour claymation piece called Michael, The Visitor, based on a short story by Leo Tolstoy and is busy on pre-production for another claymation piece called A Christmas Story, which will take over a year to complete.
The labour-intensive animation industry is not helped by the lack of training and new recruits, but both Major and Van Blerk emphasise the need for South Africans to tell their own stories through the medium.
There’s not a single black animator in the country, something the guild hopes to address, the first mission is a two-year diploma course in the medium to be held at City Varsity in Cape Town from next year. So far the university has garnered R500 000 worth of top-of-the- range computer equipment to stage the course. South Africa is so rich in stories, myths and anecdotes, and the stage of animation seems a perfect realm for cinematic expression. Apart from the expense, it appears the talent and willpower are here and have been for almost a century.
The guild intends to lobby government for development funds. Here’s hoping they come up with the goods.