Animation for the Existential Set
San Francisco artist Chris Lanier comes from the world of ink and paper. His Romanov cartoon first showed up as a strip in various alternative weeklies. Since the comic industry went into a major slump right about the time Flash became available, Lanier decided to experiment with it. He learned the program within a week and quickly discovered how cheap it was to produce a Web cartoon. Romanov is now an animated show at WildBrain, in the middle of its second season.
"You can jump out there and make stuff that is personal and different," Lanier explains. The Romanov character is an Everyman who constantly finds himself victimized by corrupt politics, perplexed by metaphysics or fascinated with everyday magic. The action is paced and accented by an abstract jazz score, with narration told in the style of silent films. The eighth episode of Romanov, "Shadow Split," won top honors at this year's Ottawa International Film Festival for best animated short. The freedom of the Web has allowed Lanier to maintain the autonomy he had as a freelance print cartoonist.
"It doesn't have to satisfy a bunch of demographic or bureaucratic constraints," Lanier says. "As people see more of this stuff, the more inclined they will be to create content themselves." He especially likes the interactivity with viewers that e-mail provides, and sees the emergence of a new kind of audience. "[Up to now], culture has been something we passively observe," he explains. "Hopefully, the Internet will change all of this."
That is perhaps the biggest thorn in the side of television producers—the ability of online viewers to choose. Consumers are perhaps becoming less anxious to swallow whatever the networks happen to serve up. "The people who are younger and just now coming into the job market don't want passive entertainment," says Honkworm's vice president of content, Janet Galore, referring to the generation that has never known a time without cable television and VCRs.
An Element of Risk
CampChaos founder and animator Bob Cesca believes that people will seek out innovative and daring entertainment, regardless of where it comes from. The stranglehold that the big networks have on distribution simply does not apply to the Web, says Cesca. Smaller companies providing truly entertaining animated content can achieve substantial audience penetration, though a profitable business model remains to be created. Traditional media has had a much more difficult time making the transition, is perhaps not as willing to take chances, and is clearly missing out, says Cesca.
"We had a deal with Pop.com, but we had some creative differences with them," Cesca explains. "It was whittled down to something that we didn't want to do." Entertainment site Pop, with its superstar backing from Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard, closed its doors before even launching, and is testimony to the fact that the rules of traditional media don't necessarily apply online.
Cesca started his Web site as a personal home page and watched it grow to the point that he was able to quit his day job at a post-production house and put together a team. He insists on staying small, with a staff you can count on one hand, and without any backing from venture capital. "We're trying to stay low to the ground," he says.
One of the most popular downloads from CampChaos is a parody of Metallica and its crusade against the defenders of online file sharing, called "Napster Bad." The cartoon makes dim-witted buffoons out of Metallica band members Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield for having the gall to threaten fans who download their music using Napster.
"Basically, our role in all of this was being the epicenter of making them look like complete assholes for what they did," says Cesca. He also wrote and directed a parody of "reality" television, affectionately titled "They Shoved a Camera Right Up My Ass," a title that pretty much explains itself.
The idea of creating completely off-the-wall social satire, and at the same time, nurturing a new media company, is just the kind of career move Cesca never dreamed of. "I'm not really a businessman," he confesses. "It's just a matter of common sense and understanding the potential of the Internet. The truth is, no one has come up with an effective business model yet, and everything is just part of a larger experiment."
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