Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Web animation: a new genre of family entertainment

Animation - Nathanael Johnson - trt 6 minutes

Intro:THERE?S A NEW FORM OF FAMILY ENTERTAINMENT IN AMERICA.
INTERNET ANIMATIONS WITH NAMES LIKE RADISKULL (RAD - IH SKULL) AND DEVILDOLL ARE OFFERING HUMOR AND STORYLINES BOTH CHILDREN AND THEIR PARENTS CAN APPRECIATE. AND AS NATHANAEL JOHNSON REPORTS THIS NEW GENRE IS DRAWING LEGIONS OF DEVOTED FANS.

Ambi- Sparks composing (fade under)
COMPUTER ANIMATOR JOE SPARKS MAY WORK AT HOME BUT HE?S DRESSED for the office: he has black slacks, a skinny black tie, perfectly-groomed sideburns that swoop down to sharp points.
TODAY HE?S sitting at an electric piano in his San Francisco apartment composing the music for his next animation.

(bring ambi up) ?That - might be a starting point.? (and back under)

He records it on his computer, adds voices, and animates characters - synchronized to the sound.

"Now," Crossfade ambi with finished music and run under narration.

Finally, he puts the animated movie on the Internet for people to watch.
Before trying animation, Sparks designed computer games. He devoted years of his life to games like ?Total Distortion,? ?Creepy Castle? and ?Spaceship Warlock,? GAMES HE COMPLAINS MOST PEOPLE HAVE NEVER EVEN HEARD OFF, LET ALONE PLAYED. BUT Then, HE SAYS he put a simple animation ? which he?d whipped out in just a few days ? (fade out music) on the Internet.

Sparks: ?Within one week 150-thousand people had showed up and had viewed the show and I started getting letters from around the world ? I?m like, this is crazy what?s going on??

To find out, he started checking out the other animated movies on the Internet. HE FOUND a lot of gross-out humor

Sparks: ?Blood and guts, killing stuff, that kind of stuff, which is all fun and stuff. But the -- demographic was mostly young males where I had kind of half female half male audience, but not only that, it seemed to fit all ages.?

Sparks keeps his stories G-rated AND his art simple. In his most recent animation, Dickey and Jackie, the characters are not much more than stick figures with smiley-face heads.

Sparks: ?Essentially the whole first show is about them making soup. The whole idea is him waking up in the morning, he?s hungry he comes in he has a little song with the vegetables ? who wants to be in my soup? (Fade in music from Dickey and Jackie gradually) ? ?and all the vegetables wake up and get all excited. Me! Me! I want to be in the soup! You know, (singing) who wants to be in my soup.?

Fade up the music the rest of the way at ?Who want?s to boil in a great big pot! ? You?re going to be in my soup!? fade under narration and crossfade with Dickey and Jackie theme music.

But then authorities summon Dickey for a secret mission and it ends there ? a cliffhanger.

Bring up theme music with Carson singing along.

In an upper-middle-class neighborhood on the other side of the San Francisco Bay, the Hom-Armstrong family is watching the same movie.

Carson: ?It?s good.?
Kyle: that was kind of funny although I don?t see why you want to be in the soup Carson: actually, food like to be eaten - it's cool.

Eight-year-old Carson and 10-year-old Kyle are fans of these Internet animations. So are their parents: Tom Armstrong and Angela Hom.

Angela: There?s a kind of irony behind a lot of these there?s these layers.
Tom: Well and I think irony is a sophisticated form of humor.

Several Internet animations straddle this intersection of cute and ironic. Kyle and Carson?s favorite is Homestar Runner.

Ambi: kids on the computer - Homestar Runner.com welcome speech ... cut! (Fade out)

So what makes this work?

Ambi: Niemeyer class (start low)

In a UC Berkeley classroom, Professor Greg Neimeyer is teaching the fundamentals to the next crop of animators.

Fade Niemeyer up "And each edit has a movement of the music timed with it left ? and right ? and left ? and right. That?s very good." Fade under

Niemeyer says these animations are honest, and that?s what makes them so compelling, both to children and adults.

Niemeyer: ?It doesn?t go through focus groups, it doesn?t go through committees, its just one person doing it - it has a lot of personality and that?s something that appeals both to kids and grown ups. To kids because they really feel like they are sitting down with someone and someone is telling them a story in their own quirky way. And to adults because there is a lot of whimsy in it, and one senses that the person who made the movie felt free.?

But making humor that works for both kids and adults can be tricky ? the more complex the humor, the less likely it will be appropriate for kids. One animation, for instance, LOOKS like a kids cartoon ? it?s about a giant pink rabbit.

clip: Do not run, tasty children! (fade under)

Make that a giant pink carnivorous rabbit.

(fade up) I am your friend, big bunny! (fade out)

Dr. Jane Healy enjoys Big Bunny herself but she worries about its affect on children. She is an educational psychologist and author of Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children's Minds ? and what we can do about it.

Healy: ?I thought Big Bunny was pretty scary actually?

While it?s no scarier than the Brothers Grimm, Healy says there is something fundamentally different about this new medium.

Healy: Visual media are very powerful as far as the memory system is concerned you are much more likely to remember certain kinds of things from an animation like this than you are from a story. What you are going to remember from your parent reading a story is a lot about your parent. We as adults in this country are so insistent on drawing children into our world and our humor and our cynicism perhaps, at an age when they really should be in the world of childhood.

Appropriate for youngsters or not, the movies are popular -- enough that several artist support themselves completely by selling merchandise to fans. Big Bunny's creator, for example, says she made about 45 thousand dollars last year selling art prints, tee-shirts and tote bags featuring he animated characters.

Fade up music ? same as beginning ? under narration.

And for fans, it?s heartening to see something so offbeat thriving. It proves that they are not alone, that there are others who share their quirky sense of humor.

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