Allison Sribnick On Surviving in Animation
Listen in as we talk to Allison Sribnick on breaking into the animation industry and succeeding! As a production coordinator at Titmouse animation (Adult Swim & Netflix), she has massive insight into the state of the animation industry.
Transcript
This is Film Center, your number one show for real entertainment industry news.
Speaker:No fluff, all facts.
Speaker:Here are your anchors, Derrick Johnson II and Nicholas Killian.
Speaker:Film Center news.
Speaker:My name is Derrick Johnson II.
Speaker:I'm Nicholas Killian.
Speaker:And what are we getting today, Nicholas?
Speaker:Today, we are talking to a very special person.
Speaker:Could you please introduce yourself?
Speaker:Hi, I'm Allison Srebnick.
Speaker:I'm a production manager at Titmouse Animation Studios.
Speaker:What's up?
Speaker:How you doing?
Speaker:I'm good.
Speaker:Thank you for having me.
Speaker:How was the drive?
Speaker:Was it a bit of a drive?
Speaker:Oh my gosh.
Speaker:You guys are out here.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Hey, but at least we introduced you to the coffee, though.
Speaker:We did introduce her.
Speaker:We introduced her to some coffee.
Speaker:before the show.
Speaker:I think it's pretty.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:Do you like it?
Speaker:Oh, my God.
Speaker:I love it.
Speaker:Not worth the drive.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:Because I wouldn't be able to make it without a French press.
Speaker:But thank you so much.
Speaker:As you guys know, Film Center News is mobile.
Speaker:We're here today in Westlake.
Speaker:Yeah, yes.
Speaker:So Allison, do you want to tell the audience a little
Speaker:bit about where you're from?
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:I'm from Columbia, South Carolina.
Speaker:Shout out to Columbia.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Shout out.
Speaker:I went to Savannah College of Art and Design back in, and graduated in 2012.
Speaker:Majored in animation and realized I didn't want to be an animator.
Speaker:I wanted to work in production.
Speaker:What but what initially drew you to animation?
Speaker:Was there anything you saw when you were young that was like,
Speaker:Oh, I need to be a part of this.
Speaker:I'm about to date myself, but I was born in 1988 and Who Framed
Speaker:Roger Rudd came out in 1988.
Speaker:And the rest is history.
Speaker:That is such a classic, it's awesome!
Speaker:Oh yeah, the combination of WB and Disney?
Speaker:Saw that when I was in diapers, before I could even talk.
Speaker:My parents couldn't turn the TV off.
Speaker:I was bound to work in animation.
Speaker:That's awesome.
Speaker:There's so much technical aspects that went into that movie, the
Speaker:mixture of live action and animation, and on top of the fact that I think
Speaker:it's the only time you get to see Donald Duck and Daffy Duck together?
Speaker:On the same screen.
Speaker:I'm pretty sure.
Speaker:I could be wrong about that, but I'm pretty sure.
Speaker:No, you are absolutely correct, and if you want any history, thanks to Savannah
Speaker:College of Art and Design's history of animation, turns out the reason why Roger
Speaker:Rabbit looks the way he does is because it's a combination of Mickey Mouse's
Speaker:design and a rabbit for Bugs Bunny.
Speaker:And when Bugs Bunny and Mickey show up on the screen, they have the same number
Speaker:of consonants and vowels in what they are saying, as well as the same amount
Speaker:of time in which they are on the screen.
Speaker:Same for Daffy and Donald Duck.
Speaker:Really?
Speaker:Wow, I didn't know that at all, actually.
Speaker:When did you, is there a reason for that?
Speaker:Why do you think they did that?
Speaker:You think Disney and WB were gonna actually go, Oh, no, Mickey
Speaker:should be the main character.
Speaker:I didn't know if it was like a petty thing.
Speaker:I knew it was a legal thing.
Speaker:I was like, it's probably legal.
Speaker:It's probably hey, I heard that they were gonna try to make a sequel.
Speaker:I'm actually glad they didn't.
Speaker:I like the, I like, I think it's good the way it is.
Speaker:No, it's perfect, because it's a combination of the old school Disney
Speaker:black and white Steamboat Willie kind of stuff that they're doing there, and
Speaker:they're playing all these animation jokes.
Speaker:For example, if you look at Dip, which is the thing that kills all of the cartoons.
Speaker:Yes, the slime.
Speaker:That's Cell Cleaner.
Speaker:It's what?
Speaker:It's cell cleaner.
Speaker:Oh!
Speaker:I didn't know that was cell cleaner.
Speaker:Really?
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:For those who are listening who might not know what that is,
Speaker:can you explain a little bit?
Speaker:Before we had the computer.
Speaker:We did all of the animation on these cellophane like sheets.
Speaker:And so they would do the inking and the painting and everything on these, and
Speaker:that was how they would do the animation.
Speaker:But what's interesting is it's very hard to find some of these cells
Speaker:because cellophane was so expensive that they were just kept cleaning
Speaker:off these beautiful pieces of artwork that were the frames of animation.
Speaker:So it was, yeah.
Speaker:That makes me so sad.
Speaker:There's probably a whole bunch of images out there that are really great that
Speaker:I guess we'll never be able to see.
Speaker:We'll never be able to see.
Speaker:So you graduated college in 2012.
Speaker:How long did it take before you made your way out to Los Angeles?
Speaker:When I graduated in 2012, SCAT had left me with the feeling of I'm
Speaker:the worst artist in the world, and why did I go out to art school?
Speaker:Which is usually what most students have.
Speaker:Yeah, that's how I felt when I went to film school.
Speaker:I was like, why am I here?
Speaker:It's because after these art schools get your money, they then
Speaker:go Just drop you on your head.
Speaker:Thank you so much, it was wonderful.
Speaker:Contact us if you become a famous alumni, or maybe we'll contact you,
Speaker:or maybe no one will contact you at all, and that'll be the end of it.
Speaker:No offense to SCAD, this is just a universal thing across the
Speaker:board with almost every college.
Speaker:But the thing is what SCAD offered me was the training that I needed
Speaker:as well as a wonderful relationship with some amazing students.
Speaker:There, I met Zachary Rich, who turned out to become my business partner
Speaker:when, in 2013, when we created Skynamic Studios, made an IP called
Speaker:Truetail, made an animated flash video with a bunch of our friends.
Speaker:And Oh, pause, pause.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:We're speed running this.
Speaker:We are speed running this.
Speaker:Back up a little bit.
Speaker:There's so much we have to unpack here.
Speaker:You're being too modest right now.
Speaker:You're right.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Let's back up to where.
Speaker:What you say you met him at college.
Speaker:I did.
Speaker:So first of all, they're just going into business You can't just go
Speaker:into business with just anybody.
Speaker:What about this person stuck out to you?
Speaker:His name's Ben, right?
Speaker:Zach.
Speaker:Zach.
Speaker:I said Ben.
Speaker:Where's Ben gone?
Speaker:Shout out to Zach.
Speaker:Zach, if you're listening, shout out to you.
Speaker:You're doing a great job, Ben.
Speaker:You've earned her respect.
Speaker:To go into business with her.
Speaker:I would say that honestly, what happened was desperation.
Speaker:I had graduated.
Speaker:I come from a family of doctors and pharmacists.
Speaker:and lawyers and that kind of thing.
Speaker:So I was that black sheep of the family.
Speaker:I was creative and they're like, what side of the brain is that?
Speaker:We don't know how that operates.
Speaker:When you had told your parents that you wanted to pursue this career
Speaker:path, what was their reaction?
Speaker:Good one, Alison.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Facts.
Speaker:I remember when I told I remember I told my dad I wanted to go into
Speaker:entertainment and he was like, yeah.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So that's your hobby, but what do you want to do?
Speaker:What are you gonna do to pay the bills, right?
Speaker:Yeah, my cousin who at the time was going off to Medical school to
Speaker:become a neurosurgeon and now he's a pediatric neurosurgeon in Ohio.
Speaker:Yeah, this is what I have to deal with He pulls me aside during 4th of July of My
Speaker:senior year in high school or my junior year into high school and he says I have
Speaker:a friend Who went out to Los Angeles because he wanted to be a director.
Speaker:Do you know what he does now, Allison?
Speaker:He's a pizza delivery man.
Speaker:Do you want that for your life?
Speaker:What kind of pizzas?
Speaker:Might be some really great pizzas.
Speaker:So I went pre med.
Speaker:So my very first year of college, I was pre med and went to a school that
Speaker:had no art and after about a semester of doing that, I realized, God, I'm
Speaker:lonely and sad and depressed and this is what it feels like to become a doctor.
Speaker:I don't think so.
Speaker:They say nothing makes an artist want to create more when you
Speaker:deprive them of their paint.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:And then what was the breaking point of okay I have to do this.
Speaker:I'm changing.
Speaker:I don't care.
Speaker:I started taking botany and I went.
Speaker:God, I really don't want to study plants.
Speaker:I don't mind drawing them, but I really don't want to do this.
Speaker:So I called mom and dad and I said please let me go to Savannah
Speaker:College of Art and Design.
Speaker:Save me from these punnett squares.
Speaker:And they said, no, you can go do graphic design.
Speaker:We think we'll at least stomach that.
Speaker:We'll compromise.
Speaker:Yes, we'll compromise.
Speaker:All your life.
Speaker:They're going to compromise.
Speaker:Yes, so you can go to the University of South Carolina, and
Speaker:you can major in graphic design.
Speaker:First day at USC, not here on the west coast, on the east coast, people.
Speaker:East side?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I got in the car, cause my mother would not let me drive, so she
Speaker:had to drive me to college.
Speaker:It's just lovely.
Speaker:Really?
Speaker:Really embarrassing.
Speaker:Why did she not allow you to drive to college?
Speaker:I don't even know.
Speaker:Honestly, she's It's dangerous.
Speaker:There's no parking.
Speaker:You're gonna hurt yourself.
Speaker:There's no parking at the college?
Speaker:Of course there's parking at the college.
Speaker:She just didn't want me to have a car.
Speaker:I was like, whoa, really?
Speaker:But my mother picked me up from my first day of my sophomore year of college.
Speaker:And I got in the car and I said I've decided.
Speaker:I'm going to Savannah College of Art and Design, and you're paying for it,
Speaker:and that's the end of story, okay?
Speaker:So I'll go for the rest of this year, but I'm taking art
Speaker:classes, and we're transferring.
Speaker:And she goes ooh, you've never been so angry before.
Speaker:I'm like, whoa.
Speaker:Okay, Allison.
Speaker:Get an art scholarship and an academic scholarship and you can go.
Speaker:Bang, done.
Speaker:Went to Savannah in 2010.
Speaker:That's so interesting to hear how You know, we have had a lot of
Speaker:people on this show and parts of it, the part of it that always
Speaker:impresses me is That breaking point.
Speaker:There's a lot of you know, there's never like a breaking point that
Speaker:you hear in other industries.
Speaker:No one's like that's it I'm becoming a doctor.
Speaker:That's it.
Speaker:I just have to be an engineer.
Speaker:You're right.
Speaker:That's done.
Speaker:I'm doing, I'm going to be a biologist.
Speaker:Roads and bridges, that's just my lifeblood.
Speaker:Dad, I want to be an engineer.
Speaker:Why won't you let me do it?
Speaker:No son, you're going to do the pizza company.
Speaker:You're going to work at the bar.
Speaker:So it's so interesting to hear, The that part of people's lives
Speaker:and so then, but you said that you were like, Oh, I don't think I, I
Speaker:want to do animation me personally.
Speaker:Now, when you sit now, I do know that you, for a fact, you still
Speaker:want to be that part, right?
Speaker:You work at Tidmouth, obviously you do like still like animation.
Speaker:Of course.
Speaker:So then what happened where you were like, I'm not going to be an animator?
Speaker:Drawing the same thing over and over again is a.
Speaker:a special skill.
Speaker:You have to understand volume and shape and the physics of motion, the
Speaker:illusion of life within the 2D form.
Speaker:It's a lot.
Speaker:Drawing on the twos, drawing on the, yeah, Yeah, all those frames, all those
Speaker:panels, everything that you're doing.
Speaker:And I just got tired and got carpal tunnel and drove myself into like craziness.
Speaker:Until one day I looked over at a senior's Cintiq and he had
Speaker:all of these spreadsheets open.
Speaker:Because he was the producer for four senior films.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:And I went, what?
Speaker:, what is that?
Speaker:And it was like all of a sudden, oh, the Angels sang.
Speaker:And there it was Cloud, the Cloud thing.
Speaker:The clouds parted,
Speaker:It was it Like that was it.
Speaker:It was Love it.
Speaker:First spreadsheet.
Speaker:I love it.
Speaker:First spreadsheet I knew Was it?
Speaker:It was Google Docs.
Speaker:Google.
Speaker:I've never seen Doc.
Speaker:The, this is the.
Speaker:Beginning of Google Docs.
Speaker:So this is in 2010 that like, I graduated high school in 2000.
Speaker:But I quickly realized that.
Speaker:But what I loved was the story and the creativity that people brought
Speaker:to the table with each IP and each show and episode and short.
Speaker:I didn't want to be the artistic hand.
Speaker:I wanted to be the voice of reason that gave them comfort and support so that they
Speaker:could be the best they possibly could be.
Speaker:And that was it.
Speaker:I knew from then on, so I tanked my classes and only worked in
Speaker:producing as many senior and graduate films as I possibly could.
Speaker:How many did you end up doing?
Speaker:About around five or so.
Speaker:Six if I count my own.
Speaker:That's still a lot of projects.
Speaker:But I loved it.
Speaker:I loved it.
Speaker:I loved everything.
Speaker:And every single one of them was different and brought different challenges.
Speaker:So when I graduated in 2012 and my parents said, You can't go out to
Speaker:Los Angeles until you have a job.
Speaker:Desperation kicked in, and I found out that my friend Zachary Rich at the time
Speaker:was creating his own online studio.
Speaker:And I went, yo, dude!
Speaker:Hey, remember me?
Speaker:We took that one Digicel class together?
Speaker:Where we learned Flash?
Speaker:Wasn't that fun?
Speaker:Fun please let me in.
Speaker:And from there, I kicked out every single person that he had that
Speaker:was production and took over.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:And became his business partner.
Speaker:That's awesome.
Speaker:What was the what was the conversation like with your parents whenever you
Speaker:were an animator and then you were like, actually, I don't want to be an
Speaker:animator, I now want to be a producer?
Speaker:So Oh, Many years later, after I'd moved out to Los Angeles and become
Speaker:a production manager, my parents told me a very depressing thing that I
Speaker:hope they never hear this radio for.
Speaker:We never thought you were gonna make it.
Speaker:We just knew we were throwing money away to let you have a dream for a minute,
Speaker:and then you'd come back to reality.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:That's pretty heavy.
Speaker:That is pretty, expect that they'd be like, eh.
Speaker:And this is your parents?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Was there any hints that they thought that previously?
Speaker:Obviously they wanted you to do something else, but were they
Speaker:ever What are you doing out there?
Speaker:No, I was simple and stupid and believed that Mommy and Daddy would
Speaker:never, ever think poorly of me.
Speaker:And, nope, that was 100 percent wrong.
Speaker:It's a flex now.
Speaker:It's a good flex now.
Speaker:Yeah, so now looking back on it, now I talk at panels, and this,
Speaker:and everything, And I'm mentoring people to get into the industry.
Speaker:I look back on that and I go, this is something I can
Speaker:actually use to tell people.
Speaker:It's okay if your parents don't support your idea.
Speaker:And even like at a panel that I did a number of years ago, I said,
Speaker:your children are not going into this field to just be artists.
Speaker:They are going into this field to find their people.
Speaker:You are not their people.
Speaker:You're not their person.
Speaker:They want to find a community that loves animation, and video games, and anime,
Speaker:and comics, and all of these things.
Speaker:Being in South Carolina, I'd go in to see a Disney movie,
Speaker:they'd think I was a pedophile!
Speaker:Cause it's whoa, she's too old!
Speaker:What is she doing in here?
Speaker:There's no child with her!
Speaker:Is she a mother?
Speaker:What is this?
Speaker:Where's the kid who's supposed to be accompanying her?
Speaker:to the movies.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:So I'm from so me and Nicholas are both from the south.
Speaker:He's from Louisiana and we're, and I'm from Tennessee.
Speaker:That's definitely the case.
Speaker:It's yeah, it's the same.
Speaker:What are you some kind of weirdo or something?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Like animation and then You know what, the same people who will say that,
Speaker:you'll be like, Oh, I liked Avatar Last Ember, or some animated show.
Speaker:And they'll be like, Oh, I love that show.
Speaker:Oh, but, okay.
Speaker:But I'm the weirdo.
Speaker:I'm the weirdo, cause I'll publicly say I like it.
Speaker:I feel like a lot more people like animation than they like to let on.
Speaker:At the time I think that it was getting ready to reach that point
Speaker:of where anime and things were going to start to come over to the country
Speaker:of South Carolina and its little country vision, like little setting.
Speaker:But at the time it was not accepted.
Speaker:And when I would explain what I did in animation or.
Speaker:Even today, when I go home and people are like, Oh, what do you do, Allison?
Speaker:I said, Oh I'm a production manager.
Speaker:And they go, And what, so you draw the cartoons?
Speaker:I was like no.
Speaker:I manage the team that creates the content.
Speaker:And they're like, Oh, I said logistics.
Speaker:Does that.
Speaker:Oh, you do look like, Oh, I'm going to say yes, but I don't.
Speaker:So you're the supply demand chain thing.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Go out in Hollywood and make those talkies.
Speaker:We haven't even gotten colored yet back here.
Speaker:As recently Mickey Mouse went into the Steamboat Willie version.
Speaker:To be clear.
Speaker:Went into public domain.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And first of all, we never thought that Disney would stop blabbering,
Speaker:lobbying Congress to extend it's not for lack of trying, right?
Speaker:That's true.
Speaker:And there's already been a whole bunch of movies that are about
Speaker:to come out of a horror version.
Speaker:I saw there's like a whole bunch of, a whole bunch of I would say cash
Speaker:grabby items media wise, because obviously it's Mickey Mouse, right?
Speaker:Steamboat Willie Mickey Mouse.
Speaker:How do you, as a production manager?
Speaker:View this possibility for some things that you work on because eventually
Speaker:everything will enter the public domain to be completely honest I
Speaker:think the government is full of crap.
Speaker:As a creator if my project ever got put up for like auction basically
Speaker:Why don't you just take somebody's child and put them up for sale?
Speaker:That's all you're doing.
Speaker:To a creator, our IPs, our projects, our characters, they're
Speaker:not just a vision on the screen.
Speaker:They're our life.
Speaker:They're something that we gave birth to.
Speaker:You put blood, sweat, tears, so many hours into it.
Speaker:I just, I can't agree.
Speaker:I know that Mickey Mouse should have never become something like that.
Speaker:If Walt Disney was here, no, absolutely not.
Speaker:And that's how we have to think about it.
Speaker:If I hate to go into this explanation, but let's take the
Speaker:Declaration of Independence.
Speaker:Who's gonna go and buy, that right out of D.
Speaker:C.?
Speaker:Is that up for sale?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Like why is it that something that was worked on, beloved like that, with our
Speaker:founding fathers with Disney's Mickey Mouse and all of the characters, that
Speaker:has the ability to be put up for sale?
Speaker:That's so interesting, because they, Disney's argument is that one of the
Speaker:current arguments is that, It's the oldest version, the old version of
Speaker:Mickey Mouse, which is not technically the newer Mickey Mouse or any of the
Speaker:newer versions besides that first one that are still under that copyright.
Speaker:And there's a lot of fear.
Speaker:We have spoken with some people working at Disney.
Speaker:There's a lot of fear of the, people associating the actual Disney products
Speaker:when they're not actually Disney products.
Speaker:You know what I'm saying?
Speaker:So like you said, protecting the IP is important.
Speaker:There's not really a solution to that right now, is there?
Speaker:I just think that you have to look at the overall IP in general.
Speaker:Mickey Mouse is the definition of Disney.
Speaker:Is it appropriate to put the actual president of Disney up for sale?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:It's so weird it makes me think of Things like the Michelin Man has
Speaker:been around for like how long but you don't ever see any Michelin Man
Speaker:commercials You can't do that, right?
Speaker:Because he's trademarked and yet Mickey Mouse It's like what that's again.
Speaker:It's the Steamboat Willie version.
Speaker:Yeah, but yet it's still the same any version of Mickey Mouse is a Mickey Mouse
Speaker:like our The project True Tale that I've been working on for, come March 11 years,
Speaker:those characters have been redesigned and edited and updated over and over again.
Speaker:If somebody took the very initial drawings that we did, our Steamboat
Speaker:Willie style kind of thing, and went, hey, I'm gonna buy that.
Speaker:And own it.
Speaker:And own it.
Speaker:I'd be horrified.
Speaker:I'm like, how dare you?
Speaker:How do you have any right to it?
Speaker:I don't understand it.
Speaker:I don't know why this is even a conversation, to be completely honest.
Speaker:It's just government not respecting the lifeblood of a creator.
Speaker:Speaking of not respecting IPs Avatar The Last Airbender is going
Speaker:to be on Netflix pretty soon.
Speaker:There's what's interesting about the team is that They've been, I think the
Speaker:world's been very adamant about the M.
Speaker:Night Shyamalan live action.
Speaker:Yeah, oh, how horrible it was.
Speaker:How long will it take me to live this rock?
Speaker:Oh!
Speaker:That's the secret that people don't like it.
Speaker:But it's interesting to see people's interpretation of different animations.
Speaker:Animation style and a whole bunch of other stuff.
Speaker:Are you, as someone who works in animation, are you Excited about it?
Speaker:No, I think it's a terrible idea.
Speaker:Because I think after, they also did One Piece as well.
Speaker:There's been, what, a billion and a half different attempts to redo
Speaker:animation in a live action form.
Speaker:Why do you think that people want to make that medium?
Speaker:Let's first ask the question of this, which any, if you ever are pitching
Speaker:a project to development, they will ask you, why did you pick animation
Speaker:as your medium to tell your story?
Speaker:The reason they picked animation to tell their story, or honestly,
Speaker:anyone does, is that the human face cannot emote like that.
Speaker:It's true.
Speaker:Animation has Big eyes, big expressions, zany, wacky, slapstick
Speaker:humor that if I do, I will kill you.
Speaker:I do not think that it is a good idea to take an animated property and
Speaker:turn it into a live action property.
Speaker:It doesn't translate, because that was not the initial take on it.
Speaker:They chose animation because that medium would lend itself best.
Speaker:To the storytelling that they needed, which is why most of the time when you
Speaker:watch a Sorry Disney, but you watch any of say the Lion King that they did.
Speaker:No, the live action version It is not going to work Those eyes and that
Speaker:face and everything does not emote Like Simba, Zazu, and all of them.
Speaker:It's also specifically Favreau's fault.
Speaker:Because Favreau said, and how many different interviews, he was like, Oh
Speaker:in the live action version, we want to make it look like a documentary, and
Speaker:lions don't they don't make faces like they do in animation, so we make then
Speaker:go watch Big Cat Diaries if you want to if you want an animal documentary.
Speaker:Not only that, lions do have emotions.
Speaker:I don't know why they have all these steel faces in the movie.
Speaker:Animals do have feelings.
Speaker:I don't think he's ever Seen real animals possibly maybe that was the issue.
Speaker:He's never i'm sure they were brought in just like how jeffrey katzenberg
Speaker:brought in lions for the artist when they needed to Draw out simba and all
Speaker:of them, but I do feel very strongly that animation is a medium that is used
Speaker:Specifically because of the ability that the human face cannot emote like that.
Speaker:So if you're going to do a live action, you better have the biggest over dramatic,
Speaker:crazy acting, or you're going to put everybody to sleep because they're
Speaker:going to be like, wait, that doesn't.
Speaker:That's not working.
Speaker:I just can't wait to be king is such a favorite sequence of mine and a
Speaker:lot of animators love that sequence.
Speaker:A lot of people love the Lion King in general.
Speaker:Someone's Oh, I don't like the Lion King.
Speaker:I'm like, Oh, so you're not human.
Speaker:That's cool.
Speaker:You're a sociopath or psychopath.
Speaker:You're not a person.
Speaker:That's insane.
Speaker:I wish you actually wish you didn't say that to me.
Speaker:I actually don't want to be around you right now.
Speaker:And then obviously they try to, it didn't even look like
Speaker:they really retried to make it.
Speaker:With this upcoming Avatar The Last Airbender live action, how do you
Speaker:suppose some of the, what do you think is going to fall under the wayside,
Speaker:outside of just the facial expressions?
Speaker:One of the big things will be that you will see a lot of allusion.
Speaker:Illusion stuff where you're gonna have a lot of green screen.
Speaker:You're gonna have a lot of visual effects.
Speaker:They think that if they Polish it up with all of the visual effects and
Speaker:everything that will Sell it that will push it to where it needs to go.
Speaker:But honestly I don't trust them on their casting.
Speaker:I don't trust them on being able to give us those 2D effects that
Speaker:honestly left us spellbound while we were watching them as kids.
Speaker:The other big issue is, this IP is done.
Speaker:I watched it Religiously, back when I was in high school, I would even put the kids
Speaker:to sleep early when I was babysitting so that I could watch it at the house.
Speaker:Such an amazing series.
Speaker:It works phenomenally as animation, but I'm 35 now.
Speaker:What 12 year old has any clue about this show?
Speaker:They don't.
Speaker:They don't.
Speaker:So who's gonna watch this IP?
Speaker:And if I was a parent, which I'm not, Would I want my child, who is 7
Speaker:or 8 years old, watching this show?
Speaker:No, probably You're just gonna show them the animation from before.
Speaker:No, I would rather them watch the animation than watch actual people beating
Speaker:themselves up with magical effects.
Speaker:Yeah, you're gonna show them the original Comparative to just
Speaker:showing them the newer versions.
Speaker:Yeah, because I Because they'll say, Oh, I think this is cool.
Speaker:I had a similar experience with one of my younger nephews.
Speaker:When he likes Teen He was like, Oh, I like Teen Titans Go!
Speaker:And I was like, What did you say to me?
Speaker:Oh, I hate And he was like, Yeah, and I was like, Alright.
Speaker:I First of all, I'm gonna have to talk with my aunt, your mother.
Speaker:Se my sister, your mother.
Speaker:Then We're just gonna go home, and I actually showed him, like, all the regular
Speaker:Teen Titan, from when it was quality.
Speaker:When Teen Titans was it.
Speaker:They had the Japanese intro, they also had the English intro.
Speaker:And then after I showed him after we like, binged it over I think three or four days.
Speaker:And he was like, Why does Teen Titans Go exist?
Speaker:I was like, thank you.
Speaker:That's what everybody's been trying to find out.
Speaker:Because it's cheaper to make.
Speaker:That's true.
Speaker:That's all it is.
Speaker:It's cheaper to make.
Speaker:Oh, it's that was the reason it was, because it was cheaper to make?
Speaker:Those little chibi puppet things are much easier to animate and work with
Speaker:than a 22 minute big, crazy, dynamic Avatar The Last Airbender fighting.
Speaker:These are slapstick, easy stories for someone to digest
Speaker:in little 11 minute chunks.
Speaker:That's it.
Speaker:That's not saying that the writing is bad or anything like that.
Speaker:It's just they know what their audience wants and they are giving it to them.
Speaker:Back then when Teen Titans came out, it was mixed up with Johnny Quest
Speaker:and Scooby Doo and all of these things that had a darker undertone.
Speaker:So they felt the need to compete?
Speaker:That darker undertone doesn't exactly work.
Speaker:In today's animation with SMP.
Speaker:What, do you think it's actually Because a lot of people who watch those
Speaker:older shows can still really enjoy it.
Speaker:There was this, there's this sense where people used to make things, not for kids
Speaker:specifically, but for general audiences, compared to just specifically kids.
Speaker:And I heard this what was it, L.
Speaker:A.
Speaker:Comic Con where someone was saying this?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I don't know, I think it's just a change of the times, but I think that,
Speaker:still in today's age I think we don't give the kids enough, respect mentally.
Speaker:I think usually they can handle stuff like that.
Speaker:I think that's a hundred percent accurate.
Speaker:The best way of putting it is S& P in the 90s was all about irreverency.
Speaker:Be wild, be irreverent, create wacky zany stories.
Speaker:How in the world did Hey Arnold get away with Helga's mother having a bloody Mary
Speaker:in the morning every time you saw her?
Speaker:Or, Edit and Eddie are literally slumlords teaching the children how to steal money
Speaker:from everyone in the neighborhood so that you can get Candy and rot your teeth out.
Speaker:Like it was.
Speaker:The age of I reverence.
Speaker:Push the envelope.
Speaker:Push the envelope.
Speaker:Which is why I believe chicken, oh, exactly.
Speaker:Oh my god.
Speaker:Cow.
Speaker:Chicken, chickens.
Speaker:Cat dog.
Speaker:Yeah, cat dog.
Speaker:Courage.
Speaker:Courage.
Speaker:A cowardly dog.
Speaker:All of them, they all had the message of we are wacky, we are zany, we are
Speaker:a reverent, and who cares if we really have plot devices in here or not.
Speaker:We're just gonna let the joke is king.
Speaker:Let's roll with it kind of thing.
Speaker:S& P was a lot more lax.
Speaker:Take Animaniacs.
Speaker:They literally joke about this.
Speaker:Or Tiny Toons, tiny Toons jokes about this.
Speaker:It's we crack up all our sensors.
Speaker:That's S& P they're talking about in that opening line.
Speaker:So in the 90s, they just wanted to make content.
Speaker:Cheap, fast, quick content.
Speaker:And that's all it was.
Speaker:Today.
Speaker:It's not that way anymore.
Speaker:Do you feel it's more like corporate now?
Speaker:It's on brand.
Speaker:Everything is about brand now.
Speaker:Back then, I couldn't tell the difference between the cartoons
Speaker:that came on Nickelodeon and the cartoons that came on Cartoon Network.
Speaker:That is true.
Speaker:And I knew Disney was more of a family, softer focus.
Speaker:But today Nickelodeon has a specific brand.
Speaker:A Cartoon Network and WB have a specific brand.
Speaker:Disney has a specific brand.
Speaker:Amazon has a specific brand.
Speaker:Even Netflix, when they pick their projects, they're being fairly specific.
Speaker:Everybody's now So scared of having a flop that they've actually branded themselves.
Speaker:Why do you think that each company, besides being scared that it's going to
Speaker:be a flop, why do you think that each, Disney, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network,
Speaker:why do you think they've all branded themselves so individualistically?
Speaker:What do you think the reason for that is?
Speaker:My opinion would be that they're scared.
Speaker:SMP has become a lot more strict.
Speaker:It's crazy how strict they are.
Speaker:Like, we couldn't have a character pull a plug out of the wall, because
Speaker:that was imitatable behavior.
Speaker:Instead, we had to have them Turn the switch off on the power strip.
Speaker:Isn't that also imitatable?
Speaker:It is, but that's a lot safer than that.
Speaker:They couldn't start fires, but you could snap your finger and
Speaker:magically have fire in your hand.
Speaker:Avatar had a huge problem with the fire bending aspect because they're like, oh
Speaker:no, kids will light matches and run around with like little torches and whatever.
Speaker:So I think what has happened is we've reached a point of SMP wants to protect.
Speaker:It's honestly, it's very similar to what's happening in the medical field,
Speaker:where doctors aren't really even allowed to touch you because they're
Speaker:afraid you're going to sue them.
Speaker:Yeah, I have heard Because the hospital is not going to back the doctor.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:It's going to back itself from getting sued.
Speaker:Precisely.
Speaker:You know what's crazy is, especially with the we don't want to get talk too much
Speaker:to medical field, but WMD has destroyed as not destroyed, but I said, really
Speaker:made a lot of medical professionals upset because they have a whole bunch
Speaker:of people come in and Oh yeah, I need this medicine because this website told
Speaker:me that and they'll say I'm a doctor, so probably check your medical history first.
Speaker:Nope.
Speaker:If you don't give it to me, I'll give you a terrible review, and I'll
Speaker:tank your business, and you can't say anything about it because of HIPAA.
Speaker:But Allison, it's been really great having you on the show.
Speaker:Yeah!
Speaker:Thank you so much for coming.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:It's been a pleasure.
Speaker:Is there anywhere where people can follow you or look up anything that you
Speaker:might have coming out in the future?
Speaker:Honestly, probably the best thing to do is just Google TrueTale.
Speaker:It's true, as in like true or false, and tail as in an animal
Speaker:tail, not T A L, but T A I L.
Speaker:And it's about a young kitten named Caleb, who's 12 years old.
Speaker:And along with all of his friends, they're going off to be heroes in a at
Speaker:a school called TrueTale Academy, where they train the next generation of hero.
Speaker:And it's set in a medieval fantasy world.
Speaker:If you like D& D, you're going to love it.
Speaker:And we hope you guys check it out.
Speaker:Cool.
Speaker:Excellent.
Speaker:Thank you so much for being on the show.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:Guys, it's been Film Center News.
Speaker:I'm Derek Johnson II.
Speaker:I'm Nicholas Killian.
Speaker:And we're here with Allison Srebnick.
Speaker:And we'll see you next time.
Speaker:See y'all.
Speaker:This has been Film Center on Comic Con Radio.
Speaker:Check out our previous episodes at comicconradio.
Speaker:com You can follow the show at Film Center News on all major social media platforms.
Speaker:Tune in next Wednesday for a fresh update.
Speaker:Until next time, this has been Film Center.
Speaker:Hey!
Speaker:Do you like anime and manga?
Speaker:Nick and I are big fans of the genre.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We recently discovered a manga named Tamashii.
Speaker:It's written and created by Ryan McCarthy.
Speaker:And it recently just came out with its 10th volume.
Speaker:Now, Tamashii is an isekai about a girl who gets transported to another
Speaker:world called the ancient lands.
Speaker:She gains mysterious powers and must fight demons and monsters to find her way home.
Speaker:Check it out on Amazon, Blurp, and get a physical copy at ryanmccarthyproductions.
Speaker:com.
