A Journey in Animation : An interview with Chris Stover
by Nick Hatzichristos

On January 2005, Chris Stover and a group of dedicated artists, achieved what many of their peers dream about : to create an impressive animated short with a very distinctive look and a deep story. For over a year (starting in November '03 and ending in January '05), a core team of 5, with contributions from a total of 26 people, worked on their own personal time to complete an ambitious project. The fruit of this labour is "The Journey", a different, magical story with a theme that is bound to touch everyone, one way or another.

The head of the team, Chris Stover, experienced Animation Director and Visual Effects Supervisor, talks to us about what it takes to bring a masterpiece to completion.

How did the whole project start out ? Had you wanted to make a short for a while, and realized that goal with The Journey, or did the thought come to you as a "hey, let's make a short film out of it" crazy idea ?

While doing commercial work over the last couple of years, I slowly started to feel technically comfortable enough to make the commitment to do a short film. Independent filmmaking was one of the main reasons I got into animation work in the first place and I knew completing a film would be no easy task.

Also the risky part of the situation, both financially and professionally took a little time to get ready for. The last thing I wanted to do was ask a lot of people I work with professionally to contribute to a project and screw it up. Unfortunately, completing a film, even with hard costs alone, isn’t cheap, so I waited until I felt like I found the right first project before taking those risks. Then, one day I met with Darla Klien and looked at her design work, went home and, along with Angie, started writing a script and determining what it would take to get it done.

Judging from the short description, The Journey is a story about life, the choices every one has to make, and the elusive second chance we all have asked, or will ask for at some point in our lives. Did that come from personal experiences, is this short an expression of thoughts and feelings, or was it "just" an interesting theme to explore, that would appeal to a broad audience ?

For me it was an expression of thoughts about what it takes to find happiness in life. I think the idea also spoke to us because of the sacrifices we would make to do this film. If you can’t enjoy the process and work it takes to accomplish our goals then you have to ask yourself, are those goals worth accomplishing ? The story of The Journey is about a character’s chance to take a second look at his life and, hopefully, learn how to enjoy the moment a little more along the way. Enjoying where you are in life isn’t always easy when all you can do is dream about where you want to be. For Angie (Co-Writer and Producer) and I, it was a theme we knew we would be living in our own lives.

The whole look of the short is somewhat surreal. Is there a reason why the characters are not human, or at least other, easily recognizable creatures ? Was it because of the artistic freedom that comes with that, or was it a conscious design choice that helped carry the story better ?

A lot of it I think had to do with artistic freedom. Darla Klien’s designs had a magical feel to them to begin with… it was a conscience decision to bring a very fantasy type of world and blend that with a story that was grounded in reality. Also, the story of the film is a bit dark, it explores the idea that life may not turn out exactly how you expected. Using a very stylized world kept it from becoming too dark.

The Journey was created by devoted artists working on it in their spare time. How hard was that, what kind of sacrifices, if any, did you and your team have to make ? It's hard enough with "day jobs" taking up the better part of our lives, did your social / personal lives take a hit ?

It is hard. I think everyone made sacrifices in order to complete this project. I tried to be sure to always respect everyone’s time and try not to waste time. Personally, I was working full time at an animation studio, teaching part-time and working on the film. I love skateboarding and snowboarding and didn’t get to do much of either during production, however, I also love the process of filmmaking... I knew the commitment it would take going in to this. Nothing ever worth doing is easy and there were times I would ask myself, if it was worth it. Now that the film is finished, I can say, without a doubt, it was worth every minute of it. I learned an enormous amount from, not only making the film, but from the people around me. It was a huge growing experience.

Did every artist on the team have a clear, specific role (storyboarding, modelling, texturing, etc) or did everyone do a little bit of everything ?

For the most part, everyone had specific roles within the production. Mark Orme primarily worked on modeling and texturing, Patrick Meyer worked on the particle animation and assisted in rigging, Dan Shafer was our storyboard artist and Darla Klien did all of the character design and set design work, along with matte painting. I was the exception – doing a bit of everything to get the project finished. Some of my primary responsibilities in production were modeling, rigging, layout, animation, lighting, and composting. Zach Wilson come on and tackled about half of the lighting, rendering and compositing tasks as well as, the title sequence. We also had a great editor, Byrd McDonald. Most importantly, we had an amazing producer, Angie Howard (my wife :) ). This was done in everyone’s spare time and within 12 months. So having a producer keep this on schedule was a make or break aspect.

What were the toughest challenges your team and you had to overcome while making The Journey ? I am talking both technical (i.e. software / hardware related), as well as any other kind (management, scheduling, tackling the project in general).

The toughest challenge we faced was the implementation and management of a very non-linear workflow. We had 8 characters and 7 sets with over a hundred shots each and a maximum of up to 16 HD render passes each. We had to have as many processes as we could underway at the same time. After the script was finished in January of 2004 we proceeded into production at an incredibly fast pace. Storyboarding was started as models were being constructed, temp rigs created and dynamic simulations tested. Keeping up with naming conventions and implementing referencing in order to drive all of these assets into specific shots was a huge technical and scheduling challenge. You can only make your best decisions during production when you can have a clear look at all of the pieces. Keeping good track of all deliverables gives you the ability to reassess your game plan constantly in order to avoid problems. I don’t think we could have completed this process within a year, considering its scope, if we hadn’t had multiple assets under creation at one time.

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Where did the support from intel come from ? Somehow I don't think that any creative group can call up an intel representative and ask for rendering power ! Did you go to them, did they come to you, was there some other kind of "link" with intel all along ?

The studio I work for does work with Intel. We heard through the grape vine that they were looking to license content for use in promoting some new cluster machines. Angie and I started asking around and secured the opportunity to pitch our short. The guys there liked the idea and the design of the film, so a couple of days after our pitch they called and we started negotiating an agreement. We had only been in production for a little over two months previous to the pitch. Thankfully, we had some of the models and test animations, along with the storyboards and concept designs, which helped us take advantage of the opportunity. Not only did the Intel relationship provide a huge boost to what we could accomplish with the look of the film, it also provided a huge legal and business learning opportunity. We were already in the process of legally learning more about the intellectual property side of things, however, with the new relationship, we also had to go through legal talks over licensing the property. That was a great learning experience.

A common torture among artists, even more so in CG, is the "could be better" syndrome. I 've never heard of anyone ever look at their own work and say "I 'm done. It's perfect". Now that The Journey is out, are there things you think could / should have been done better ? If you had to start from scratch tomorrow, what, if anything, would you do differently ?

Yes, there are things…. But hindsight is always 20/20. I don’t think I could ever be completely happy with my work. I know it can always be better. I know every flaw of our film. I can see through every shot and I know where every smoke and mirror is placed. I laugh with Mark a lot because I know of technical flaws that he still doesn’t know about. Time is the road to satisfaction. If you limit your time, what you can do creatively within that time also starts to become limited. The whole process was such an eye opening experience it’s kind of funny. In trying to drive a process like this, one of the main things I had to do was assess how I managed my own time. You can always wonder if you should have done more of this or less of something else. It helps to just go ahead and print it to film - cause after that there is no going back... It’s exciting now - moving into a new project - I can bring so much more to the table than I could have before making this film.

What is your opinion on CG software these days ? Do you, as a CG artist, feel complete freedom, or are we just not there yet, and you still find yourself feeling restricted ? What were the criteria for choosing a software package to create "The Journey" on ? Superiority over other packages ? Personal experience ? Maybe it just "felt right" for the job ?

To me it's a great time to be making animated films as far software is concerned. I think the quality level of independent shorts out over the last couple of years is a reflection of the great software available. You can get off-the-shelf software that is affordable and flexible. We used Maya, Shave and a Hair Cut, After Effects, Photoshop, and Final Cut Pro. It all comes down to what package you’re most comfortable with…all the tools out there do roughly the same things, it’s just their bells and whistles are put in different places. It’s nice to feel comfortable within a software package. You can focus much more on the content with out having to deal with a bunch of technical hurdles.

I understand that The Journey is currently doing its rounds in film festivals. Where / when is its next stop ? And, given that the film features a very distinctive look and feel, to go with an appealing story, what is the viewing public's reaction to it so far ? What kind of interesting feedback are you receiving, besides common "I liked / didn't like it" comments ?

It will be playing at CORTOONS in Rome, Italy in June and at the Tahoe/Reno International Film Festival in August. So far we have been getting a great reaction from people. He had a Q & A after our first screening at the Vail Film Festival and it went very well. The Vail festival called it “a touching, animated wonderland” on their web site – which was great to hear.

Will the film be released to a wider audience sometime in the near future ? A DVD maybe, or could we even hope for a web version ?

We would love to be able to do a DVD. Both Mark Orme and I teach so it would be great to add tutorial based content along with some of the rigs and scene files. But, if nothing else we will eventually release it on our web site.

And of course, the standard, but always interesting, question : What now ? Any other ambitious projects you can talk about ? Should we expect more, bigger, better things soon ?

Angie and I have been working on 2 different character and story bibles for childrens television series. We will be producing a 15 to 20 sec piece to accompany one of the pitches and for the other, we will produce a 3 minute short film as a proof of concept. Our core team for The Journey has signed on to help us get these pieces produced, so we are really excited about the future. Hopefully by the end of the year we will have websites up for both projects.

This is exciting news ! We will keep an eye out for the first glimpses of these projects.

Once again, congratulations to the whole team involved in completing a demanding project like The Journey, and thank you for talking the time to talk to us about it. We wish you the best of luck - even if luck is the lesser ingredient in a success recipe - on your future efforts !