Question: Why is Space Chimps getting a sequel?

Why is Space Chimps getting a sequel?



Space Chimps did $30,105,968 domestically.

That's pretty bad when compared to Disney, Pixar, and DreamWorks, who typically get well over $100 million domestically (really depends on the films).

Now Space Chimps cost $37 million to make. So by our normal standards, that's a flop. But that budget is actually super cheap, considering that the big boys spend over $100 million on an animated film. If you keep your costs down, then you don't need as big of a profit to have a "success."

So the first saving grace was that Space Chimps made $34,682,011 in foreign markets, totaling $64,787,979.

That said, not all that goes to the studio (a lot of it goes to the theaters). However, adding DVD sales on top of that, then "Space Chimps" definitely made a healthy profit for the studio.

Plus if they had a sweet script for the sequel, a promise that they can make the effects look better, and point that Andy Samberg is even more popular now than before... then I think they could sell the idea to the studio executives.

================

I think the aliens stuff from the first film was a little too "home video worthy" for a theatrical release, so I hope they have a better script and better alien effects if they venture back out to an alien planet. (Obviously Zartog is back, but he could be invading Earth.)

I think they knew that the alien stuff was the weakness, because it didn't show up in the trailer at all. Just going by the trailer, you actually didn't know that 80% of the movie was on an alien planet.

So I hope they make the script and alien stuff a little more movie-worthy. As for me, I loved the movie, and I thought the actors really did a great job!

Enjoy!

The Emperor

Question: Does a movie need to make 2.5x its budget in order to break even?

Question for the Emperor: Does a movie need to make 2.5x its budget in order to break even?


So marketing isn’t always all that big and doesn’t always scale. I mean, the average movie is probably paying 25 million in marketing, with the bigger going up to 40 million. The smaller movies may only pay 10 million or so. The blockbusters might hit around $100 million in marketing costs (or $150 for the mega blockbusters).

The real costs go to theaters and distribution (40-45% of gross).


2.5 times the production costs sounds about right, but the production costs and marketing costs are variable, and the distribution/theater costs are almost directly related to the gross. Some smaller movies might be closer to 2.1 times, while some extreme examples probably get even higher. Let’s look at an extreme example…




Sony’s Spider-Man 3 (effects by Sony Imageworks)



Production Budget: $258 million

Marketing Costs: about $150 million
http://www.moviemarketingmadness.com/blog/2007/05/01/movie-marketing-madness-spider-man-3/

Gross Worldwide Income: $890,871,626

Theater/Distribution Costs (based on 45%): $400,892,231

Total costs (Budget, Marketing, and Theater/Distribution): $808,892,231

2.5 x it’s Production Budget: $645 million

Total Box Office Profit (guesstimation): $82 million


So Spider-Man 3 actually had total costs that were about 3.1 times the original production budget.



So why do they make these films then?

- Promotions
- Toys
- Merchandise
- DVDs


Sometimes movies are expected to lose at the box office and gain all their profit from DVD sales. For example, Harold and Kumar was pitched as a movie that would break even in the box office and then make strong profits on DVD (that system worked so well that the sequel just came out; they wanted to do it again). Austin Powers made $67 million in the box office, and then after a strong DVD performance, the sequel made $312 million in the box office (with a low $33 million production budget).

- The Emperor

Question: What do you do about light and background noise?

Question for the Emperor: What do you do about light and background noise?



Here's an example of a video made where the lighting didn't match...


InnerU



There are some editing programs that will up lighting for you. Or just crank it up always just to make sure; for example we carry around a hand-light and extension chord used by mechanics.

We had to use an editing program to crank up the lighting in Following Directions 2:




As far as background noise goes, usually better to go silent and then just tape some excess background noise and loop it onto both ends. Or play the same music under both to disguise it.

We had a unique problem in Mike Tyson Will Eat Your Children where we were using Mike Tyson's actual audio with background noise and had to come up with new background noise to blend it a little:





- The Emperor

Question: Is there anything I can do to get featured on the front page of YouTube?

Question: Is there anything I can do to get featured on the front page of YouTube?

Nope. Make friends with partners and with people who are cool on YouTube. Try to make something you think will get featured. You really got to think outside the box to get featured, and the more often you think outside the box, the more often you get featured. Creative/entertaining songs and animations tend to do better, but they're much harder to do than a normal v-log.

The only vid we got featured was Fruits VS Bugs:



Check out the sequel if you haven't:



Our channel was also featured, on the day we released Episode 2.


- The Emperor

Question: What is a YouTube Partner and how do subscribers help you become a partner?

Question for the Emperor: What is a YouTube Partner?

A partner is someone selected by YouTube to be given tons of tiny priviledges that add up to coolness. For example, revenue sharing on ads (partners have more ads around their vids), autoplay on their channel, banners, and smaller features.

Question for the Emperor: How do subscribers help you to become a Partner?

Well, they subscribe and they watch your videos. The requirements include regularly making videos where thousands of people watch them. It's pretty vague, but basically you just build a case for having a strong, active audience that already goes to your channel. Plus, you won't get selected if you are just showing copyrighted images, music, clips that aren't yours, or clips of videogames. You've got to generate original content pretty regularly (like at least two videos a month).

Hope this helps! The only vid we got featured was Fruits VS Bugs:



Check out the sequel if you haven't:





- The Emperor

Question: Why do some animated movies flop?

Question for the Emperor: Why do some animated movies flop?

So, first thing about animated movies is that your target audience has to be the family. The latest person to make this mistake was Robert Zemeckis, who lost a ton of money on Beowulf. Even Disney has made this mistake with Treasure Planet (Atlantis barely survived the mark).


If you want to target adults, you need to make cheap anime and release it on DVD (the expense of 3D won't get you a return; only the really popular anime can touch 3D, and, even then, it's only used for effects). If you want to target boys with action (movie mistakes include Sinbad, Treasure Planet, Final Fantasy, Titan AE, etc.) you need to get it on TV. (For example, Osmosis Jones flopped in the theater but made a successful TV cartoon.)



So, why do family animated movies do well? Women. Women won't go see action movies, especially cartoon ones. They are the ones driving what the kids see, so only the die hard moms give in and take kids to see animated action movies. On top of that, all the children (sons and daughters) want to go see Finding Nemo, but only the son wants to see TMNT. So they skip TMNT because over half the people who would have to see it are... Women. That's vital. They need to be the primary market (even if the movie is about super heroes or cars - Pixar knows this very well).

On top of that, men won't go see animated action films; they'd rather see Die Hard 4 than Beowulf.



So, if you make an animated action movie, all you're left with is boys, aged 7-19. That's a small market when the mom controls most of that money. That market is confined to the TV set.

Even flops like Ant Bully, Doogal, and Barnyard are squarely aimed at young boys. The mom has no motivation to take kids to those. Check out the poster for Ant Bully. It even looks like an action animation:

Look at all those posters above. There is no motivation for women and girls to see any of those movies based on those posters (or the movies themselves).

Read more about this here:

http://theanimationempire.blogspot.com/2009/03/why-action-animated-films-dont-do-well.html

- The Emperor

Question: Did you win the Tax Laugh competition?

Question for the Emperor: Did you win the Tax Laugh competition?

We definitely won Tax Laugh in the way we intended to... Our goal was for both of our videos to be in the top 20 so that the main two people who worked on them would each get a camera. That's what we succeeded in doing, so we definitely won in that sense.

Tax Laugh Story:


That's why we're so grateful to everyone who voted! Thanks!

So out of 103 entries, both of our videos got in the top 20! That's amazing!

Tax Laugh Standup:


The next round is by the judges only, and we don't expect to make the top three.

We wouldn't have made the final 20 without all your support. So we sincerely and humbly thank you for voting our two videos into the top 20. With over 100 videos submitted, our odds weren't good, and we thank you for the wins!

We couldn't have done it without you. Thanks everybody! Thank you for your support!!!

- The Emperor

Question: Why is Zelda taken by a pig?

Question for the Emperor: Why is Zelda taken by a pig? Why isn't she kidnapped by Gannondorf instead?




This is actually an inside joke. Ganondorf appears later in the story.

- The Emperor

Question: What is the name of that song in the Zelda animation?

Question for the Emperor: What is the name of that song in the Zelda animation?





It's called Zelda, by Joe Pleiman, from an album called The Rabbit Joint. It is popularly believed to be done by System of a Down.



- The Emperor

Question: What do I need to learn to be a Web Designer or Animator?

Question for the Emperor: I've got a son in high school who wants to be a Web designer or animator. What does he need to do?


He's actually starting a little bit late. I didn't start thinking about it until college, though, so he's got me beat. =^)

Of course, I didn't have access to the Internet until college.

So, the cool thing with design and animation is that the portfolio is much more important than the degree. The degree helps (moreso in design than animation), but the true value is in the skillset. Whereas most other professions are defined by the resume (which shows degree and job experience), design and animation are defined by the portfolio and merely validated by the resume (most design jobs require the degree, but it's still more possible to get by without one than a technical job).

First of all, DON'T GO TO DEVRY OR ANY ART INSTITUTE!!!! And also, don't take Information Management or Computer Science degrees! The two disciplines we mentioned are entirely art-based. Inofrmation Management and Computer Science are entirely math, logic, and science. They are technical disciplines. They are polar opposites from artistic (user experience) positions.

First thing about design: don't do Web design!!! Web designers are a dime a dozen. If you build a portfolio that is entirely Web design, you'll be lucky if you get a job, and it won't pay well. If you go the design route, you'll want to get a degree in graphic design (user experience design), you'll want to explore some industrial design (where you design objects for the purpose of them being physically made), some print design, some Web design, and then concentrate on software UI design. There are interface designers and interaction designers; both are good positions to have in the software industry. This will help push you to those two jobs, but I'll give more details on that when we think more about design.

Okay. Animation...

Here's some basic information about animation from the Pixar guru, John Lasseter:
http://www.siggraph.org/education/materials/HyperGraph/animation/character_animation/principles/prin_trad_anim.htm

If you go get a degree, you want a university that does well in animation and has awesome animation projects coming through. There are also schools that specialize in animation (Ringling in Florida, DigiPen where I graduated from in WA, Vancouver Film School, etc.).

http://www.digipen.edu/

Animation Mentor

Another place to learn animation is online through Animation Mentor:

http://www.animationmentor.com/

Many of their mentors are current animators at Pixar (and all the major animation studios).

The animators that graduate from this online school are doing very well and getting jobs in the related industies (videogames, animated films, effects for movies, etc.) even though the school is not accredited.

The founder and CEO, Bobby Beck, commented on this blog post below and explained why they aren't accredited. First, he reiterates what I said that a degree is not very valuable, especially in comparison to the skills. Having an Animation Mentor degree will help get someone to look at your work (so that's valuable), but it really comes down to what your portfolio looks like.

Second, he said, "If we went for accreditation we would have to extend our course offering to add things such as math, english, so forth and so on which is the opposite of what we are doing. We want to cut the "fluff" and deliver the core of what animators need to know and deliver it in a way that no one else does."

Similarly, when DigiPen moved to accreditation (after I left), the animators on that track seemed to be moving much, much slower. What they had after their first year was exactly what I was doing in my first semester. So they had to take twice as long to get through the modeling and animation lessons.

The Animator's Test - Blender

Now, here's the test to see if your son wants to be an animator.

Go to www.Blender.org and download the free 3D program. It's very powerful, and it's free. The downside is that it's a little difficult to learn (which is one of the reasons why its free). Have him download that and follow the tutorials on the Website. If he gets through all of it, loves doing it, makes progress very quickly, and learns the interface fairly well, then he's an animator. If he has trouble motivating himself, he's not an animator, and then keep looking.

That's animation. You have to teach yourself new software and be passionate about it enough to overcome the difficulty of learning the software. It's the most important skill in animation. If you can't do it, you can't be an animator (it's still possible, but it just means you'll be struggling to teach yourself that skill for the next 10 years, or maybe you'll be able to teach yourself that skill in 4 years at a university).

If you can do it on your own with difficult software like Blender, then you're born to be an animator.


That's it. Let me know how it works!


Here's one of our 3D animations, Fruits VS Bugs - Part 1:




The sequel, Fruits VS Bugs - Part 2:




- The Emperor

Question: Did you use Flash to make the Zelda animation?

Question for the Emperor: Did you use Flash to make the Zelda animation?




Nope. We used Microsoft Paint (and Windows Movie Maker)! Our animator, Willem, is the best paint animator we've every seen. =^)


- The Emperor

Question: What font are you using for the WWW subtitles?

Question for the Emperor: What font are you using at the beginning of the Who Would Win videos (episodes 7-9) for the subtitle text that says who is fighting?



That's the "Cracked" font.

- The Emperor

Question: Where did you go to school, and what do you recommend?

Question for the Emperor: Where did you go to school, and what do you recommend?

-----------------------------

Yup. So, there were lots of animators on FVB, and we all graduated from DigiPen or Art Institute of Seattle. Most are now working for vg companies.

So, I don't recommend an art institute or JC. Some universities are good, and there are colleges that specialize in just 3D animation, like DigiPen in WA (geared more for games) and Ringling in FL (geared more for animated films). There's also a good online school, Animation Guru (not certified yet, but soon).

What animation comes down to is... what can you do? The portfolio speaks much louder than the degree.

That's why we offer an internship program. It's unpaid and work from home, but if you do the work, you'll actually learn faster than if you paid someone at a college.

So if you're interested, let me know, and we'll hook you up.

Thanks!

- The Emperor

Question: What software do you use to edit and work in?

Question for the Emperor: What software do you use to edit and work in?

-----------------------

We usually go a little big on the resolution... 640 x 480. We use Premiere and sometimes Final Cut (depends on who is doing the editing).

We then run it through Windows Movie Maker on the PC to get the file size down. That's the secret. You can get a 120 meg file down to 35 megs or so using WMM. If you've got a Mac, iMovie works, but the results aren't quite as amazing.

Who Would Win 7; edited in Final Cut:


Also, I'd say use a good cam, but if you're mostly editing, not shooting, then that doesn't matter. We use Premiere (PC) and Final Cut (Mac). After Effects has better tools than Premiere, but it takes longer to learn, and you can do all the same stuff with Premiere (just usually not as quickly and easily).

Hope this helps. If not, ask more questions! =^)

Email Commercial; edited in Movie Maker:


We do use Photoshop and Premiere together... depends on what you're doing. No need to use Photoshop if you aren't animating or doing still images.

We export from the editing software at 640x480 and use a Microsoft compressor (out of Premiere).

Then into WMM. We "Save to the computer" and do just use the "highest quality" first option. We only lower the quality for videos we attach in emails. We haven't tried NTSC, because we don't think it will make the quality better.

Making of the MGM Logo; made with Anim8or and edited in Movie Maker:


Anim8or is good for easy to use 3D software. You should only use if if you want to create a basic 3D model or animation. It can't do the really cool stuff, but it's free and easy to use. For the cool stuff, you'll want to learn Blender, which is free and hard to learn, but it can do anything. Go to www.Blender.org for that.

- The Emperor

Question: Why the name Fruits VS Bugs?

Question for the Emperor: Fruits vs Bugs is a great name, but what about a name like "B.U.G.S" (You know, like S.W.A.T)? Also, are any more of them coming soon?

-------------------

Fruits VS Bugs Part 1:


Interesting thought. B.U.G.S. takes itself a little more seriously. The original title was Agents of the Spirit, but after we got ownership, I made the title more straightforward and silly. It has a "Snakes on a Plane" kind of feel (which is both good and bad). =^)

Fruits VS Bugs Part 2:


Honestly, we're currently concentrating on getting Fruits VS Bugs distributed on cell phones. The next step is trying to get it distributed on video. So we probably won't for awhile just due to a business decision. However, we're still moving forward on other animations.

Thanks!

- The Emperor

Question: What are taxes?

In our latest video, "Ed Price - Tax Laugh: Tubo Tax is Easy!!!", we entered a contest done by Turbo. A few of our audience members weren't familiar with the English word, "tax," and they wanted to know more. So...

Question for the Emperor: What are taxes?

In our video,we throw a lot at you that might be hard to understand if you don't speak English very well.

Taxes are payments you make to the government. When we "do our taxes," we fill out these forms and send our income receipts to the government. They then charge us more money if we've been with-holding too little from our paychecks, or they give us back money if they've been taking too much from our paychecks. Also, by filling out the forms (itemizing and deducting), you can actually get more money back.

Here's the video:


So, a company that makes tax software, Turbo Tax, is holding this contest we entered.

Thanks!

- TAE

Question: What does SW mean?

Question for the Emperor: What does SW mean in the description of Fruits VS Bugs: Episode 1?

Star Wars. I had too many references in the description. LOL

This is regarding this notice we put in the description of Fruits VS Bugs 1:

"This video was removed briefly due to a legal dispute with 20th Fox Films. So we're removing any SW references in the description."

Fox picked it up automatically as a copyright infringement, so YouTube took it down temporarily. They take things down without humans double-checking! Grrr. =^)

The reason why references were in the description was because references were in the video. But I double-checked to make sure they thought it was a copyright issue or a trademark issue.

I went directly to Fox, YouTube, and Fox's media law agency they hired to go get all their copyrights taken off the Internet. Apparently that company is using software provided by YouTube to search for keywords and automatically pull down infringements. It doesn't work very well, because I can easily search and find Star Wars content that's been on YouTube for over a year, yet they take mine down without double-checking. What the heck!!!

Use humans!

Fox never got back to me, but I think all my emails and phone calls sent them to put pressure on their agency to respond. YouTube helped guide me to the agency (so thanks to them). Eventually I got into email and phone conversations with the agency, and they got my video back up.

When it got back up, all the video responses were wiped out. All the times it was favorited were wiped out. And my comment responses were jumbled and pulled out of the threads in the comments where they originally were (so I have deleted some of those since they are no longer in threads).

However, it still had all its views, comments, the description, ratings, etc.

Here's the video:



Here are the references in the description we had to Star Wars, which we replaced with "SW" after this fiasco:

"Of course, this wouldn't be a TheAnimationEmpire video without nonsense and nostalgia. Look for references to Loony Tunes, Indiana Jones, Charlie's Angels, Spiderman, SW Ep. 2, Mortal Kombat, Super Mario Kart, The Simpsons, Yoshi, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jurassic Park, Kung Pow, The Matrix, Super Mario Brothers (Bros.) and, of course, a lot of secret agent themes. Our preview for Episode 2 even references Batman, Toy Story, and several more SW themes."

Beware of Fox! Their agency is copyright trigger happy! =^)

- The Emperor

Question: Why did you use the sound effect, Spoffo?

Question for the Emperor: Why did you use the sound effect, Spoffo, in Fruits VS Bugs Episode 2?

We threw two strange sound effects into a scene in Fruits VS Bugs Episode 2. You can see them at 02:45...



We added "Spoffo" and "Swukt" in there as inside jokes. One of our animators, Chris Chin, draws comics. He uses these made-up sound effects in his comics. Since we saw him draw so many "Spoffo" and "Swukt" sound effect bubbles in his comics, we decided to add them to this scene. You later see another joke sound effect, "Bling Bling."

- The Emperor

Question: Why does Extra Fruity have such bad voice acting?

Question for the Emperor: Why does Extra Fruity have such bad voice acting?

Extra Fruity was actually made for a youth group with the voices of the group itself. It was actually taking some of our other animations and just talking over it, not really syncing up the voices (which was kind of funnier to us if it didn't match).

Extra Fruity:


So it was meant to not have great voice acting, and it was intended for 200 kids (not the 170,000 or so people who've seen it). That said, we're not complaining, because we marketed it to get it a lot of views.

Please check out our sequel to the featured video (with 940,000 views), Fruits VS Bugs Episode 1. The sequel is called Episode 2 (original, I know). That's actually the kind of voice acting that we are going for nowadays.

Fruits VS Bugs Episode 2:


So, we're working on shipping another original animation for YouTube, and we're also working on a bunch of other projects as well. We could always use a good voice actor for future unpaid projects (we don't get paid for these, so you wouldn't either)./ If you're interested, email the Emperor: Emperor@TheAnimationEmpire.com. Thanks!

- The Emperor

Question: Do you make shorts for films?

Question for the Emperor: Do you make shorts for films?

Like when they play the shorts before the movies? No, but that's an interesting market. That actually used to be a real market back in the Loony Tunes, Mickey Mouse, Oswald (also by Disney), Felix The Cat days (not to mention Goofy, Donald Duck, Silly Symphonies, Betty Boop, Koko the Clown, Popeye, Superman, etc.). They played short cartoon serials (the live-action serials are what Star Wars and Indiana Jones were based on) before the movies, and the makers of those took cuts of the profit (this was before TV). This is why Disney had their success with their serials on Wonderful World of Disney (the show had many names) when TV got rolling.

Because movies never really got worse than PG-13 (by today's standards) they were always accessible by kids. So, as a result, many of these cartoons were shown before movies that were much more oriented toward adults. They were aiming at adults and kids. It was a completely different audience than Saturday cartoons today that aim so specifically (such as boys 9-13).

When TV came out, all the cartoons and such went to TV instead. The pre-cartoon and serial market dried up at the movies. Why go to the movies to watch a cartoon short when you can get it on TV (and currently on the Internet) for free?

To probably more closely answer your question, we're working on cell phone distribution and video distribution. We've got two cell distribution deals, but we're still just starting out with it. We got close to video distribution, but we're starting over on that.

To dig a little deeper in this topic, John Lasseter (the Pixar dude) just took over Disney's animations as CCO (Chief Creative Officer). He thinks Disney has made mistakes in moving away from 2D animation and from stopping the animated shorts that play before movies (Disney made a brief attempt during the Roger Rabbit craze by releasing three Roger shorts and a Mickey short).

So Lasseter set 2D animated movies back in motion (the next one is the Frog Princess, made by the Aladdin team), and he had his team do a new short, Goofy in How to Hook Up Your Home Theater, which was distributed before National Treasure: Book of Secrets (so it's still out in theaters). I saw it. It is hilarious, just like the best of the Goofy "how to" and sports shorts that Walt Disney himself used to produce. Go see it.

Goofy hasn’t had a short in the theaters since Aquamania in 1961.

- The Emperor


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_To_Hook_Up_Your_Home_Theater

"How To Hook Up Your Home Theater is a 2007 theatrical cartoon from Walt Disney Pictures, directed and written by Kevin Deters and co-directed by Stevie Wermers-Skelton. This is the first theatrical Goofy solo cartoon short (other than a few educational films) made since Aquamania. Being 50% paperless, it was also used as the premiere testing ground for the paperless 2D animation technology which has been included at Disney, the first major change in how to produce hand-drawn animation since the introduction of CAPS, and was also an attempt to see if the new tools could be used to produce a short with the same graphic look as that of a 40's cartoon. Instead of paper the animators worked on Wacom's cintiq together with software such as Toon Boom's Harmony software.

"The short was released with the Disney film National Treasure: Book of Secrets on December 21, 2007."

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I can't wait to see their next short...

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Deters

"Kevin [Deters] moved on from animation and became a story artist for several miscellaneous Disney projects. Kevin's idea for a new hand-animated Goofy short was green lighted, developed and produced with Kevin as the creative force and he co-directed the project with Stevie Wermers-Skelton. The Goofy short (How to Hook-Up Your Home Theater) opened nationwide with National Treasure 2 on December 21, 2007. He was also a co-director on another Disney short currently in production (December 2007) about the Lochness Monster titled The Ballad of Nessie, an idea conceived by his partner Stevie Wermers-Skelton. They also co-directed The Ballad of Nessie."