Series: Major Damage

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CG Animators Do Major Damage!

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At Comic-Con International, fans were treated the animated short movie MajorDamage. The film is a technological marvel, not just for it's cool CGIanimation, but also for the two-year, global development effort it took to makethe film.

Comics2Film chatted with the character's creator, Chris Bailey, aboutthe process of turning his comic book concept into what he calls "a modest 2 1/2minute garage project representing animation talent from around the world."

Bailey is Director of Animation atthe F/X house Cinesite. Prior to that he was executive producer and director onDisney Channel's show Kim Possible. Bailey professes to be a long-timecomic fan with a fondness for humor books. 

After directing the Oscar-nominatedMickey Mouse short Runaway Brain as well as additional shorts forDisney's theme parks, Bailey decided he wanted to work on something that was hisown. "While I had great experiences with Disney directing projects, I wanted todo something personal," Bailey said.

So he turned his attention to a pet project, an eight-page comic about alittle boy named Melvin who is given by space aliens the powers of his favoritecomic book hero Major Damage. "I conceived it as sort of an amalgam of Big and Shazam and X-Files," Bailey told C2F.

Bailey cites early Marvel comics as having a major influence on the concept.

"The biggest [influence], I gotta tell you, was Stan Lee and Jack Kirby monstercomics. I love giant tikis," Bailey enthused. "My entire animation career I've wanted to animate agiant tiki-god coming out of the center of the earth and trying to smash somebody. So Ifigured I'm going to make my own short film, by God it's goingto have a giant tiki-god."

It wasn't just monsters though, one look at Major Damage's exaggeratedfeatures should reveal another Marvel comics influence: Marie Severin's NotBrand Ech. 

"These silly guys dressed inwool tights and towels wrapped around their necks andbig chicklettes for teeth, damn there's just something appealing aboutthat," Bailey said. "When we modeled Major Damage in the computer, I actually took a couple ofpanels of some Marie Severin work where the characters were screaming...and they just had these big ol', honkin' teeth. I said, 'I want histeeth to look like this.'"

Bailey first storyboarded the film as a garage project for himself to workon. "I wanted to do it CG but the technology wasn't quitethere for me to be a one-man show," Bailey said. As luck would have it hethen served on an animation panel discussion with Kellie-Bea Cooper, a producerwho had recently finished her own short The Physics of Cartoons.He mentioned Major Damage and Cooper became interested incollaborating with him on it. 

Bailey said she and partner/husband Doug Cooper, who served as CG Supervisor,were instrumental in getting the movie made. "Without them, the projectwould surely have died. Kellie-Bea provided the enthusiasm and organization andDoug the technical magic," Bailey said. "Major Damagewas not a one man show by any means."

Cooper started lining up a crew of animators andmade arrangements with Hewlett Packard and AliasWavefront to sponsor the project with hardware and software licenses. However,even with the team in place, Major Damage proved to me a major undertaking.

"Originally there were eight of us. We just went through our friends andcolleagues in the animation business," Bailey said. "It became very clearwithin a few months that we were going to need more help."

Bailey used the power of the internet to assemble an international team thatnumbered around 100. He put a call out  to CG-Char,a forum for CG Characters animators. The project received submissions of CG modeled props and designs in exchange for a credit and aT-Shirt.

"When it came time to send out the T-Shirts I realized we had peoplecontributing from Costa Rica, Australia, The U.K., South America," Baileysaid. "It neverdawned on me that we were an international garage production until that time."

Coordinating with a legion of contributors scattered throughout the world wasa daunting task only made possible by the internet. Doug Cooper came up with theidea of establishing a file depot to augment communicates via phone conversations and e-mails. Many changes were communicated withbefore and after PhotoShop images. "I tried to work visual as much aspossible since it wasn't an option to be in the same room," Bailey toldC2F.

Anotherinnovation in their online studio was the "scene browser.""It showedthe first middle and last frame of every scene in the entire cartoon,"Bailey said. He could discuss the film on the phone while both parties viewedthe same visual reference.

"The biggest thing that I found gratifying about the whole process isfinding out how many people out there want to support independent filmmaking,from my colleagues in the business to hobbyist to professional actors and peoplein post-production," Bailey said.

Many of the hobbyists surprised the director. "My favorite story in thatregard is this one guy, Tim Ryan, who was an exterminator," the director said.Ryan  took a class in computer animation and began working with Cooperdoing low-end technical work on the film. Eventually Bailey let him work onmodels for the show. 

"He was fast and the work was great and he ended up modeling all my face shapes for Melvin and the Tikis so they could make facial expressions and speak," Baileysaid. "He got hired by Dreamworks right after our cartoon to essentially dothe same thing there. A year earlier the guy was crawling under houses lookingfor termite infestations!"

The film also had support from seasoned professionals. Space Ghostvoice actor Gary Owens did the opening animation. Gary Rizzo at Skywalker soundset Bailey up with some studio time for sound editing. Jim Venable of PowerpuffGirls fame composed the music.

Currently Major Damage can only be seen on the film festivalcircuit, but Bailey plans to have a feature-packed DVD ready for fans later thisyear. In the mean time the original eight-page comic will be published inOctober as part of Mike Manley's Two-Headed Monstrosity."We'll have two covers on the comic. One will be Major Damage and one willbe Monster Man."

Bailey tells us he also hopes to do a Major Damage featurefilm, along with more comics and short cartoons on a regular basis.

For a sneak peek at the current film visitMajor-Damage.com.