Short Cuts

Eternal Battle for Global Animated Sandwich Domination Heats Up; Sabiston Sez: Step Off, Beeyatch! Dept.: A recent e-mail from Flat Black Films' Bob Sabiston notes that the local animation company -- responsible for, among other things, the ground- and mind-breaking digimation in Rick Linklater's Waking Life -- isn't behind "that new series of horrible Schlotzsky's commercials!" Sabiston and Flat Black have apparently been receiving kudos (or questions) regarding the locally created campaign, which utilizes a similar rotoscoping technique as the one digitally created by Sabiston for his proprietary software seen in the Linklater film. The appropriation of that specific animation "look" has already resulted in some smoldering bridges betwixt former pals Sabiston and John Andrews of Los Angeles-based animation house Klasky-Csupo, who utilized the same style for a series of television spots for the Internet provider Earthlink over a year ago (see austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2001-08-31/screens_feature.html for more info), as well as a host of other recent ad-world knockoffs, but the fact that Schlotzsky's is based in Austin is "especially heinous" to Sabiston, who notes that the sandwich barons "certainly must be aware of the controversy with Earthlink." Says Sabiston, "I expected people to start copying the look now that Waking Life has received distribution -- however, it's really depressing that it's originating in Austin." Sabiston says he gave Schlotzsky's a ring but was told that the ads were done "by some guy in Chicago, I think." Not so, says Schlotzsky's spokesman (and former head of the Texas Film Commission) Dana Shelton: "We used a good many Austin-based creative services on our TV spots, specifically Match Frame for our post-production and Tequila Mockingbird for our sound design. The short version is that Match Frame uses some software for their animation, one of which is called Smoke, by Discreet Technologies of Toronto, as well as Adobe After Effects. These are pretty much standard video-compositing tools, and so I'm not real sure what Mr. Sabiston's complaint here is. We didn't use his software." As Shelton went on to note, the technique of rotoscoping has been around since the Twenties and "we've got a process that's in vogue again; we were glad to use so many members of Austin's creative community to achieve the look and feel of the spots." Sabiston, who admits he's "cooled off" following his initial instinct "to go throw a brick through [Schlotzsky's] window," allows that this is all pretty indicative of the remarkable impact his software (not to mention Waking Life) has had on the animation and advertising world-at-large. "I guess I've really got to start taking it as flattery. I don't think there's much way to stop anyone now, and it's pretty natural -- that's what they do, they get ideas from what's out there."... Vaya con dios, Eagle!