2. INTRODUCCIÓN A LA LOGÍSTICA
2.5. LA LOGÍSTICA Y LAS TIC
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n our industry, one often hears anima- tion artists lamenting toons created by (gasp) non-animators. In the past few years, we’ve seen a renewed focus on buzzwords like “artist-driven” and the less determined “artist-friendly”—but as HBO’s new late-night comedy series The Life & Times of Tim proves with its auteurist sensi- bilities, sometimes, a lot of funny and very little pretty can make productive bedfel- lows.Created, written and exec produced by Steve Dildarian (who also voices the titular character), The Life & Times of Tim may seem familiar to indie animation fans. That’s
because the show was spawned from Dil- darian’s award-winning Angry Unpaid Hooker short, which was featured in the fourth edition of The Animation Show. The series follows the comic-tragic misadven- tures of a 20something New Yorker, who can’t catch a break from the bizarre events and characters that turn his every day into a hilarious ordeal, and ruin his attempts to appear normal for the sake of his exasper- ated girlfriend (voiced by Dildarian’s friend and former colleague, Mary Jane Otto). Whether he’s being menaced by a pimp or coerced into pressing rape charges against
a bum, you can’t help but root for him. “I haven’t seen a good animated come- dy where the storylines are relevant to young people’s lives,” explains Dildarian, “All the best animated shows seem to cen- ter around families, or over-the-top situa- tions. I just wanted to create a show that’s more grounded in reality.” (Yes, living in Manhattanis that much different from your life!) This down-to-Earth mentality applies seamlessly to the look of the show. Dildarian describes his process—or lack thereof: “I just draw the characters and back- ground to the best of my ability, and this is what it looks like. I couldn’t have drawn it
better if I wanted to,” he says, adding, “Peo- ple seemed to like the unpolished look of the show and the limited animation. I always assumed we’d need to spruce it up some- where along the way, but we never did.” Dildarian developed this look when he madeHooker, after a limited budget lead him to take his live-action plot and turn it into a crash course in animation using Apple’s iMovie. Ironically, the “naïve charm” of the stilted animation (art created in Photoshop and animated with After Effects and Final Cut Pro) proved to be the biggest produc- tion challenge. “[We had to] teach people
on our staff to un-learn a lot of what they know how to do,” Dildarian says, “We’re ask- ing people to draw like a fi ve-year-old, or to animate like a very inexperienced animator. It’s easier said than done.”
The comic, who lists sardonic maestros Larry David and Ricky Gervais as inspira- tions, joins the animation scene after a highly successful career in the ad business. After winning a few dozen Clio awards and writing memorable campaigns like the “Budweiser Lizards,” he decided to step down from that hectic world and focus on more personal projects. But his three-year journey to TV echoed the hard-luck frustra- tions of his protagonist.
“I spent a year making the original short fi lms [Hooker was followed by three more which comprised the pilot] and writing a pilot script, then another year producing it as a pilot for Fox,” Dildarian elaborates. Af- ter a couple of false starts at Fox, the pilot was shopped around, attracting funding from Media Rights Capital (which is also on- board Mike Judge’s upcoming The Goode Family) and eventually landing at HBO— which, happily for their audience, snapped it up the very next day after Dildarian went in for the pitch meeting. “A lot of the groundwork had been done [at that point],” says Dildarian, “The pitch was really just so they could hear my vision for the show, but I have a feeling they knew they liked it before I walked in the room.” A year later, Dildarian has 10 half-hour episodes under his belt. Each episode is, in a way, a self-contained short fi lm, leaving the hapless Tim open to limitless possible fi - ascos, without any long-term consequenc- es. And much as the short-subject format- ting of the series stays true to its origins, so does the wonky animation; “The on-air ver- sion is certainly better looking than the fi rst short we did, but the overall style has re- mained the same.”
Though at fi rst glance the static, limited- ness of Tim makes it seem an unworthy fi t for animation, the unpolished quality gives the show an underlying sense of “Gosh darn it, I’m trying!” which perfectly echoes the struggles of our underdog hero. After all, the mark of a true artist is knowing when enough … is enough. ■