When Toy Story exploded onto movie screens in the 1995 holiday season, the Disney folks weren't the only ones holding their breath and keeping an eye on box office numbers. In a nondescript office building in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, a few expatriate Brits were trying to decide if they should greet the film's success with cheers or reservation. Toy Story is hard not to like, especially if you're a fan of state-of-the-art computer-generated animation. These men were more than just fans; they were veterans. Almost a decade earlier, Ian Pearson and Gavin Blair had animated and directed a milestone of the genre: Dire Straits' Money for Nothing video. Despite the video's boxy, stiff-limbed characters - an artifact of the limited computing power of the day - Money for Nothing pushed the vernal art form of CGI (computer-generated imagery) further into the cultural consciousness than anything before it. It gave Pearson and Blair, along with fellow animator Phil Mitchell, who joined the team a few years after the Dire Straits video, the impetus to consider doing something far more ambitious. Soon they were kicking around ideas for making the first television animation series made entirely with computers.
After much creative stewing and an arduous search for investors, the result, a children's TV series called ReBoot, débuted on North American screens in 1994 - beating Toy Story by a good year. Still, in terms of exposure, John Lasseter's film easily stole ReBoot's thunder - which turns out to be something of a sore spot for the British team. They've nothing bad to say about the film. On the contrary: it was good; it was a success; and what's good for computer animation is good for them too. But talking to any one of the three creators will likely bring out a casual mention of this feat: just one season of ReBoot episodes - 16 shows - means producing almost 320 minutes of CGI. "Compare that with the maybe 10 minutes of CGI in Jurassic Park," says Phil Mitchell. "Or with Toy Story, which runs about 80 minutes. That movie took years to do, too. We can now do two episodes in under six weeks."
But as long as animation is not an Olympic sport, it hardly matters who crosses the finish line first. Quality is what matters. And in this category, ReBoot and Toy Story are in the same league. While no one would mistake ReBoot's story lines and dialogs for the work of David Mamet, they're humorous and entertaining - and the result of a propellerhead sensibility that can make the show exasperating to watch for anyone who doesn't happen to think that computers are way cool. ReBoot is a 3-D roller-coaster ride unlike anything that's been shown on TV before - with this quality and in this quantity. There's plenty of fast-paced action, dizzying camera angles, and other eye candy to keep kids riveted.
"I think what they do is enormously impressive," says Jim Ludtke, the cutting-edge animator who is responsible for The Residents' Freak Show CD-ROM, as well as a new title based on the old Tales from the Crypt comic books. "For me, it's about the same jump in quality and sophistication that you get when you've been watching Hanna-Barbera cartoons like The Huckleberry Hound Show, and then you see Astro Boy or Speed Racer for the first time. There's a richness to ReBoot's images and a variety in the facial articulation of the characters that's just a step ahead. I frequently say, 'How'd they do that?'"
The fact that ReBoot is made entirely on computers (cratefuls of high-end Silicon Graphics workstations) is not really what sets the show apart. Nowadays, most of the traditional-looking animation shows leave the tedious task of inking and coloring to computers. Often, animators draw images digitally, using an electronic tablet and stylus - eliminating paper or acetate cels entirely. So what distinguishes ReBoot? It's the lifelike 3-D effects, obtained with obvious animation talent and gobs of raw processing power. And ReBoot's type of computer animation yields creative and production advantages that nothing else can match. "If a traditional animator draws a scene and then decides that a different angle is called for - or three different angles - he has to start all over again," cocreator Blair points out. "But on a high-end workstation running Softimage, you just go click-click-click and you have your three new angles."
As a byproduct of doing ReBoot, Mainframe Entertainment Inc., with its team of some 70 animators, has written proprietary software, which it uses internally and doesn't sell. The company also has some product spinoffs, including the development of IMAX rides: 18-seater vehicles mounted on hydraulics that move according to visual cues from the ReBoot TV show on the 180-degree wraparound screen. In addition, in fall 1996 the ReBoot team launched a second CGI show called Beast Wars, a surprisingly blunt SF series about two battling intergalactic robotic tribes. Finally, there are plans for a ReBoot feature film, about which everyone is intriguingly tight-lipped.
"The terrible thing about 3-D computer animation is the enormous investment you need to get started," says Blair. "The wonderful thing is that once that's behind you, new projects are so much easier to get off the ground because everything you need is already in place."
Binomes and data sprites
ReBoot takes place in a multilevel city called Mainframe, which exists in the innards of a PC. The city's inhabitants, robotlike binomes and humanoid data sprites, are threatened by two viruses, the megalomaniacal Megabyte (Darth Vader meets Dr. No) and Hexadecimal, a long-legged chaos queen, just this side of kinky, who dons Kabuki-like masks to reflect her changing moods. These villains strive for nothing less than domination of the entire Net. Leading the defense against them is Bob, a guardian with silicon-colored hair and no short supply of courage. Dot Matrix, the smart entrepreneur who runs Dot's Diner, is Bob's trusted ally. Dot's kid brother, Enzo, idolizes Bob and attempts to emulate him - with mixed results. The one main character who is never seen nor heard is the User - that's you - who runs the programs that keep the binomes busy. (Who did you think does all that work when you launch a word processor or a spreadsheet?) Every now and then, the User drops a bombshell on Mainframe in the form of a cube that represents a computer game. The dapper sprites must fight the User unto the death - or at least until he or she quits the game and calls it a day.
True to much of animation's legacy, grown-up references are sprinkled liberally throughout each ReBoot episode.Hip nerd humor is very much in evidence. A waiter who puts his restaurant's trash in a dumpster is heard to mutter "Garbage in, garbage out." Other geek gags allude to Star Trek, bar codes, and similar totems of the digital lifestyle. One show features the appearance of two earnest investigators, Data Nully and Fax Modem, who unfold conspiracy theories that prompt an incredulous Bob to ask if the duo is "completely random." It is a clever takeoff of The X Files's Scully and Mulder, with the "real" Scully, actress Gillian Anderson, providing Nully's voice. Such pop-cultural allusions abound, some aimed at 6-year-olds, others at boomers. (An episode called "Talent Night" spoofs the Village People.) "I love how they turned the show into a pretty slick manifestation of geek stuff that they're managing to slip into the mainstream," enthuses Jim Ludtke.
If Mitchell, Blair, and Pearson (and the show's fourth initial creator, John Grace, who stayed in England) had developed the idea for ReBoot a few years later, it would have been a different show with radically different digital scenery. That ReBoot takes place inside a computer, explains Blair, was intended as a convenient excuse for the look they thought the show was going to have - squarish, with little dimensional depth, just like the Money for Nothing video. Such were the technical boundaries of computer rendering in 1986, when ReBoot was conceived on the proverbial napkins and beer coasters. Blair explains: "We had to put ourselves in the shoes of the viewer and ask, 'Why does it look like this?' Well, it's inside a computer. 'But why are there no shadows?' Um, it's inside a computer. Then of course, as the technology advanced, the show started looking the way it does now, all shiny with rich textures and natural-looking body movements. The reason for the show taking place in some kind of digital fairyland became less pressing. But the whole thing had already been set in motion, and we figured, What the hell, it's a great idea, let's just go with it."
That it took almost a decade to bring ReBoot to the television screen was fortuitous for another reason: it would have been a marginal series delighting a small group of übernerds just five years ago. Not until the developed world became seriously wired, and home computers reached critical mass, could the show become the success it is today. It's now been sold in more than 50 countries. "It makes more sense all of a sudden," concedes Mitchell. "Everybody is into computers, and everybody has a PC."
The gang at Dot's Diner
For the benefit of their guest, Gavin Blair and Phil Mitchell have temporarily abandoned their workplace - a labyrinth of messy offices outfitted with millions of dollars worth of high tech machines - and are happily drinking ale at a Vancouver seafood restaurant. Blair, who is neither tall nor fat but somehow manages to come across as a hulking Boy Scout in his shorts and Doc Martens, is the most outspoken of ReBoot's top animators. With his small round glasses and mischievous smile, he's almost a dead ringer for XTC's front man, Andy Partridge. In the rock star look-alike department, Mitchell would do a good job passing for former Hüsker Dü member Bob Mould. There's an intensity about him that makes it easy to picture him banging out dissonant guitar chords with abandon, though in reality Mitchell is more likely to be found hunched over a computer screen, tweaking an animated character's features to perfection. Like Blair, he received top honors for the computer-animated commercials he made during the London part of his career. We're soon joined by the third member of the ReBoot triumvirate, Ian Pearson, who appears to be the most businesslike of the bunch. Then again, he's hardly your average corporate drone. His heavy Geordie accent - Pearson is from Sunderland in the northeast of England - sets him apart from the crowd. In a display of his assimilation into North American culture, Pearson wears a baseball cap.
The reason the ReBoot team ended up in Vancouver, in early 1993, is simple: money. Importing pricey computer workstations and high-end video equipment to England to start up the show was not an option. The gear would have been twice as expensive as in North America, after shipping and middlemen markups. "And an office building in London similar to the one we have here - forget it," says Blair. "You're talking millions of pounds." The team didn't want to move to the obvious alternative, Los Angeles. What was the point of giving up one smog-filled metropolis for another?
Then a colleague suggested Vancouver, and Pearson went on a reconnaissance mission. Recalls Blair: "Phil and I got this phone call in the middle of the night from a very drunk Ian: 'Oooooh Vancouver is beautiful, you've got to come and see it.' So we all packed our bags and came here, despite the fact that back in England everyone thought we were insane. After all, Canada was just for mounties and polar bears."
What the animators found was a great place to do business: a bustling, international creative community - not to mention a government that gives substantial tax breaks to foreign businesses that provide employment. Grant money and other subsidies for artists have long been part of Canada's cultural fabric, and the animation business, among others, has been allowed to experiment and expand as a result. Vancouver, thanks to its agreeable weather and its relatively close proximity to Hollywood and Silicon Valley, has found itself playing host to a growing movie and animation scene.
Through the early 1990s, money had been very much on the team members' minds. "You can't just knock out a pilot for a computer-generated series, and then if people like the pilot, you do the show," Blair says. "Because to buy all the gear, build all the models, all the characters, and all the sets to do a pilot - that's an enormous investment. You've got to do 13 episodes or none. Also, the people we asked to sink millions of dollars into the project were a bit jittery because they weren't sure we could do it. We couldn't prove we were up to the job because nobody had ever done something like this before. So for them, it was a big leap. A huge gamble."
In 1993, ABC TV said yes. So did YTV in Canada, as well as Limelight, an international film and video production company. The Brits were in business, but in some ways, their troubles seemed to have just begun.
Battling a Hexadecimal
Now the ReBoot team had to deliver. Their inexperience showed when, well into production of the first script, they discovered it was about 100 percent too long and they were forced to make cuts that didn't help the clarity of the plot. The whole first season, they say now, was too frenetic, too fast-paced. "We wanted to put everything into the first shows," Blair says. "We had this huge cast of characters. We had three heroes, two villains, their sidekicks, plus all the ancillary characters. We had a city to explore. These days, we've got a better handle on what we're doing. So we have 21-page scripts instead of 44-page ones, and we don't try to do too much in any one show."
Another problem that had to be overcome was ABC. The network's own internal Broadcast Standards and Practices unit (BSP) raised objections to many a ReBoot script. Few of those admonitions carried much merit and some defied common sense, according to the show's creators. (The people at BSP and ABC's public relations department repeatedly declined to talk to Wired.) "We can generally see the logic to what BSP is trying to do," says Blair. "If you have a kid run through a plate-glass window on TV and he's OK, you might find that actual little kids start running through plate-glass windows thinking they'll be all right. It can't hurt to have someone point that out to you so you'll be extra careful and responsible."
But ABC's disapproval focused mainly on sexiness and interpersonal violence. The network was under the gun. Just weeks after it agreed to finance and air ReBoot, one of the network's executives told Congress that ABC proposed to create a safe haven for children on Saturday morning. The fact that Disney later acquired ABC didn't do anything to soothe the ReBoot creators' nerves. "We'd just sold ABC an action adventure show, and now we couldn't even have a punch-up because that was violence," says Blair. "Also, we couldn't have jeopardy. Meaning we couldn't end an act with Bob falling off a cliff and him yelling 'Aaaaahh' as we cut to a commercial - because that's jeopardy, and we'd upset the kiddies."
The ReBoot team was particularly baffled by the directives it received concerning sexual content. It's a safe bet that even dirty-minded lechers would not find much titillation in ReBoot, but ABC, apparently, begged to differ. BSP insisted that Dot's shapely figure be toned down. Never a particularly large-breasted character to begin with and never one to expose much cleavage, Dot's chest had to be completely desexed. "So she acquired this longish horizontal lump on the front of her torso," muses Blair. "Her breasts sort of come out at the side and then go straight across the front without a hint that there are two of them." The animators started merrily referring to this peculiar accoutrement as Dot's monobreast.
It wasn't always so funny. When Dot, for once dressed in a long, glamorous gown, sang to her kid brother on his birthday, the script called for her to sashay over, wink, and give him a sisterly kiss on the chin. ABC wouldn't hear of it. "It was obviously incest," Blair says BSP told him. "We were implying an incestuous relationship between brother and sister." Pearson pipes up, and his Geordie accent is suddenly steely. "I can't honestly get my mind to think in those terms. I think that's one of the sickest things I've heard. Those people, how do they sleep at night?"
Things didn't get any better when, according to Blair, BSP outlawed the word hockey on the grounds that it's apparently slang for a mixture of semen, urine, and feces. Next they outlawed the term wuss because it is not just "a weak, cowardly, or ineffectual person," as the dictionary might have you believe, but a vulgar word meaning "wet pussy" - or so BSP claimed.
There was not much love lost between the ReBoot team and ABC when they parted company after just two seasons. Thankfully, the fans didn't suffer. More than 100 independent TV stations throughout the United States subsequently purchased the right to show the series. (For a list, see www.inwap.com/reboot/Claster.html.)
Pearson says that there's an upside to the separation from ABC; ReBoot has started to fulfill its potential. "I think the third season is blowing the first two out of the water. We haven't gone hideously violent or anything like that - it's just more action-filled and fun-filled."
And, no doubt to the horror of a handful of moral guardians, Dot's monobreast is now in stereo.
