Making Life: An Interview with Bob Sabiston

by Dave Filipi

Dave Filipi is the Associate Curator of Film/Video at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio.

Bob Sabiston was the Art Director for Richard Linklater's acclaimed animated film Waking Life. Not only did Sabiston animate substantial portions of the film, but he also designed the software that allowed for the groundbreaking marriage of digital video and experimental animation. Among Sabiston's other works are the shorts Snack and Drink (1999) and Yard (2002). Waking Life was his first feature.

Sabiston visited the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio on May 10, 2002 to discuss his career and show clips from Waking Life, earlier work for MTV, and additional short pieces including the two mentioned above.

This interview with Wexner Center Associate Curator of Film/Video David Filipi was conducted via email a couple of weeks after his visit.

Filipi: How did you get involved with Richard Linkater and how did the project get started?

Sabiston: I met Rick through my friend Tommy Pallotta, who produced RoadHead and Snack and Drink. Tommy was in Slacker and has known Rick for ten years--so Rick was kind of aware of the work we were doing. Eventually we approached Rick about executive producing an animated-documentary TV show, and we started working together. The show never happened but I think the seed was planted in Rick's brain to do something with the animation. He was reminded of the ideas he had long ago for a movie like Waking Life.

Filipi: For the layman, what exactly did you contribute to Waking Life?

Sabiston: I wrote the software program that we used to animate the video footage. For the past five years, I've been developing the technique as well as building a group of animators who are familiar with it. So I was the technical and art director for the film. I hired the artists and basically was in charge of them. Every week or so I would meet with Rick and the producers (Tommy Pallotta and Anne Walker) to go over what had been animated.

Filipi: What was the nature of the interaction between you, the other animators, and Linklater once the animation began? Did he watch the animation process? Did he stop by daily or weekly, or did he wait until most of it was completed before giving his input?

Sabiston: Rick did not stop by very often. He mostly reviewed things in our meetings. I was the messenger between Rick and the artists, I tried to communicate to the animators what Rick wanted, liked or didn't like about the way it was looking. A three or four minute scene by a single animator can take months, so Rick was able to track pretty closely how things were coming along.

Filipi: Cinema is obviously a collaborative art form but a film's creation is typically attributed to the director. This is even more problematic when discussing Waking Life where a writer-director such as Richard Linkater is more dependent on the vision of an animation director and the group of animators than he typically would be with other crew members. How did you find working on a project where you really didn't have any involvement in the script, the digital images, dialogue, etc? Were there any out-of-the-ordinary creative differences you didn't anticipate when the project began?

Sabiston: There were less creative differences than I would have expected. Everyone involved, at least at the producer-director level, had pretty similar ideas of what we wanted for the look of the film. Usually we were in agreement about whether something looked good or not. Mostly everyone was just worried about how long it would take, so Rick was pretty open-minded about the look. We disagreed on the initial conception for the boatcar scene, but in retrospect I think I was wrong to push for the first version we did.

As far as working on something that I had no control over, normally I would hate it. However, I love Rick's work and I've said many times that Slacker's a big reason I moved to Austin. When I read the script for Waking Life I was very excited. It was exactly the kind of animated movie I wanted to make anyway.

Filipi: Who would you cite as influences on your work? I think many people might assume the Fleischers and their developments in rotoscoped animation (see the Superman shorts of the 1940s), but I suspect that you would include more people from the traditional arts such as painting.

Sabiston: Actually I come from more of a computer background for animation, so I was motivated by the early Pixar short films, like Luxo, Jr. Also the travelling festivals of independent animated shorts. That is where you first saw Beavis and Butthead, as well as more experimental, visual-art animations. The crowd energy at those things made a huge impression on me, I wanted to be part of it. I think I saw Creature Comforts there, by Aardman studios, which to me just seemed like the perfect short animated film.

Later, after college, I was more interested in painting and how the principles or motives of abstract painting would apply to creative 2D animation on a computer. Diebenkorn was definitely my favorite painter, but also Hunderwasser. Then also I was a big fan of the mundane personality documentary films like Sherman's March, and all of Errol Morris's films.

Filipi: The style of your animation is very complimentary with the loose-narrative style of Waking Life and shorts such as Snack and Drink. Do you think the marriage would be as successful for a more traditional narrative? What types of subjects or stories do you envision as a good fit with your work?

Sabiston: That is hard to say. The rotoscoping technique itself is applicable to any style of animation, and therefore any type of movie. Fantasy and science fiction movies would probably do well with it. However, personally as far as the things I want to animate, I think I still just like the animation of personality--character portraits. The human face remains the most fascinating thing me to me, as far as things go that change frame-to-frame.

Filipi: After your talk at the Wexner Center, a number of people asked about the possibility of acquiring the software you use to produce your work. Could you describe how the software you created differs from that offered commercially, and the reasons why it seems like you are reluctant to have your software available outside your company?

Sabiston: I think my software is set up for one specific purpose, and therefore it is simpler than other softwares out there. Most other software art packages want to lead you away from the hard work of hand-drawing, it seems to me.

My reluctance to release the software to people comes from two reasons, I guess. First, I hate to see my creation become this watered-down thing that is everywhere. It is like in the early 80's when the program "Print Shop" came out for the computer. At first it seemed so cool to have this choice of fonts and patterns for your printed signs, but then it was everywhere and it was just nauseating. However, I am more worried about the amount of time I would have to give to supporting the software as a product. Even if I just put it for free on my web page and let people have it, I know that people would email me and call me all the time with questions, complaints, and suggestions for how to make it better. My life is already too hectic as it is. However, maybe I can find some company or investors or something who can help me deal with the hassle.

Filipi: What other animated films do you admire?

Sabiston: Disney's Alice in Wonderland, James and the Giant Peach, Fantasia 2000, Toy Story 2, Miyazaki films(My Neighbor Totoro, Laputa:Castle in the Sky). I like the TV Funhouse cartoons on Saturday Night Live.

Filipi: What are you working on now?

Sabiston: We are doing a short series of documentary animations for PBS, their TV show "Life 360."