On multiple occasions we have posted about the personal short film Leonardo, by Pixar story artist and director Jim Capobianco. After ten years in production on this pet project, the finished product has garnered numerous accolades and screenings at various festivals across the globe. [watch a trailer here]

With the recent DVD release of the film, Leonardo: The Complete Codex, and in conjunction with his upcoming appearance at the CTN Expo in Burbank this weekend, Jim was kind enough to send us a copy to check out. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s a great short about Leonardo daVinci’s creative quest to explore his dream of flight. Animated traditionally on paper, the film takes inspiration from daVinci’s very own notebooks, complete with rough, and sometimes even unfinished, animation, timing and drawing notations, and subtle color variations of the parchment-like background. Through accurate depictions of flying inventions daVinci himself drew, we are treated to a number of gags, some of which have a Warner Bros. feel to them, as the film’s hero makes several failed attempts to test fly his inventions, and leads to a conclusion that often alters the lives of many great men, even today.

If you’re a fan of traditional animation, and collect DVDs for the sole purpose of checking out the DVD extras, then you don’t want to miss out on getting a copy of the film. In my opinion, it is what every DVD should come packaged with. Inside the well crafted packaging made from recycled materials and images from the film, you are treated to a bunch of cool extras, including 4 versions of the film with commentary at various stages in production, stills of preproduction sketches, as well as final designs, descriptions and facts about various inventions that can be seen throughout the film.

And if that weren’t enough, the DVD also comes with a blank notebook, Leonardo pencil, and a flipbook with an animation cycle of Leonardo flapping a pair of his homemade wings.

Jim will be screening the film and selling the DVD exclusively this weekend at the CTN Expo. You will be able to find him at booth T-49 and talking in Theater 3 at 1:30pm on Friday about making the film after hours and on the side from work at Pixar, as well as going through some of the things he learned while making the film. If you can’t make it this weekend, you will have to wait until Monday to order the film from Jim’s website.

And as promised on several occasions, we were able to catch up with Jim, and ask him a few questions about his career, the film, and his website, Aerial Contrivance Workshop, where you can find more information about his various side projects. Enjoy!

DAN: First off, tell us a little about yourself, and how you originally got into animation, and where you are now in your career.

JIM: I grew up at the other end of I-80 due east of San Francisco in a town called Saddle Brook, New Jersey, just a few exits from NYC. In high school, I took a class called Graphic Arts in which you made t-shirts, silk screen printing, photography etc. It was the class all the potheads attended to blow off school. Not being a pot head but an art nerd, I knew one of the assignments was animation and I wanted to do that assignment. Everyone else did paper cut-outs or clay but when the assignment came around I asked to do 2D, hand animation. My teacher, a wonderful guy named Mr. Schmaltz, didn’t know how to teach me that so he gave me a book and since I was the only kid who actually did anything in the class he just let me animate even after the assignment was due. In fact, since I didn’t finish it by the end of the year, when I took graphic arts 2, my senior year, he let me keep right on animating. So, I kind of created my own animation class in high school. Then I knew I had to do this thing. So I applied to Cal Arts and based probably on that still unfinished film I got in.

After I finished Your Friend the Rat in 2007 I decided I would finish one creative project a year from now until I’m too feeble to do anything but be a vegetable and catch up on all the TV I missed doing all this stuff. So In 2008, I directed Wall-E’s credits and even a little animation, How to be a Good Bagger, for a friend’s documentary called Ready, Set, Bag! I finished Leonardo in 2009, which, in fact, plays in front of Ready, Set, Bag!, and is probably the only documentary you’ll see that has a short in front of it.

These creative things I’m aiming to do may not all be films, so the public might not see everything. One year it may be a screenplay or a children’s book. But if I could make a film every year that would be pretty awesome. You know, I realized this when I watch my daughters grow in their first year of life that humans are programmed to do so much in that single year. You figure out that you have a hand, that it can go in your mouth and it will help your gums feel better. How to become mobile, crawl, maybe even walk and talk all in a year. This stuff is hard to figure out and takes tons of practice. And more importantly all of it is rewarding and an accomplishment. Then I thought about adults and how most don’t do anything in a year except complain and I thought, holy shit, if every adult accomplished just one amazing thing like learning to walk in a year what a better place this would be. You see we all have the potential.

DAN: Tell us about your website Aerial Contrivance Workshop.

JIM: Aerial Contrivance Workshop is a place I set aside to kind of play. It’s a virtual studio to showcase my outside work as well as friends (the Contrivers) and people we are interested in. Eventually, I would like it to be a gathering place for artists (animators, writers, filmmakers, cartoonists, photographers, musicians) to talk about the latest goings-on about their disciplines via the Libro di Bottega (the workbook). ACW promotes learning and cross pollination of ideas and I hope that a visitor to the site would get more out of the projects posted then just a trailer and some info (though that is what’s there now about Leonardo). Eventually they can get interconnected with scientists, intellectuals, teachers and artists revolving around a particular subject matter and learn more about the subject as well as filmmaking and creativity. It is very embryonic right now. It would be great if it generated an income or through the projects and properties it did but that isn’t important right now. I do hope to have a proper store on the site where you can buy original artwork and prints, t-shits, the films, whatever, but also some free stuff too. Right now there are some Leonardo-based activities for kids that parents can download.

DAN: What was the inspiration for creating a film about da Vinci?

JIM: Well I have always found people trying to fly with homemade wings funny and the dichotomy of reaching for something impossible wonderful – it is really the human character. It occurred to me I had never seen Leonardo da Vinci animated well or even running around trying to fly and I wanted to see that. And being in animation we have the unique opportunity to make what we want to see come alive and be reality.

DAN: The film has been in production since 1999, roughly. Can you break down the timeline of its production over the 10 years, from script to final?

JIM: Prior to 1999, I worked on the idea for maybe 3 or 4 years. Doodling, drawing up storyboards, thinking about it.
In 1999, on my 30th birthday, a wonderful guy, Chris Vallance, who worked at Pixar with me, told me he had just been promoted to assistant editor and he needed something to cut to learn the Avid. I told him I had something for him to cut, although, I really didn’t have it all at the time. But now I had an interested editor so I seized the opportunity and we worked after hours, some weekends and assembled the story reel. Which was a very immediate process. He would put together what I had and when something needed fixing or adjusting I would just draw it up and we would look at it right away. In about two months we put together a complete blueprint for the short that changed very little in 10 years. I planned everything in it. Every BG, every camera move I could even use the boards for my character layouts. This saved a whole lot of pain down the line. After the story reel was done I thought I would enlist a bunch of friends to animate it and be done in oh about a year. But only a couple of animators came through for me and a fellow by the name of Herriman Maynard, who thought he couldn’t animate, came along and animated about 75-80% of the thing.

DAN: Can you describe the process used to make this hand drawn short, and did the pipeline change, or evolve in any way as new techniques/software became available?

JIM: I was very thorough in organizing the thing and thinking about it like it was a real production, which is very important if you are going to take on such an enormous task. At first I had a hard time finding a pencil test system that was cheap enough and I would use a scanner and adobe premiere. This took forever. Eventually I found a pencil test system called Toki line tester from France. It saved my sanity. Incidentally we used it on Your Friend the Rat but the animators hated it so we moved to (Flipbook?). But I kept using Toki at home. Until they upgraded it and it literally killed my computer. But by then I had finished animation. After Effects played a major roll in the final assembly. And I would not have been able to finish the film before 2007 because I didn’t know the man pretty much responsible for finishing the film – Craig Foster before then. Craig, I met on YFtR and we became good friends. He designed and animated the Canadian Mountie bit, the American Revolution moment and some other scenes on YFtR. He jumped on to Leo and took on the Art Direction and composting of the entire film. And it lived with him. A film that I had complete control over for ten years in this last stage I had to rely on Craig to put together with After Effects because I don’t know the program like he does. And I ran him through the ringer asking for fixes and adjustments. So much so I felt I strained our friendship but we’re good now. I am definitely indebted to him.

DAN: I imagine over the past 10 years, your views and or perspective on the film has changed as far as its story direction. Does the finished film differ from the original script? If so, what were some of the obstacles that influenced the changes?

JIM: Nothing really changed in any big way. As Herriman animated it things changed slightly if it would help the flow. There is one series of shots of when Leo is going to jump off the cliff in his initial run. It was boarded slightly different, more static then what is animated. When it was animated, the shots, 4 of them, were animated straight ahead one right into the next in a week and they have a nice energy I think because of that. Only two animated shots where cut form the final film.

DAN: Was there a specific point where you finally decided to stop making changes to the story or design? If so, what helped you to move on and stay on course?

JIM: The storyreel. I worked that thing up until it played as good as I could hope the film would. It allowed me to show the film to anyone at anytime too and this was a huge source of positive reinforcement. People would watch it and really respond to it. This kept me going for ten years. I would also replace the boards with animation as it was finished so I could see the film getting done.

DAN: Was it difficult to stick to the original story?

JIM: Around year 5, I would play around with a scene here or there, restaging it or re-conceiving it. I think because I was getting slightly bored with the film. I would show my friend, Ronnie Del Carman, who was helping me with some art direction at the time, he would just give me a look and a shrug, and into the trash it would go. The change wasn’t necessarily better or worse it was just different. He kept reminding me to stick to my initial instincts.

DAN: How has working at Pixar influenced the production of Leonardo?

JIM: Of course it has. It’s all interrelated. I didn’t really think I could animate. The only time prior to making the short was at Cal Arts 10 years before and even then I never thought of myself as an animator. I figured I would get my animator friends to each animate a handful of scenes. As it turns out they weren’t as excited about animating at home and on the weekends when they had done it all day. So I started one scene, showed them to get a critique. These experienced animators then told me I could animate. So I did another and another and found I kind of liked it. I kept going or rather Herriman did and in the end animated 80% of the film. I think what had helped me develop as an animator between school and actually sitting down to actually animate was storyboarding. We basically work in clear storytelling poses when we storyboard Also structuring and planning the scene.

DAN: Now that it is finished, is there anything you wish you could change?

JIM: There are a lot of little things in the film I wish we had more time on or could go back into. Overall though I am happy with it, Leonardo is close to what I had in my head but also as reality it isn’t either. The short became it’s own being. You give birth to creative things like this but then environment and who they meet along the way shape them into the beings they become.

DAN: Your series of blog posts about the 10 things you learned in making a short film, you stressed the importance of making mistakes, and learning, along with a bunch of other helpful tips for aspiring filmmakers. Now that it’s all finished and you are beginning your next film , is there anything you would add to those 10 things you originally posted about that you hope to apply with the next film or pass on to other filmmakers?

JIM: Well for one I never realized how much work there is to do after making the film. Promoting the film is something you don’t learn in film school and it really takes a lot of pavement pounding and money. I probably spent more money after the film was finished then during making the film. With festival submissions, tape coasts, travel to the festivals, promotional materials like posters, postcards, etc.

Another thing is you realize how much junk is out there and getting shown in these festivals. So, if you can make something half decent you’ll get it seen.

Another thing I learned is that it is hard to get the next one started. Well for me it has been. Picking the thing to do, especially since you aren’t as naive about the time it will take anymore, it is daunting. If I go with this one it will take years then I won’t be able to do this one. It is hard. But I am getting there. Just got to pick it and do it. It always is just the doing of it that matters.

DAN: Who or what have been some of your major influences in your approach as a filmmaker?

JIM: I have this book called 101 Things They Never Taught You in Film School and in it they say, “Always approach your film as if you are 15 years old.” Meaning that like a 15 year old you would have tons of energy, you will blunder into it, make mistakes, you really don’t have any inhabitations. You are naive and full of possibilities. I really like reminding myself of that. We get so self-conscience of ourselves as creators and got to let that go.

I am very much influenced by artists who just get out there and do their thing for the sake of their art not just for themselves but to make something beautiful or moving to touch people. Like Jim Jarmush, Stanley Kubrick, Charlie Chaplin even Walt Disney. I truly believe we all have the right, the responsibility to bring something wonderful to the world. When we use or powers, so to speak, in a cheap way or untruthful way, when it isn’t about the creation but the driver is money or ego then we are committing a crime. There are a lot of crimes being committed out there.