"Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien." - Voltaire

I was reading this article by Kevin Koch (definitely a worthwhile blog to visit for some technical insights to animation). In the article he talks about over baking, well, that's what I call it, but how do know when enough is enough for your animation. Toward the latter end of this article he quotes Voltaire as have said (translated from french): "the best is the enemy of good". What this simply means is that at times as artists we reach a point where something is workable, it's good, but we want to push it further. That is definitely a noble goal, we always want to improve our craft we want to polish it make it better. If good is good then better must be better. The downfall is, that we tend to lose ourselves and not see the forest for the trees. In our quest to improve what is good we can get so focused on trying to make it better that we in fact can waste time, and in many cases ruin was was at one time, good.

The best modern example I can think of is George Lucas' Star Wars. The man got incredibly lucky with Star Wars (let's call it what it originally was, no episode this or subtitle that). It was hugely popular and went on to spawn the biggest movie franchise in history. I lead into one of my all time favorite movies; The Empire Strikes Back. Very few argue that the original Star Wars trilogy was less than incredible. For the purpose of this post; it was good. damn good.

So why, 15 years later did Lucas decide to revisit it and use modern technology to 'perfect it'. He argues they are his movies and that at the time technology limited what he could do. That if the technology were available that is how he would have made the movies. In the documentary on the DVD of Episode IV special Edition Lucas indicates that this is how he saw the movies, that as a film maker you're "never really finished with the film" you just hand it off and hope it does well. He says that he now has the ability to go back and 'finish' them. If by driving a bus into their colon is finishing, then yes, you did. In his quest to 'perfect' his films he ruined them.

Now I'm not a total hater. There are some things about the SE that were definite improvements. I loved how they cleaned up the print, how they made the dogfights a little more intense, fixed the matting of the battle on hoth and opened up the windows of cloud city. But other changes that were redundant, killed the pacing of the film or were just poorly executed, like Jabba in ANH:SE. Even after the second pass on it it was just a bad scene. And Boba Fett mugging for the camera as if to say; "hey fan boys check me out, I'm cool I made it into the first movie! woot!"

And if that wasn't bad enough he made the prequel trilogy. Not only were they poor movies, they actually detracted from the greatness of the original trilogy both figuratively and literally. Lucas once again went into his original trilogy and mucked things up to try to make them more cohesive to the new trilogy. I think adding Ian McDiarmod to Empire was good, but the change in dialogue in that scene was baaaaaaad. Adding Hayden Christiansen at the end of the Jedi was baaaaaaad and I could go on.a

Now, I didn't want this to be a Star Wars rant fest, so much as illustrating the point that, sometimes you have to tell yourself; 'this is good, it works. yeah I think i can polish it up, but if I do, will i actually ruin it?" If you're a career animator many times you can't afford (time wise) to over polish something. You get very few chances to actually go back and over bake it. You have to get a workable version in the pipeline, get the Director to sign off on it, and then hand it off and get busy on the next assignment. So the production process for better or worse can save you from making that mistake.

Look at what Dick Williams did with the Thief. He over baked it. He wanted to put the whole thing on ones, put everything he knew about animation into it and while I admire his determination to make the BEST animated film he could, in the end he lost it. It ended up taking too long, costing too much and eventually flew from his control. That makes me sad.

So, I hope this makes some sense. I hope that in our experiences we can find that happy place where we can say; 'yes, that's good, I'm happy with it, i can let it go and be it's own thing. I have other things that need my tending now." That's not to say this is an excuse for mediocrity. But if Lucas is correct that films are never finished then maybe somethings unfinished are superior that way.