Making short work of the competitions

Decorating the desk of Tim Sarnoff, president of Sony Pictures Imageworks, the visual effects and animation studio operating under the Sony Pictures Digital umbrella, are several of the international awards won by “The ChubbChubbs.” That’s the company’s charming six-minute, computer-animated short that screened last summer in theaters with “Men in Black II” and “Stuart Little 2.”

Yet even though it’s a strong contender for an Academy Award nomination Tuesday for best animated short, “The ChubbChubbs” was never meant to be seen by an audience outside the studio. The quirky sci-fi comedy was produced instead as an efficiency experiment in computer animation.

Sony Picture Imageworks was working on “Stuart Little 2,” “Spider-Man” and “Men in Black II” when it put “ChubbChubbs” into production.

“We have a long-range plan in the company that started five years ago to become a character animation facility,” says Sarnoff.

“Our effort has been directed primarily to do photo-realistic live-action movies such as ‘Stuart Little’ to ‘Spider-Man’ to ‘Hollow Man’ -- anything character-driven and in a live-action movie we have become specialists for.”

Part of the plan for Imageworks, the production arm for Sony Pictures Animation, was also to produce films featuring stylized computer-generated (CG) characters, along the lines of the Pixar/Disney hits “Toy Story” and ‘Monsters, Inc.” and Fox’s “Ice Age.”

“So we set up a pipeline that made sure we would be able to create a fully stylized CG project while at the same time continuing to do the photo-realistic visual effects business,” says Sarnoff. “ ‘ChubbChubbs’ was the vehicle where we were able to create a new pipeline.”

Imageworks, says Sarnoff, began working on “ChubbChubbs” in September 2001 “as a ‘Gong Show’ for all the individuals in the company to pitch a project.” By December, they had narrowed the pitches to a dozen, which was further winnowed down to three. Eventually, Jeff Wolverton’s idea, “Attack of the ChubbChubbs,” was picked and Eric Armstrong was chosen to direct. A team of 100 artists and technicians worked on the film.

“We started animating it in February and finished the project in May,” says Sarnoff.

“The intent was to put as much animation through our facility in that style as we possibly could.”

“ChubbChubbs” is set in a popular intergalactic nightclub where a little alien named Meeper mops the floors while he dreams of becoming a singer. But when he accidentally vaporizes the star attraction, he is banished from the club. The only way he can redeem himself is to warn the patrons of the arrival of the ChubbChubbs, the most vicious creatures in the galaxy. But the ChubbChubbs aren’t exactly what they seem.

With the added workload, Imageworks hired extra people, Sarnoff says. “Mostly, they were story people. We had the animators here and we have the technical expertise already created, but what we learned from this is how to edit ourselves. It’s not so easy to make a six-minute short. This could have been a two-hour short.”

After “ChubbChubbs” was finished, Imageworks screened it for the motion picture group at Sony. The enthusiastic executives then screened it for the exhibitors, who were equally enchanted with the comedy. By July, “ChubbChubbs” was paired with “Men in Black II” on more than 3,000 screens. It’s also featured on the “MIB II” DVD. And Imageworks hopes to start is first full-length CG feature -- not a “ChubbChubbs” story -- for Sony Pictures Animation sometime this year.

“ChubbChubbs” is just one of the many short films that have been released with high-profile features in the past few years. PDI/DreamWorks recently distributed “Sprout”; Sony Pictures distributed “Something Fishy” with the Dana Carvey comedy “Master of Disguise”; and the Oscar-winner “For the Birds” played with “Monsters, Inc.”

“There’s a desire from the audience to see more shorts that make them laugh rather than sell them popcorn,” says Sarnoff, who grew up watching “Looney Tunes” cartoons at the movies. “But to come up with a vehicle to tell a story in six minutes, I don’t know if there is an economic mechanism yet to make it viable for [movie] companies to do this as a business.”

So far, “ChubbChubbs” has won five animation awards including best animated short at the International Short Film Festival/L.A., the best animation short at the Foyle Festival (the Northern Ireland International Film Festival), the best short at LEAF (London Effects & Animation Festival) and is nominated for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award.

“It tells a story of universal truth,” says Sarnoff. “It’s an Everyman story. We are thrilled that people have responded well.”