Production artist Nicolas Marlet will be among those taking part in an artist panel at Alhambra’s Gallery Nucleus on Sunday March 28th, talking about and showing some of their work from Dreamworks’ How to Train Your Dragon. Other artists in attendance will be: Alessandro Carloni (Head of Story), Pierre Olivier Vincent (Art Director) and Simon Otto (Head of Animation).

This event is free and its highly recommended you arrive early - seating is limited. The panel will begin at 3pm. For more information please check the Gallery Nucleus website.

A trailer for the children’s film Moomins and the Comet Chase, the first stereoscopic 3-D feature out of the Nordic region. It’s being produced by Finnish studio Filmkompaniet Alpha, who previously made the feature Moomin and Midsummer Madness in 2008. The characters are based on Tove Jansson’s classic book and comic characters Moomins which have been the subject of numerous animated TV series and features throughout the years, including a hand-drawn Japanese version of this same Moomin story from 1992 titled Comet in Moominland.

Elk Hair Caddis is another mini-masterpiece from those crazy kids at Denmark’s Animation Workshop: Peter Smith, Alice Holme, Anders Brogaarde and Magnus Moller.

Peter Smith told us:

One of the goals with this piece of animation was to explore some of the boundaries of the 3D media, and how close we could bring it to a 2D feel in terms of broadness and flexibility. One of the very important inspirations that made us think along these lines was the work of the Swedish company Meindbender. Particularly the short Football vs. Rabbit was a very helpful source of inspiration. For the animation we used Maya and Blender (Anisculpt) and for comp we used Fusion.

Computer animation from Russia in 1968 (yep, that’s forty-two years ago!):

A group of Russian physicists and mathematicians with N. Konstantinov in the head of it created mathematic model of the cat and its moving and realized this model in the program for the computer “BESM-4″. Computer printed hundreds of frames on the paper using alphabet symbols and then they were converted to the cinefilm.

(Thanks, Mark Newgarden)

Only on Cartoon Brew do you get scoops like this:

Just in time for Passover: Brew reader Afonso Bruno snapped this pic of the new rodent-head shaped ham slices now available in Paris supermarkets. It’s right up there with our previous posts on Disney food tie-ins like Aristo-Cats Cat Food, Old Yeller Dog Food and Mickey Mouse Liver Paste.

An enticing trailer for Lipsett Diaries, a short directed by Theodore Ushev (Drux Flux, Tower Bawher). It’s rare to see animated imagery with such substance and beauty—so intensely powerful—and it’s only the trailer:

[Lipsett Diaries] depicts the maelstrom of anguish that tormented Arthur Lipsett, a famed Canadian experimental filmmaker who died at the age of 49. His descent into depression and madness is explored through a series of images as well as sounds taken from Lipsett’s own work.

The film is written by Chris Robinson, the artistic director of the Ottawa International Animation Festival; this marks his first major involvement in the production of an animated film. LipsettDiaries.net has more background about Lipsett and the film, including a fascinating tidbit about the influence of Lipsett’s work on George Lucas and Star Wars. The film is in competition at Annecy this year, and something tells me it might be selected for Ottawa too.

Here’s the teaser for a godawful looking low-budget European co-production… waitasec…my bad…this is DreamWorks’s Megamind. By now, I’ve come to expect very little from DreamWorks product, but this one strikes me as being even blander and clumsier than their usual bland and clumsy style. It looks like a slapped together patchwork of CG cliches, so much so that in these clips the characters appear uncomfortably detached from their background environments. The strain of a three-films-a-year schedule is becoming painfully evident.

Let’s Pollute by Geefwee Boedoe

Yesterday, the Annecy International Animation Festival announced the selections for its 34th edition, which takes place June 7 through 12. This is a milestone year for the world’s oldest continuously running animation festival as it marks its fiftieth year of existence. The Annecy site has the complete list of selections for shorts, TV series, music videos and commercials. Feature film selections will be announced next month. Their site states that 48 animated features were submitted. Wow!

Of note: one of only two American films in the short film category is Let’s Pollute by Geefwee Boedoe, who designed the titles to Monsters Inc.. There’s a brief but intriguing Cartoon Modern-esque trailer on IMDB.

Also, in the graduation film category, I’m delighted to see that Jake Armstrong’s The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9! was accepted into competition. The film had its online debut on Cartoon Brew TV last year. It makes us feel good knowing that Brew TV shorts continue to excel at festivals after their online premieres. Similarly, another Brew TV premiere, David Sheahan’s Together! made it into Slamdance earlier this year. Great work guys!