There’s something I don’t understand, and probably never will understand, about DreamWorks Animation. With so many incredibly talented artists working under one roof, how can the studio’s films be so visually dull and devoid of artistic ambition? If these guys can create art, why does Katzenberg insist on hiding it beneath over-rendered fur and realistic grass textures, and marring their work with incompetent celebrity voices, fart jokes and every storytelling cliche in the book. While I’ve yet to enjoy a DreamWorks animated film, I’m certainly enjoying all these new blogs by the studio’s artists…and at the same time wondering how the hell a film that looks like THIS could be made by such an amazing group of individuals.

Patrick MateInsert Name Here: A group blog comprised of four DreamWorks animators (Fabio Lignini, Arnaud Berthier, Jakob Jensen, Simon Otto) and one animator at Sony Imageworks, Luis GraneGabriele PennacchioliAlessandro Carloni

Video game animation isn’t a frequent topic of discussion on the Brew, but LOCO ROCO, an upcoming Sony PSP game from Japan, recently caught my attention. The character designs are simple and sans outlines, in that supercute style that Japanese designers do so well. The backgrounds strive for a similarly fresh approach, and use crisp appealing shapes with creative color styling. Overall, the design and animation of LOCO ROCO easily matches the standard of most of today’s animated TV shows. Just take a look at this video demo. The entire gameplay, and not just the cut scenes, look like a TV series done in Flash or something. I’m not sure what, if anything, this means for the industry, but with the technology finally at a point where videogames (2D ones at least) can look this good, one hopes that game developers will begin to take greater advantage of the possibilities to produce creatively designed and well animated games.

(click on image for larger version)

A legendary magazine cartoonist with an inimitable style, Eldon Dedini, passed away last Thursday from esophageal cancer. His work, including many beautiful watercolor cartoons, appeared primarily in PLAYBOY, THE NEW YORKER and ESQUIRE. Prior to animation, he worked at Disney as a storyboard artist in the 1940s, both on their shorts and the package features like FUN AND FANCY FREE (1947). Here’s a nicely written obit from his hometown paper, the Monterey County Herald. Also, a major collection of his work is being published this summer by Fantagraphics. The image at top is a page from a 1967 Volkswagen promotional book, hence the Volks-themed cartoon.

Ebert on animation in today’s Chicago Sun-Times.

Blackwing Diaries has posted some interesting John K. drawings of elephants which I hadn’t seen before. According to Jenny’s blog, these were for a freelance WB gig from around the time REN & STIMPY was starting up. The posts, HERE and HERE, also offer a good perspective on the LA animation scene ca. 1990.

People ask me on occasion why I like animation. It’s a difficult question to answer, and one that I’ve rarely (if ever) answered to my own satisfaction. To me, art is something as natural and necessary as breathing or eating. Why wouldn’t I like animation would seem to be a more appropriate question. Well, I may have finally found a better answer.

Tonight, at ASIFA-Hollywood’s “Evening with John Canemaker” event, John screened six classic animated shorts that he finds inspiring for one reason or another. Put together, these six films are the perfect explanation for why I like (love?) cartoons. Animation, at its best, is a visual medium unlike any other, one that is filled with limitless creative possibilities, and these films illustrate the point more vividly and efficiently than anything I could ever say. So the next time somebody asks me why I enjoy animation, I’ll just give them a list of the following films:

The Fleischer short MYSTERIOUS MOSE (1930)
The Disney short THE BAND CONCERT (1935)
FOX HUNT - Anthony Gross and Hector Hoppin (1936)
FLAT HATTING - John Hubley (1946)
FREE RADICALS - Len Lye (1957)
THE TEMPEST (scenes from an unfinished film) - George Dunning (ca. mid-1970s)

(Image courtesy of Cartoon Retro)

I first saw this film back at SIGGRAPH 2003 so it’s not exactly new. But the film has stuck with me, and it holds up quite well. Now that it’s online, I have to point it out. TIM TOM is a graduate film by Romain Segaud and Christel Pougeoise, produced at the French animation school SupInfoCom.

There’s all sorts of nods to old school animation techniques in this film — from the opening titles (in the form of a thaumatrope) to the flipbook facial expressions to the characters interacting with strips of film. But the biggest nod to old school techniques is the quality of the character animation itself. Computer animated characters, especially those in student films, rarely move like this…with such distinctive and individual styles of movement, with such snappy timing, with such expressive overlapping action. But much to the credit of the two filmmakers, the characters in TIM TOM are alive in the way that the best animated characters should be.

Here’s some production info in the words of one of the filmmakers, Christel Pougeoise:

We met at SupInfoCom, one of the top animation schools in France with an emphasis on teaching CGI animation. There we collaborated on a five minute animated film that took 16 months to create. The simple scenario features two animated characters trying to meet against the wishes of a giant omnipotent human hand. There is no dialogue but the thoughts and expressions of the protagonists are written on their notepad faces. Using Maya, Photoshop, and After Effects, the 3D computer animation is made to look like realistic puppets made of clay and paper. It’s a reference to old stop-motion films. We also chose a 40s jazz soundtrack (Django Reinhardt) and a black and white image to provide the film overall with the aesthetics of the classic films of Méliès, Trinka, Dudok de Wit, and Svankmayer. Romain came up with the original idea and I liked it so much I decided to work with him. During the third year, we worked on the screenplay and storyboards and during the last year we modeled the characters, animated them, rendered the movie with computers, added the sound, and then transferred it all to 35mm film. Tim Tom has played at several festivals in Europe and US, has received the LEAF award in London and the prix de la SCAM in France.

Forget the whole Plympton vs. Gondry flap on the Kanye West video. Today, it’s Michel Gondry vs. Mike Jittlov. I received an email from an artist yesterday (who prefers to remain anonymous) complaining that the Gondry video for West isn’t all that original. He wrote, “I just thought it was worth pointing that Gondry’s video (colors and all) is a huge homage/rip of Mike Jittlov’s amazing short film ‘Swing Shift,’ and is a very poor imitation at that. Not that I’m not a Gondry fan, because I am, but considering the source, it’s not one of his better efforts.”

Mike Jittlov, for those that aren’t familiar, is a legend of the LA indie animation scene. I’m familiar with his pixelation work, particularly THE WIZARD OF SPEED AND TIME, but I’d never seen SWING SHIFT. That is, until last night, because I found online a late-70s showreel of Jittlov’s work, thanks to blog of Pixar’s Jeff Pidgeon. There’s a clip from SWING SHIFT about 1/3 of the way into the reel where you can find, what else, clothes and other objects dancing after-hours in a department store. You can decide for yourself whether the Gondry video has its roots in this Jittlov short, but I’d definitely recommend watching the entire Jittlov reel. Who knew Regis Philbin was a fan of experimental animation?

UPDATE: Tom Knott writes, “I have an interview with Gondry were he talks about the influence of Norman McLaren, specifically McLaren’s film ‘A Chairy Tale’ (1957). Gondry noted that he makes reference to ‘A Chairy Tale’ in a video he did for Beck. The Kanye West video seems to also reference ‘A Chairy Tale.’”