32 Comments »   posted in Cartoon Culture

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A while back I mentioned briefly on this site that I had been offered an opportunity to write a book for Pixar, and today I thought I’d offer a few more details about it. The coffeetable book I’m working on, which will be out later this year, is directly tied in to the Pixar Short Films Collection dvd, and is an in-depth history of the studio’s early shorts. I was naturally thrilled when they asked me to come on board because, well, come on it’s Pixar, but also because I know the importance of shorts to the company’s history and the value that they place on creating animated shorts even now that they’re a successful feature studio. Admittedly, in the beginning, I was slightly concerned about whether there was enough to say about the shorts to fill an entire book, but it took only a couple weeks of working on the book before I was begging my editor to double the initial page count. We’re still in production on the book right now, and one thing I can say about it is that there’s a lot more text and meat in this than your average art of book. It’s exciting to see it come together and I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

Because the book’s content stretches back to André & Wally B. which was done before Pixar even officially existed, I had to familiarize myself with the ins and outs of the studio’s entire history. It’s truly a fascinating story. Today we look at Pixar as the untouchable 800-pound gorilla of computer animation so it’s easy to forget that not so long ago, they were a struggling hardware company and their animation division was comprised of just a handful of folks working in a company of over one hundred people. There was hardly a guarantee that their animation division would become what it is today, and it only happened because of the genius and vision of individuals like Ed Catmull, John Lasseter, Alvy Ray Smith, and a slew of computer whizzes like Bill Reeves, Loren Carpenter, Eben Ostby and Rob Cook.

When I began researching the book, I wanted to find a reliable source that would help me understand the early roots of Pixar and its earlier incarnation as the Computer Graphics Division of Lucasfilm. During an interview with Pixar co-founder Alvy Ray Smith, he recommended I take a look at the recent book Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution. I took him up on that advice and am glad I did. This book is absolutely essential reading for anybody who wants to understand the roots of Pixar and its founders Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith. The book is not entirely about computer animation, because Lucas’ Computer Division also dealt with editing, game and sound programs, but the parts about Pixar’s pre-history make it well worth the money and the solid technical details and hardcore research are enough to satisfy the geekiest of the computer geeks. George Lucas has played a crucial role in contemporary filmmaking by introducing digital technology into all aspects of his productions, and this book is a wonderful document of how it happened…and as a result, how Pixar came out of it.

Speaking of essential, below is YouTube video with the author of the above book, Michael Rubin, interviewing Ed Catmull, Alvy Ray Smith, Andrew Stanton and Brad Bird on stage. It’s 1 hour and 40 minutes, and it’s a fun and inspiring chat.

Just for the heck of it, let me share a few other random Pixar bits that I discovered online while researching the book:

Here’s a link to the personal website of Pixar co-founder Alvy Ray Smith. He has an interesting page with rare Pixar documents and a page about the first “Pixar” short André & Wally B. with an amazingly in-depth PDF file about the making of that short.

Pixar has a sub-site where they make available all the technical papers that their technologists have presented at SIGGRAPH. It’s pretty heavy on the tech, so beware, but there’s also some QuickTime tests that accompany a few of the papers, like this one about “Volumetric Methods for Simulation and Rendering of Hair.”

Here’s a new link posted yesterday: Didier Ghez did a short interview with David Price, author of the just-about-to-be-released The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company. I don’t know how the book will turn out, but it sounds like Price has done his homework and I can’t wait to read it.

Finally, one of the fascinating aspects of Pixar that nobody talks about is their TV commercial work. Did you know Pixar produced 71 TV commercials in the early- and mid-’90s? A complete list can be found by following this timeline on their site. They’re surprisingly difficult to locate online, but there’s a handful on Youtube, including the very first one the studio produced, for Tropicana, directed and animated by John Lasseter:

23 Comments »   posted in Books, CGI

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Academy Exhibit of Classic Animation

April 25, 2008 12:05 am

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences new lobby exhibition, Ink & Paint, opens to the public on Friday May 16th. It highlights the work of animation artists who have devoted decades to creating the characters, storyboards, color keys, backgrounds, layouts, and cels needed to assemble the classic, 2-D Hollywood animated cartoons. According to the press release:

Encompassing all stages of the filmmaking process, this exhibition showcases artwork from the 1940s through the 1990s and features such animated classics as Alice In Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians, Gay Purr-ee, The Secret of NIMH, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Lion King and The Iron Giant as well as from Oscar-winning shorts starring such timeless characters as Mr. Magoo, Winnie the Pooh and the Pink Panther, as well as Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoons and the Academy Award-winning shorts of UPA.

Artists whose work is represented include Álvaro Arce (The Prince and the Pauper), Mary Blair (Cinderella), Paul Carlson (Gay Purr-ee), Ron Dias (The Secret of NIMH), Ann Guenther (Winnie the Pooh and Tigger, Too), Michael Humphries (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), Homer Jonas (Sleeping Beauty), Art Leonardi (Pink Panther), Abe Levitow (1001 Arabian Nights), and Gloria Wood (Gay Purr-ee).

The Academy’s Grand Lobby Gallery is open Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and weekends from noon to 6 p.m. Admission is free. Please note the Academy will be closed May 24-26 and July 4-6 in observance of Memorial Day and Independence Day.

No Comments »   posted in Events

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Popeyes in Puerto Rico

April 24, 2008 4:00 pm

I can’t stand Popeyes Chicken, but if the restaurants looked like this one in Puerto Rico I might give them another try.

This one, recommended by one of our readers, is on Highway 3 between San Juan and Luquillo, hasn’t gone all “New Orleans”, but continues to embrace its animated namesake. I’ve been told Popeyes is very popular on the island, and all of them have some sort of reference to the character. Click on each photo for a larger image.

(Thanks, George)

39 Comments »   posted in Cartoon Culture

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Plympton, Paley and CGI at Tribeca

April 24, 2008 11:55 am

The 2008 Tribeca Film Festival kicks off this week and there are three animated features in competition. Each of them plays multiple times over the next week. Show times and ticket info can be found on clicking on the title of each feature. First up is the world premiere of Idiots and Angels, the latest from Bill Plympton. Fellow NY indie Nina Paley offers the American premiere of her feature Sita Sings the Blues. The film got a special jury mention at its world premiere last February in the Berlin International Film Festival. And finally, there’s a feature I’ve never heard of: a celebrity voice-heavy, indie CG feature titled Terra directed by Aristomenis Tsirbas. Check this last one out at your own risk.

9 Comments »   posted in Events, Feature Film

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Peur(s) du Noir & Richard McGuire

April 23, 2008 3:55 am

Over the past couple years, I’ve mentioned the French animated feature Peur(s) du Noir, which is a collection of black-and-white horror tales. I finally saw the film a few weeks ago, and though I admired the effort to do something different, the overall experience was underwhelming. The themes and ideas made an attempt to be “adult,” but the quality of storytelling was lackluster and didn’t engage an adult’s mind. Part of the problem was that the filmmakers were primarily comic artists whose lack of animation training was evident, and who didn’t seem to grasp the inherent possibilities within animated filmmaking.

The notable exception was the segment directed by illustrator Richard McGuire whose piece was not only the most minimalist, but also the most intense and frightening. Graphic design historian Steven Heller recently interviewed Richard McGuire about his work on the film and it’s a good read.

There’s no word yet of a US release date for the film but here are a few related links: the official film website, a clip from McGuire’s segment, and a blog with a thoughtful review of the film by Ed Howard.

7 Comments »   posted in Feature Film

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Oliver Laric’s (>’.')>=O____l_*__O=<('.'<)

April 23, 2008 2:44 am

It’s been over a year since we’ve mentioned the innovative video experiments of Oliver Laric, but his latest project, (>’.')>=O____l_*__O=<('.'<), demands a plug. At first glance, it looks like an abstract piece of emoticons, but a bit of squinting reveals much more than appears on the surface. (via Animation Show)

4 Comments »   posted in Shorts

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Coloring Books

April 23, 2008 12:05 am

Aaron Higgins of Toonarific has started a new website devoted to cataloging classic coloring books. As an art resource, it’s invaluable as the site is showcasing and preserving coloring book art since the 1930s. Higgins’ RetroReprints site is a guide to what books have been published over the years, and he is slowly adding images under the books themselves for users to download and color. He is also reformatting the images and creating complete ebooks, also available to download.

And in case you were wondering where you could buy vintage coloring books of your favorite characters, Aaron also has over 1000 coloring and activity books for sale here on ebay.

13 Comments »   posted in Cartoon Culture

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