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POSTS FOR “2008“Cartoon Brew's home for up-to-the-minute, unedited announcements and press releases direct from industry sources.
January 23, 2008 10:38 am
Do artists improve with the passage of time or do an artist’s skills begin to deteriorate at a certain age? Animation director Will Finn explores this fascinating topic on his blog, using as an example the late work of Chuck Jones. It’s a thought-provoking read that argues that Chuck was actually a better artist when he created artwork intended for the animation process instead of static pieces of fine art. 37 Comments » posted in Ideas/Commentary January 23, 2008 3:48 am
The Animation Magazine article offers plenty of other details about Mack’s career including this fascinating tidbit:
Mack is survived by his wife Ginni, three sons (Kevin, Brice and Greg) and grandsons Jon, Ray and Danny. 10 Comments » posted in Animators January 23, 2008 2:28 am
Nothing hits the spot after a hard’s day work like seeing a few good Preston Blair swipes. Reader John Luciano writes, “I never get tired of seeing Preston Blair swipes! I’ve been meaning to take a picture of a pet rescue sticker that’s been on my apartment door since I moved in.”
And just to show that stealing from Preston Blair is not an activity limited to Americans, Danny Wall sends us a gem from Japan—a cardboard popcorn container full of PB swipes. Danny writes, “Although why use that little donkey? Personally, I never liked that character, although I am guilty for using that lion for my senior class’s high school mascot.”
More Preston Blair swips here, here, here, here, here, here and here. 8 Comments » posted in Cartoon Culture January 22, 2008 9:55 pm
Do you hate the pedestrian state of storytelling in today’s animated features? Probably not as much as Paul Dini does. Dini, best known for writing on the animated Batman and Superman TV show, has posted a long essay on his blog tearing apart the contrivances of contemporary animated features. An excerpt from Dini’s rant:
(via Mayerson on Animation) 24 Comments » posted in Feature Film, Ideas/Commentary January 22, 2008 8:00 pm
Yesterday’s Bizarro by Dan Piraro. 5 Comments » posted in Comics January 22, 2008 1:15 pm
The nominees for the 80th annual Academy Awards were announced this morning: Best Animated Feature Note: The Surf’s Up nomination surprised even Sony. Yair Landau, president of Sony Pictures Digital, told Animation Magazine this morning, “We really didn’t run any campaign here whatsoever.” Considering that both Persepolis and Surf’s Up are released by Sony, it’ll be interesting to see whether they choose to promote one film over the other in the run-up to the Oscars. Best Animated Short Film Note: This is the first time since 1999 that US filmmakers have been shut out of the animated short category. This year’s nominees are by Canadian, British, French and Russian filmmakers. Ratatouille also received nominations for Best Original Screenplay (Jan Pinkava, Jim Capobianco, Brad Bird), Best Original Score (Michael Giacchino), Best Sound Editing (Randy Thom and Michael Silvers) and Best Sound Mixing (Randy Thom, Michael Semanick and Doc Kane). UPDATE: Four of the five animated short nominees can be viewed online in their entirety. Ticklebooth has the links. 41 Comments » posted in Feature Film, Shorts January 22, 2008 2:48 am
If you are anywhere—and I mean anywhere—in the DC area on February 15 and 16, then mark your calendars for the American premiere of Genius Party and the world premiere of Genius Party Beyond. These two new Japanese features are from Studio 4°C, the same production studio that has given us Mind Game and Tekkon Kinkreet. Each 90-minute film is a compilation of seven shorts, some from well-established directors, some from the young and up-and-coming. The Washington DC screening, which is a part of the Japan! Culture + Hyper-Culture festival, will also include in-person appearances by three of the fourteen Genius Party directors: Shinichiro Watanabe, Koji Morimoto, and Mahiro Maeda.
To truly grasp the uniqueness of this undertaking, listen to Studio 4°C CEO Eiko Tanaka describe the idea for these features in this FPS magazine interview:
Which major feature production studio in the US would take the risk of producing not one, but two 90-minute compilations of anything-goes animated shorts? Which studio would be inspired enough to hand the reins to fourteen different directors and allow each to bring to the screen the stories they really want to tell, and then find a workable business model to distribute these films to the general public?
There are many promising shorts in the Genius Party packages including new works by Masaaki Yuasa (Mind Game) and Koji Morimoto. This trailer for the first Genius Party offers a taste of what’s in store. In the FPS interview noted above, Tanaka lays out one of the primary reasons why her studio, which she cofounded in 1986 with Koji Morimoto and Yoshiharu Sato, is such a consistent producer of excellent and challenging works of animated art:
One of the Genius Party shorts that I’m most looking forward to is Wanwa, the Puppy directed by Shinya Ohira. MangaAnimation.net recently offered scans of a magazine article featuring artwork from the short. The images in this article are a tantalizing mix of stylistic experimentation and individualistic character animation; its free-spiritedness reminds of the very best of the works by John and Faith Hubley, a comparison that can’t be made often nowadays. As anime critic Ben Ettinger writes, “it’s truly stunning stuff that has little to do with anime and everything to do with great animated art.” Ettinger’s blog AniPages Daily offers some explanation of the short’s technique and his thoughts about the short’s potential:
A few images from Wanwa the Puppy:
LINKS 26 Comments » posted in Anime, Events, Feature Film January 21, 2008 11:42 pm
Last August Jerry wrote about one of the newest animation fads sweeping through Japan: a crude, borderline inept, series of animated pieces about the Bottom-Biting Bug. This article in Pingmag reveals that the creators are the husband-and-wife team UrumaDelvi. They are also responsible for the animated short A Long Day of Mr. Calpaccio, an entertaining little film that made the festival rounds a couple years back. In the Pingmag piece, the husband half of the team, Uruma, discusses the genesis of the Bottom-Biting Bug and speculates about why it has caught on with the Japanese public. A short clip of the animation is below, but if you really want to torture yourself, try watching this ten-minute spectacle. 4 Comments » posted in Anime, Cartoon Culture, Shorts
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