And let me also take the opportunity to plug this book.

Recently three-dimensional paper sculpture/cut-out/origami has exploded as a major trend across multiple disciplines including animation, illustration and design. In an animation context, the factor that distinguishes this trend from traditional stop-motion is that the artist builds their own models/sets out of paper and other household materials. Two new books have been published documenting the movement in primarily non-animation media: Three-D: Graphic Spaces (Amazon link or book review) and Tactile: High Touch Visuals (Amazon link or book review ). One of those books even has Steven Heller’s name on the cover, a sure sign of fad status in the design world (seemingly the only design trend Heller hasn’t ‘discovered’ yet is our little world of animation).

In animation, one of the first major contemporary examples of paper sculpture was Virgil Widrich’s Fast Film from 2003. It remains a mighty impressive piece of work:

Another widely seen example of three-dimensional paper animation was Jamie Caliri’s “Dragon” spot for United Airlines which aired during the 2006 Super Bowl:

Caliri’s paper sculpture work is more mainstream than ever with his direction of the end titles for Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa. The art director of the Madagascar titles was Megan Brain, whose paper sculpture animation has also been seen in segments of Nick Jr.’s Yo Gabba Gabba! and Cartoon Network’s Class of 3000.

Animation artists all over seem to be enjoying creating paper sculptures. Last month Jon Klassen and his brother created an iceberg sculpture loosely based on Jon’s illustration concepts for this Royal Bank of Canada commercial.

Animation industry veteran Joe Orrantia is currently in the process of building an awesome-looking three-dimensional spaceship for one of his projects. He’s using PVC pipes, foam core, cups, and cereal boxes, while documenting the making of it on his blog.

It would be an oversimplification to label the emergence of three-dimensional paper sculpture as a mere backlash to the mathematically precise aesthetic of CGI or the longing for a simpler more tactile art. At least in the animation world, a lot of artists are using digital technology to aid their three-dimensional animation projects. For example, The Seed, a sublime piece of work by Johnny Kelly, would have been much more difficult to create without the aid of computers. The ‘making of’ video below hints at how the production incorporated digital technology alongside paper and scissors:

And then there’s the wildly inventive My Paper Mind by recent Pratt grad Javan Ivey:

The film is entirely made of cut-paper imagery but Javan shows on the film’s “making of” page that he used computer animation tests to make sure it would look right. “Computers are dirty cheaters… don’t we love it,” he writes on his website. So true.

Before anybody gets too excited about having discovered the next big thing, it would be wise to give this trend a bit of historical context by pointing out that Bill Justice, X. Atencio and T. Hee were doing paper sculpture animation at Disney in the early-1960s in films like A Symposium On Popular Songs (1962)…

and the opening titiles for The Misadventures of Merlin Jones (1964)…

Then, of course, there’s Russian animator Yuri Norstein whose dimensional work with paper in a film like Tale of Tales (1979) seems to come from another planet entirely:

Songwriters Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson released an animated video for their holiday single Winter Song. The animation was designed and directed by UK’s Crush Design and Art Direction, a small company of artists with some really amazing graphics and hand drawn typography under their belt. A higher rez version of the video is posted here.

(Thanks Jackie C.)

It’s “Animation Month” for Stu’s Show on Shokus Internet Radio. The current voice of Porky Pig, Bob Bergen, kicks off things with an interview on the show today (Wednesday 1/7), live beginning at 4:00 pm PDT (7:00 pm EDT) and re-broadcast the same time all week. Batman: The Animated Series and Duck Dodgers writer/producer Paul Dini will appear next week (1/14) , followed by writers Mark Evanier, Earl Kress, with voice actors Janet Waldo and Gary Owens on 1/21, and last but not least, yours truly Jerry Beck on 1/28. As always, listeners will be encouraged to call in with their questions and comments on the station’s toll-free telephone number. Click here for more details.

Jim Capobianco, Pixar story artist and director of the short Your Friend the Rat, is nearing the end of production on Leonardo, a personal short of his own. He’s been documenting the production on a production blog at leoanimation.blogspot.com. Last week Jim started a series of blog posts called ” 10 things I’ve learned in making a short film.” The advice in these posts is wonderfully informative and in-depth. Jim openly shares his experiences and offers case-specific examples in every blog entry. Moreover, his tips are applicable not just to short filmmakers but anybody involved in a creative endeavor. As a writer and editor, I was reminded of good work habits that will help forward my book projects. Here are links to the tips that Jim has shared so far:

1) Those helping you need to get something out of it too
2) Have a plan
3) Goals Goals Goals
4) 5 minutes a day
5) Chunks of Time

These pieces (of art) were spotted on display aboard a recent Disney Cruise, for a very high priced auction by the Park West gallery. They were created by M Kungl, a “fine artist” specializing in art deco creations. Cinderella, Tinker Bell and Ariel are given the Miley Cyrus/Annie Leibowitz treatment. Even Jessica is more graphic than usual. What do you think?

Here’s a restored 1936 Fleischer Studios drawing wedge (click photo above to see larger image). It’s made of wood and fitted with ball-bearing’d wheels to ease the rotation of the heavy disc. It also has two inventions of the Fleischer’s employed on it:

1. a lever which when pushed down, will slide the drawings off the pegs in an uniform fashion so as to not rip the peg holes in the paper

2. an inkwell tray with a sliding latch which locks the bottles in place. (This was added later on and wouldn’t have been on an animator’s/asst’s disc)

This contraption began its life in the NY studios at 1600 Broadway, then traveled to their new Miami complex for several years, only to return to Manhattan as the property of Famous Studios. It also comes with Marty Taras’ fieldguide. . .

…and it will be part of It All Started Here, the East Coast animation exhibition curated by Howard Beckerman and J. J. Sedelmaier. Presented by ArtsWestchester in partnership with J. J. Sedelmaier Productions, Inc. and Blue Sky Studios, this citywide celebration of New York’s 103 year relationship with the animation industry will have its opening reception on Saturday, Jan 17th, from 5-8pm at The Arts Exchange, 31 Mamaroneck Ave. in White Plains, New York. This is the kick-off for a month of screenings, parties and displays.

For more info regarding all the It All Started Here festivities check the Facebook page. And, to whet your appetite, JJ sent us a very vintage 70s era Wyler’s Lemonade spot by Jan Svochak that will be in the Commercials section of the film program. . .

The Mass Animation project headed by former Sony Pictures Animation exec Yair Landau continues to receive press, most recently in an editorial that ran in yesterday’s LA Times. To summarize the project via the Times:

Through Facebook, Mass Animation invited the public to create scenes for its first short video, “Live Music.” The company supplied the animation software, the story, backgrounds, characters and audio. Animators whose work is chosen will receive $500 per scene. All told, the project will cost about $1 million and take six months to complete, a fraction of the money and time required for a comparable Hollywood project.

The unsigned Times editorial believes that this is “an early sign of things that are certain to come” as “a new class of creators and entrepreneurs is coming to vie for its share of the global entertainment dollar.” We’ve written about the Mass Animation project before on Cartoon Brew here and here. As I argued in one of those posts, unlike previous technologies, the Internet empowers artists so that they no longer have to settle for exploitative compensation models handed down from above.

The LA Times gets it right in predicting that the days of corporate-driven entertainment are drawing to a close, but it won’t be because of shady production models conceived by the likes of Landau. It’ll be due to the burgeoning generation of savvy entrepreneurial artists who understand that the road to creative success and financial security doesn’t run through Hollywood any more. Execs like Landau are dinosaurs within this new digital/online paradigm, and they’re grasping at straws trying to find “innovative” ways of paying artists cheaply on the Internet. Their attempts at doing this will become increasingly desperate and outlandish as more and more artists recognize the uselessness of such people in an entertainment landscape where the means of production, distribution and promotion are accessible to all. That is the true definition of mass animation.

For an even less-flattering perspective on the Mass Animation project, see yesterday’s post by Steve Hulett on the Animation Guild blog.