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POSTS FOR “May, 2009“Cartoon Brew's home for up-to-the-minute, unedited announcements and press releases direct from industry sources.
May 10, 2009 11:21 pm
Apparently it’s the season for children’s books by animation artists. A couple weeks ago, we wrote about the new kids’ book by Tom Warburton. This week marks the release of a title that really excites me: Let’s Do Nothing! by animator superstar Tony Fucile. Tony has created a funny animated book trailer that is viewable below, and there’s also an interview with him here (click on “download an article”). Click here to order the book on Amazon. 22 Comments » posted in Books, Tony Fucile May 10, 2009 10:00 pm
I previously posted about the Academy’s upcoming Monday night series of 1939 Oscar nominees (May 18th through August 3rd). With each film the Academy will screen a short subject and a Buck Rogers serial chapter. Here’s the cartoons that will run with each feature: Stagecoach – June 1 – THE FILM FAN (Porky Pig) For Of Mice and Men (July 27th) they are running an Our Gang live-action short Dog Daze instead of a cartoon short. Gone with the Wind (May 18th) will have no cartoon due to length of feature. The series ticket is $25. for all ten films (averages out to $2.50 per screening). For more information on this series check the Academy website. 6 Comments » posted in Events May 9, 2009 8:09 pm
The trailer for The Princess and the Frog aired for the first time today on Disney Channel. (Thanks, Aldon Spears) 108 Comments » posted in Disney May 8, 2009 11:37 am
I attended a couple year-end animation school screenings yesterday in Manhattan—one for NYU students and the other for School of Visual Arts students. The focus of this piece today will be on the latter school, which are called the Dusty screenings. School of Visual Arts has the largest animation program in New York. They presented forty-five thesis films last night. The films were a mixed bag, as most school programs are, but the gap between poor and well done was wider than usual, partly because of the size of the program, but also because the bad films were really bad and the good films were jaw-droppingly spectacular. The weakest of the bunch made your eyes pop out. It made me angry to think how somebody could have just spent four years of their life and $150k, and not understand the first thing about filmmaking, storytelling, drawing or animating. (To be fair, I had the same reaction for many of the works at NYU’s screening so the reaction is not exclusive to SVA.) The bottom line is that something is clearly wrong, either with admission standards or instruction. On the other hand, the good films coming out of SVA are outstanding. In a few cases, the films exceeded the quality of anything I’ve seen recently from schools like CalArts and Sheridan, which are considered the North American standard-bearers in traditional animation instruction. The most unique thing about the SVA films I saw is that they don’t rely on conventional student cliches like copying Disney-style expressions or Fifties-style character designs. These students have found their own groove and are exploring personal styles of movement and design not often seen in student films; their inspiration seems to come less from Milt Kahl and more from indie comic artists and illustrators along the lines of Ghostshrimp, Jordan Crane and Tom Herpich. I was unable to sit through the entire four-hour screening, but I think I caught some of the most solid entries, which included Cat by Peyton Skyler, Metromorphosis by Mikhail Shraga, Juxtaposed by Alex (Wager) Myung, The Chicken Prince by Ioana Alexandra Nistor, and Fantastic Plastic by Lev Polyakov. Another entertaining short, Metal Boot by Paul Villeco, has already been posted online: There were two films in particular that floored me last night. The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9 by Jake Armstrong (first image below) and Singles by Rebecca Sugar (second image below). The visual inventiveness of both these films, and their sophisticated marriage of design and animation, was absolutely mindblowing. If Rebecca and Jake represent the future of hand-drawn animation, then the art form is in safe hands.
32 Comments » posted in Shorts, Student May 8, 2009 9:08 am
Yooouuutuuube.com is a site that allows users to create a frame-by-frame video wall display using any YouTube video link. The effect is striking if you plug in a fast-cutting video like the one for this electronica song that uses sounds from Alice in Wonderland. I can envision animators coming up with some novel ways of utilizing this display format. 16 Comments » posted in Internet/Blogs May 8, 2009 3:00 am
Pixar is opening a satellite studio in Vancouver which will be dedicated to producing short subjects. According to a story in The Vancouver Sun, the new studio will not work on Pixar’s feature films, but will make shorts which, general manager Amir Nasrabadi hints, could include TV series.
It sounds like the new studio will be producing DVD bonus materials, at least to start with. After that… who knows? UPDATE: Canadian animation director and historian Mark Mayerson offers his take on Pixar’s new studio. Historically, he writes, “[S]atellite studios tend to stay satellites. Rather than regard the satellites as minor league teams, where talent is developed and then moved up to the majors, the satellites are walled-off as facilities for lower budget work.” 50 Comments » posted in Books, Disney May 8, 2009 12:30 am
Submitted for your educational pleasure – another historical find from our friends at the Van Eaton Galleries: The patent for Max Fleischer’s bouncing ball cartoons (filed in 1925, granted in 1926). Click on thumbnails below to read the convoluted legalese that Fleischer uses to describe his new technique. Note they use Daisy Bell (“A Bicycle Built For Two”) as a sample lyric. Great find – thanks Mike! 4 Comments » posted in Classic May 7, 2009 4:00 pm
Forbes.com just posted a rather flimsy column about animated features, discussing how much money they make and claiming there are “45 or 50 fully 3D feature-length, computer-animated films in production today, ready for release over the next couple of years”. Really? That many? They also posted a slideshow of 10 Animated Movies Worth a Billion. Seems to me they left a few off the list… but why quibble over a couple of billion more or less? |
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