Thad Komorowski has posted three examples of animation acting – one each from Disney, WB and MGM – all created without the aid of rotoscoping or performance capture. The foolishness of commentaries by critics like Mick LaSalle and James Lipton becomes only more evident when they are presented with actual examples of the animation medium’s expressive potential. LaSalle believes that the animated film has never “had the ability to show the human face. There was never any point to a close-up in an animated film — there was never really anything to see.” Really, Mr. LaSalle? I think Rod Scribner and Bob McKimson proved you wrong about sixty years ago, as evidenced in the clip from TORTOISE WINS BY A HARE. James Lipton thinks that Robert Downey rotoscoped is a better performance than anything an animator could create. Perhaps he should look at Ken Muse’s anguished animation of Tom in HEAVENLY PUSS. We haven’t even begun to examine all the stellar animation in feature films, but even in these short films, the inanity of LaSalle and Lipton’s opinions are exposed.

I didn’t think of doing this but somebody found Mick LaSalle’s review of THE POLAR EXPRESS. An excerpt is below. If anything can be said to his credit, LaSalle is consistent…well, consistently blind.

It’s also an enchanting, beautiful and brilliantly imagined film that constitutes a technological breakthrough. The one profound limitation of animation — the rigid faces that don’t allow for emotional nuance — is overcome through a new process that allows actors to record their performances digitally onto a computer. These performances — the gestures, the subtleties of facial expression — are then used as the template for the computer-animation process.

It reminds me of Ward Jenkins’s classic blog post about POLAR EXPRESS and how it could have been improved.

Tomorrow evening, July 28, illustrator/toy designer James Jarvis will be having an art show/book signing at Meltdown Comics (7522 Sunset Blvd., LA, CA 90046) from 6-10pm. On display will be numerous pages of development and prepatory drawings (example below) from his recent book project VORTIGERN’S MACHINE AND THE GREAT SAGE OF WISDOM. Reportedly, there’s interest right now in transferring Jarvis’s work to animation. His drawings and toys definitely lend themselves to CG design, and I can imagine his stuff working well if it was animated properly. For more info about the show, visit MeltComics.com or call 323/851.7223.

A prominent Pixar animator emailed me last night with the subject header “This is real” and a link to this must-read-to-believe SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE review of MONSTER HOUSE. I don’t know anything about the reviewer, Mick LaSalle, except that I’ll never be able to take another word this guy writes seriously. It’s one thing to have a subjective view of a film – it’s another to be so glaringly ignorant of the art form you’re discussing to completely dismiss one hundred years of accomplishments and proclaim something so obviously inferior as a technological advance. Here is the most egregious part of LaSalle’s review:

Animated films always had the advantage of being able to go anywhere and show anything, to defy the laws of physics and follow the imagination as far as it could go. But they never had the ability to show the human face. There was never any point to a close-up in an animated film — there was never really anything to see. But with the motion-capture process, real actors give their performances with computer sensors attached to their face and body, and that recorded information becomes the template for the computer animation. If an actor is bug-eyed, the character will look bug-eyed. Moreover, if the actor is thinking or is full of doubt, the technology will be able to render subtle qualities of pensiveness or doubt in the animation.

Imagine what Disney might have done with this in the creation of the Seven Dwarfs. Imagine all the things that will be done with this in the future. “Monster House” looks like the ground floor of something important.

So the only question that remains is, Who’s going to break the news to Ollie Johnston, the last of the Nine Old Men, that all those classic Disney features he animated on were a waste of time because he never had the ability to show an emotive human face? Poor guy, if he’d only had motion-capture to help him animate.

UPDATE: Storyboard artist Jenny Lerew weighs in with an eloquent response to Mick LaSalle’s less-than-eloquent review.

“Montreal -40°C” is a recent music video directed by Louis-Philippe Eno for the Montreal band Malajube. It doesn’t break much new ground, but it creates a nice mood within a sparse setting and the integration of live-action and animated elements is well executed.

(via Feed)

I could write about everything that happened in San Diego during my two-day Con visit, but nothing could possibly say as much as this photo of my new Comic-Con buddies and I. Click on it for its full-size glory. Thanks to Gabe for the photo.

Mark Mayerson rips apart the new book CREATORS: FROM CHAUCER AND DURER TO PICASSO AND DISNEY by British historian and journalist Paul Johnson. According to Mark, the book is riddled with errors about the animated art form, such as:

Winsor McCay is misspelled. Max Fleischer is erroneously credited for Felix the Cat. The Three Little Pigs was released in 1933, not 1932. Alice in Wonderland was released in 1951, not 1957. Carl Stalling was a composer, not an animator. It’s Carl Eduarde, not Edwards. It’s Grim, not Jim, Natwick. It’s Tytla, not Tytler. It’s Ted Sears, not Wears.

What’s particularly disgusting about Johnson’s text is not only the factual inaccuracies, but that he may have deliberately falsified history to promote his personal agendas. For example, his description of how the Disney strike happened is a complete fabrication, but it makes sense that he would write something like that after reading this Wikipedia article about Johnson, that says, “In his Enemies of Society (1977), following a series of articles in the British press, he vehemently attacked the trade union movement for what he saw as its violence and intolerance, terming them as ‘red fascists.’ He also at this time started to inveigh against liberal and left-wing causes.”

Check out Mark’s blog for more of his thoughts on Johnson’s book.

The Ottawa International Animation Festival is right around the corner and the selections for its 2006 edition were announced last week. The full list of films in competition and showcase screenings can be found HERE. My immediate thoughts are that (a.) the selections look really solid and (b.) I’m glad that there’s far fewer films being screened in Ottawa than at Annecy. The Ottawa festival takes place September 20-24.

Chuck Jones once said in an interview that when he wanted to draw believable human characters, he would pattern his drawing after Sam Cobean’s because his “characters always looked to me more like life than life itself.” Prior to becoming a NEW YORKER cartoonist, Sam Cobean had worked in the animation industry at Disney and Columbia. One of Cobean’s earliest print assignments – a WWII-era US military training pamphlet – has now been posted on-line HERE. Subject matter aside, I think Cobean’s drawings are absolutely amazing: funny, direct and super-appealing. If I’d seen any comic book in San Diego with drawings of this caliber, you can bet I’d be raving about it right now.

(via MetaFilter)

Animation Guild president Kevin Koch has written a fascinating post on the Guild blog about how to predict an animated film’s final box office gross based on the opening weekend take. Here’s Kevin’s formula and how it applies to recent CG features:

Total Domestic Gross = Opening Weekend x 3 (for a movie with no legs)

TDG = OW x 4.3 (for a movie with great legs)

Just for fun, here are the opening week multipliers of most CG features:

Polar Express — 7.4
Toy Story — 6.6
Shrek — 6.3
Jimmy Neutron — 5.8
Antz — 5.3
A Bugs Life — 4.9
Finding Nemo — 4.3
Toy Story 2 — 4.3
Madagascar– 4.1
Shrek 2 — 4.1
Monster’s Inc. — 4.1
Hoodwinked — 4.1
Over the Hedge — 4.0
Ice Age — 3.8
The Wild — 3.8
Cars — 3.7 (so far)
The Incredibles — 3.7
Robots — 3.6
Dinosaur — 3.6
Shark Tale — 3.4
Chicken Little — 3.4
Valiant — 3.3
Ice Age 2 — 2.9
Final Fantasy — 2.8
Doogal — 2.1

Question: What does a Lebanese cartoonist do while he’s dodging bombs being dropped on him in Beirut?

Answer: He watches SPONGEBOB and draws funny cartoons. Sounds like a decent plan to me.

See more of Mazen Kerbaj’s comics on his BLOG.

(via BB)

In the 1920s, some kids around the Los Angeles area contributed drawings and stories to “The Junior Times” which was an insert of the LA TIMES newspaper. A number of these kids went on to become famous animation artists, including Ed Benedict, Fred Moore and Bob Clampett. I’d never seen an example of Clampett’s work from this paper, but Filboid Studge’s blog has unearthed a 1926 comic (“The Innocent Pussy”) by a 12-year-old Clampett. He also found a 1928 short story by Clampett. If you like this sort of historical crap, you’re definitely going to want to check this out.

Ok folks, the news that everybody’s been waiting for! ANIMATON BLAST #9 will debut in San Diego this week!!! It’s been a long four years since the last issue and I couldn’t be more thrilled that we managed to finish this new edition in time for the Comic-Con. My printer in Canada says the issue looks terrific and they’re FedEx’ing a batch down to San Diego today. BLAST 9 should be on the convention floor first thing Friday morning. I’m getting less issues sent down than I’d hoped so if you want to make sure you get a copy in SD, make sure to pick it up early. The exclusive seller of BLAST 9 at the Comic-Con is Stuart Ng Books (booth #5113). The rest of the issues are also being sent down from Canada, and if you’ve pre-ordered an issue, I’m expecting that they’ll be shipped the week of July 31-August 4.

Clay Kaytis of the Animation Podcast has compiled a nice round-up of animation-related booths at the Con. Among other things, he notes that LILO AND STITCH director Chris Sanders will be at the Club Coconut booth (#2044).