My good friend, Miles Thompson, a full-time painter and sometimes animation artist, is currently working on his next solo art show, which will debut at La Luz de Jesus in September 2007. The theme of the show is “California” and he’s set up a blog HERE to share his research for the paintings and to post finished work for the show. Unlike many tributes to the Golden State, Miles seems to be digging beyond the superficial aspects of California and exploring the rich heritage and character of the state. It’s shaping up to be an excellent art show.

Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt have announced the line-up for the third edition of the ANIMATION SHOW. Having seen all the films in the line-up with the exception of one, let me just say that this is a superb program. It’s a perfect sampling of the indie animation scene and includes a bit of everything: hand-drawn, CG, stop-motion, abstract, it’s all here. Films include Run Wrake’s RABBIT, Joanna Quinn’s DREAMS AND DESIRES, Don Hertzfeldt’s EVERYTHING WILL BE OK, Shane Acker’s NINE and Ga”lle Denis’s CITY PARADISE.

The touring schedule of the upcoming ANIMATION SHOW is different as well. They’re switching from conventional art house runs to a “music concert”-style schedule in which they’ll play limited one or two-night engagements throughout the US. LA folks will get the show for two nights: February 7, 2007 at Royce Hall in UCLA and February 15 at the Rialto in Pasadena. The complete tour schedule can be found HERE. If it hits your area, I highly recommend checking it out.

What does it feel like to be nominated for an animated short Oscar? Atlanta animation director Ward Jenkins was curious to find out so he interviewed the distinguished John Canemaker, who was not only nominated but also won the Oscar this year for his short THE MOON AND THE SON: AN IMAGINED CONVERSATION. John describes in detail the whirlwind activities leading up to the ceremony and it’s a fun read. Part one is posted HERE and Ward promises that part two of the interview will be posted on his blog next week.

Who ever said being a distributor of animated films was boring work? Here’s an amusing newspaper article from a few months back about Russian animation distributor Films by Jove and the full-fledged sting operation they set up to catch a guy in LA who was pirating their dvds.

Talk about scraping the bottom of the artistic barrel: the Museum of Television & Radio in Beverly Hills is currently hosting an exhibit of “pop surrealist” art inspired by FAMILY GUY. The show, “What The Deuce Are You Staring At!?!”, runs through January 21, 2007. After January, the art goes on a tour of animation galleries including Animation Connection in Toronto, The Linda Jones Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, The Animation Art Gallery in London, The Silver K Gallery in Melbourne, Australia, and Van Eaton Gallery in Sherman Oaks. To check out some of the pieces, go HERE.

Feel good this holiday season by participating in FPS MAGAZINE’s annual charity auction which runs through November 29. All proceeds, less eBay and Paypal fees, will be donated to the Canadian Cancer Society. The auction includes animation-related books, dvds, software and other goodies. Item listings and additional info are at the FPS website.

One of the most interesting animation stories of ‘06 took place last February when Disney acquired the rights to one of Walt’s earliest creations, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Unlike Universal, who owned the character for decades and did nothing with it, Disney has recognized the potential market for this classic character and is planning a major Oswald push in 2007.

A Disney insider writes to let me know that last week they held an internal launch party for Oswald at Disney Consumer Products in Burbank. The party, which included a live performance by the Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA, who mixed classic Oswald cartoons with contemporary music, also featured a gallery exhibit displaying some of the upcoming merchandise. Products include vinyl toys, clothing and stationary. From the exhibit: “Oswald will benefit from a more refined retail launch, focusing on the ‘couture’ market…this equates to high-end merchandise from renowned designers, ranging from apparel to accessories.” Disney also just announced an ‘07 dvd release of Oswald cartoons. From the looks of the merchandise, it’s nice to see that Disney is staying relatively faithful to the character’s roots and also keeping him black-and-white. And thankfully, no baggy pants or backwards baseball cap…yet.

Our source sent us some video of the RZA at the Oswald party as well as pics of the merchandise. I’ve posted it all below:

Indie filmmaker/stick-figure master/ANIMATION SHOW co-founder Don Hertzfeldt talks extensively about his work in this new AWN interview. Good stuff throughout. I particularly agree with his thoughts on computer animation:

CG models and perfect life drawings leave me cold. All that a realistic, representational drawing of a bicycle tells me is, “bicycle.” There’s so much more mood and psychology to bring to the film if your artwork communicates more than just nouns. It’s why photorealism in animation is usually so boring and pointless. It’s all nouns. Ninety percent of CG animation is all nouns. I can’t feel anything going on behind the image.

The point of this medium is you can do literally anything, you can show us amazing things we’ve never seen before. I want to see animators change the language of cinema! Seriously, we have the means. Push animation deep into the wild new places where the surrealists took their reaction to photography. Rock the damn boat. If you’re going to strip animation of all its subjective power and just show me what things look like in real life you might as well be shooting live action.