Author Archives: brewmasters

“21 Years in 7 Minutes” By Caroline Torres

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Welcome to the third annual Cartoon Brew Student Animation Festival. Over the course of the next ten weeks, we’ll be debuting ten remarkable student animated shorts.

We’re launching the festival today with 21 Years in 7 Minutes by Caroline Torres (Rhode Island School of Design). Autobiographical stories are a staple of student filmmakers, but rarely have we seen one as confident and original as this one. Torres’ fast-paced accounting of her life uses superb visual storytelling filled with comedy and heart, and pairs it with a distinctively quirky animation style that complements the simple line artwork. The film is a pleasant reminder that life is most often about friendship in all its many forms, from boy-next door crushes to BFFs who share in everything to animation school friendships in which people often connect through their characters.

Click HERE to meet the filmmaker Caroline Torres and comment on the film.



The Cartoon Brew Student Animation Festival is made possible by the generosity of our presenting sponsor JibJab.

Selections for Cartoon Brew’s 3rd Student Animation Festival

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We’re delighted to announce the selections for Cartoon Brew’s third annual Student Animation Festival. This year we topped over 200 submissions, which made programming this year’s festival a challenging task. We chose filmmakers whose work displayed confidence and maturity while being unafraid to experiment with new ideas, techniques and styles.

(A brief note: for the first time, we have multiple selections from two schools: Rhode Island School of Design and Sheridan. In particular, there are three films from Sheridan. We received a record two-dozen entries from Sheridan this year, and we appreciated the diverse range of voices coming out of there, as well as the consistently high technical proficiency of the school’s students.)

Each of the ten filmmakers below will receive $300. Further, we’re introducing a new twist this year. After all the films have debuted, we will conduct a poll where viewers can vote for their favorite film. The winner of the audience choice award will receive an additional $500.

Cartoon Brew’s Student Animation Festival is made possible by JibJab, our major sponsor for this year’s festival. JibJab has consistently demonstrated generous support for young and emerging talent, and we are proud to recognize them as the sponsor of our festival.

Once again, a hearty congratulations to this year’s selections in our Student Animation Festival. Mark your calendars: the first film will debut on Cartoon Brew on Monday, July 2.


The Ballad of Poisonberry Pete
Directed by Uri Lotan, Adam Campbell, Elizabeth McMahill
School: Ringling College of Art and Design
Country: USA (Florida)


Ballpit
Directed by Kyle Mowat
School: Sheridan College
Country: Canada


Gum
Directed by Noam Sussman
School: Sheridan College
Country: Canada


Money Bunny Blues
Directed by Ellen Coons
School: College for Creative Studies
Country: USA (Michigan)


Otzi
Directed by Evan Red Borja
School: School of Visual Arts
Country: USA (New York)


Peace One Day
Directed by Angie Phillips and Phoebe Halstead
School: Kingston University
Country: UK


Pest
Directed by Nooree Kim
School: Sheridan College
Country: Canada


Troubleshooting
Directed by Eric Ko
School: Rhode Island School of Design
Country: USA (Rhode Island)


Snail Trail
Directed by Philipp Artus
School: Academy of Media Arts Cologne
Country: Germany


21 Years In Seven Minutes
Directed by Caroline Torres
School: Rhode Island School of Design
Country: USA (Rhode Island)

Submit to Cartoon Brew’s 3rd Student Animation Festival

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Cartoon Brew Student Animation Festival

We’re excited to announce a call for entries for our third annual Student Film Festival, a yearly showcase of outstanding student films from around the globe. We’ve received hundreds of submissions in our first two years that have resulted in a fantastic selection of films, and we hope to continue that trend this year. Click to see the 2010 lineup and 2011 lineup.

Our mission for the festival is simple: to share student-produced animated shorts with the widest possible community of industry artists, fellow students and animation fans. And not just any student films, but films of the highest caliber…the most original, the most thought-provoking, the ones that make us laugh hardest and engage us emotionally. Of course, we present student films throughout the year on Cartoon Brew, but we want the festival to direct even greater attention to the exciting work being produced by today’s up-and-coming filmmakers.

Filmmakers who are selected to screen in Cartoon Brew’s Student Animation Festival will each receive $300. We’re also adding a new twist this year. After all the films have debuted, there will be an audience poll where Cartoon Brew viewers can vote on their favorite film. The winner of the audience choice award will earn an additional $500.

Here’s all the info you need:

RULES

1. It has to be animated. (Obviously.)
2. It has to be a student film. (Even more obvious.)
3. Must have been completed after May 1, 2011.
4. Must be an online premiere. (Films that are accessible online to the public will not be considered.)
5. Submissions due by Sunday, June 3, 2012Thursday, May 31, 2012

SUBMIT
To submit, send an email to studentfest (at) cartoonbrew (dot) com with the following info:

• Your name, school and country
• Film title and synopsis
• Private link and password (ex: Password-Protected Vimeo link, Private or Unlisted YouTube link, or a website download link).

WHAT HAPPENS IF I’M SELECTED
Up to 12 films will be selected for the festival. We will announce the festival selections in early June. Screenings will begin on Cartoon Brew in late June. Every film that is selected to screen as part of the Cartoon Brew Student Film Festival will be paid a screening fee of $300(US). We don’t assume any exclusivity or ownership of your film. In other words, you are still free to submit to festivals, sell it to distributors, and post it anywhere else on-line shortly after its online debut in our festival.

ONE FINAL NOTE
Many students are informed in school that posting their film on-line ruins their festival chances. We’ve explored the issue before by speaking with festival directors and recommend reading this. None of the major animation festivals enforce such a rule today. However, some non-animation festivals, like Sundance, ask that a film be taken off-line during the course of their festival. As far as we know, the only awards organization that strictly demands films remain off-line is the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, so if you’re trying to qualify for a Student Academy Award, you don’t want to post your film on-line. To understand the issues better, read this case study written by Avner Geller, who co-directed Defective Detective, a film that appeared in last year’s Student Animation Festival as well as won a Student Academy Award.

(Submit photo via Shutterstock)

HOUSEKEEPING: How to Send Stories to Cartoon Brew

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Have an animated film or a piece of news to share? Here are some helpful tips for submitting to Cartoon Brew:

* If you are submitting a news item, DO NOT SUBMIT using our personal contact forms or Twitter accounts. Submissions via our personal forms will be junked. Use our SUGGEST A STORY form, which is conveniently located in the right sidebar.

* An easier way to get our attention is to submit items via Cartoon Brew’s Facebook page. The benefit is that even if we can’t post it, it becomes part of the public discussion among over 5,500 Brew readers. Our FB page is quite active and we look at it regularly.

* If you have a company press release, submit it to our CB BIZ news editor Chris at PR [at] cartoonbrew [dot] com

* Do not send links to film fundraising campaigns. We haven’t linked to a single fundraising campaign in over two years, yet we still get multiple fundraising submissions on a daily basis. We will under no circumstances link to a third-party fundraising campaign on Kickstarter, IndieGogo or any such similar site. We instituted the no-fundraising policy as the fairest solution to deal with the barrage of requests. If a film project is newsworthy for a reason other than the fact that it needs money, we may write about it AFTER the campaign’s completion (or after its fundraising goal has been met), or we’ll post about the project without promoting the fundraising effort.

Today’s CB Biz Roundup

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Today’s news from around the industry, only on CB Biz:

→ Pixar Releases Upcoming Film Slate at CinemaCon

→ Columbia College Chicago Honors Outstanding Alumni At Commencement Ceremonies, Including Disney Animator Marlon West

→ The One Club Announces Judging Panel For 4th Annual One Show Awards

→ Anaheim’s Promenade Gallery Hosts Disneyland-themed “Rat Trap Gallery” Show

→ New Zealand Animation/VFX Company Toybox Hires Bruce Carter & Leoni Willis

→ DreamWorks Animation Releases iOs App For “Rise of the Guardians”

→ Korea Announces Government Funding For Dubbing Of Korean Films For Foreign Release

→ Call For Entries: Philadelphia Film & Animation Festival

→ Call For Entries: Athens Animation Festival

→ New York Int’l Children’s Festival Invited Adults For Claymation Workshop Benefit For Scholarship Program

Get Ready To Submit To Cartoon Brew’s Student Animation Fest

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Quick reminder: we’re soon going to begin accepting submissions for the 3rd annual Cartoon Brew Student Animation Festival. Last year’s selections were fantastic and we’re planning to put together another showcase of outstanding student animation from around the globe. If you’re finishing up a student film this year, we hope you’ll submit to Cartoon Brew’s festival. Any student film completed after May 1, 2011 and not yet posted on-line is eligible. Full details coming soon!

Music Video Roundup #10

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Simian Mobile Disco by Cerulean

Jack Featherstone and Will Samuel designed, directed and animated this abstract video at London’s ISO studio. (Thanks to Felipe Robles for the link.)

Cpt. Metal by Die Arzte

Vienna, Austria collective LWZ, comprised of Martin Lorenz, Stefan Salcher and Markus Wagner, created Cpt. Metal for German punk band Die Arzte.

Te Koop / A Vendre by Pree

Maxwell Sorensen animated this piece over the last two months, during evenings and on weekends. Created entirely in Photoshop and After Effects after scanning “a big pile of real paper textures to keep it more organic”. Sorensen spends his days interning on stop-motion projects at Hornet Inc.

The Rifle’s Spiral by The Shins

That’s Jamie Caliri‘s new video for Portland-based indie rock band, The Shins. Caliri, best known for his Lemony Snicket end titles, created this surreal stop-motion animation inspired by Edward Gorey illustrations and Martin Scorsese’s Hugo. Go here to watch the making of video.

March in Review: Glen Keane Left Disney and Some Other Stuff Happened

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This past month we not only commemorated Cartoon Brew’s eighth anniversary, we also achieved the highest month of traffic in our site’s history. The twenty posts below were the individual posts that you viewed most frequently during March. Three of the posts, including the top one, were related to Glen Keane’s departure from Disney, but the pageviews were spread out across plenty of other big stories as well.

1. EXCLUSIVE: The Full Text of Glen Keane’s Disney Resignation Letter
2. The Sweatbox, The Documentary That Disney Doesn’t Want You to See
3. Digital Domain’s John Textor Brags to Investors About Exploiting Animation Student Labor
4. The Poster For The Walt Disney Biopic You’ll Never See
5. The Failure of John Carter and Analyzing Andrew Stanton
6. Why Kids Today Think Disney Was A Jew-Hating, Hitler-Loving Racist
7. How Much Money Animated Shorts Earn on YouTube
8. BREAKING: Glen Keane Left Disney Today
9. First Look at Genndy Tartakovsky’s Hotel Transylvania
10. Ricky Garduno, RIP
11. Pete Docter’s Flipbook Animation Set
12. Dick Clark is Selling His Flintstones Home
13. FIRST LOOK: Rise of the Guardians Trailer
14. Let’s Cast the Walt Disney Biopic
15. An Open Letter to Glen Keane
16. EXCLUSIVE: Nickelodeon’s New Shorts Program
17. Frankenweenie Teaser
18. Japanese Brave trailer
19. Brad Bird on Ollie Johnston
20. The Lorax Talkback

Cartoon Brew is Eight Years Old

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Eight year old birthday card

Cartoon Brew is eight years old today, and for what it’s worth, that makes us the longest-continually operating animation blog on the Internet. We had no idea what would happen when we launched the Brew in 2004, but we’re proud that it’s lasted as long as it has and that you’ve allowed us to be a voice for the animation community. In the past few years, we’ve launched new initiatives like CB Biz and the Cartoon Brew Student Animation Festival, but we’ve got even bigger things in store for this year, including a major site overhaul.

Whether you’ve been with us since the pre-Brew era when we published our thoughts as Cartoon Research and Animation Blast or you’ve joined us more recently, we have a simple message to our readers. We want to thank each of you very sincerely for reading Cartoon Brew. We know that you have many choices today for animation news, and we’re honored and humbled that so many of you have chosen the Brew as one of your sources. The Cartoon Brew team spends large portions of time working on the site to keep the content fresh and everything running smoothly, and we intend to continue doing that for a long time to come.

Jerry Beck and Amid Amidi,
The Brewmasters

UPDATE: Our friends at the French animation blog Catsuka remind us that they’re twelve years old. So that make us the second longest-continually operating animation blog.

2012 So Far…

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Through the first 70 days of 2012, we’re averaging 2.8 posts per day on Cartoon Brew’s homepage. That’s not counting all the posts on our industry news section CB Biz. For the curious reader, here are Cartoon Brew’s most viewed and most commented posts through the first two-and-a-half months of 2012.

MOST VIEWED POSTS IN 2012
1. Ricky Garduno, RIP
2. A Tale of Two Titmouses: A Cartoon Brew Investigation
3. Preview: 2012 US Animated Features
4. Why Kids Today Think Walt Disney was a Jew-Hating, Hitler-Loving Racist
5. Web Premiere: “Wild Life” by Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby
6. Stephen Colbert’s Must-See Interview with Maurice Sendak
7. Rediscovered: Long-Lost Version of “The Hobbit” by Gene Deitch
8. The End of the Creator-Driven Era in Animation
9. Out of Context Animation
10. Ghostshrimp Exposes the Hypocrisy of Cartoon Network

MOST COMMENTED POSTS IN 2012
1. A Tale of Two Titmouses: A Cartoon Brew Investigation – 350 comments
2. Ghostshrimp Exposes the Hypocrisy of Cartoon Network – 135 comments
3. New Brave Trailer – “The Prize” – 112 comments
4. Lou Dobbs Says “The Lorax” and “Arrietty” Indoctrinate Children – 100 comments
5. My Favorite Super Bowl Commercial – 95 comments
6. The Oscars: Animated Feature Nominees – 90 comments
7. Academy Award Talkback; RANGO and MORRIS LESSMORE win – 86 comments
8. Joe Murray’s Kaboing Goes Kaput – 75 comments
9. “The Adventures of Tintin” Wins Golden Globe – 74 comments
10. How Cartoon Brew Spawned Bronies – 68 comments

Music Video Round-up #6

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Easy Way Out by Gotye

Director Darcy Prendergast of Melbourne, Australia-based Oh Yeah Wow had one golden rule for this music video: “Nothing should be created in a computer. All of the elements were created in camera, then masterfully assembled by visual effects wizard Andrew Goldsmith. We animated the plasticine blood, the cat, the flames, the smoke–all in stop motion with a motion control set up. Andrew then composited all these elements together.”

Rock It For Me by Caravan Palace

French artist Ugo Gattoni came up with the concept for this boldly art directed video that was directed by Gattoni, Guillaume Cassuto, and Jeremy Pires.

Love Is Making Its Way Back Home by Josh Ritter

This stop-mo video was created with over 12,000 pieces of construction paper, shown as it was shot, with no effects added in post. A collaboration between director Erez Horovitz and animator Sam Cohen.

Romantic Crap by Some Toir

The animation for the Russian video blends pixel, stop motion, and live action. The director is Yegor Lymarev, and the animation is by Alexei Medvedev.

New Sum (Nous Sommes) by Hey Rosetta!

Using a roto-scoping technique similar to Waking Life or Scanner Darkly, Jesse Davidge directed this video at Blatant Studios, in Vancouver, BC.

Academy Award Talkback; RANGO and MORRIS LESSMORE win

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UPDATE #1: The Oscar for Best Animated Feature was awarded to RANGO.

Accepting the award, Verbinski said, “Someone asked me if this film was for kids. I don’t know, but it was certainly created by a bunch of grown-ups acting like children.”

Rango

UPDATE #2: The Oscar for Best Animated Short was awarded to The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg (Moonbot Studios).

Joyce and Oldenburg seemed genuinely surprised at winning the honor. Joyce told the crowd “Look, we’re just these two swamp rats from Louisiana. We love the movies more than anything… and there are thousands of men and women, from the beginning of cinema, who inspire us. Everything we do everyday is to honor those people and those films. This is incredibly grand.”

In case you forgot, here were the results of Cartoon Brew’s Oscar Survey.
Read Cartoon Brew’s interviews with the five nominees of the Best Animated Short category. Congratulations to the winners and nominees.

Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis (Wild Life)

Enrico Casarosa (La Luna)

Grant Orchard (A Morning Stroll)

Patrick Doyon (Sunday)

Bill Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg (The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore)