Disney Animation followed up its CG Prep & Landing TV special from last year with this new 7-minute short, which premiered on Tuesday night during the telecast of A Charlie Brown Christmas on ABC. In case you missed it (I did), they’ve graciously posted it onto YouTube. I loved the first one, and this is a worthy little follow up. Kevin Deters and Stevie Wermers-Skelton wrote and directed. And yeah, that’s Betty White as Mrs. Claus.
(Thanks, Bruce Wright)
The Writers Guild of America, West and the Writers Guild of America, East have announced nominations for outstanding achievement in animation during the 2010 season.
ANIMATION — any length
“Lrrreconcilable Ndndifferences” (Futurama), Written by Patric M. Verrone; Comedy Central
“Moe Letter Blues” (The Simpsons), Written by Stephanie Gillis; Fox
“O Brother, Where Bart Thou?” (The Simpsons), Written by Matt Selman; Fox
“The Prisoner of Brenda” (Futurama), Written by Ken Keeler; Comedy Central
“Treasure Hunt” (Back at the Barnyard), Written by Tom Sheppard; Nickelodeon
The 2011 Writers Guild Awards will be held simultaneously at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel in Los Angeles and the AXA Equitable Center in New York City on Saturday, February 5, 2011.
Here’s a new film from Team Cerf, a group of animation students who recently graduated from the French animation school Supinfocom:
Buck is an ordinary guy. Well…except the “deer head” thing. And today, Buck is gonna spend this cool Sunday afternoon with his girlfriend who’s so happy to see him (she’s pretty much always happy). But when Buck find out that her father is not the sympathetic and tolerant guy he expected, the Sunday afternoon turns really bad.
Although not made by the same group of artists, the film is connected to an earlier short we plugged on Cartoon Brew called Salesman Pete.
CREDITS
Directed by Denis Bouyer, Yann De Preval, Vincent E Sousa and Laurent Monneron
Sound Design by Julien Begault
Music by Yannis Dumoutiers and Mickaël Védrine
Your history lesson for today: Europa Film Archives is a gold mine – posting dozens of rare cinematic treasures from various European archives, including many obscure animated shorts. Lobster Films donated this one: a 1918 syphilis prevention film, On doit le dire (You Have To Say It). It’s quite effective in communicating its message – and its cut-out technique holds up rather well. It was animated by Marius Rossillon (aka O’Galop), creator of the “Michelin Man“!
(Thanks, Floyd Bishop)
This incredibly surreal Cantonese animated film was uploaded yesterday by Hong Kong-based studio Simage Animation & Media. Temple Rider is fairly easy to understand without subtitles – and absolutely beautiful to look at. According to the studio, “the girl in our story (Yan) is a reflection of the new generation in Hong Kong. She is very protective by her family and does not even have the guts to ride on a two-wheel bicycle. One day, she finds a magic temple and her new challenge begins.”
(Thanks, Al Young at Twitchfilm)
This cute music video, Keenan at Sea, was directed by David Cowles and Jeremy Galante for the band The Girls. The girls are a harp and ukulele duo, consisting of David’s daughter, Alison Cowles, and her buddy Mikaela Davis. They’ve been together for a little over a year now and are building a strong following in the Rochester, NY area. The video was put together in After Effects by Jeremy Galante, with some help on the design by Janis Dougherty. David Cowles designed the characters and did all the story boarding.
Jymn Magon has begun a series of live web events aimed at Disney fans, animation aficionados, and aspiring writers & artists. His first event is pulling together a Disney Gummi Bears reunion, as a two-hour webinar featuring photos, artwork and interviews with the creative team that brought this show to life. Basically, people register, then they log in a few minutes before the event, and once it begins they watch the live broadcast with the ability to ask questions in real time.
Guests include:
• Voice of Grammi Gummi – JUNE FORAY
• Voice of Sunni Gummi – KATIE LEIGH
• Series Director/Producer – ART VITELLO
• Layout whiz – ED WEXLER
• Original Background Designer – GARY EGGLESTON
• Title song composers – MICHAEL & PATTY SILVERSHER
• Series writer – MARK ZASLOVE
• Co-creator & story editor – JYMN MAGON
This web event will be presented next Saturday, December 11th, at 5pm Pacific (8pm Eastern). The price is $20 and is limited to 50 participants. Visit Magon’s website for more details and registration.
This looks exciting–Arthur Christmas, arriving December 2011 from Aardman Animations and Sony Animation. Here’s our first glimpse:
ASIFA-Hollywood, the Los Angeles branch of the International Animated Film Society, announced its nominations this morning for the 38th Annual Annie Awards. The award recognizes the best in the field of animation, with categories including best animated feature, television production, commercials, short subjects, video games and outstanding individual achievements. The nominations for Best Animated Feature are Despicable Me (Illumination Entertainment); How to Train Your Dragon (DreamWorks Animation); Tangled (Disney); The Illusionist (Django Films); and Toy Story 3 (Disney/Pixar).
Complete nominee list after the jump:
Continue reading
This gorgeous animated short is an exploration of moving gesture drawings by Brigham Young University animation instructor Ryan Woodward (Osmosis Jones). He explains the creative process behind the piece here.
(Thanks, Anthony Holden and Motionographer)
We may never know what Glen Keane’s version of Rapunzel would have been like – but here’s a taste in a 2005 pre-viz demo (Watch it quick, before Disney removes it), created by Tony Hudson under the direction of Glen Keane, of the update he envisioned:
(Thanks, Edward Himel)
Check out this funny short made by art collective Paper Rad. Here’s an introduction to the Problem Solverz characters
UPDATE: Commenter ALFE points out that Cartoon Network has picked up 11 episodes of this show. Paper Rad and Cartoon Network working together?! A sign of the apocalypse?
Randy Bish (12/4) from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
(Thanks to Jim Lahue and Billie Bowser)
In this age of CG motion capture, old fashioned rotoscope animation looks refreshing. Case in point: Paranoia is an animated short film made by 4 students (Sandeepan Chanda, Sunil Kumar Yadav, Amrita Mukhopadhyay, Nitesh Mishraas) as part of their final year degree project for Mumbai’s Thakur-Toonskool Advanced Animation Academy.
Once again I visited with Stu Shostak this week to do his Internet radio show. During the commercial breaks I peruse Stu’s huge archive of back-issue TV Guide magazines. And, as usual, I found an article worth sharing with Cartoon Brew readers – this time a May 27th, 1961 interview (thumbnail at left, click to enlarge) with actor Jim Backus which makes numerous references to his voicing of Mr. Magoo.
Meanwhile, animator Darrell Van Citters continues to mine the rich history of Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol on his blog dedicated to the UPA holiday special. He just posted a thorough piece about director Abe Levitow. It’s a must-read, with several rare personal photographs from Levitow’s family. Darrell is appearing with layout artist, Bob Singer, actress Marie Matthews (young Scrooge) and hopefully actress Jane Kean at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica on Saturday, December 18th at 4 PM. They’ll be showing the Magoo special on the big screen where it looks particularly amazing. And if you can’t make it, buy the new DVD/Blu-Ray. If you don’t have Darrell’s book, shame on you! If you do, buy another to give as a Christmas gift. You’ll be glad you did.
