Author Archives: Jerry Beck

“Nanny McPhee Returns” Titles

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The Submarine Channel posted a nice, in-depth Making Of interview with Paul Donnellon of Voodoodog, about his stop-motion end credit sequence for Nanny McPhee Returns (aka British title Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang). The interview sheds some light on the sometimes difficult working relationship between a movie director and the title designer – especially if the director is unfamiliar with the stop-motion animation process (which was the case here). But what makes this article special is the exclusive inclusion of 2 animatics, storyboard sketches and images of the paper models. Check it out here.

Next week in Burbank: CTN Expo

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This is the Burbank Marriott tonight. It will look nothing like this next week – Friday November 19th through Sunday the 21st – when the CTN Expo is in session. The place will be packed wall-to-wall with animation artists, creators, filmmakers, studio recruiters, art students and cartoon fans.

It’s the “Comic-Con” of animation and animators and the place to be. Cartoon Brew is sponsoring the animators’ lounge, I’m moderating a panel (interviewing the principals of Spain’s Headless Studios), there will be special guests and special events including screenings of The Illusionist, CandyMan and Tick Tock Tale, live drawing demonstrations, raffles, appearances all weekend from Jean Giraud “Moebius”, Chris Sanders, Ronnie del Carmen, Louie del Carmen, Enrico Casarosa, Chris Wedge, Joseph Gilland – just to name a few.

The exhibitor room includes booths from Walt Disney Animation, Warner Bros., Stuart Ng, Pascal Campion, Dean Yeagle, Sony Pictures Animation, Cal Arts, Titmouse, Animation Mentor, Nancy Beiman and over 100 others.

Panels include a preview of Warner Bros. new Looney Tunes Show (Friday @ 12:30pm), Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois interviewed by Charles Solomon (Friday @ 6pm), Jill Culton interviewing Peter de Seve and Carter Goodrich (Saturday @ 2pm), and dozens more seminars, discussions and demonstrations. The complete schedule is now online.

The CTN Expo II will be held next weekend in Burbank. For more information, click here. My advice: Buy your tickets now!

“Sandman” opening titles

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This past Monday we posted the trailer for Germany’s new stop mo feature, The Sandman and the Lost Sand of Dreams. Delighted by the positive comments it recieved, co-director Sinem Sakaoglu has sent us the first four minutes of the film and a little bit of info about the title sequence:

“It is an homage to the TV Sandman and the sand dreams are made of! Thus the more limited animation and the variations on the famous title song of the series. We also wanted to celebrate handcraft. One might say we took it too literally, but the hands appearing are really the hands of the animators who animated those shots. Pretty much everything was done in camera for this sequence, including the animation of the sand on glass. We did composite some layers together digitally though. Three very talented animators worked on the title sequence: Fritz Penzlin, Bernhard Schmitt, Dobrin Yanev. The clip also includes the opening shot of the film. Hope you enjoy it!”

Winnie The Pooh (2011)

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The Associated Press has posted the first image (above) from Disney’s forthcoming old school 2D Winnie The Pooh feature, scheduled for release next summer. This is the flick most of The Princess and the Frog crew moved over to. Here are some choice excerpts from Derrik J. Lang’s AP story:

The new “Winnie the Pooh,” the first big-screen “Pooh” adventure from Disney animators in more than 30 years, will more closely resemble the classic short films from the 1960s and ’70s. “We wanted to create a movie for the big screen that had the charm and wit of those original shorts,” said Peter Del Vecho, the film’s producer. “What originally endeared all of us – adults and children – to these characters was that they were stuffed animals that came to life in the imagination of a child. We wanted to rekindle that imagination in a big way.”

“Winnie the Pooh,” loosely based on five stories from A.A. Milne’s books, finds Pooh, Tigger, Rabbit, Piglet, Kanga, Roo, Owl, Eeyore and Christopher Robin searching for a new tail for Eeyore in a watercolour-drenched Hundred Acre Wood. The gang will also hunt for a mysterious creature called a Backson, briefly mentioned in 1928′s “The House at Pooh Corner.”

While this version of “Pooh” won’t be generated by a computer or projected in 3-D, Del Vecho cautioned it wouldn’t simply be a redux of past “Pooh” projects. He said the film, spearheaded by Disney and Pixar animation chief John Lasseter, will feature five new original songs and a faster pace punctuated with humour that’s appropriate for modern audiences.

UPDATE: Just recieved this larger publicity image from the forthcoming film (below). See the trailer here.

“Horse Glue” by Stephen Irwin

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Stephen Irwin, the innovative director of The Black Dog’s Progress, has created a new experimental short made up of two films which unfold together within the same space, their narratives becoming intertwined. Horse Glue was commissioned by Animate Projects for Channel 4 and had its world premiere in Ottawa last month.

Glue uses a combination of cut-out and 2D hand-drawn animation with photography. In contrast, Horse is a disjointed and roughly spliced together film, with a soundtrack that has worn away to hiss and crackle. Animate Projects has just posted the entire film online (trailer above), accompanied by an interview with Stephen and an essay about the film by curator Angela Kingston.

Trailers you don’t need to see…

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… but we’ll show them to you anyway.

First up, they’ve remade Madagascar as a live action movie. No, not really, but The Zookeeper is the first hybrid CG/live action talking animal movie of 2011 and those things usually do well no matter how much I hate them:

More exciting is the prospect of Kung Fu Panda 2. However, this teaser trailer is sort-of a cheat – ya think?

LAAF – The 2nd Los Angeles Animation Festival

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The 2nd Los Angeles Animation Festival will take place at the Cinefamily / Silent Movie Theatre in Hollywood (at 611 N. Fairfax) December 2nd through 5th. Its shaping up to be quite an event.

The festival will feature a tribute to stop motion clay innovator Will Vinton, including a screening of his 1986 feature The Adventures of Mark Twain (in 35mm). Opening night will premiere Jan Svankmajer’s new feature Surviving Life (photo above) and the fest will premiere screenings of several contemporary international animated features, including the Japanese anime mindblowers Redline and Midori-Ko, the Chinese independent feature Piercing 1, the Czech stop-mo In The Attic and Sylvain Chomet’s latest masterpiece The Illusionist. Teddy Newton from Pixar will do a presentation on the making of his short Day & Night. There will panels, parties, shorts and several more features, including two with live musical accompaniment — independent animator Brent Green’s experimental feature Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then accompanied by Green and members of Fugazi and Giant Sand; and Rene Laloux’s 1973 masterpiece Fantastic Planet with live score by LA indy band Jesus Makes The Shotgun Sound. LAAF will also feature panels, parties and these three contests:

“Unfinished Masterpieces”, an opportunity for animators to submit their unfinished projects. Directors of the chosen projects will be allowed to present their work.

“Character Screen-test”, a contest where the Best Character gets the prize.

“Dangerous Experiments”, an anything goes contest that encourages the most way-out interpretations of the word animation.

A 5-day festival pass is $125, $85 for students with valid ID, while supply lasts. Tickets for most shows are $10. For aspiring filmmakers, there’s a November 15th deadline looming for submissions to several contest categories. Further information on the contests, including submission deadlines, can be found at the festival website. Entry is free and all selected works will be programmed in front the festivals features and special presentations. Films will be judged and winners picked by industry juries including animation filmmakers Maureen Selwood, Sheila Sofian, Jen Sachs, Mark Osbourne, Corky Quakenbush, Peter Hannan and others to be announced.

The festival is being produced by co-directors Miles Flanagan, owner and lead director of Parallax Studioworks and John Andrews, executive producer of production company ka-chew!, in conjunction with their partner, the non-profit Cinefamily. For more information on festival passes and programming Click here.

The Sandman and the Lost Sand of Dreams

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Rankin-Bass lives!

Actually, this has nothing to do with Rankin-Bass – but you can see the influence. Sinem Sakaoglu (The Three Robbers) and Jesper Møller (Asterix and the Vikings) have been busy the last three years working on what is sure to be a new children’s classic, The Sandman and the Lost Sand of Dreams, Germany’s first stop-motion feature. Here’s the trailer:

The film opened six weeks ago in Germany and Austria. Ms. Sakaoglu sent us some further information:

“Sandman is a cult TV figure (originally East German) here, who’s been putting German kids to sleep with his sand for the last 51 years. While he is one of the main characters in the film, he is not the protagonist of the story. It’s about Miko, a little boy overcoming his fears and the power of dreams…”

Check the film’s website for some great behind the scenes photos from the production, or watch the video below. Let’s cross our fingers that someone picks up this little gem up for US distribution.

Cool “Scooby Doo” titles by Six Point Harness

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I’m no fan of Scooby Doo, but if Warner Bros. ever decides to do a series or movie with character designs as cute and stylized as these, I’d quickly change my mind. Here’s the very appealing opening title sequence from the new direct-to-video Scooby Doo: Camp Scare, designed by Peter Girardi, Dan Krall, Pete Oswald and Dexter Smith and animated by the gang at Six Point Harness: