Tonight, ASIFA-East handed out prizes for its 43nd annual Animation Festival. The Rauch Brothers took home the Best in Show for their 9/11-themed short John and Joe. Two children’s films that I particularly enjoyed at the screening were Michael Sporn’s inspiring I Can Be President (which was shown in excerpted form) and an adaptation of Mo Willems’ book Don’t Let The Pigeon Stay Up Late directed by Pete List. The latter showed that preschool animation can engage audience participation without talking down to kids.

The most surprising film of the evening was Leah Shore’s Old Man. The “old man” in question is Charles Manson, and Shore uses a breathless array of techniques and styles to illustrate recordings of his schizophrenic ramblings. Though we’ve posted Shore’s films here before—see BOOBatary and Meatwaffle—I’d suggest that Old Man is a breakout work for the young filmmaker. She is a talent to watch.

A full list of winners follows the jump.
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SVA animation student Greg Lytle (previously featured in the Animated Fragments) was recently commissioned to create this quirky trailer for publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s new book The Storytelling Animal. The book, written by Jonathan Gottschall, is about “the integral part that stories play in the human species”. Lytle created the trailer in two and a half weeks, using Photoshop and After Effects.

Seth MacFarlane’s first full-length feature is a hilariously raunchy mix of live action and CG animation. Mark Wahlberg stars as John Bennett, “a grown man who must deal with the cherished teddy bear who came to life as the result of a childhood wish…and has refused to leave his side ever since”. Universal will release Ted on July 13th. The following is an R-rated (for language) redband trailer – you’ve been warned:

Wes Anderson (Fantastic Mr. Fox) returns to animation – stop-motion animation – to cleverly illustrate a child’s conception of how Sony’s Xperia smartphone works. The animation, created at Laika/house, was directed by stop motion veteran Mark Gustafson, who also directed the animation in Fantastic Mr. Fox. Tiny bits of behind-the-scenes footage here. Or just watch the commercial.

(via Mashable)

Beautiful stuff from Studio 4°C (Tekkonkinkreet, The Animatrix, etc.). This is for a new web promotional series called PES: Peace Eco Smile for Toyota Motor Corporation. It’s a romantic-comedy in animation about an alien called PES and a human named Kurumi. Do for Love, directed by Yuichiro Hayashi, has just gone online. It’s in Japanese and looks more like a trailer… but it’s delicious anime eye candy:

(via Anime News Network)

Bi-coastal (NY & LA) commercial shop Buck produced and directed this spectacular 2-1/2 minute spot for online bookseller Good Books. And if you think the piece feels familiarly gonzo, that was intentional. Buck posted this disclaimer at the end of the film:

DISCLAIMER: What you will see is an entirely fictional and completely unendorsed representation. (Though we humbly suggest Hunter S Thompson might have liked it.) We are devoted fans paying homage. No disrespect is intended.

Credits after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

“Van Gogh to Rothko in 30 Seconds” is the title of Michael Langan’s new spot for Art.com‘ s artCircles iPad app. Not only is it a cool visual effect, but the ad does a good job of promoting artCircle’s function, which is to allow people to search for fine art and photography by color and words.

Animator/designer Gabriel H. Fermanelli has turned me on to the commercials he’s producing through Punga, a collective of artists in Buenos Aires who specialize in animation and branding. Fermanelli co-directed a series of spots for Wrangler Jeans (with Tomas Dieguez); this one is my favorite:

Fermanelli’s latest stylishly designed spot is for Volvo, featuring Sloths:

In this new stop-motion commercial, animator Eleanor Stewart uses recycled paper to tell the story of how Hyundai recycles rain water at its factories.

‘Nuff said!

What’s the best way to promote a romantic comedy about prostitution? The producers of the 1963 Billy Wilder film Irma la Douce decided to advertise it with an animated trailer. They commissioned John Wilson and his studio Fine Arts Films to create the piece. Animation director Michael Sporn has scanned the trailer’s artfully designed, never-before-seen storyboards and posted them onto his blog. They can be viewed HERE and HERE.

Okay, here’s another post for the animation historians.

Animation pioneer Max Fleischer was an inventor and he was passionate about science and modern technology. When his cartoon studio became established in the 1920s he created several educational films for various clients – not to mention extra-length films devoted to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and Darwin’s Theory of Evolution (both in 1923). Many of these industrial films are lost.

AT&T has dug into its archives an unearthed a pair of sponsored films Bell Telephone commissioned from the Fleischer studio. Fleischer actually produced four nontheatrical titles for the phone company (How the Telephone Talks, 1924; That Little Big Fellow, 1927; Now You’re Talking, 1927 and Finding His Voice in 1929), but AT&T has posted two. Both are pretty rare – I’d never seen That Little Big Fellow myself. They are meant to educate and inform, and are not as inventive (or comedic) as the Koko the Clown theatrical shorts, but are fascinating nonetheless.

So, if you want to learn a little about the science of telecommunications in the 1920s, here are two of Fleischer’s finest. Thank you AT&T.

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