The Spline Doctors have posted a new podcast interview with Mark Andrews (head of story on Ratatouille and The Incredibles) and Pixar story artist Ted Mathot. Haven’t listened to it yet but I think it’s safe bet that the interviewer, Pixar animator Andrew Gordon, asks better questions than this guy.

IGN has an interview with director Andrew Stanton about Pixar’s next feature Wall-E. The following comment from Stanton perfectly encapsulates what sets Pixar apart from almost every other major feature animation studio:

One of the keys to us is we’ve never thought about our audience, or never thought about who our audience might be. We honestly are just making the movies that we want to make, that if we didn’t show it to anybody else but ourselves we’d be fine…[I]t’s all artistic; there’s not a single sort of corporate kind of audience point of view looking at any of the stuff we do — at least within the walls of Pixar.

Incidentally, one can find similar sounding quotes from any number of Golden Age animation directors like Chuck Jones and Tex Avery. Allowing a filmmaker to make the film that they want seems like the most obvious concept, the only requirement being that the filmmaker’s vision has to be trusted. Sadly, with the exception of Pixar, most contemporary animation studios don’t extend that type of trust to their directors.

Postmodern Times is a new series of short animated films presenting “ideas about global consciousness and techniques for social and ecological transformation.” The first episode, “Toward 2012,” introduces the project, explaining concepts from Daniel Pinchbeck’s book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, in the author’s own voice. It’s an unlikely visual delight, combining motion graphics with performance capture and live-action in an inventive graphic package.

Future segments will focus on shamanism, sustainability, alternative energy systems, the Mayan Calendar, quantum physics and synchronicity and human sexuality, and a host of other subjects. The director of the series is Joao Amorim, who works out of Curious Pictures in NYC. The Postmodern series is developed by Amorim, Daniel Pinchbeck, Nikos Katsaounis and Fellipe Barbosa.

Like the Yamamura short I just posted about, Amorim’s Postmodern Times is a work of animation that aims for a purpose beyond entertainment. Don’t get me wrong, entertainment is a calling of the highest order, yet the art of animation is far too often stereotyped as a medium that is capable of only providing cheap laughs and nothing else. As filmmakers like Yamamura and Amorim demonstrate, animation (in all its many forms) is one of our most powerful and accessible forms of contemporary communication. It’s exciting to see filmmakers recognizing the medium’s potential and taking full advantage of its expressive qualities.

I’d heard good things about Claude Chabot’s Apnée but unfortunately missed its screening at Platform. Luckily the film is posted online over HERE. While the film is little more than a graphic gimmick, it’s a well done piece proving that even photorealistic CG can be effective when applied in the proper artistic context. Also worth noting: it’s been pointed out that Apnée bears more than a passing conceptual resemblance to a 2001 animated short: Daniele Lunghini and Diego Zuelli’s Le Foto Dello Scandalo. You can judge for yourself by watching that film on YouTube.

I was talking to my good friend Victor Haboush yesterday and he had an endorsement for Ratatouille that I just had to share. He says, and I quote, “It’s the best animated film since Pinocchio.” That’s a pretty bold statement but Vic is somebody whose taste I trust. And that’s not just because he’s worked on classics like Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty and 101 Dalmatians. Or because he worked on Brad Bird’s first feature The Iron Giant (and which he doesn’t share the same enthusiasm for as he does Bird’s latest). It’s because Vic knows what he’s talking about and because he’s always frank about what he thinks of things. If Vic says it’s good, then it probably is.

I like Casper. But I hate those direct-to-video CG Casper movies.

However, I just became aware of this new Casper movie which played on the Cartoon Network last year. I checked the website, the stills, and the music video. It looks kinda cute. I’m liking the design of the supporting characters. I think maybe I’ll give this one a shot.

Hey, it’s for kids - and we’ve seen worse. And I’m not saying this because I have my own Casper book coming out.

Wanted to put the spotlight this morning on two young animation filmmakers whose work has caught my attention and who I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot more from in the future.

Irene Kotlarz, the director of the upcoming Platform Animation Festival introduced me to the work of Miwa Matreyek, a recent grad out of the CalArts Experimental Animation program whose films combine CG, illustration, live-action and live performance. There’s the sense of a well-formed artistic voice throughout her films, which is uncommon among younger filmmakers. Her work can be viewed at SemiHemisphere.com. Be sure to check out the “Digitopia” video.

Moving on, a few months back I posted a link to a rather experimental bit of CG called RGBXYZ. At the time, I didn’t know who had produced the shorts. It turns out that the filmmaker is David O’Reilly from Ireland. More of his work can be seen at DavidOReilly.com. It’s always exciting to see somebody taking CG into a more stylized direction, especially when they’re as fearlessly experimental as OReilly has shown himself to be. He has a digital short called WOFL which has some fascinating compositional ideas and camera moves. I was also surprised to find out that he did the animation for Shynola’s Beck music video “E-Pro,” which is also posted on his site.

Conan O’Brien recently visited ILM where, among other things, he created some motion capture movement. It’s in the second half of the video below: