Last Saturday, the topic of Bill Griffith’s ZIPPY comic strip was computer animation. Click on the strip below for the full-size version.

(Thanks, Apelad)

During a Disney investor’s conference yesterday, John Lasseter and Ed Catmull announced some major Disney-Pixar news. Notably, that TOY STORY 3 is scheduled for release in 2009. Pixar vet Lee Unkrich (co-director of TOY STORY 2, MONSTERS, INC. and FINDING NEMO) is going solo as director for the first time. He’s working from a script by Michael Arndt (LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE). Also, it was announced that Disney story artist Chris Williams is the new director of AMERICAN DOG, which is set for 2008 release. You may recall the buzz from last December when Chris Sanders was unexpectedly removed from the project (Sanders has now left Disney). More notes from yesterday’s conference can be found in this VARIETY article.

Shane Acker, the director of the atmospheric Oscar-nominated short 9, was a special guest at the ANIMATION SHOW screening in LA a couple nights ago. I had the opportunity to do a short Q&A with him on-stage after the screening and there were lots of excellent questions from the audience. One of the primary topics of discussion was about how 9 is currently being adapted into a full-length animated feature. I can’t think of a better short to be expanded into a feature. There’s plenty of cinematic vision in Shane’s original short as well as the sense of a fully developed world that’s just begging to be explored and fleshed out. Acker is also directing the feature and the producers include Tim Burton and NIGHT WATCH director Timur Bekmambetov.

The feature version of 9 is being animated in Luxembourg at Attitude studios and will be released by Focus Features. During our Q&A, Shane announced for the first time the voice cast for his film. The leads are Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau, Elijah Wood and John C. Reilly. If that voice cast is any indication, this isn’t going to be your typical paint-by-numbers CG feature and that’s something to be excited about. Focus Features, which is the art house arm of Universal Pictures, is also the distributor of Henry Selick’s upcoming flick CORALINE (currently being produced at Laika).

“Hi! I’m Mr. Mo Cap! I’m the future of animation!”

I woke up this morning to the news that Disney is entering a partnership with Robert Zemeckis to create a new in-house studio to produce motion capture films.

Mo-Cap? Oh-Crap! In a parallel universe, (the one in my mind, anyway) Disney was supposed to make a deal with Aardman for clay films… not with Zemeckis and motion capture. There is a part of me that would like to think that Disney bought in with Zemeckis just to keep him and his future “performance capture” projects off the market… but I doubt it. The grosses (and Oscar prestige) of Happy Feet and Monster House are too great for Disney to ignore.

I’m guessing this is an Iger-led business decision, not a Lasseter-led creative one. Let’s not forget the studio’s mandate: Disney must dominate animated features. Number 1 - buy Pixar. Number 2 - buy any other technique or filmmaker encroaching on our dominance in the market. Teaming with Zemeckis is part of that plan.

I hated the look of Polar Express, but could see some potential for the technique in Monster House. However, neither film can be compared to the true art of hand-drawn Disney animation. John Lasseter is commited to reviving traditional hand drawn character animation at the studio and this new business deal does nothing to slow those plans. While this new arrangement doesn’t bode well for Disney’s own (non-Pixar) CG feature projects, it does keep Disney at the forefront of digital filmmaking - with a new twist on an old technology. I can’t help but think that Max Fleischer is looking down on all this and having the last laugh.

Oscar-nominated animation director Michael Sporn has a thought about all the negative reviews that the Nickelodeon feature BARNYARD is receiving:

Too bad. When you have a live-action auteur like Steve Oedekerk come in to write and direct an “animated feature,” surely you’re on the right track. Why should the director know anything about the craft?

My sentiments exactly.

Mick LaSalle is quickly becoming a household name; in the past week, his awful MONSTER HOUSE has been picked up all over the blogosphere including Boing Boing, Cinematical and SFist. Toronto-based writer Jason Anderson, apparently jealous of LaSalle’s infamy, decided to write his own article showing a profound lack of understanding about the animation art. Yesterday, he had an article published on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) website that explains to the world how MONSTER HOUSE and ANT BULLY are revolutionizing animated filmmaking. His classic line is that MONSTER HOUSE offers audiences a “taste of the future technologies that will someday make Pixar’s classics seem as quaint as Dumbo.”

Here are some of the choice cuts from Anderson’s piece:

“While Pixar set the standard, recent films like Warner Brothers’ The Ant Bully and Sony Pictures’ Monster House are pushing big-league Hollywood animation into promising new territory.”

“Though Cars has been a box-office leader this summer - second only to Disney’s live-action phenomenon Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest - Over the Hedge, The Ant Bully and Monster House strike a far better balance between form and content, tweaking the Pixar formula and moving beyond its limitations.”

“[MONSTER HOUSE] does, however, have the best-rendered cast of CGI Homo sapiens to date…”

“At the screening I attended, the children in my row frequently seemed to be on the edge of tears. Sure, they might require psychotherapy in later life, but they’re getting a taste of the future technologies that will someday make Pixar’s classics seem as quaint as Dumbo.”

(Thanks, Peter Fries)

The ARK is a new CG animated short written and directed by Polish artist Grzegorz Jonkajtys. It is scheduled for completion by the end of 2006. The trailer - watch HERE - looks pretty dark and intense. Jonkajtys, who has one other short to his credit (MANTIS), has been working at a digital fx house in the US where he has contributed to films like HELLBOY, GOTHIKA and SIN CITY. The official ARK website has more images and details about the short.

Mark Mayerson has a short but insightful commentary about the (sad) state of CG feature animation in the US and the hope that exists beyond the current slate of mind-numbingly repetitive and uninspired CG filmmaking:

We had A Bug’s Life and Antz and now The Ant Bully. We had Finding Nemo and Shark Tale. We had Madagascar and The Wild. And we’re due for a plague of rats. There’s Ratatouille, Flushed Away, Rats Amore and One Rat Short.

When you take the genre conventions and add settings or subject matter that have already been done, you’re in danger of boring the audience.

Something very interesting happened in the comics field that may relate to what’s going on in animation. From the 1960’s onwards, comics fans argued for longer, more serious works. While Marvel and DC, the two main companies, did adapt to a degree, they stuck with superheroes and continued to market to their established fan base.Cartoonists finally took matters into their own hands and started doing personal work that broke out of genre conventions. Between the importation of Manga and mainstream publisher interest in the graphic novel, Marvel and DC have been reduced to minor players in terms of sales and artistic importance.