This video mashup by Nick Tierce of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times + Tron is pure win!
(via Kottke)
Charlie Chaplin’s “Tron”
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Monthly Archives: November 2010
Ten Animated Shorts Make the Oscar Shortlist
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced this morning the shortlist of ten animated shorts for the 2010 Best Animated Short category. Members of the Short Films and Feature Animation Branch will now vote one more time to narrow it down to five nominees. The final vote, which determines the winner, is open to all Academy members provided that they have watched every nominated short.
We published the list of 33 qualifying shorts a few weeks ago on Cartoon Brew. The ten shorts that were voted to move forward are below. Did your favorites make the cut?
Coyote Falls
Director: Matthew O’Callaghan
United States, 2010, 3 min
Link to filmmaker website
Day & Night
Director: Teddy Newton
United States, 2010, 6 min
Link to filmmaker website
Where Cartoon Brew Readers are From: 2010 Edition
With 2010 drawing to a close, I thought it might be fun to check our stats and find out which studios and schools have driven the most traffic to Cartoon Brew between January and November 2010. We published a similar study of reader traffic for a shorter period of time in early 2009. Since that time, our traffic has skyrocketed, and there have been a lot of shake-ups in the rankings.
Whereas in early 2009, Pixar was the studio network that visited Cartoon Brew most, today it is Disney, followed by DreamWorks. Viacom and Turner have also jumped ahead of Pixar in the number of their visits. All five of these companies have recorded visits in the tens of thousands, as has Blue Sky Studios. The schools that visit us the most are CalArts, Savannah College of Art and Design and Ringling. I limited the list below to entertainment and media companies that have generated at least 1,000 visits in 2010.
See the full list of companies and schools after the jump, along with more analysis of the numbers.
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Financial Review spots by Kapow Pictures
Sydney, Australia-based Kapow Pictures wrapped a series of five spots for the Financial Review. The handsome Catch Me If You Can-styled spots were created in After Effects.
CREDITS
Client: The Financial Review
Agency: Brand Central
Production Company: Kapow Pictures
Director: Mark Gravas
See the other four commercials in the campaign after the jump.
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Doug – the Movie
No, it’s not the latest Nickelodeon Movie, but maybe it should be. It’s the third viral comedy video from “Dr. Coolsex” – a NYC sketch comedy trio consisting of Alex Charak (who plays Doug), Dustin Drury (playing Roger), and Greg Murtha (Chalky). This trailer was co-conceived with Alan Starzinski (Boomer), and that’s actress Janet Passanante playing Patti Mayonaise.
Cabarga’s XXX “Topless Summer Love Girls”
This is one of the strangest things I’ve ever plugged on Cartoon Brew. We all know Leslie Cabarga as the author of The Fleischer Story, the best history of the Max Fleischer studio ever published. More recently Leslie blessed us with The Logo, Font, & Lettering Bible, which presents comparisons of early Mickey Mouse comic strip inking of Floyd Gottfredson, and the classic Betty Boop inking of Fleischer animator Willard Bowsky to how various type faces are rendered. Now Leslie’s got a new book and it’s slightly OT, thoroughly XXX and totally NSFW.
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“Flicks: How the Movies Began” by Arnold Schwartzman
Flicks: How the Movies Began is an interactive 12-page book published by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2001. The designer of the book,
(Thanks, Philip Hunt)
“Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea” by Guy Delisle
(Photo by Jason Garber)
A guest book review by our friend Linda Simensky, PBS’s senior director of children’s programming:
North Korea has been in the news lately. So where do this country and animation intersect? You probably didn’t know there is (or at least was) at least one animation studio there. For an interesting look at North Korea through the eyes of an animator who worked there, check out the graphic novel, Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea
Delisle, a French Canadian cartoonist, was sent by a French animation studio to be an overseas supervisor at Scientific and Educational Film Studio of Korea (SEK) in Pyongyang. In this graphic novel, he writes about his experiences there, both in animation and in his attempts to see North Korea outside the studio.
He has written graphic novels about being an overseas supervisor in Shenzhen and about his time in Burma while his wife was stationed there for Doctors Without Borders. Delisle’s a great artist, and his experiences as an overseas supervisor will seem familiar to many of you. But his insider’s take on Pyongyang is fascinating, and well worth reading in light of current events.
The book is available for $10.17 on Amazon.
NSFW: Seven Dwarfs Pez Dispenser set
Released mid-2010, in a “limited edition” of 250,000, was this Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Collector’s Pez Set. Must have seemed like a good idea at the time… but the designers failed to notice an inappropriate design flaw. Luckily, toy collector Mike Mozart caught it and brought it to our attention:
Sex Sells: Best Bugs Bunny Show Promo – EVER!
Australian model Sophie Lee had an acting career in TV and Motion Pictures, but began her on-screen career hosting a local afternoon Bugs Bunny show in 1990. This sexy promo was aimed at luring adult males to watch the cartoons – and it worked!
(Thanks, Thad K)
Los Angeles Animation Festival starts Friday
I’m happy to report that my friends at Cinefamily – along with festival organizers, animation producer John Andrews and animator Miles Flanagan – have assembled a world-class program of new animated features, shorts and retrospectives (not to mention, parties) for this week’s 2nd Los Angeles Animation Festival at the Silent Movie Theater. From Friday December 3rd through Tuesday December 7th the theatre will host an amazing array of hard-to-see recent international animated works – from the U.S. premiere of the new Jan Å vankmajer feature, to the debut of the Chinese independent feature Piercing 1, the anime mindblower Redline, and Sylvain Chomet’s new masterpiece The Illusionist (I’ll be introducing it on December 7th).
Fest guest of honor Will Vinton is presenting his short films, specials, commercials and a 25th anniversary screening of his 1985 Claymation feature The Adventures of Mark Twain. I’ll also be introducing Pixar’s Teddy Newton (on Saturday morning 12/4 @ 11:30am) who will discuss his acclaimed hand drawn/3D/CG short Day & Night, and there is a lot more.
A special Festival Pass is available – it allows you free guaranteed entry into every show, early admittance to any show and admission into all festival parties. Its priced at $125 ($85 to students) and must be purchased no later than Wednesday at 6pm (only 75 passes will be sold). Individual show tickets are $10 ($6 to Cinefamily members). Programs will sell out (theatre only holds 150 seats) so I urge you to reserve tickets now. For more info go to the CineFamily website.
“The Hunt” by Double Triple
This visually striking video for WOOM‘s “The Hunt,” loosely retelling the myth of Persephone, was animated entirely with natural materials. Directors are Phillip Niemeyer and Dan Forbes of Brooklyn-based Double Triple. This page about the video includes some photos documenting the production.
CREDITS
Worked on by:
Katie Briggs
Michelle Forbes
Amelia Grohman
Jane Herships
Sara Magenheimer
Adam McClure
Michael McKoveck
Eben Portnoy
Sam Zide
“Tangled” Disney’s Biggest Animated Opening EVER!
Disney’s Tangled bulldozed its way past analysts’ expectations earning a FINAL $48.9 million over the weekend, and boosting its five-day Thanksgiving holiday total to a towering $68.7 million. Disney’s first CG princess cartoon was a couple hundred thousand dollars shy of Harry Potter’s first place box office finish, however, its three-day total still ranks as the biggest opening ever for a feature produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation. Some more figures from Box Office Mojo:
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Calling All Furries: Orangina “Anytime”
Here’s something for the furries. A sequel to a 2007 Orangina ad campaign which apparently was quite a success…
Agency: Fred & Farid, Paris
Creative Directors: Frederic Raillard, Farid Mokart
DA: Frederic Raillard, Farid Mokart, Thomas Raillard
TV producer & post production: Alexandra Marik, Benoit Armstrong
Director: Tom Carty
Production: Gorgeous, London
Post Production: The Mill, London
Sound Design: Wave Studios, Johnny Burn
(Thanks, Jim Lahue)
Cartoons That Do More Than Entertain
David Bornstein wrote a fascinating profile in the NY Times about Julia Borbolla, a Mexican child psychologist who has developed a series of animated characters called Antenas that interact with abused, disabled and sick children. The digital characters are brought to life by a psychologist in an adjoining room. Another great example of the ever-growing uses for animated content in the new century:
Antenas characters have been used to assist children who are experiencing a range of difficulties. Therapists in Tacubaya use them in pre- and post-operative therapy and burn rehabilitation. In Morelia, one character, Bompi, is employed to assist children with disabilities. (Bompi says that all humans have disabilities because they don’t have antennas.) The program is being used to provide emotional support to children with heart disease and cancer, teach children how to protect themselves from potential abuse, and, at the government’s request, learn about children’s experiences in public day care centers. In a pilot project being conducted by the Pediatric Hospital of Iztapalapa in conjunction with four government agencies, children’s interactions with another character are carefully being reviewed as potential legal evidence in cases of violence or abuse.
