Max and Dave Fleischer (and animator Dick Heumer) explain it all in this 1928 classic cartoon.
If you had to recommend one cartoon for the world to see before we all perish – what would it be?
Back in February, Amid post Einar Baldvin’s Cal Arts thesis film, Catatonic. Baldvin just completed a musical piece in collaboration with Icelandic Klezmer-and-Balkan band Varsjár Bandalagið (The Warsaw Pact). It’s much lighter fare than Catatonic but just as intense and interesting in its own way. Perfect viewing for an end-of-the-world weekend.
The world is ending on May 21st, so May 23rd is the perfect time for the apocalyptic hilarity of Cartoon Dump, with its rapturous mixture of sketches, songs, puppets, stand-up comedy and actual Saturday Morning Cartoons from the 50s, 60s and 70s that are so bad you’ll be praying for the destruction of the Earth.
I’ll be introducing Frank Conniff (MST3K), Erica Doering along with guest comedians Andy Kindler, Emo Phillips and our usual gang of Mighty Mr. Titan, Johnny Cypher and who knows what else…
Join us Monday (5/23), 8 PM at the Steve Allen Theater, 4773 Hollywood Blvd. (two blocks west of Vermont). Buy advance tickets here!
The LA Film Forum presents Triumph of the Wild: New Experimental Animation curated by Eric Leiser. The screening, which presents recent experimental films from the US and Europe, takes place on Sunday, May 22, at 7:30 pm at the Egyptian Theater (6712 Hollywood Blvd.) Three of the filmmakers–Eric Leiser, Alice Cohen, and Gina Marie Napolitan–will appear in person.
Tickets are $10/general admission, $6/students and seniors, and free for Filmforum members. To purchase advance tickets, visit the LA Film Forum website.
Here’s the screening line-up:
These Hammers Don’t Hurt Us by Michael Robinson
(2010, USA, 13 mins)
The External World by David OReilly
(2011, Ireland, 17 mins)
Triumph of the Wild by Martha Colburn
(2009, USA, 10 mins)
Battery Cage by Studio Smack
(2009, Netherlands, 4 mins)
Mirror Moves for Private Eyes by Alice Cohen
(2010, USA, 13 mins)
Mastering Bambi by Persijn Broerson and Margit Luckas
(2011, USA/Netherlands, 13 mins)
Remisequenz by Xenia Lesniewski
(2010, Germany, 3 mins)
City of Progress by Justine Bennet
(2008, Netherlands, 11 mins)
Forest by Eric Leiser
(2008, USA, 3 mins)
Demons and Cathedrals by Gina Marie Napolitan
(2010, USA, 5 mins)
One of my favorite student films from a few years back — 2008, to be exact — has finally appeared on-line: Michal Socha’s Chick (Laska) from Poland. The images in this short stay with the viewer long after the film has ended thanks to a combination of stark production design and energetic animation, especially the jaunty dance of the lady, who appears to be a prostitute. The sex scene (safe for work) illustrates the effectiveness of abstracting an idea in animation instead of literally showing it. It may surprise some viewers to learn that the film was made primarily in CG, using 3D Studio Max along with After Effects and Toon Boom. Dig around the film’s official website to see the storyboards and concept art.
Been meaning to post this for months – a fun little animated promo for Australia’s Awesome Waste of Time contest website. If anyone knows who directed this – let me know.
(Thanks, Kent Osborne)
Fox is premiering another new series this fall: Allen Gregory, created by actor Jonah Hill (Get Him to the Greek, Superbad), and Yes Man screenwriters Andrew Mogel and Jarrad Paul. The seven-episode order for the series is being produced by Burbank-based Bento Box Entertainment, which was started a couple years ago by three Film Roman executives.
My favorite publisher Chronicle Books recently announced their fall publishing line-up and it includes three books that may be of interest to Brew readers:
A first of its kind book: Setting the Scene: The Art & Development of Animation Layout
Sasquatch’s Big Hair Drawing Book
The Art of Pixar: The Complete Color Scripts and Select Art from 25 Years of Animation
Though primarily live action, I had to post the phenomenal debut film by Toronto-based filmmaker Sol Friedman. Junko’s Shamisen, which played the festival circuit last year, was recently posted online. A visual tour-de-force, it combines live action with cel, stop motion (by Pete Levin) and computer animation.
Toy Story 3 director Lee Unkrich promised to post an embarrassing old video when he reached 100k followers on his Twitter account. He reached that number yesterday, and the embarrassing video is this appearance on the Eighties game show Win, Lose or Draw. Unkrich prefaced the video with three facts:
1) I was 20 years old
2) I was plump
3) I was coerced into buying that sweater by the show’s producers
Fun question of the day: What other animation artists, besides Unkrich and Ward Kimball, have appeared on game shows? Please share if you know.
Last weekend, Profiles in History in conjunction with Van Eaton Galleries (disclosure: they are an advertiser on Cartoon Brew) staged a massive animation art auction. I’m not a collector, but found it fascinating to browse through the auction results and see what prices the lots commanded as well as what pieces didn’t sell (for example, lots of Fantasia art).
Here’s a sampling of twenty pieces and how much each sold for. The last few prices are staggering.
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Carlos Salgado, an illustrator, designer and director for Spanish production company User T38 sent us a note with a link to his beautifully stylized spot:
“I’ve been following Cartoon Brew for a long time and has been a web of reference and inspiration for my work. In the last year I’ve been directing and design 3 pieces of animation that will be seeing this year, the first of them (ironically the last one I made ​​but the first to be shown) is a 1 minute and 40 seconds long animation made ​​for an NGO (non governmental organization), Ãfrica Directo (a humanitarian aid group), I invite you to see the animation we have done.”
Credits after the jump…
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Cartoon Brew is pleased to announce a call for entries for our second annual Student Film Festival. We launched the Student Film Festival last year and the response exceeded our wildest expectations with over 120 entries from around the world.
Our mission for the festival is simple: to share and promote student-produced animated shorts of the highest caliber…the most original, the most thought-provoking, the ones that make us laugh hardest and engage us emotionally. We know that students are producing some of the most exciting work in the animation art form today and we want to show this work to our broad community of industry artists and animation aficionados. This year, not only will our festival selections debut on the Cartoon Brew home page, we’ve also arranged real world screenings of the films at the new TRICKSTER festival in San Diego and at The Cinefamily theater in Los Angeles.
Here’s all the info you need:
RULES
1. It has to be animated. (Obviously.)
2. It has to be a student film. (Even more obvious.)
3. Must have been completed after March 1, 2010.
4. Must be an online premiere. (Films that are accessible online to the public will not be considered.)
5. Submissions due by Tuesday, May 31, 2011
SUBMIT
To submit, send an email to studentfest (at) cartoonbrew (dot) com with the following info:
• Your name, school and country
• Film title and synopsis
• Private link and password (ex: Password-Protected Vimeo link, Private or Unlisted YouTube link, or a website download link).
WHAT HAPPENS IF I’M SELECTED
Up to 10 films will be selected for the festival. We will announce the festival selections in early June. Screenings will begin on Cartoon Brew later in June. Every film that is selected to screen as part of the Cartoon Brew Student Film Festival will be paid a screening fee of $300(US). We don’t take any exclusivity over your film. In other words, you are still free to submit to festivals, sell it to distributors, and post it anywhere on-line after its debut in our festival.
ONE FINAL NOTE
Many students are erroneously informed in school that posting their film on-line ruins their festival chances. We’ve explored the issue before by speaking with festival directors and recommend reading this. None of the major animation festivals enforce such a rule today. However, some non-animation festivals, like Sundance, ask that a film be taken off-line during the course of their festival (although we know for a fact that they have not enforced the rule in the past). As far as we know, the only awards organization that strictly demands films remain off-line is the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, so if you’re trying to qualify for a Student Academy Award, you don’t want to post your film on-line.
Our first glimpse of Spielberg’s (and Jackson’s) mo-cap Tintin movie. They are still afraid to show us their faces – and I’m still not entirely sure why this film had to be motion capture – but it’s looking quite good nonetheless.
UPDATE: The Hi-Def Japanese trailer contains a few different shots
(Thanks, Chris Sobieniak)
Max Porter of the husband-and-wife animation team Tiny Inventions wrote a fascinating blog post about the pros and cons of immediately distributing their short Something Left, Something Taken on-line last year instead of waiting for the film to complete its festival run:
I read a comment on a popular film blog a while back that asked how filmmakers could afford to give their work away for free. Ru and I always felt the exact opposite. How could we afford not to put our work online? For us it was simple. We reasoned that the sale of our animation could not possibly generate enough money to sustain our life in New York. By putting our work in a place that people could see it, we actually ended up making far more money from opportunities created from the online presence than we had in previous years.
PS: As further proof that times have changed, Something Left, Something Taken is one of two American shorts competing in the shorts category at Annecy next month.
