Monthly Archives: February 2012

A Tribute to African-American Animation Artists

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Black Animators

I can’t let Black History Month pass without making mention of the fantastic Facebook gallery called African-American Animators–Past & Present. It’s disheartening to think that for the first fifty years of American animation history, there were no black animation artists. Frank Braxton broke the color barrier in the mid-1950s, and animation (and America as a whole) has changed much since then. Now, we have this wonderful tribute to the diversity and talent of the black animators who work in our industry, many of whom I’m proud to call friends, others who I’ve featured in my ‘zine Animation Blast (Ed Bell, Phil Stapleton, Milton Knight), and even one of my animation teachers (Lenord Robinson).

Tinman Creative: February 2012

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Morghan Fortier and Brett Jubinville are so excited about their upcoming project at their newly established Toronto studio, Tinman Creative, they’ve posted a video showing off their first month of production. They plan to create such a video every month. I don’t know if their mystery project is a commercial, short film or TV production, but it sure looks intriguing with its great character designs and great sense of color.

“Vaesen” by Adrian Dexter

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“Vaesen is an original story that I wrote and directed. It’s not based on any specific folktale, but I chose a very iconic visual aesthetic, and used folktale conventions that are engrained in many from childhood, so that I could explore a looser narrative. Basically I wanted Rankin-Bass on acid, written by Borges.”

So says Danish-American Adrian Dexter, currently working at Important Looking Pirates (ILPVFX) in Stockholm. He recently graduated from The Animation Workshop in Denmark with this Bachelor film project (2012). As you can see, he definitely achieved that “on-acid” Euro-fairy tale feeling.

Academy Award Talkback; RANGO and MORRIS LESSMORE win

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UPDATE #1: The Oscar for Best Animated Feature was awarded to RANGO.

Accepting the award, Verbinski said, “Someone asked me if this film was for kids. I don’t know, but it was certainly created by a bunch of grown-ups acting like children.”

Rango

UPDATE #2: The Oscar for Best Animated Short was awarded to The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg (Moonbot Studios).

Joyce and Oldenburg seemed genuinely surprised at winning the honor. Joyce told the crowd “Look, we’re just these two swamp rats from Louisiana. We love the movies more than anything… and there are thousands of men and women, from the beginning of cinema, who inspire us. Everything we do everyday is to honor those people and those films. This is incredibly grand.”

In case you forgot, here were the results of Cartoon Brew’s Oscar Survey.
Read Cartoon Brew’s interviews with the five nominees of the Best Animated Short category. Congratulations to the winners and nominees.

Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis (Wild Life)

Enrico Casarosa (La Luna)

Grant Orchard (A Morning Stroll)

Patrick Doyon (Sunday)

Bill Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg (The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore)

“Realigning My Thoughts on Jasper Johns” by JK Keller

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Realigning The Simpsons

“Realigning My Thoughts on Jasper Johns” is an art project by Baltimore-based JK Keller that digitally reprocesses the animation from The Simpsons episode “Mom and Pop Art” into a glitchy, bright hot mess. Keller explained his process:

I ripped all the frames, then used software to turn the ripped images into vectors. Then I processed the files through Illustrator using the default Alignment & Distribution tools (23 different combinations). The resulting files were then brought back together for the 23 final videos.

With the audio, I used a similar process, making a spectrogram image of the audio from each cut in the episode. Then I applied a variety of processes to the image to mimic the alignment/distribution used. Then took the resulting image and turned it back into audio.

The project is intended to be shown as an installation of a 9 screen grid. Viewers would be able to adjust dials and switches to adjust volumes & video sources to create their own juxtapositions of the 23 videos.

Interested in the incorrect use of default software tools and how they can be used to generate new forms, and the absurdity that results between default digital manipulation and purposeful manual influence.

The results of Keller’s experiment are visually mesmerizing. The introductory video is below followed by the rest of the project on this YouTube playlist.

(via @FezFilms)

Exploring the Bookshelf of Animation Legend Jules Engel

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What kind of books might an animation artist have kept on their bookshelf sixty years ago? They certainly wouldn’t have owned many animation books. In the 1950s, there was no Illusion of Life or Animator’s Survival Kit, and the entire number of books published about animation could be counted on one hand. Inspiration for the classic animation artist lay beyond the world of cartoons and animated film.

I was reminded of this when I found a photo of Jules Engel, a background painter who started at Disney prior to joining the Modernist studio United Productions of America (UPA). The shot below was taken at UPA circa 1954-’55. Engel later made his own independent shorts and created the CalArts Experimental Animation program, which he ran until his death in 2003.

After examining the image (and a similar photo taken from a slightly different angle), I was able to identify many of the books on Engel’s shelf. (Click HERE for a larger view of the image.) Engel’s books span the spectrum of visual arts from photography to painting to dance and theater. His collection confirms much of what we already know about the artists who worked at UPA, and their commitment to exploring the possibilities of the animation medium. Far from working in a vacuum, they were fully aware of the latest trends and ideas in the contemporary art world.

Below is an inventory of the books that are identifiable in the photo of Engel’s bookshelf. I’ve tried to include the covers of the specific editions that Engel owned:

British Circus Life by Lady Eleanor Smith and John Hinde
Jules Engel book

New Theatres for Old by Mordecai Gorelik
Jules Engel book
Continue reading →

Cartoon Dump Post-Oscar Show

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One night after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences salutes excellence in film, Cartoon Dump is back saluting crappiness in cartoons! Now in our 5th year – join MST3K’s Frank Conniff as “Moodsy, the Clinically Depressed Owl”, comedian Erica Doering as “Compost Brite”, the infamous J. Elvis Weinstein as “Dumpster Diver Dan” and me, in Hollywood, on Monday February 27th at 8pm. And we are joined this month by special stand-up comedy guest Dana Gould (The Simpsons), Emo Philips returning as Cartoon Musicologist Professor Emo, and comedy/burlesque sensation Kasey Wilson! Fun! Fun! Fun! And Bucky and Pepito! Click here for more info!

Sanjay Patel at the Asian Art Museum

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Sanjay Patel

If you’re in San Francisco, you’ll want to head to the Asian Art Museum sometime before April 22 to catch “Deities, Demons and Dudes with ‘Staches: Indian Avatars by Sanjay Patel.” The one-man show by Sanjay Patel, who works by day at Pixar, is an extension of his illustrated book projects that explore Hindu religion and iconography through a contemporary lens–The Little Book of Hindu Deities and Ramayana: Divine Loophole. The photos I’ve seen of the show online–wildly colorful large-scale murals spanning entire walls of the musuem–are sufficiently impressive. If you’ve seen the show in person, share your thoughts about it.

“Team Spirit: F*ck The Beach” by HannesJohannes (NSFW)

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After I saw Yellow Submarine in 1968, I thought all animation was going to look like this in the future. No need to take drugs, Team Spirit – Fuck The Beach by Swedish duo Johannes Helgelin and Hannes Elltorp (aka HannesJohannes) is an acid trip unto its own. Be warned: lots of naked people doing “nasty” stuff here – Not Safe For Work.

CREDITS
Video produced by: HannesJohannes
Music by Team Spirit
Story: HannesJohannes
Art & Design: Johannes Helgelin
Animation and Comp: Hannes Elltorp
Animation Assistant: Tobias Petersson

Lou Dobbs Says “The Lorax” and “Arrietty” Indoctrinate Children

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Fox Business’s Lou Dobbs claims that President Obama’s “liberal friends in Hollywood” are “targeting a younger demographic using animated movies to sell their agenda to children.” He cites Studio Ghibli’s The Secret World of Arrietty and Illumination Entertainment’s upcoming The Lorax as evidence of this indoctrination. One of Dobbs’s guests claims that these films are creating a generation of Occutoddlers, referring to the Occupy Wall Street movement which these films allegedly promote.

Of course, I wouldn’t put it past Fox that they’d try to stick it to Chris Meledandri, who runs Illumination and is a competitor of Fox in the animation market. After all, Meledandri used to run 20th Century Fox Animation and oversaw the earlier Dr. Seuss animated adaptation, Horton Hears a Who!, which was distributed by Fox.