Monthly Archives: August 2012

Calling Los Angeles Artists: Support Kevyn Wallace On Monday

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Last August, animation veteran Kevyn Wallace was driving down the 134 Freeway in Los Angeles, just a half mile from the Walt Disney Feature Animation where he had worked in the layout department on films like Tarzan and Mulan. As he was driving, an L. A. driver’s worst fear was realized–he was hit by a drunk driver. Eyewitness accounts from that evening said that the other driver’s car slid around the freeway and clipped another car. Then, the driver’s car spun around and faced Kevyn’s car straight on.

The high-impact crash punctured Kevyn’s gas tank and his car exploded into flames. A couple of good samaritans stopped on the freeway and attempted to rescue him from his burning vehicle. Unable to free him, they ran back to their own cars to find something to cut the seatbelt with. The witnesses reported that Kevyn, strapped into his seat, screamed for help as he struggled to free himself. Meanwhile, Kevyn’s windshield exploded. He miraculously managed to pull himself out of the car–but not before he had suffered burns over 90% of his body. Kevyn was placed into an induced coma and died a little over a month later at the LAC+USC Burn Center.

It was a life tragically cut short at age 47. Kevyn had worked on dozens of animation projects including The Simpsons Movie, The Land Before Time series, and Bébé’s Kids, but at the time of his death, he had embarked on a new career path. He had returned to his alma mater, Art Center College of Design, to earn a Master’s degree in filmmaking. Animation remained always close to his heart. The class project he was working on was a documentary about African-American animators.

I spoke to one of Kevyn’s sisters, Niva, earlier this week. She told me about her family’s efforts to find justice for Kevyn and bring some closure to the painful event. To their disappointment, the driver who caused the crash hasn’t served any time behind bars and has been freed on bond for the past year. His punishment to date has been to wear an alcohol monitoring bracelet and to turn over his passport. The family is understandably frustrated by the drawn-out legal process, but recognizes that the judicial system will ultimately determine whether the other driver bears any responsibility for the death of Kevyn Wallace.

There’s not much Kevyn’s family can do at this point, but they are making a public plea for support from the animation community. They tell me that one of the most important hearings in the case against the other driver will take place this Monday, August 27th. The defendant may either enter an open plea or choose to continue to a jury trial, which would begin next month. Kevyn’s family is asking his friends, colleagues and fans to show up to the hearing on Monday morning. In the words of his sister, they want to “put a face on Kevyn” and show that he’s more than just a statistic.

Kevyn’s sisters have spent the last year attending all the hearings related to his case. But the court has no sense that Kevyn was part of the much larger animation family, an important contributor to the art form, and a guy who was liked and appreciated by many. Kevyn’s family feels that a courtroom filled with industry professionals could make a positive impact. It would be amazing if the 400 people who showed up at Kevyn’s memorial would show up again, but even a fraction of those people would be a powerful statement of strength and support from our community. If the defendant chooses to enter an open plea, Kevyn’s colleagues will even have a chance on Monday to make statements to the court before the sentencing.

The hearing is scheduled for this Monday, August 27th, at 8:30 AM. The hearings generally take an hour or two, but Kevyn’s family would appreciate anybody who can come, even if they can’t stay for the entire hearing. Here’s where to go:
Los Angeles Criminal Courts Building
210 West Temple Street
11th Floor, Room 114

Meet The Artists Who Make The Google Doodles

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Every few days, the Google homepage offers up a new Google Doodle either in the form of an illustration, short animation, or interactive element, like the playable Les Paul guitar. The Doodles are not only an ingenious promotional vehicle for Google and its corporate ethos, they also illustrate the goodwill that a company can generate by appealing to the audience’s creativity and imagination. The in-house Google artists and engineers who create the Doodles don’t get a lot of publicity, so if you’ve ever been curious about who’s responsible for the Doodles and how they do it, I highly recommend watching this panel discussion from a couple weeks ago. The speakers are Google Doodle lead Ryan Germick and three of the Google Doodle staff–Kris Hom, Marcin Wichary and Jennifer Hom.

Tissa David 1921-2012

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Very sad news today: New York animation legend Tissa David passed away last night at age 91. Michael Sporn broke the news on his blog and gives a recount of her career better than anyone one else could. Animator David Nethery wrote an appreciation of Tissa a few years ago on his website.

Tissa David was New York’s master animator for over five decades. Born in Transylvania, Tissa moved to Paris in 1950, where she worked for producers Jean Image and Paul Grimault. In 1955 she moved to New York where she worked as Grim Natwick’s assistant at UPA. Her work for John Hubley included commercials, shorts and features. Tissa may be best known to the public for developing and animating “Raggedy Ann” in Richard Williams’ 1977 feature Raggedy Ann and Andy. In 1978 she began a long stint animating for R. O. Blechman (including on Simple Gifts and A Soldier’s Tale).

Below, in tribute, is something we posted here a few years ago, a fuzzy video copy of one of Tissa’s pencil test from the “Candy Hearts and Paper Flowers” scene in Raggedy Ann and Andy.

For a lot more on Tissa David’s life, I urge you to visit Michael Sporn’s Splog and read John Canemaker’s piece in The Wall Street Journal.

“Peace One Day” by Phoebe Halstead and Angie Phillips

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We’re proud to present a new entry in Cartoon Brew’s Student Animation Festival: Peace One Day by Phoebe Halstead and Angie Phillips of London’s Kingston University. The film was made in support of the non-profit organization Peace One Day, to raise awareness for The International Day of Peace on September 21st. Two people battle each other as civilizations are built and torn down around them. Their uniforms–sometimes recognizable and sometimes abstracted into colorful shapes and forms–change at a frenzied pace, but the combatants and violent behavior remains ever the same. The powerful anti-war statement is heightened by Halstead and Phillips’ strong visual concept that smartly ties together violence throughout history and geography.

Click HERE to read an interview with the filmmakers Phoebe Halstead and Angie Phillips.



The Cartoon Brew Student Animation Festival is made possible by the generosity of our presenting sponsor JibJab.

Box Office Report: “ParaNorman” Debuts Weak; “Ice Age” Huge Overseas

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Laika’s stop motion film ParaNorman opened last weekend in third place at the U. S. box office with $14.1 million. Despite opening in one thousand theaters more than Laika’s previous film Coraline, the film still didn’t match the $16.8 million opening of the earlier film. ParaNorman did, however, top last April’s $11.1 million opening of Aardman’s The Pirates! Band of Misfits.

ParaNorman‘s disappointing opening is a reminder that stop motion doesn’t generate the huge box office returns we’ve come to expect from major computer animated features. It’s debatable whether the lower grosses are attributable to the technique of stop motion, the type of stories that artists tell with stop motion animation, or the simple fact that no stop motion film has ever enjoyed the type of massive marketing push that accompanies the typical CG feature.

Ice Age: Continental Drift fell out of the domestic top ten, grossing $3 million in its sixth weekend. Its U. S. total is currently at $150.2 million, which will end up being the lowest grossing entry in the Ice Age franchise. But don’t take that as a sign of failure. The film has been an overseas phenomenon, grossing $646.3 million from foreign markets. Combined with domestic grosses, its global total will surpass $800 million this week, making it the sixth highest grossing animated feature of all time.

The overseas popularity of the Ice Age series is an outlier in the animation world. To put it into perspective, the latest Ice Age will gross more from foreign markets alone than Disney/Pixar’s Brave will gross domestically and foreign combined. Each new Ice Age film has increased its percentage of overseas share, as shown below:

Film % of Domestic Gross % of International Gross
Ice Age (2002) 46% 54%
Ice Age 2 (2006) 29.8% 70.2%
Ice Age 3 (2009) 22.2% 77.8%
Ice Age 4 (2012) 18.9% 81.1%

Fox signs five-year Dreamworks Animation distribution deal

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Dreamworks Animation has announced today its new theatrical distribution arrangement with 20th Century-Fox. It’s a 5-year deal for Dreamworks animated features to be released from 2013 through 2017. Paramount will release the forthcoming Rise of The Guardians, the last film in its previous arrangement with the studio, and Paramount will continue to distribute all the previous Dreamworks films it handled to TV, DVD and ancillary markets.

Unlike the deal with Blue Sky Studios (which Fox owns completely), Dreamworks remains an independent producer who will pay Fox a fee for its distribution services. It’s an interesting move for both Dreamworks and 20th Century-Fox. For Fox, it gives them two major animation studios to compete against the Disney/Pixar powerhouse. For Dreamworks, it assures first class worldwide distribution for its hefty line-up of films in production. In theory, it sounds like a win-win for everyone – everyone but Paramount.

“Thunderpaw”, An Animated Comic By Jen Lee

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Jen Lee is doing something very special with her newly launched on-line comic Thunderpaw: In the Ashes of Fire Mountain. The comic, which is updated weekly, makes extensive use of animated GIFs, which in itself is not a new idea. However, the way that Lee incorporates animation into her narrative is as original as I’ve seen. She’s just getting started and I can’t wait to see where she takes the idea.

THIS THURSDAY IN NYC: Scribble Junkies Festival of Drawn Animation

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New York animation filmmakers Bill Plympton and Pat Smith will present a screening of recent hand-drawn animation this Thursday, August 23, in Manhattan. The line-up includes the American premiere of Hisko Hulsing‘s masterful 18-minute short Junkyard, which alone makes the screening worth attending. There will also be preview footage from Bill Plympton’s upcoming feature Cheatin’. The screening is FREE and open to the public. It begins at 7pm at the SVA Theatre (333 W. 23rd Street, between 8th and 9th Avenue).

A Site Devoted To Rubber Hose Animation

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It seems the more CG becomes the prevalent form of contemporary animation, the greater the desire that young artists have to rediscover hand-drawn animation techniques and styles. Animation smears already have a Tumblr. It’s only fitting that there’s now a Tumblr devoted to one of the earliest major styles of animated movement–rubber hose animation.

(Thanks, Charles Kenny)

Two New Books You Gotta Get: “The Toy Story Films” and “Sketchtravel”

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This is the story of Pixar, John Lasseter and three of the most important animated features of the last 20 years. It’s also one of Charles Solomon’s best books – and that’s saying something. The Toy Story Films: An Animated Journey is one of those oversized art books – loaded with great graphics that alone would be worth the purchase – in which the text is equally important (and possibly more significant) than the images accompanying it. Solomon begins with the story of Lasseter at Disney and his journey to into CG, Lucasfilm and ultimately to Tin Toy, the short that inspired the Toy Story films. Three chapters detail the making of the Toy Story films in-depth (and lavishly illustrated with production art and photographs I’ve never seen before – a photograph of John Lasseter holding his childhood Casper The Friendly Ghost doll on page 45 is worth the price of this book alone). A chapter called Buzz and Woody in Limbo goes into the years between Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3, when the characters were part of TV’s Buzz Lightyear of Star Command and the ill-fated Circle 7 version of Toy Story 3. His final chapter on the making of Pixar’s triumphant Toy Story 3 brings the book full circle and cements Pixar’s place in animation history.

I didn’t see this one coming – it’s one of the best animation books of the year (and this is a pretty good year for animation books). It compliments the other books on Pixar’s history with ease, by focusing on three of their greatest films with new insights and fresh perspective. Hayao Miyazaki penned an affectionate Foreword, John Lasseter explains how personal these films are to him in the Afterword. This one’s the real deal, a great read – and I sincerely urge all of you who collect animation history to get it. That goes double for you Disney, Pixar and Toy Story buffs.

Charles Solomon also pens the Introduction for Sketchtravel, an exciting book project just published by Chronicle Books. French Illustrator Gerald Guerlais and Pixar art director Dice Tsutsumi passed a sketch book to over 70 artists around the world over the past 5 years. This book reproduces the artwork collected and tells the incredible story behind the project. It’s a gorgeous collection of material and great way to celebrate the artists represented. These include Hayao Miyazaki, Frederic Back, Bill Plympton, Enrico Casarosa, Bill Pressing, Peter DeSeve, Ronnie Del Carmen, Glen Keane, Nicolas Marlet, Mike Mignola, Lou Romano and many many others. It’s truly inspirational stuff. Highly Recommended!

“ParaNorman” talkback

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From coast to coast, the reviews are coming in and its looking good! Betsy Sharkey in The Los Angeles Times says ParaNorman is “the most fun you’ll have with ghosts and zombies all year”. Manolha Dargis in The New York Times admires “the movie’s meticulously detailed pictorial beauty, which turns each scene into an occasion for discovery and sometimes delight.”

ParaNorman opens today and its a great little film. I highly recommend you check it out – and report to us right here with your opinion in the comments below. Only those who have actually seen the film will be allowed to post below.

Attention those in Southern California: Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra California is hosting a ParaNorman event this Sunday with character and armature designers Vera Brosgol, Jeremy Spake, Heidi Smith, and Alan Cook all flying down for the event. Story boards, models, and lots of designs will be on display. There will also be free posters to the those who attend (while supplies last) and the admission is free! Here is the link.