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TAG FOR “Internet/Blogs”Cartoon Brew's home for up-to-the-minute, unedited announcements and press releases direct from industry sources.
September 8, 2008 1:52 pm
There are still some retrograde film festivals that penalize filmmakers for putting their films online, but progressive festivals are embracing the Internet as a vital component of their programming strategy. Take, for example, the Holland Animation Film Festival, which today began accepting entries via YouTube for its newly announced web competition, which allows online audiences to see the entries via YouTube and help choose the winner. Here are the details:
1 Comment » posted in Internet/Blogs 
September 3, 2008 10:07 am
Award-winning filmmaker Signe Baumane writes to tell me that yesterday somebody flagged her one-minute short The Very First Desire Now and Forever for having “objectionable content” and today the film was pulled from YouTube. What was so objectionable in this short, which we’ve plugged before on Cartoon Brew? A baby innocently squeezing milk from its mother’s breasts. What happened to Signe’s film should serve as a warning to all filmmakers who choose to use a free corporate service like YouTube to host their film work. But the bigger issue is that YouTube should consider addressing the arbitrary policies they hold towards “objectionable content.” There are currently thousands of videos on their site displaying full-frontal male and female nudity in art, whether it be the work of Michelangelo or Matisse. It’s a slippery slope when YouTube begins passing judgment on what qualifies as art (painting and sculpture) and what doesn’t (animation). If the site’s policy is strictly no nudity, then it should be consistent about it across all forms of art. And if it’s the natural act of breastfeeding that YouTube deems so offensive, then a good first step would be to remove all of the live-action videos on their site featuring woman breastfeeding their children. 29 Comments » posted in Internet/Blogs
August 27, 2008 5:37 pm
Some happy news to report today. The Mass Animation project that we mentioned here last week released a new set of details today on their Facebook page. Notably among those details is that every artist whose work is used for the short will be compensated financially. Granted that the project is still structured like a contest and there’s a chance that the work you create won’t be used in the film (hence no compensation), but at least the artists whose work wins approval will receive something for their effort. Exploring new production models based on online collaboration is a worthy cause as long as it’s not done on the backs of artists, and I’m glad that we can now show some support behind a contest like Mass Animation. 10 Comments » posted in Ideas/Commentary, Internet/Blogs
August 22, 2008 10:40 pm
David O’Reilly has built a very cool animated walk cycle that takes advantage of the iPhone’s motion sensitivity. O’Reilly describes the effect on his blog:
There’s been some controversy online about whether O’Reilly’s animation is actually motion-sensitive or if all the animation was completed earlier and he’s simply moving the iPhone to match the onscreen action. Regardless, the reality is that there is amazing potential for interactive cartoons on the iPhone and other motion-sensitive devices. Let’s do a little blue-sky thinking and imagine the possibilities. Instead of simply watching a cartoon, viewers can now interact and control the actions of their favorite characters. A simple tilt of your iPhone could send a character walking in any direction. A quick shake could make your character turn away from another character. Don’t feel like watching an 11-minute cartoon today? Control the pace of short and make it a four-minute cartoon. New technologies will open up new narrative possibilities for animation artists. The linear cartoon is so 20th century. For a new generation of kids, watching a cartoon with only one ending (i.e. every cartoon today) will test the limits of their patience. It’ll be the equivalent of riding a horse-and-buggy after cars had been invented. Sure, Chuck Jones and Mike Maltese came up with a good ending for One Froggy Evening, but today’s cartoonists can come up with twenty different endings for their shorts, exploring all sorts of what-if scenarios. They can begin to understand their creations from a deeper, more psychologically complex perspective. As a viewer, if you like a particular ending, you can control your character’s actions to always achieve the same result. But every individual viewer can also change the outcome of the cartoons they watch with a simple tilt or turn of their screen. Viewers can become engaged in the universe of their favorite cartoons as never before, and it will become a much richer experience for both creator and viewer. All of this could happen, but it will take the combined efforts of programmers, animators and studios with the vision and desire to push their cartoon characters into the 21st century. Previous Brew posts about David O’Reilly HERE, HERE and HERE. 26 Comments » posted in CGI, Internet/Blogs
August 22, 2008 6:21 pm
Animators beware! There’s a new collaborative animation project called Mass Animation that is asking animation artists (both pros and amateurs) to come together via a Facebook application to produce a 5-minute CG animated short destined for theatrical release. The project hasn’t launched yet, but the details that are available on the official website and in this Intel press release aren’t encouraging. The program, which doesn’t compensate any of the animators who work on it, is being sponsored by Intel, Autodesk, Facebook, Aniboom and Reel FX. The film is being directed by former Sony Pictures Digital exec Yair Landau. He says, “Mass Animation combines original computer-generated animated storytelling with social networking in a powerful, new way…we will reach so many talented animators who might not otherwise have access to this community of imagination and artistry. This project is the future of creative collaboration.” Apparently Landau believes that the future of creative collaboration on the Internet means getting lots and lots of different people to create free work for deep-pocketed corporate sponsors so that they can release your work theatrically. Unlike earlier technologies, the Internet empowers artists so that they can avoid being taken advantage of in this manner. Companies that are trying to facilitate the exploitation of artists via the Internet are truly living in the past. Perhaps this contest started with benevolent intentions, but the press release makes it sound super-exploitative, and the fact that a Hollywood exec is directing the project simply adds to the ick-factor. I’ll make an effort to stay on top of this story and find out how it turns out. (Thanks to Chris Roman for bringing this to everybody’s attention on the Cartoon Brew Facebook group) 26 Comments » posted in Ideas/Commentary, Internet/Blogs
August 8, 2008 2:41 pm
One of the newest, and most unexpected, outlets for original animation nowadays appears be newspaper websites. For the past year or so, the NY Times has been commissioning beautiful animated pieces by animators like Jeff Scher and Gary Leib, and now the Chicago Tribune is getting into the act with a new politically-oriented series Animated Chicago by illustrator and animator Joe Fournier. I’m not sure if they’re planning to do more of these, but the first episode can be viewed on the Tribune’s website. 7 Comments » posted in Internet/Blogs, Shorts
August 7, 2008 2:42 pm
LA Weekly has two articles this week profiling Amy Winfrey and her animated webseries Making Fiends and Stefan Bucher’s Daily Monster video podcast. What do both of these creators have in common? Their ideas started out as independent self-financed Internet projects that gained a popular fan following and were ultimately given TV deals by major companies. Making Fiends is about to debut as an animated series on Nickelodeon, while Daily Monster was collected into book form this year and will also appear as a segment on PBS’s new Electric Company in 2009. The paths that both of these properties have taken offer a view into how new TV animation ideas will be discovered in the future. The dysfunctional system of pitching and development in TV animation still exists, but it is on the wane and being dismantled by the Internet. As Winfrey and Bucher have demonstrated, creators are no longer beholden to clueless and sheltered development execs who don’t have the foggiest about what their audiences want to watch. Today an artist can create an uncompromised piece of animation independently, post it online, and attract a significant audience without any assistance from broadcasters. The cherry on top is that if your idea is successful, major companies will be knocking at your door to pay you money to produce more episodes. 20 Comments » posted in Internet/Blogs, TV
July 5, 2008 12:05 am
New Orleans movie critic David Dubos is now writing for, and podcasting about, movies each week on NewOrleans.com. He’s recorded me twice now during the last few weeks, allowing me to ramble on with my opinions of Kung Fu Panda and Wall•E, and debate the pros and cons of both films. Be warned, the editing makes me sound a bit hyper on these podcasts. But I applaud David for showcasing these animated features – both highlights of the current summer movie season. |
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