SHREK: FROM THE SWAMP TO THE SCREEN is hands-down the ugliest “art of” book I’ve ever seen for an animated film, which is probably owing to the fact that it’s little more than a collection of stills from the film. Let me put it this way: if the US military wants an effective interrogation technique for Iraqi prisoners, there’s no need for naked pyramids and all that silliness – just force the Iraqis to look at this book and they’ll start talking in no time. Then again, I’m sure there’s something in the Geneva Convention that protects people from being exposed to such ugly animation artwork. The only half-decent parts of the SHREK book are the handful of pages showing the pencil development art, which illustrate how appealing and visually enticing the SHREK franchise could be if Katzenberg would only step aside and allow artists to do their job. If you simply must have the book, wait a few months until it’s remaindered, like the “art of” book for PRINCE OF EGYPT which is currently marked down from $45 to $2.95 at HamiltonBook.com.

I’m not into video gaming, but I am into classic cartoon characters. Images from the forthcoming Astro Boy Playstation game look pretty cool. Click here for more frame grabs.

This just in from John Tebbel:

Great news. The power of Chuck Jones triumphs.Due to the pitching in of lots of folks, chief among them Mr. James Braby of Ernest Neuman Co., an art conservator, who donated their time and expertise to remove the murals and make them safe for moving, the Chuck Jones conference room murals we identified a week ago are going to be saved.The outpouring of attention from everyone who heard of it, especially some of the donors to educational non-profit New Visions for whom Jones sketched the murals on conference walls in a fit of inspiration in 1988, makes it possible for New Visions to change their plans and make a proper home for the works in their new headquarters across town.
Without these donors stepping forward they wouldn’t have been able to keep it; saving conference room artworks isn’t part of their mission statement. To put it another way, this is sort of like re-uniting Shirley Temple with that scruffy terrier she offered to sell to get that operation for her father.Thanks Jerry, thanks to Jones fans everywhere.

The Jones Mural even made today’s New York Daily News

We should note the merger yesterday of Universal and NBC. Their new tagline is “Imagine The Possibilities”.NBC-Universal is the only megacorp that doesn’t have an animation programming commitment. NBC has no animation production or kidvid block (They run Discovery Kids programing on Saturday mornings) and Universal is content to just churn out LAND BEFORE TIME sequels ad infinitum, so this corporate combo’s possibilities are not very exciting to us.
Could NBC-Universal start a competitive animation channel with their Walter Lantz library, Land Before Time movies and connection to Dreamworks? They could, but why bother?Click here for an interesting AP photo – the kid wearing the SHREK shirt is not out of line: Universal Theme Parks have SHREK attractions and Universal distributes Dreamworks features.

Directors don’t always have input into character designs for a TV series, but they should. There are many design issues that have enormous impact on production. Design is far more than how a character looks.

In drawn animation, the amount of pencil mileage – the number of lines on a character – has a direct effect on how long it takes to do a drawing. The number of colors on a character determines how quickly color can be applied, whether it’s by hand or by a digital system. Both of these things have an enormous impact on the schedule. If each image of a character is going to take a long time to produce, you’re going to get less animation.

In computer animation, a big issue is intersections. While 3D characters look solid, there’s nothing to stop one surface from penetrating another. A character can easily push his hand through a table or his own body. When you’re dealing with capes, skirts or long hair, you have to be concerned about the potential for intersections. Even something as simple as the design of a character’s neck might lead to intersections when the character talks or moves his head.

The more time the animators spend fixing intersections, they less time they’re spending on new animation. Being human, animators will often avoid moving something if they know that it will end up causing intersections and slow them down.

Non-artists don’t realize that a design implies a style of motion. The audience expects a realistically designed character to move in a realistic fashion. This takes more time than moving a character in a stylized fashion. If you have a conflict between the level of realism in the design and in the motion, the audience doesn’t perceive the character as believable. While a viewer might not be able to articulate it, the viewer knows that things just aren’t right.

Drawn animation deals with this fairly well due to experience. There’s been a resurgence of UPA style design in shows like Dexter’s Laboratory or The Fairly Oddparents because these designs can be moved in a stylized fashion that fits well with TV budgets. Even drawn action-adventure cartoons, such as the ones that Bruce Timm has designed, are stylized. Besides the visual appeal of the designs themselves, they also work with the quality of animation that will be done for the budget.

Computer animation on TV is still grappling with this issue. Certain shows, like Angela Anaconda and several pre-school shows, have taken the stylized design route and use animation that matches the design style well. CGI action adventure shows like Max Steele or Roughnecks: The Starship Trooper Chronicles have gone with a more realistic design that the animation couldn’t live up to. These shows have failed to catch on with audiences and I think that the gap between design and motion styles is at least partially responsible.

Via Boing Boing, here’s the latest fad in Japan: Food preperation designed like your favorite cartoon stars!Enjoy Hamtaro, Doremon, Hello Kitty, Powerpuff Girls in a new way, for lunch! Images Here!

Tim Biskup’s new book 100 PAINTINGS is tiny – about 5″ x 5″ – but that’s because the 100 paintings in it are even tinier – 3-1/2″ x 3-1/2″. All of the works in the book are reproduced at actual size. The Dark Horse release is printed very nicely, with the paintings set against black paper, which really serves to bring out the rich colors in Tim’s work. I can’t imagine many other artists being able to pull off a project like this, as one hundred paintings created in such a confining canvas size has the potential of quickly becoming repetitive and tedious. But as Gary Baseman writes in the book’s introduction, Tim’s work can be likened to a jazz musician improvising, and the way Tim manipulates colors and shapes in each painting is constantly imaginative and fresh. There is more effusive praise from me on the book’s duskjacket, so needless to say I recommend picking up a copy of this book.The wait for Tim’s next volume of miniature paintings may be a while though: he writes in the book that he’s currently working on the “Jackson 500″ which is an ambitious series of 500 business card-sized paintings.

Dave Bossert, who produced the ON THE FRONT LINES dvd and hosted a fantastic 35mm screening of World War II Disney cartoons last night in Glendale (see Christian Ziebarth’s review on Animation News) is going east.On Sunday May 23, at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Springs Maryland, Dave will be hosting a 35mm screening of the feature VICTORY THROUGH AIR POWER and several wartime Disney shorts. This will be the only east coast public showing of these films. For more information, go here (this screening was set up so fast, the info hasn’t been posted on the website yet).