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My Cage (8/19/10) by Ed Power and Melissa DeJesus ; and Strange Brew (08/31/10) By John Deering.

(Thanks, Jim Lahue)

In case you were wondering what Pixar’s abandoned film Newt might have looked like, the official Disney-Pixar account posted an image gallery on Facebook earlier yesterday. Check it out here.

(Thanks, Keith Krail)

Part two of the opening cinematic from the forthcoming Epic Mickey video game (Part One we posted here) – this time with 30% more Oswald!

(Thanks, Matthew Gaastra)

Not to be confused with Cat Shit One — Scoop Away Kitty Litter has been producing an animated series for their website. The Adventures of Clumpy and Crumbly: The Litterbox Clumps, directed by Eric Makila and Jamie Webster (as “Borthololmule Flores”) from Toronto’s Alchemy, is as cute as stop-mo cat litter can be. Here’s a sample:

(Thanks, Jeff McAndrew)

Here’s a talkback post dedicated to all the students who have graduated from animation schools in 2010. Now that it’s been three to four months since graduation, I’m curious to hear who’s had success finding a job in the animation industry. Would love to hear from students all over about what the job situation is like in your part of the world. And with schools starting up again right now, this year’s juniors and seniors will find your experiences useful to hear too.

Here are some things you could address:

1.) What school did you graduate from and are you looking for full-time work in the industry, freelance work, or are you working on independent projects?

2.) What kind of work in the animation field have you been able to find?

3.) Is the job market what you expected it to be based on what you’d heard in school?

4.) Are you optimistic about the current state of the industry?

We’d appreciate it if only students who have graduated in ‘10 would respond to this post.

Yesterday’s post about Marge Champion (née Belcher) reminded me of an article in the April 4, 1938 issue of Life about her role in Snow White. The two-page piece has some nice images of her acting alongside Louis Hightower, the movement model for Prince Charming. The article also mentions that “Miss Belcher’s Prince Charming in private life is Arthur Babbitt, one of the Disney animators, whom she married last summer.”

Here’s a reprint of the article:
Read the rest of this entry »

With all the RIP posts recently, it’s refreshing to hear some news about animation veterans who are alive. Today is the 91st birthday of Marge Champion. Tomorrow is the 96th birthday of Willis Pyle. If you don’t know who these talented individuals are (or even if you do), it’s worth heading over to John Canemaker’s blog for a very nice tribute to both of them.

Animation historian Harvey Deneroff writes perceptively about animation past and present, and not so long ago, he wrote something about computer animation that caught my attention and which helps to explain the ever-increasing complexity of animation imagery. He calls it “Deneroff’s Law”:

In 1958, C. Northcote Parkinson, famously stated in Parkinson’s Law: The Pursuit of Progress, that, “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” And Deneroff’s Law basically states: Given more powerful and complex tools, filmmakers will inevitably use them to make more complex films.” This rather simplistic observation is by no means original and in fact was inspired by a comment John Lasseter made during a phone interview about Toy Story 2. If I remember correctly, he said something like when presented with a computer 10 times more powerful, rather than using the added power to produce animation 10 times quicker, animators will usually opt to make their animation 10 times more complex and expensive.

He explores “Deneroff’s Law” in much greater depth and gives it historical context on his blog which I recommend reading.