There’s a solid animation lecture series currently happening at London’s Science Museum in conjunction with the Pixar: 20 Years of Animation exhibition. The series - Talk Animation! - continues through June 9. Upcoming speaker highlights include directing duo Smith & Foulkes, Philip Hunt of Studio aka, and stop motion director Barry Purves. More details HERE.

The Tale of How is a mostly CG animated short produced by the South African animation collective Blackheart Gang. Credits are Marcus Wormstorm (music, writer), Cherie “Ree” Treweek (design/illustration), Jannes Hendrikz (creative director/2D animation and compositing) and Justin Baker (lead CG animator). According to the filmmakers, the story is about an octopus named Otto, “and he’s an island that all the Piranha birds live on. His broken heart has made him mean, and he eats piranhas even though he’s not hungry.” The lush, densely layered visuals look completely unlike anything else out there. Blackheart Gang doesn’t fall into the all-too common trap of using computer animation to make photorealistic art, instead creating a fluid and organic world that draws upon the tradition of illustrators like Rackham, Nielsen and Beardsley.
(Thanks, Craig Clark)

Here’s some fresh talent. Two young Dutch animators, Joost van den Bosch and Erik Verkerk (Ka-Ching Cartoons), have posted a test section of their new film, a clever, well designed CG piece produced to look like paper cut-outs in stop-motion animation. Bosch and Verkerk developed this idea as a concept for a television series during their graduation at the Arts Academy in Rotterdam. According to them:

“It comes from an old tradition in the Netherlands of young children using old shoeboxes to make small theatres from cardboard figures. Through one small round opening on one side of the box one can look at the small motionless stages in 3D. The lid of the box can be used for lighting the ’stage’. It is called a ‘kijkdoos’, a looking-box. Like a 3D drawing. In our animated series, thirteen short adventures come to life in ’shoebox’ style.We are both very big fans of the old 30’s cartoons and wanted to make something that was influenced by that era - and hopefully can create films that will be as timeless funny as they are. At the same time we thought it would be nice to combine it with this old dutch tradition of making these lookingboxes which pushed us into the style it is right now. At the moment we are in production on our graduation film, which will be the pilot for the series, and will be finished at the end of June. The producers at il Luster Productions already are making plans to develop it into a real televison series.”

The completed film is going to be about ten minutes (six minutes of animation and four minutes of live action). We wish them luck. More information on their website.

After almost four years, J. J. Sedelmaier Productions and Robert Smigel, the creators of NBC’s Saturday Night Live “Saturday TV Funhouse” cartoons, are bringing back Ace and Gary, The Ambiguously Gay Duo, to host the “Best of Saturday TV Funhouse” on NBC, airing April 29th. This is the first ever collection of animation shorts to run as an SNL special. The ninety-minute program will showcase the recurring series of “Funhouse” segments including “The X-Presidents,” “Fun with Real Audio” and of course “The Ambiguously Gay Duo.” The SNL animated special will feature new material especially animated for this show, with Ace and Gary as the show’s hosts interacting “live” with the current cast throughout the program. Ace and Gary are voiced by Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell of “The Office.”

Heads up, New Yorkers! The Film Forum is presenting CARTOONS: No Laughing Matter?, a program of new animated shorts begining Wednesday, May 10th. These new works, by eight well known independent animators, include Suzan Pitt’s bizarre Mexican fantasy, “El Doctor” (pictured above), Lisa Crafts’s “The Flooded Playground”, a nightmare of childhood fears, the latest film from George Griffin, “It Pains Me to Say This” and JJ Villard’s riff on Charles Bukowski, “Son Of Satan”. Films from Andy & Carolyn London, Suzie Templeton, Chris Shepherd & David Shrigley and Debra Solomon are also included. CARTOONS: No Laughing Matter? will play for two weeks, May 10-23, and they say the program is not appropriate for children.

Pixar animator Andrew Gordon has posted an extensive 45-minute audio interview with fellow Pixarian, art director/production designer Ralph Eggleston, on his Spline Doctors blog.

Story artist Jenny Lerew has posted another excellent entry about storytelling in animation on her blog, Blackwing Diaries. This time, she tackles the importance of creating honest, likeable characters that the audience can relate to. It seems like an obvious point, and yet, the type of characters which she speaks about are missing from the vast majority of contemporary feature and TV animation.

Director/designer Dave Wasson (TIME SQUAD, MAX AND HIS SPECIAL PROBLEM) has launched a new line of T-shirts called Vot-Not. He’s starting out with three designs and they’re all quite fetching. Ordering info HERE.
(via Gabe Swarr)