Beginning this month, a group consisting of hundreds of Japanese animation artists have launched the Japan Animation Creators Association (JAniCA), an attempt at unionizing Japanese animation artists, especially those who freelance, and creating awareness of the generally poor working conditions of Japanese animators. More details about the formation of the group can be found at Anime News Network. To better understand the necessity of this group, this article describes some of the working conditions that Japanese animators have to endure:

One 32-year-old female animator is working in her second year at an animation company to pursue her childhood dream, but she works 12-hour days for half the salary of her former job. Another animator used to be a regular company employee with an apartment to himself, but had to move back with his parents since he could not afford rent on an animator’s budget. Without health insurance, he would not check into a hospital even when an illness worsened. One 59-year-old had to cut back due to deteriorating physical health, and now subsists on 120,000 yen (US$1,000) a month. Some of the 59-year-old animator’s former colleagues now receive public assistance or are now homeless.

(via TAG Blog)

The long-awaited how-to book from master animator and director Eric Goldberg is almost here. Character Animation Crash Course! will be released next month and is currently available to pre-order on Amazon for $23. Here’s what Eric tells us about the book:

“Well, the animation book I’ve been writing for 25 years, based on my animation notes, has finally arrived! Well, almost… Character Animation Crash Course!, published by Silman-James Press, is 240 pages of cartoon goodness, all geared to getting great performances from your characters on the screen. It comes with an accompanying CD that has animation movie files of selected sequences in the book. You can watch them in real time, or frame-by-frame, and they all include X-sheets, inbetween charts, circled keys, and underlined breakdowns, so the tests can be analyzed while you read the book, revealing how the principles actually look in movement and why. Shipping date might be as early as mid-July. Also, I’ll be premiering it at the San Diego Comic-Con, signing copies at Stuart Ng Books, Friday July 25th from 2 – 4, and Saturday July 26th from 11 -12. Also, the book provides examples from classic cartoons that can be pretty easily-accessed in this DVD, YouTube, iPod age so you can see my inspirations from the Golden Age Masters. And because, frankly, I’m a big geek.”

Tom Hignite, the Wisconsin home builder who thinks he’s Walt Disney, is back – in a series of local infomercials which ultilizes lush character animation created by a team of former Orlando studio animators he hired a few years ago. Since his misguided plans for making 2D animated features went bust, Hignite is back to building houses, using poor Flash animation (pictured above) to move his characters, and pretending he’s Uncle Walt in these TV spots. You can read the full story of Hignite’s wacky true-life adventures in this Milwaukee Magazine article – and, if you can stomach it, watch one of his informercials here.

Stereoscopic 3-D filmmaking is either the latest film fad or the future of theatrical animation. For those who know their film history, all indicators point toward it being the former. This Portfolio article by Kevin Maney is one of the better pieces I’ve read about the topic:

“Studios are latching onto 3-D for much the same reason that Bob Dole took Viagra. Most of Hollywood’s businesses are making money—for all Katzenberg’s complaining, DreamWorks’ first-quarter profit was up 69 percent—but the sector that makes Hollywood feel best about itself, theatrical showings, is deflating, in large part because the difference between seeing a movie in your local multiplex and on a 52-inch high-definition TV in your family room is not that vast.”

Earlier post about 3-D on Cartoon Brew

(article link via Kottke)

A newly restored, digitally remastered version of Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty (1959) will be presented on Friday, July 18, at 7:30 pm at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. Following the screening, a team from Walt Disney Animation Studios including Dave Bossert, creative director of special projects; animator Andreas Deja; Theo Gluck, director of library restoration and preservation; and Terry Porter, sound department chief and head rerecording mixer will participate in a panel discussion hosted by Leonard Maltin.

According to the Academy press release:

This new digital restoration of “Sleeping Beauty” comes from 4K scans of the camera original successive exposure Technirama negative. The 7.1 audio remix was created from the Disney Studio’s 35mm mag elements, including the original 3-track stereo music masters, which were recorded in Berlin in 1958.

Tickets are $5 for the general public and may be purchased online at www.oscars.org, in person at the Academy box office or by mail. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. The Samuel Goldwyn Theater is located at 8949 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills.

Once again John McElwee, over at his Greenbriar Picture Shows blog, is waxing nostalgic about classic theatrical cartoons. McElwee also posts several vintage Looney Tunes cartoon posters, trade ads and publicity stills to illustrate how these shorts were once marketed.

If nothing else, Animation Magazine serves as an entertaining repository of all the awful ideas that animation studios try to produce nowadays. In the latest issue one of the properties being pimped by this studio is called Donkey Ollie.

It probably wouldn’t be so disturbing if the same company hadn’t taken out a full-page ad on the facing page honoring a certain animator named Ollie (see below). What’s sadder perhaps is that having a crappily animated CG ass named after one’s self is a higher honor than many animation legends have received.

Ryan, Jeremy, Alex and Tim – The Muks of Mukpuddy Animation in New Zealand – have taken a break from their day to day animation work to work produce this:

According to the creators:

It’s an idea we’ve had for sometime now and has always been something we’ve discussed while doing other jobs. Finally, we put everything aside and put all our effort into making a short. It was created in 3 weeks by the four of us here at Mukpuddy.

Our Flash animated 3 minute pilot is called It’s the Pughs and is the story of a man so desperate for a son that after the birth of his daughter, decides to bring up the poo that follows as “his boy”. The idea is based on our observations of the “typical” New Zealand bloke. The dad who wants nothing more that his boy to be the Rugby player he always wanted to be. As kiwi as this is, it seems to us this is a fairly universal trait.

As disgusting as the idea of raising a poo as a child is, we’ve tried to focus on the relationship between Rudy (the dad) and Peter (his poo son). As much as we embrace that the show will be a lot of gross poo jokes, we like to use the phrase “heartwarming toilet humour”.

Clearly, poop characters (Mr. Hankey, Stinky, Doodie.com, etc.) are here to stay – whether we like it or not. The Muks also have a bunch of production sketches posted on their blog.