Matte Stephens is an artist based in Peterborough, New Hampshire who paints in a style that is influenced by, in his own words, “mid 20th century industrial and graphic design like the work of Charles and Ray Eames, Alexander Girard, George Nelson/Irving Harper and fine artists of the same era like Ben Shahn and Paul Klee.”
After three years of tryouts and short runs in a total of four different cities, Disney Theatrical’s version of “Aladdin” finally opened on Broadway March 20th at the New Amsterdam Theatre. So now that it’s here, how does it compare to the animated “Aladdin” we all know and love? After seeing the musical a few days ago, here are my observations.
Watch a conversation with the filmmakers of ‘Nimona,’ which is newly nominated for a Critics Choice Award.
This weekend, Disney’s “Frozen” became the highest grossing animated film of all time. Its $1.072 billion worldwide gross has surpassed the $1.063 billion of “Toy Story 3,” which was the previous record-holder for biggest animated feature.
With the entire Internet already yakking about the new “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” trailer, it hardly seemed necessary to bring it up here. But for the sake of posterity, here is the trailer for the Jonathan Liebesman-directed film, which will debut on August 8th:
A second season of Mickey Mouse shorts will begin airing April 11th at 9pm (ET/PT) on the Disney Channel. Each new short will be available the day after its cable premiere on WATCH Disney Channel, Disney.com, iTunes, and YouTube.
The Oscar-nominated French animated feature “Ernest & Celestine,” which is being rolled out theatrically across the U.S. over the next few months, has its first significant expansion this weekend.
Next month, IDW, the publishing company that partnered with Cartoon Network last year for the comic book revivals of “The Powerpuff Girls” and “Samurai Jack,” will be adding “Dexter’s Laboratory” to their library of monthly titles.
“He doesn’t play football… he’s only drawing, all the time. What’s his problem, Doctor?” Only a specialist can find out… Real animators were asked to give their animated and live action testimonies about their childhood as animators. It is indeed a strange condition…
There are countless crowdfunding sites nowadays, but none have offered a viable alternative that challenges Kickstarter and Indiegogo’s dominance. Patreon may change that though. The crowdfunding site offers a twist on the crowdfunding model that may prove attractive to filmmakers who want to produce content regularly.
“The Tom and Jerry Show” will premiere Wednesday, April 9th, at 5:30pm (ET/PT) on Cartoon Network. It’s being pitched as “a fresh take on the iconic frenemies that preserves the look, core characters and sensibilities of the original theatrical shorts.” Unlike the original 6-7 minute theatrical shorts, which were produced during the 1940s-’50s, the new episodes will be 11-minutes each.
The United States has surprisingly few animation festivals for a country of its size, but increasingly we are seeing smaller local events that serve as a substitute for the festival experience. Animation Breakdown is an ongoing series in Los Angeles, and Chicago animation fans, who already enjoy the Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation, will see the arrival of Animation Torrent next month.
The following two spots attracted my attention for the inventive ways in which they mixed live-action with animation: “Metamorphosis” for Hermès, directed by Julien Vallée of Vallée Duhamel, and “Inner Beauty” for Honda, directed by the venerable production team of Smith & Foulkes through Nexus Productions.
This story exists in its basic features since the fable “The Father and His Sons” by Aesop (600 B.C.) and is told to this day in anecdotes and urban myths. In From Dad To Son we translated a written narrative into a paper crafted animation short. It’s a parable about the assignment of roles of parents and children and the conflicts of physical separation and their communication. And a response to violence of privacy by governmental institutions.
This a fan-made experiment in which the 1956 Tom & Jerry short “Down Beat Bear” is remade in CGI with anime girls in the roles of Tom, Jerry, and the dancing bear. The characters don’t appear to be random and likely represent some part of fandom of which I’m not aware. Even lacking that context, I still think it’s a fascinating piece of work, not so much for its animation or technical merit as for its resurrection of (and reverence for) classic theatrical animation in a completely unexpected setting.
The 17th edition of the Holland Animation Film Festival concluded last Sunday in Utrecht, Netherlands. The winners of the top prizes for both feature film and narrative short hailed from South Korea.
Skip Dolphin Hursh works as a designer and animator for Nickelodeon in New York. Skip uses his free time to create personal work that includes handsomely designed looping animated GIFs that invoke thoughts of toy machinery and strange cellular activity. He explains more about how he arrived at this ongoing project in an interview with Giphy.
The Whitney Biennial is one of the most anticipated events in the world of art museums. Begun as an annual survey of American art in 1932, it became a biennial in 1973. Its overall purpose is to show a snapshot of the contemporary art world, often focusing on very recent works. For the art intelligentsia, it is often an excuse to complain about a) the state of contemporary art, and b) the curatorial choices made, or both—with occasional exceptions, such as the 2012 Biennial, which was met with overwhelming praise.
An erotic parody of “Shrek” based on the 4chan meme Shrek is Love, Shrek is Life.
Ventriloquist Jeff Dunham, whose primary skill is spewing hate speech without moving his lips, has brought his shtick to animation with an hour-length animated special called “Achmed Saves America.”
It was recently announced that, after a nearly four-year hiatus, the Adult Swim animated series “The Boondocks” would be returning on April 21st for its fourth and final season. However, any excitement that fans of the show experienced when hearing the news was cut short when they learned that the show’s creator, Aaron McGruder, would not be involved.