Tech

Microsoft Aims To Please Artists and Creators with Surface Pro 3 Tablet/PC

Yesterday in New York City, Microsoft unveiled the Surface Pro 3, the latest iteration of its fully-featured PC/tablet with pressure-sensitivity and an abililty to run any PC-based creative software from Adobe's Creative Cloud suite to Toon Boom, Maya and ZBrush, to post-production filmmaker tools like Assimilate’s SCRATCH and RED’s CineX.

Anime

Book Review: ‘Stray Dog of Anime: The Films of Mamoru Oshii’

I can remember looking at anime titles in British video catalogues back in the nineties; as the pastoral fantasies of Hayao Miyazaki would not reach prominence in this country until the new millennium, UK distributors placed a strong emphasis on futuristic thrillers. The films of Mamoru Oshii certainly fit that bill.

Events

A Major Stop Motion Exhibit in Barcelona Explores Starewitch, Švankmajer and Brothers Quay

“Animated cinema is the demiurgic art par excellence: matter comes to life and is transformed in the hands and imaginations of the creators. They, more than anybody, know about the secret life of objects.” This description, comes from the exhibition “Metamorphosis: Fantasy Visions in Starewitch, Švankmajer and the Quay Brothers,” now playing at the Centre de Cultura Contemporanea (CCCB) in Barcelona, Spain, and it's a good summary of the work of these four visionary animators.

Business

British Studios Locksmith and Double Negative Plan To Make CG Features

There are big developments in the UK animation industry in the wake of a much-heralded tax break received by the British animation industry that went into effect last year. Sarah Smith, the former creative director of features at Aardman Animations, is setting up a studio named Locksmith Animation. She bills it as the UK’s "first high-end CGI feature animation studio," and it is focused on creating a long-term slate of films for worldwide distribution.

CGI

‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ And A Thought on The Hyper-Grotesque

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:

Business

Patreon Offers a New Way to Crowdfund Animation

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.

Interviews

Animation Breakdown’s Alex McDonald and Kevin Sukho Lee on Launching A New Festival

The Los Angeles indie animation event of the season takes place tomorrow, Saturday March 8th, at The Cinefamily. Animation Breakdown Roundup! is a collection of over two dozen shorts by seasoned indie stars (Vince Collins, Emily Hubley), current filmmakers (Kirsten Lepore, Takeshi Murata, Devin Flynn, Allison Schulnik, Galen Pehrson, Amy Lockhart, Matt & Paul Layzell, Garrett Davis, Charles Huettner, Caleb Wood, Alex Schubert) and next-wavers (Peter Millard, Sean Buckelew, Quique Rivera Rivera.)

RIP

Michael Sporn, A Passionate Film Director, RIP

Animator and filmmaker Michael Sporn, a man who represented the spirit and vitality of New York's animation scene as much as any other single individual, passed away from pancreatic cancer on January 19. He was 67.

CGI

Pixar Makes Painterly CG: New Research Could Change The Look of Their Films

Last summer at SIGGRAPH, Pixar presented a paper offering some clues about one of the major new directions that CG feature animation is headed. The paper, "Stylizing Animation By Example," explored how filmmakers could achieve more expressive rendering styles that disregard the perfect boundaries of computer graphics rendering and mimic traditional painting techniques.

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