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Next Wednesday, the animated duo of Jeff Twiller and Randy J. Johnson will host their own animated film screening in Brooklyn. It's a legit line-up of animated shorts, with perceptive cinematic commentary supplied inbetween the films by Twiller and Johnson. Thankfully, they happen to be animation experts.
Animation artist Jamie Baker ("UP," "WALL·E," "Finding Nemo") has written a hilarious and detailed account of what it was like to work as an artist in Taiwan in the mid-1980s. Spoiler—it was weird:
Any exhibition that “…aims to demonstrate the centrality of animation to contemporary global culture…” is worth our attention, and the UK's Barbican Centre-produced “Watch Me Move: The Animation Show” has been doing that at museum venues since 2011. This June, it comes to the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville.
The NFB StopMo Studio app for the iPad provides essentially everything you need to jump into creating an animated film. You won't have any issues getting comfortable with the user interface if you've worked with animation programs before, and it seems more than approachable for newcomers young and old. Once you open up the program, you're welcomed with a short and succinct tutorial that covers the basic tools, and then opens up to allow you to explore the rest of the options available.
We're entertaining ourselves on Cartoon Brew's Instagram account this afternoon with a series of childhood photos of famous animation folk. How many can you identify? Click on the images for the answers.
A look at animation history via Cartoon Brew's archives.
This short animation of a seemingly CG bear climbing stairs is garnering a lot of attention on the Internet because it's actually a CG bear printed as 3-D models and then animated in stop motion.
"Green Lantern: The Animated Series" showrunner Giancarlo Volpe drew a mini-comic about his first experience attending a focus group for his series.
This week the influential Gawker Media brand launched an animation-specific site called, quite simply, Animation. The blog is a subsite of the larger io9 brand, which already publishes a fair amount of animation coverage. Another Gawker site, the gaming-oriented Kotaku, covers anime and will continue to do so.
While animation is most often used as an entertainment form, it can also used to educate, and increasingly, to advocate for social causes. We saw animation yesterday for a gun safety PSA in the United States, and now we turn to Australia where Universities Australia is promoting its Keep It Clever Australia campaign to stress the value of public funding for university education and research.
Animator and director Stephan Franck ("Iron Giant," "Despicable Me"), who was recently nominated at the Annie Awards for his work on "The Smurfs: The Legend of Smurfy Hollow," premiered a collected paperback version of his adventure comic Silver at the Emerald City Comic Convention last month.
To commemorate ten years of Cartoon Brew, I thought it would be fun to revisit our posts from earlier years. What happened in animation last year? Five years ago? Ten years ago?
Mark Mayerson, a TV show creator, animator, and teacher, has written what may be the single best thing I've ever read about the contemporary animation pitching process.
When you think of countries that are known for their animation, Brazil is probably not among the first that comes to mind. However, the country has nearly a century-long history of producing animation, and while historically most of the animation they have made hasn't been seen outside of its borders, there have been notable contributions to the art form throughout the country’s history. With the animation industry growing quickly in Brazil—they are ranked seventh for countries that visit Cartoon Brew most often—it is a great time to explore the country's animation legacy.
This is a rare demo of Pixar's proprietary animation system called Presto. The program was written originally for "Brave" and is being used on all of the studio's upcoming films. It offers animators a deep level of control within a real-time, interactive environment.
Giannalberto Bendazzi's "Cartoons" is an indispensable animation history book . Why won't any American publisher take a risk on the updated version?
Animator Lucas Zanotto has released a follow-up to his Drawnimal appcalled Miximal. It's a mix-and-match style children's game in which different combinations of animals can be created. Little bits of animation accompany each section of the animal, and when all three pieces align into a complete animal, the creature peforms a short act.
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 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 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.