.png){kind=logo}
Our post on Andy Serkis's inflammatory rhetoric about the limited role of animators on his motion capture performances generated a robust, often heated, discussion in the comments. By far, the most informative comment was provided by 3-time Oscar winner Randall William Cook, who was the animation supervisor and designer at WETA on the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy that was released between 2001 and 2003.
Ryuichi Kazama continues his victorious streak with a singles win at the Youth Olympics, while Sakuma and Peco realize they aren't cut out for the sport after witnessing Smile's continued improvement. At the halfway point in the story, we seem to be in a transitional stage in which the relationships of the players to one another and their attitude towards the sport are changing. The episode didn't have much tension to it partly as a result of that. There was no strong driving narrative force. That made it one of the less memorable episodes so far.
Today is the 100th birthday anniversary of one of the most important women who ever worked in animation: Joy Batchelor. With her husband, she ran the studio Halas & Batchelor, which was the largest English animation outfit for a good part of the 20th century and made that country's first feature-length animated film, "Animal Farm."
“DreamWorks Animation: The Exhibition” opened last month at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI). Clearly inspired by “Pixar: 20 Years of Animation,” which was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York back in 2005, the DreamWorks show includes over 400 items, and covers the studio's twenty-year history right up to the present—there are displays about "Mr. Peabody & Sherman" and "How to Train Your Dragon 2," which will be released next month. It is the largest exhibition in the twelve-year history of the ACMI.
Ralph Bakshi pulled himself away from his drawing desk in New Mexico to chat with Cartoon Brew about his legacy, his latest project "The Last Days of Coney Island," which he recently funded on Kickstarter, and what he really thinks about the computer’s role in animation these days.
The exhibit “Chuck Jones: Doodles of a Genius” has opened at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, California. We've previously written about the show, which features random non-production doodles by the great Golden Age theatrical short director, and now we have a preview of some of those doodles on display thanks to the official Chuck Jones Tumblr.
The Walt Disney Family Museum has opened a new exhibit focused on one of the studio's legendary Nine Old Men: "Leading Ladies and Femmes Fatales: The Art of Marc Davis." The show will be up through November 3. Unlike the museum's current Mary Blair exhibition, the Davis show is much smaller, with around 70 pieces on display.
The championship grinds on. After Smile’s defeat at the hands of Kong, the tables are turned and the elite players of Kaio Academy come …
A look at animation history via Cartoon Brew's archives.
While this week’s "Steven Universe" opened a lot of doors as far as characterization and parallels, it was simply okay. Mr. Pizza was comical relief but other than that you had to dig for the entertainment.
During YouTube's splashy Brandcast upfront event on Wednesday, DreamWorks announced the launch of DreamWorksTV, a new streaming children's channel that will offer original animated and live-action programming, as well as vintage animation content.
Directors who have graduated from CalArts' character and experimental animation programs have generated over $30 billion in box office grosses since 1985. However you slice it, that's a remarkable amount.
Fox's experiment with late-night animation didn't go as well as they had anticipated. The network will end its Saturday late-night animation block ADHD (Animation Domination High-Def) in June, less than a year after it began. It was originally created as a replacement for the cancelled sketch comedy show "MADtv."
Tensions run high during the high school championships, and all eyes are on the showdown between Kong and Smile. The third episode jumps abruptly from Smile's training in episode 2 right to the championships, and to a Smile who has begun to gain the confidence to show his true potential.
This week's "Steven Universe" dived into the whirlwind that is the mindset of an insecure youth, in ways that were similar to the episode “Lars and the Cool Kids.” At first, the episode didn’t really make any sort of impression on me. It took another viewing for me to grasp its depth—or at least theorize things in the whirlwind that in my own mind at 3am.
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.
Determined to unleash Smile's potential, Coach Koizumi devises a relentless schedule of training that culminates in a death match pitting old veteran versus young hopeful. Smile's resistance finally cracks under the pressure, and he begins to get serious. Meanwhile, the appearance of a new rival - the tough-looking Ryuichi Kazama - sets the stage for a later showdown.
“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.
It's been one week now since CG Hub, the popular portfolio site and social network for digital artists, unexpectedly shut down, leaving thousands of its users angry and confused.
This week's issue of "The New Yorker" does something that they rarely ever do: review an animated TV series. The show they elected to discuss is "Adventure Time."