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ASIFA-SF PRESENTS NEW GERMAN ANIMATION WITH RAIMUND KRUMME IN-PERSON Krumme has gained international attention and numerous festival prizes for personal work that features intricate shifts of perspective, expressive characters and occasional social commentary. His commercial work includes animated ads for NASDAQ, Levi's, AST Computers and the Milk Board. He also directed a segment of the French computer animated feature Opera Imaginaire. He is currently in Hollywood, developing Crockett Johnson's Harold and the Purple Crayon and Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are for TriStar.
Krumme's award winning shorts including Rope Dance, Crossroads, Passage and Spectators. Each explores surreal distortions of space and/or size relationships. What appears to be flat surface in one sequence may turn out to be the side or even bottom of something in the next image. His new reality keeps audiences guessing and has made his work a hit when shown in programs including Spike and Mike's Festival of Animation.
Krumme has taught animation in Germany and Brazil and is a founder of the dynamic European organization, Cartoon.
Krumme will present two programs of his work in the Bay Area. On Saturday, November 9, at 1:30 PM, he will show his work at De Anza Community College, Cupertino. The program will be in the Advanced Technology Center, Room 120. The college is off 280. Turn onto Highway 85 and take the first exit off 85. The event will be free and will include several works on video that will not be shown on Sunday.
Krumme's program at the U.C. Theatre in Berkeley is on Sunday, November 10 at noon. It will be in 35mm and it will feature his work and other outstanding new German animation. The event is sponsored by ASIFA-SF and the Goethe Institute. Show you ASIFA membership card for a reduced admission fee. Special thanks to Marty McNamara for organizing these special events.
DISNEY/PIXAR'S TOY STORY JUST OPENED IN NEW YORK CITY - That is the ice show version of the film. Ads for the production are on busses, in subways, etc.
CURIOUS PICTURES OPENS A SAN FRANCISCO BRANCH Curious Pictures was founded in New York City in 1993 as a full service production company specializing in outstanding animation, special effects graphics, mixed media and live action work for TV. Seeing a need for a branch office in San Francisco, they opened their second production facility with Anne Smith as their executive producer.
Their local office is off to a great start. Since opening their doors on Sept. 4, 1996 they have been busying doing 3 stop-motion commercials for a national sponsor that are being directed by Denis Morellia and shot at Twitching Images. They are also doing a cel animated spot with a comic book look that will begin to air in December across the nation. The latter is for a well known shoe company and was directed by Robert Valley.
Anne Smith began her career in animation in New York working with Ink Tank and Broadcast Arts. About six years ago she moved to San Francisco and worked her way up through the ranks at Colossal from production manager to senior managing producer of animation.
The New York team includes Mo Willems whose work has been shown in past Spike and Mike shows. His personal work includes The Man Who Had to Yell and he has done several project for Sesame Street and Nickelodeon. The company is headed by Steve Oakes, president; Susan Holden Squibb, CFO; David Starr, executive producer and head of sales, and Richard Winkler, executive producer and head of production. Among their current TV spots are "Roachercise" for Orkin. The ad features a giant cockroach that was modeled out of silicon and plastic.
Curious Pictures in San Francisco is looking at director's reels for future projects. If interested contact Anne Smith at (415) 437-1400. 1360 Mission Street, Suite 201, SF CA 94103
COLOSSAL PICTURES DOES ANIMATED MOVIE OPEN FOR NICKELODEON The rhinoceros and Nick logo in the opening were animated on paper and then inked and painted using SoftImage Toonz. Adobe photoshop and Flame effects and compositing were added. Dan McHale, Tom Rubalcava and Charlie Canfield animated the opening, Keun Hicks and Beth Morris did the digital ink and paint and Zane Rutledge did CG animation. Click 3 West did the post. Bob Roesler was the Flame artist. Canefield was the animation director.
RICHARD ZIMMERMAN'S BIRDHOUSE was shown at the NuArt in Los Angeles to a packed house in October. The program was a selection of new shorts. Steve Buckley reports that the audience loved the work.
STORY ANIMATION DOES A COMMERCIAL FOR GTE MOBILNET The 30 second ad electronically morphed animated scenes together. Lorie Loeb directed the spot and David Gordon designed it. Lisa Davidson, Brian MacKenzie and Susan Teagarden provided art production and support. The animation was shot by Carter Tomassi at Messy Optics.
The ad was for Focus Advertising and was supervised by Camila Velez. The spot is now on the air in southern California. For more information contact Robert Story (415) 383-2628.
THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA is the name of Mike Johnson's almost completed 3 1/2 minute stop-motion animated short. The title comes from the name of the song in the work. Animation was by Johnson and Paul Berry, and the directors of photography were Rich Lihmann and Sean Mathiesen. It was shot over a series of months while the crew worked at Danger Productions and Skellington. The music is performed by Les Claypool of Primus.
ERROR - JAY CLAY MEETS CANHEAD is the title of Tim Hittle's new work. Last month our newsletter was written in a great hurry and "canhead" ended up as "canned" which doesn't make sense. The stop-motion film is a wonderful audience pleaser by the man who became world famous (in the animation world) for his short The Potato Hunter.
Errors in the current issue can be attributed to my writing this issue at the last moment. Work on it began Oct. 28 as I'm just back from two weeks in New York City. Also, the computer I use was being repaired until the 27th by one of our members who knows how to keep an antique 286 machine fine tuned. Much thanks to Seth Olitzky for his help.
MORE ON PIXAR UNIVERSITY Oren Jacob says "Pixar University was started this past June by two instructors, Jimmy Hayward and Oren Jacob, teaching the new animators and the new technical director classes respectively. For the fall semester, Ronen Barzel and Larry Aupperle are now teaching the TD class and Steve Segal, as you mentioned in the article last month, is teaching the animator class."
He also writes that "Jimmy and Oren are continuing to teach the Advanced Character Animation class at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco. Several other Pixarians, including Andrew Schmidt, Dale McBeath, Brian Green, Craig Goode and Marius Nichita to name a few, are teaching an introduction to SoftImage at the Academy of Art College as well."
SIX FOOT TWO KEEPS BUSY WITH CD-ROM PRODUCTIONS Among their recent work is Sheila Rae, the Brave for Living Books. The disc is a sing-along adventure for children aged 3 to 7. Robbin Atherly was the animation director, Bridget Erdman the producer and Michael Sporn was the animator.
Another recent project was the visual enhancement of Meridian for 3DO. They used traditional and CG animation to improve the look of the game.
Other CD-Rom titles the company has worked on are Get in a Fight and Harry and the Haunted House from Living Books, Star Wars Chess from Software Toolworks, The Treehouse and Carmen Sandiego from Broderbund, and products for other developers.
The company also does other forms of animation including a tiger that jumps through a hoop for Northern California Nissan dealers. The animation was by Chris Petrocchi. Atherly directed the segment for Chiat/Day.
For further information contact Six Foot Two at 1011 Magnolia Ave., Larkspur, CA 94939 (415) 925-9909
LUCILLE BLISS WAS A GUEST SPEAKER AT A RECENT DISNEY FAN CLUB CONVENTION AT DISNEYLAND She was on a panel that discussed voice work, and was the only member of the group that had actually worked with Walt Disney (she worked on Cinderella when she was 17). Bliss lives in San Francisco and has been active with our chapter and ASIFA-Hollywood for many years.
Also on the panel were Tony Jay (from Huntchback), Joanne Worley, Jodi Benson (Ariel), and Mary Kay Berman (the new voice of Snow White).
Bliss can be heard daily on the radio doing ads for Lifescan.
David Bluford is the general manager of the company and Phil Stockton is the stage manager. For further information call (415) 641-1100 or fax 641-1311.
ANIMATION PRODUCER KEVIN COFFEY TOURED THE SOUTH WITH A ROCK BAND He toured as a guitar player with "Elvis Herselvis and the Straight White Males." They played 14 gigs in 17 days in the deep south in August. The tour took them to Automatic Slims in Memphis, Howlin Wolf in New Orleans, the Velvet Elvis clubs in Houston and Dallas, House of Blues in New Orleans (a private Siggraph party that included Wes Takahashi in attendance), and to 9 other clubs in Mississippi, Florida, Georgia and Louisiana. Coffey says, "I would like to thank the local animation studios that picked up the slack while I was gone."
WIG, A CREATIVE CONSULTANT SERVICE, OPENS IN SF The company is run by Robin Skirboll and Susan Smith as an arm of Western Images. They provide technical expertise, including animation and visual effects advice to producers while they are in pre-production. They can do storyboards, effects design, typography treatment, motion tests, etc. for agencies and clients.
CUSTER AVENUE STAGES OPENS "A CLEAN, WELL-LIGHTED PLACE TO SHOOT." They have renovated the former Studio Colossal site at Custer and Rankin near Third Street and now offer several well-equipped stages including one for motion control work. The company also has a full-service effects shop which can
create scale miniatures, overscale models, animatronics and puppets. They also house JCX Expendables which can furnish a complete inventory of film production supplies.
The company offers other services that may or may not be of interest to animation producers. There are the usual kitchens, dressing rooms, phones, etc. plus a set and prop department. They also have an AVID 8000 editing system and other interesting goodies available.
DAILY VARIETY TO HONOR PIXAR The Oct. 30 issue is set to congratulate and honor the company on the release of their first feature on home video.
ADLER AND COMPANY, A FINE ART AND ANIMATION DEALER, OPENS IN SAN FRANCISCO The new company is located at 2284 Union (at Steiner). They were formerly located in New Jersey. A catalog available. (415) 931-4471 and (800) 647-8007.
DISNEYANA! COLLECTORS EXPO SHOW IN SAN MATEO on Saturday and Sunday, December 7 & 8. The show will offer thousands of items for sale. There will be "surprise guests, book signings and 100 door prizes." It will be at the San Mateo County Expo Center at 25th Ave. and Delaware Street. Admission is $5. For further information call (415) 286-3452.
THE CD-ROM HONEYMOON IS OVER for most local companies. In October employees at one of our largest production companies were told 3 of the 5 production teams would be facing unemployment. That translates as over 40 jobs. Speculations as to why the jobs were cut range from the company's products are not selling as well as expected to downsizing so the company will look better on paper to stock holders.
There are other signs that the CD-Rom industry is having growing pains. At a local animation company that does CD-ROM projects for publishers, a major project was cancelled in Oct. and people were let go. At another company the owner says that he doesn't expect his company to do any further CD-Rom projects as he thinks the publishers can no longer afford his services. He says production budgets are getting smaller. He believes a future area of growth will be animation jobs for internet companies.
CD-Rom should be around for many years since most computers sold recently have CD-Rom drives built-in. Friends say one major company in San Mateo is doing extremely well despite the internet fad and the desire of many computer owners to have home web sites.
If CD-Roms do not sell this Christmas as well as the industry expects them to sell, expect changes in marketing. Several people who watch the industry expect producers to start selling existing products for less. They also see the need for companies to reduce production costs in the future and to produce fewer titles each year.
The concept that lower prices can result in large volume sales was demonstrated a few years ago in the home video market. You may remember that when home video tapes were first sold to the public they were expensive ($39 and up). Not many tapes were sold. When the market didn't take off at those prices, companies lowered the price of pre-recorded tapes down to $19.95 and less. That is when the industry took off and became profitable for the volume dealers.
One animator who has worked for several local CD-Rom producers says the companies he has worked for had internal problems that drove up production costs. Often the different departments didn't work well with other units of the company. They were ego driven and didn't share information with others. He also felt many projects that died were not properly planned in the first place. Nobody demanded that the final storyboard and script be approved before animation started. As a result a lot of messed up jobs were well into animation or even post-production before they were killed.