For the past 2 years, Bill Plympton has had a team of interns busy restoring Winsor McCay’s last short film, The Flying House.  As work has progressed, Matthew Modine came onto the project as a producer and with assistance from business partner Adam Rakoff, has launched an online fundraising effort through Kickstarter.com.  Find out more about Winsor McCay, his career, the restoration of the film and how you can get involved.

 

 

Recently, I had an opportunity to talk to Daisuke “Dice” Tsutsumi, whom many of you know as a driving force behind the Totoro Forest Project and most recently, the Sketchtravel charity art project.  An accomplished artist who spends his days applying his formidable skills as an art director at Pixar Animation Studios, Dice gave me an inside look at the unprecedented Sketchtravel sketch book, a historic collection of sketches being auctioned off this coming October 17^th.

Before I tell you why you must go see LAIKA’s new stop-motion tour de force, ParaNorman, I’m going to share some deeply personal recollections from my wayward past.  There is relevance here, I assure you.  Just give me a chance.  Many years, ago, when I was a young lad, I often faced the derisive taunts of my schoolmates, who took delight in calling me anything from “Farto” (a deviously pithy replacement of the first letter of my last name – I still get mail to Dan Farto and it pisses me off as much now as it did when I was 7) to “Fat Fuck” to “Jew.”   Many of these upstanding citizens grew up to become pillars of business, doctors, lawyers, disgraced investment bankers.  Two of the meanest became cops.  A couple from the pre-Jackass gene pool died in nasty drug-fueled car crashes soon after dropping out of high school. Even though Facebook was decades away from germinating in the loins of that you-know-which Harvard nabob (I can’t say his name or I’ll break into 20 minutes of angry muttering) and text messaging involved nothing more than a pencil, some paper and a reasonable sidearm throwing motion, very few of my friends and none of the various school bullies ever had any problems finding new and efficient ways of singling me out for their verbal abuse.  They didn’t need no stinking mobile computing devices to focus their bullying.  They were just naturally talented, like Michael Phelps of Jenna Jamison.

 

 

By Nancy Phelps

If you have ever watched an animated film and wondered “How did they do that?” then Tobias Wengert’s  ANIMATORS how did they do that? is the book for you.  Wengert has transcribed in print his conversations with twelve diverse members of the Stuttgart, Germany animation community who reveal the secret techniques behind the magical images they create.

Imagine exploring Paris through a digital window in your living room, using a camera to capture a 3D blueprint of your house to plan your next remodel, or trying on clothing in a virtual dressing room that shows how fabrics flow with your every move. These are a few potential applications of visual computing, a fast-growing field of technology that combines photorealism, HD video and audio, interactivity and computational modeling to enable real-time, lifelike immersive experiences.

The demand for visual computing is accelerating in parallel with increasing computational power that enables the processing of complex visual data, the proliferation of mobile devices and the demand for improved user experiences. In the future, people will use their computing platforms to interact with the world in richer ways, letting them enjoy realistic simulated experiences that blur the line between the physical and virtual worlds.

 

 

With MIPTV starting today, an independent market research firm has released the results of its most recent television animation production industry survey.  According to Copenhagen-based management consulting and market research firm International Institute for a Better Tomorrow, production companies that historically have generated significant revenue from animated series are finding today’s marketplace significantly more crowded and less lucrative than in previous years.  A company press release accompanying highlights of the survey says that their most recent data suggests that senior studio executives are in agreement that the halcyon days of big money animation television deals are a distant memory, never to return.  However, bucking conventional wisdom and recent industry trends, these executives differ greatly on profit strategies and business models they plan on putting in place to shore up their bottom line and ensure the survival of their businesses.

A complete breakdown of the survey results is as follows:.

 

 

It is with great sadness that I report Dr. Changyou Chen, father of AWN contributing writer and Ingrid Pitt: Beyond The Forest animator Perry Chen, passed away from cancer last Thursday, July 19.  A memorial service is scheduled this Sunday, details below.

 

6 new character posters have been released for the new DreamWorks feature, Rise of the Guardians, set for release November 21, 2012, including the evil villain, Pitch.

 

 

By Nancy Phelps

Estonian animation director and educator Ulo Pikkov has accomplished a remarkable feat in producing a most readable book on animation theory.  For those who do not know about the technical side of animation Animasophy – Theoretical Writings On The Animated Film is a great place to start.  Readers who are already well versed in animation techniques will be reminded about what they already know but don’t always think about.

 

No, Anderson, Bullwinkle, Rocky and Me is not a British supergroup from the 80s.  Please, who would have played bass?

Alexander Anderson Jr., who along with Cal frat brother Jay Ward created Rocky & Bullwinkle and Dudley Do-Right among other cartoon characters, passed away last Friday at age 90. My daughters grew up with a constant barrage of my “Wossamotta U” and “fan mail from some flounder” mimicry.  Of course back then, they thought me odd and had no idea what I was saying, until I bought them (actually, I bought for myself) our first set of The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle VHS tapes at least 15 years ago and opened their eyes and young minds to all the greatness and splendor of Anderson and Ward’s creations.