I’ve known Gary Schwartz since, well, since he was a much younger zany filmmaker and animation teacher.  In the Webster’s Dictionary, under the word “energy,” there is a picture of Gary with his infectious grin, a camera and a tripod.  If you ever meet him, ask him about taking 3-D pictures of Don Knotts in the Toronto Airport.  This year at the Ottawa Animation Festival, as he does every year, Gary made an extremely cool stop motion short – in one day! This year’s edition, Fa Fha Pha Ottawa!, inspired by the Ottawa festival award designed by sculptor Tick Tock Tom, is his best yet!

 

 

From the Taiwanese studio and web broadcaster NMA.tv comes their latest animated news “piece,”  Brett Favre's Pecker the Talk of the Town.  Pardon my cheap pun. It can’t be avoided – you’ll understand once you watch the video.

By Randi Rost

In the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy, a feverish search occurs seemingly in slow motion. In order to make progress in the search, a team of researchers from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), has been inventing a brand-new field of work called “art forensics.” Armed with innovative new portable sensing devices and Intel technology, they are searching for a lost masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci called “The Battle of Anghiari.” This impressive painting, considered by some to be da Vinci’s greatest artistic accomplishment, was lost more than 450 years ago.

 

 

Candy Kugel, Rick Broas and the folks at Buzzco Associates have taken on big business and the pervasive economic and political dissatisfaction spilling over on Wall Street with a set of 7 animated shorts.  In the time-tested spirit of political humor, where one can only laugh when faced with daunting issues that are anything but funny, each short is based on a traditional nursery rhyme, spinning topical issues together with little childhood ditties we all know and love.  The latest film, Itsy Bitsy Spider, was just released last week.

 

 

Noted animation producer / director / technologist / multimedia guru / man of international mystery Christopher Panzner has launched a brand new bi-yearly digital magazine, LHOOQ (pronounced “Look”), a pluridisciplinary (pronounced “double-you tee eff”) look at mindstyle, lifestyle, arts, literature, anything, everything.  The first issue includes a great piece spotlighting three well-known Canadian (pronounced “Kun-ay-dee-yan”) animation-type folks, none other than Mike Fallows, Chris Robinson and L. Elliot Taylor

 

For her role as Visual Development Artist on Wreck-It Ralph, Lorelay Bove tapped into her Spanish roots and her love of Catalan modernist architecture to help influence the style, color and character design for Sugar Rush, a candy-coated cart racing game. Inspired by this distinct artistic style that includes such masters as Antoni Gaudi, the filmmakers were able to envision Sugar Rush as a sweet landscape environment that was both credible and melt-in-your-mouth edible.

With Wreck-It Ralph about to be released for the home entertainment market, we chat to the talented artist to discover more about the hilarious, arcade-hopping animation and the amazing artistry behind it…

Sony Picture Home Entertainment has just released on Blu-ray 3D, DVD and DVD, The Pirates! Band of Misfits, the latest film from those masters of zany stop-motion comedy and cheeky Brit humor, Aardman Animations. The transfer looks great and the animation is superb.  Though the film didn’t catch fire at the international box-office, don’t let that deter you.  The film is one of the few family movies that is enjoyable for youngsters with enough adult humor to keep the geezers happy as well.  The various DVD sets include numerous extras for hours and hours of “aarguably” the greatest set of stop-motion pirate movie festivities of all time.

On IndieWire, Bill Desowitz delves into the 3-D retrofitting of Disney's The Lion King. He talks to those in charge of the work and those who worked on the original classic as well.

 

 

It's hard to choose my favorite Christopher Walken.  Kevin Pollack, Jay Mohr and of course, Kevin Spacey come to mind.  In fact, Mr. Walken has become such an iconic personality that it's tough to watch him on TV or in a film and not think, for a moment, that he doesn't do nearly as good a Christopher Walken as one of the previously mentioned actors. He's just not Walken enough.  As they say, you can't be too rich, too thin, or have enough Christopher Walken.

For every cowbell junkie and True Romance lover, this video should scare the "Wow, Wow, Wow" out of youze.

 

 

By Brian Taylor

The World Solar Challenge is a 3,000 kilometer race across the Australian outback. That’s 3,000 kilometers of scrubland and blistering sunlight -- the kind of environment that’s not particularly welcoming to humans or technology, unless that technology happens to be solar-powered.

In late October 2011, for the eleventh race since 1987, a group of solar-powered cars designed by groups from around the world attempted to cross the continent, from Darwin to Adelaide, on solar power alone. Some cars made it; some had to resort to being towed on trailers part of the way by gasoline-powered vehicles. Members of one 70-person-strong team from Cambridge University designed, built and drove a car in the race.