Legend of the Guardians.  (C) 2010 GOG PRODUCTIONS PTY LTD. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Picture.

You’ve probably heard about the Uncanny Valley: not a geographical location, but the precipitous drop in peoples’ comfort level when they come across something that’s almost human… but not quite (like the replicants in Zemeckis’ mocap movies). Well, in Zack Snyder’s Legend of the Guardians you’ve got owls – dozens and hundreds of owls who look almost like real life owls… but not quite. It’s that quest for the absolutely perfect replication of wind rippling the tiniest hairs in their feathers or the way light glints and reflects off their wide eyes: Guardians achieves it – at the expense of the audience they’ve just tossed into the Valley.

Every invention that has ever been created had to face one final battle. The battle between conservative and progressive people. I think there are lots of possible reasons and scenarios in which it might make sense to be conservative. But creativity and technology is definitely not one of them. And filmmaking is both creative AND based on technology. Not a single technological advancement in history has been achieved by being conservative. And technology is simply the basis for everything we do in film production.

Nothing is more important to the success of the learning process than motivation.

Talent is important, but talent without motivation simply doesn’t cut it.  Curiosity, persistence and a spirit of creative accomplishment are indispensable.  It’s the responsibility of the instructor and the institution to ensure that the learning environment is one that encourages openness, individuality, teamwork, sound problem solving and creativity.

Autodesk is taking over Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas for the week to stage Autodesk University.  The event is mostly dedicated to training Autodesk’s customers in their wide array of products, particularly people interested in AutoCAD, Revit, and Inventor.  In addition, there’s a trade show as well as keynote addresses and other special events that makes this more like a yearly Autodesk conference than just a week of training. 

Over 5500 people found their way to Las Vegas this week for over 500 classes.  An additional 20,000 will attend virtually.  People started arriving on Monday for various related events, such as the developers conference, but the main conference started on Tuesday with the main keynote.  Being Las Vegas, the keynote started with none other than Elvis Presley (or a reasonable facsimile) singing the disclaimers to the tune of “Glory Glory Hallelujah.”  After that, Autodesk CEO Carl Bass took the stage and talked a bit about Autodesk’s future direction.  A lot of this centered on the idea of the computing cloud, centralized high powered banks of servers controlled by remote workstations.  Users would interface to this computing power by Autodesk software running not only on high-end workstations, but also net-enabled devices such as netbooks and iPhones.

Special Guest: David B. Levy 

This week on the Forum, Joel attempts to summon the wisdom of ghosts while Alan has an identity crisis of historical proportions and unwittingly reveals one of Hollywood's best-kept summer blockbuster secrets. Then, Dave "David B." Levy stops by to talk about how to juggle animation multitasking, authoring books on pitching and job-getting, Ben Franklin, industry infestation, Mad Men, and popping one's bubble.  

And, you actually can rewind a clock, not that hard.

The Lady and the Reaper's producer Raul Garcia, director Javier Recio Gracia, and exec producer Enrique Posner chat with ICM agents.

On the first day of the L.A. leg, the tour swung by agency ICM. Due to another special Irish screening Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty's director Nicky Phelan and producer Darragh O'Connell couldn't make the event, but The Lady and the Reaper's director Javier Recio Gracia, producer Raul Garcia, and exec producer Enrique Posner were on hand.

More than a dozen agents showed up to watch the nominated films. Agent Craig Bernstein said that agents look at shorts to find the next hot filmmaker. They want to see that a filmmaker can tell a story with a beginning, middle and end in a short period of time. This shows a real solid understanding of story. One of the agency's success stories is hooking Oscar-nominated student filmmaker Shane Acker up with the deal to transform his short 9 in a feature.

After the screening in chatting with the agents, Raul said that in Spain they have to make their films in English because it makes it much easier to get international distribution. Right now Kandor's productions cost around $30 million, but still need to compete with the Pixar and DreamWorks films with budgets five times the size.

Looking down from the second floor bridge onto the Pixar atrium.

Written by Dan Sarto

If it’s Friday, it must be Pixar.  And as most would attest, a visit to Pixar is pretty special.  In no particular order, we met John Lasseter, crawled around the infamous Love Lounge, drank Scotch with Andrew Gordon in the Lucky 7 Lounge, met up with Oscar-winner Ralph Eggleston and his mending broken finger, had lunch with Roger Gould, screened the nominated films for 235+ staff, saw concept art, original models and other visual goodies from several films and talked to Bob Peterson.  And, we bought Girl Scout cookies in the Pixar lobby.  Quite the day indeed.

If it’s every animation fan’s dream to visit Pixar, then at the conclusion of our Friday visit, the fan in all of us was ready to die and go to heaven.  The pouring rain outside did little to dampen our enthusiasm as we piled out of the van and into the lobby.  There, our host, Michelle Radcliffe, coordinator for in-house education at Pixar University, greeted us warmly and after a few introductions, patiently marched us all over the main building, answering all our silly questions and making sure we had a good time. 

Special Guest:  Ottawa International Animation Festival - Part 1

Full laurels, keys to capitals, and banks of international accolades might weigh down other comedy podcast journaltarians of animation, but never for the lion-hearted, docu-brave, master news-making martyrs (and hyperbolically humble) Joel Frenzer and Alan Foreman.  Join them as they interview animation's brightest and best about books, inappropriate cartoons, competing podcasts, pirates, and pumpkins - live from North America's largest festival of international animation in Ottawa, ON in 2010 at the Ottawa International Animation Festival 2010.

By John Gaudiosi

When it comes to video games, Valve Software was one of the early game studios to emphasize the importance of interactive narrative in shooters like Half-Life. Storytelling remains an integral part of all of Valve’s games. And Erik Wolpaw is one of the top writers at the Seattle game studio.

Wolpaw began his career as a journalist writing for game sites like GameSpot.com and founding OldManMurray.com. That work led to a job at Double Fine Productions for Psychonauts, and in 2006 he was honored with a Game Developers Choice Award for best writing.

Gabe Newell hired Wolpaw at Valve, where he’s worked on the story and dialogue for games like Portal 1, Left 4 Dead and now Portal 2. Wolpaw talks about the creation of Valve’s much-anticipated Portal 2, which ships in April, in this exclusive interview.

As we face an uncertain jobs market, many of you are asking yourselves 'What does the future of animation hold for me?'  To see what lies ahead, one only need look to the past...