This October, at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, I finally had an opportunity to meet Caroline Leaf in person. Her films were among the first animated shorts I fell in love with when I discovered animation. The Street and The Owl Who Married A Goose, to name just two of her many films, are among my favourites even to this day.

Several years ago I’d heard that she had moved on from filmmaking and was now painting. I was curious to know what was behind the shift, and even more curious to see her current work. 

Currently a lot of our colleagues are involved with “dimensionalizing” conventional 2D films into being stereoscopic or so called 3D movies. While most of the artists I spoke with tended to mumble something about “colorizing Shirley Temple” all are glad to have the work.

 

 

A professional sound designer offers a series of online webinars on designing sound for film. 

 

By Cima Balser

In all our travels, we’ve always found animation studios to be great fun to visit.  UPA in its day had a bookcase filled with faux books, with carefully lettered titles on the bindings, such as “Brain Surgery Can Be Fun.” 

During the entire time Yellow Submarine was being produced there, the receptionist at the entrance never recovered from shock as each day he watched the Carnaby-clothed artists march in and out.  One day there was a serious complaint from the tenant downstairs, and soon after the crew was reprimanded by a shamefaced John Coates.  We heard that a very, very large billboard size poster with carefully lettered “POOP” was being lowered and waved across all the windows of the office below. 

So yes, animators have traditionally played and had fun, along with their real work. However, as Bob and I tagged along with Ron and Dan’s group to DreamWorks’s campus in Glendale, we found that the bar had been lifted higher than we could have ever imagined.

The year 2010 has been a “Perrific!” year for animation films.  I saw not only impressive major studio releases, but also amazing indie films at film festivals and Landmark theaters.

Of the 15 animation features fighting for the three precious spots for best animation Oscar feature, I predict my own top animation picks which all received 4.5 starfish: Toy Story 3 (Pixar/Disney) , How to Train Your Dragon (DreamWorks), and Tangled (Disney) will be chosen tomorrow (Jan 25, 2011) when Oscar nominations are revealed.

 

 

It’s no surprise that recent anime pop culture has been Death Note’s bitch. Dan Brown wishes he could write a detective yarn as intelligently intricate and pleasurably discombobulating. The story of the impromptu murderer Light Yagami, a.k.a Kira, his supporting Shinigami Ryuk, the Death Note empowering him to kill by simply writing a name, and his ultimate battle of wits with the genius detective L has consumed the world like Kate and Leo’s Titanic. And even if we didn’t have the edible Misa to accompany this ensemble, Light’s devotee and a Lolita that would have made Nabokov sweat, this story is rather perfect. Who doesn’t love the hunt for a killer, one teeming with anxiety and nearly insolvable riddles? 

 

Director Lee Unkrich and the entire Pixar team have found a fitting conclusion to the TOY STORY trilogy. It is worthy to stand by the masterpieces that came before it. The story deals with many of the same issues the previous films did, but extends them organically. The first film was Woody dealing with the possibility of being replaced as owner Andy's favorite. The second film was about what it means to be a toy. Now the third film deals with the existential question of what does it mean to be the toy of a child who has outgrown toys.

After a rousing fantasy sequence that brings the tangent filled imagination of a child to life, Woody (Tom Hanks, FORREST GUMP) leads the other toys in one last ditch attempt to get Andy (John Morris) to play with them. It doesn't go so well and the endless optimist Woody prepares the toys for their new life in the attic. Naysayers fear they'll end up in the trash or on eBay. Through a series of misunderstandings, Woody ends up in Andy's box to college and the others in a trashbag at the curb. After a narrow escape, Buzz (Tim Allen, TV's HOME IMPROVEMENT), Jessie (Joan Cusack, WORKING GIRL) and the others make their way to the donation box, hoping daycare will allow them to be played with again.

UPDATED

The book publishing industry, like the newspaper biz, is on a glide path to oblivion.  It's just too easy and cheap to download a book to your computer, iPad or Kindle.

And that was last year!

Now it takes less time to publish your own book than it does to write a query letter to publishers, let alone send it out and wait for the rejection letters.

Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing is so easy it's frightening (to the publishing industry). How easy?

Special Guests:  Will Krause and Fran Krause 

On this week's episode of the Frenzer Foreman Animation Forum, Alan gives Joel a sneak peek at his decades-old experimental energy sleep activity cycle! Then, the most impressively twinned pair of animation super-star multi-makers Fran and Will Krause ride into the forum on their tandem bike to discuss making things, breaking things, and their high-octane bacon-powered recipe for dancin' dancin' dancin'.