We've come along way from The Flintstones to The Simpsons but one thing seems to remain constant when looking at the most succesful Prime Time Animated shows as at the core of most of them is the American Family and its problems, concerns and interactions.  The newer shows keep searchingfor the line they can't cross but after all is said and done the father, mother and kids all rotate around the same age old problems and concerns, just with a more contemporary viewpoint. 

I begin to suspect that this is like trying to write the perfect pre-nuptial, and wonder that perhaps it can’t be done!  I chew on this for a bit before I start to realize that the problem that is stymieing me, needs to be included in the definition.   After all, if art can’t be clearly defined wouldn’t that need to be part of its definition?  I also thought of what Elbert Hubard said, “Art is not a thing, it is a way.”

 

By Kira Formina

It’s the first day of the Northern-California leg of the annual AWN Oscar® Showcase Tour, a crisp, foggy morning in San Francisco. At about 9:20 am, already running a few minutes late, the four of us pile into the van on the way to Electronic Arts. Ron Diamond, the inexhaustible host and promoter of this unique event, takes the wheel as Tim Reckart navigates, while Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly and I are in the back.

This year, Ron is bringing five Oscar nominated shorts to the studio screens: Minkyu Lee’s Adam and Dog; Reckart’s and O’Reilly’s Head Over Heels; PES’s Fresh Guacamole; David Silverman’s Maggie Simpson in the Longest Daycare; and John Kahrs’ Paperman.

Aussie and Romanians sitting in a tree...

 

By Dan Sarto

Our day began at Sony Pictures in Culver City.  We watched a short film detailing the history of the studio dating back to brothers Harry and Jack Cohn’s 1918 partnership with Joe Brandt to form CBC Film Sales, or as it was then known as Corn Beef and Cabbage.  CBC became Columbia Pictures Corporation in 1924, with original offices located on Gower Street in Hollywood. The studio’s fortunes changed dramatically with the hiring of Frank Capra in 1927, who over the next decades helped chart a course of excellence starting with their first Best Picture Oscar in 1934 for It Happened One Night.  The list of legendary films produced at the studio is immense, including From Here to Eternity, Dr. Strangelove, Lawrence of Arabia, Taxi Driver, Gandhi, Ghostbusters and The Last Emperor to name but a few.  Sony purchased the studio from Coca Cola in 1989, changed its name to Sony Picture Entertainment and relocated to the former MGM lot in Culver City.  I’ve skipped numerous pieces of the studio’s story, including the growth of its vast TV operations, and of course, the creations of Sony Pictures Imageworks and Sony Pictures Animation, our ultimate destination for the morning tour and screening.

On the specific topic of film, there is the Francois Truffaut auteur theory, which suggests that in order for a film to be recognized as art, there must be one guiding hand on the entire project.  This is to say that the auteur must be all things to the film – He or she must write the screenplay, cast the actors, direct and edit the film in order for it to be considered a work of art.  Truffaut allows that others may set the lights, operate the cameras and fill other duties but all creative decisions must be solely and strictly that of the filmmaker. 

The question is how does this definitioin fit in animation where the vast majority of films are made with a team of artists and technicians working together, often independently?  

 

 

By Sean Buckelew and Jess Iglehart

When we traveled to the 2012 Annecy International Animation Festival to present a two-part CalArts Retrospective curated through the class taught by our professor Irene Kotlarz, we expected to bring films back to screen in America, but never did we dream that we would eventually be hosting the legendary animator Katsuhiro Otomo at the new Los Angeles incarnation of the PLATFORM International Animation Festival taking place at REDCAT. 

 

There is a bright side. The West Bank is evolving, Ramallah is booming economically. Unexpectedly, in a middle of the West Bank a new development named Rawabi is sprouting in the mountainous land, out from the sand. This newest undertaking, clearly with some, even if only a silent approval of Israel, is special not only because it is design to bring a sense of stability, hope and prosperity to the Palestinians but also because of the green approach utilized in its current construction. Thus, as the mountains are being torn to make room for the city, the material excavated from them is recycled into the building blocks from which the structures are erected. Nothing, so it was explained to me, is being lost in the process by which one organic matter of the long past is being inverted into another, one of the future.

Original Wassup ad gets animated re-do that will make you excited in your brain and pants.

By Tim Kridel

By next year, annual sales of smartphones that support HTML5 should hit 1 billion worldwide, says the research firm Strategy Analytics. Even today, there’s a healthy installed base of HTML5 phones: at least 336 million, based on 2011 sales.

That market momentum is one reason why HTML5 skills are increasingly important. We recently spoke with Mike Richmond, a technologist in Intel’s Open Source Technology Center who focuses on HTML5, about what to keep in mind when working with the language. [Disclosure: Intel is the sponsor of this content.]

Why should mobile app developers begin mastering HTML5 if they aren’t already proficient? Does HTML5 enable them to develop app features that they otherwise couldn’t, or target certain segments such as browser-based Web apps?

Mike Richmond: Applications developed in HTML5 are easier to move between target environments. And because HTML5 and CSS are so visual, it can be much easier to do user interfaces that are scalable between platforms rather than doing the same UI in native code. Web apps can also be delivered outside of an application store.