The VIEW Conference is proud to announce that award winning director Genndy Tartakovsky (“Dexter’s Laboratory,” “Samurai Jack,” “Star Wars: Clone Wars”) will present and discuss his feature film debut, Sony Pictures Animation’s 3D monster comedy Hotel Transylvania, for the first time in Italy during the 2012 conference, October 16 to 19 in Turin, Italy.

Welcome to the Hotel Transylvania, Dracula’s lavish five-stake resort, where monsters and their families can live it up, free to be the monsters they are without humans to bother them. On one special weekend, Dracula has invited some of the world’s most famous monsters — Frankenstein and his wife, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, a family of werewolves, and more — to celebrate his daughter Mavis’ 118th birthday. For Drac, catering to all of these legendary monsters is no problem — but his world could come crashing down when a human stumbles on the hotel for the first time and takes a shine to Mavis.

Columbia Pictures presents a Sony Pictures Animation film, Hotel Transylvania.  The film features the voices of Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg,Selena Gomez, Kevin James, Fran Drescher, Steve Buscemi, Molly Shannon, David Spade, and CeeLo Green.  Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky.  Produced by Michelle Murdocca.  Screenplay by Peter Baynham and Robert Smigel.  Story by Todd Durham and Daniel Hageman & Kevin Hageman.  Executive producers are Adam Sandler, Robert Smigel and Allen Covert.  Music by Mark Mothersbaugh.  Music Supervision by Liza Richardson.  Imagery and Animation by Sony Pictures Imageworks Inc.

MIPTV is always a draw, but how has the economy affected this marketplace?

Wow, was it easier to get from meeting to meeting this past MIPTV. Considerably smaller in scale both booth wise and in attendance, it was a noticeably quieter MIPTV. “Yeah, well, this is what it looks like when several trillion dollars disappears overnight…” a seasoned market-goer told me. While there is no denying that the world is in the midst of a major fiscal re-order, a lot of the people at MIP weren’t necessarily crying the panicked, frantic song they were at last fall’s MIPCOM. The sky is no longer falling, business is just slow…really slow. “I am only here for a few days and only meeting with the people that I might actually do business with,” I heard over and over. I also heard, across the board, in every meeting, the words, “new media” and “diversify.” New media is the given, with not only producers unveiling elaborate cross-platform ideas with every pitch, but also a number of new players coming to the event and starting some interesting, brain-bending conversations. And “diversify” came into play as players scramble to have as many arrows in their quivers as possible to stay afloat. An animation producer with a new board game? An animation company plunging into live-action? A television producer suddenly pitching a feature? An animation production house moving into online world creation? ‘Why not!’ is the attitude right now. When times are slow, you have to start thinking of other places to sell.

Genzano di Roma from across the lake. All images courtesy of Heather Kenyon.

What is it about Italians? Give any of them a microphone and invite them to speak and they immediately turn into the best public speakers known to man. Joking, calling out to the audience, laughing, and then delivering interesting insight and banter. This is I Castelli Animati. Led by unfazable festival director, Luca Raffaelli, the festival bounced along for four days, from November 26 – 30, 2008 in Genzano di Roma, a little hill town north of Rome located around sparkling blue lakes.

OIAF Artistic Director Chris Robinson previews Chainsaw by Australian animator Dennis Tupicoff.

The Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) is trying out some new elements this year, including a new venue (the Canadian Museum of Civilization), a new free shuttle bus between venues and new additions to programming, like a live art presentation by Daniel Barrow, who uses an overhead projector and narration to create something called "manual animation."

So what about the films?

... after all this is a film festival.

First of all I want to say that it's really hard to make an excellent film.

I'm just completing my fifth film, and believe me it's very easy to fall in love with your work, not so easy to see it with some objectivity.

All the films that made it into competition are here for a reason - there is something about them that is excellent. It could be the story, or the animation, or a unique voice and style, perhaps it's the way the story and music interplay, it could be an unusual technique, or a particularly superb sense of timing.

Stephen Beck (interim director, LSU Center for

computation & Technology) (l) and John Hays (animation

producer, Howl).

written by Joe Strike

I arrive at Baton Rouge’s Belle Hotel, which until April was the Sheraton Baton Rouge. (BR from here on, saves space.) The hotel’s terrible online reviews don’t seem to apply, as the place is actually quite nice. (Wish the internet service was a little more steady, but I’m online now – for the moment…)

Evening comes and Stephen Beck, the current director of Louisiana State University’s Center for Computation and Technology (the Festival’s host) picks me up. We’re heading for the Rave Theater a ways down from BR’s Shaw Center for the Arts, where the Festival is based. Rave? I’m expecting a spontaneous dance party in some empty warehouse, but the Rave is a classy 15-screen multiplex, and they’re about to show Tangled to various invited guests and schoolkids.

"Legends of Norrath" leads the "Into the Pixel" exhibit.

by Donna Bulford

Another great year of E3 in downtown at the Staples Convention Center. Lots of interesting announcements and events this year. The art exhibition “Into the Pixel” continues to chronicle the ascent of console game graphics from popular culture and street cred to the rare refined air of original paintings inspired by well-known games.  It’s a national sentiment, even the National Endowment of the Arts and the Smithsonian have gotten into the act with shows centered around “the art of video games” (http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2012/games/).

Gunnar, Nancy and Nik

Gunnar Strom, Nancy and Nik Phelps

By Nancy Phelps

ANIMATION VOLDA is a unique festival run by animation students at Volda University College.  Volda is a town of roughly 7,000 people of which 3,000 are students and the festival is primarily for students and festival guests.

ANIMATION VOLDA began five years ago by renowned Volda University College Associate Professor of Animation Gunnar Strom.  This year’s three student festival organizers,  Anja Malec, Lara Zlatar, and Ivan Dujmusic, did a wonderful job of decision making, programming, and problem solving but I have a feeling that larger-than-life Gunnar was always around to offer assistance when needed.

By Keeto Lam

Editor’s Note: Film critic and historian Keeta Lam did a presentation at the 60 Years of Hong Kong Animation event and was kind enough to provide AWN with a great synopsis of the history of animation in Hong Kong.

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Animation production in Hong Kong has roughly over sixty years in history. It is not until recently has it been recognized and appreciated as a respected industry.

As early as in the 20’s, when movie making was just emerging, the four Wan brothers of Shanghai had already been considering making an animation film. In the 40’s, Wan lai-min and his twin Wan gu-chen came south to Hong Kong to look for filming resources.  They used their animation "Princess Iron Fan", released in ’41 in Shanghai, as part of the Hong Kong film"Father and Son" which was directed by Shuen Wei in 1953.  The “Movie within movie” format made the record as the earliest animation in Hong Kong.  Until 50’s to 60’s, Hong Kong animation pioneer Mr. Lo kei-ping used self-developed special animation  technique to produce the early special effect films such as"The Buddha's Palm"in ’64(a series of seven films). A lot of animations were hand drawn onto the film stock, without optical synthesis.  Those “hand drawn” film copies were extremely precious.

By Ellen Besen

What makes an animation festival great?

With OIAF recently past and CTN on the immediate horizon, it seems like a good time to ask this question, one I’ve been asking myself in the aftermath of every festival experience for so many years I’ve lost count. I’ve also lost count of my many attempts to answer that question – most of them quite unsatisfactory.

In fact, I only started to answer the question in any meaningful way when I found myself taking over a sweet little festival- the late, lamented Kalamazoo Animation Festival International (KAFI)- from 2006 to 2009. We were charged, at the time, with taking a promising regional festival to the next level…and in the process of achieving that goal- if only for a moment before the economy, among other things, took the whole enterprise down- a great deal of what really makes a festival work was revealed.