Cam gets his chance to meet Sundance Buddha Robert Redford

I just got back from the Directors brunch at the Sundance institute approximately one hour out of Park City Utah. I was one of the lucky, being a director/animator for a short in this year's festival called The Real Place, produced by the National Film Board of Canada.

This brunch is for many one of the highlights of the festival and though we went last year it was equally exceptional and inspiring. It is a wonderful way to get to know some of the best filmmakers in the world and hear what is on peoples mind.

Curators Lars Denicke and Peter Thaler welcome attendees to Pictoplasma 08. All images courtesy of Pictoplasma, unless otherwise noted.

“Characters want you! The floodgates opened and our visual culture was set upon by a mass of abstract characters, grinning, blinking and snarling in their inimitable pared-down graphical way. In what has become a truly global movement they have invaded digital media, animation, advertising, design, fashion, street and fine art, mashing up and guzzling their way through a diet of pop culture, tribal art, folklore, logos and cartoons. They are the true embodiment of the utopian promise of global communication. They speak in emotions that bypass language and cultural boundaries.”

I Castelli Animati takes place about an hours drive from Rome, in the large and bustling ancient Roman town of Genzano on Lake Nemi. Narrow cobbled streets, ancient stucco buildings with red tile roofs, black iron gates, shuttered windows... in other words the original Mediterannean (sic?) style. This area has been a busy center since before the birth of Jesus.

But there is a vibrant modern overlay to the town... banks, schools, chic shopping, all housed in ancient buildings but the goods and services as current as the cutting edge. (Well, almost ... the hotel has no wireless internet support for Apple computers.)

Comet Ent.'s Santa vs. Claus

You can (almost) always tell an animator by their t-shirt, so I figured the young lady in the Supergirl tee waiting for the hotel shuttle at the Baton Rouge airport had to be in town, like me, for the Red Stick festival. The Supergirl fan turned out to be Carmen Llanos from Comet Entertainment, soon joined by her partner Raquel Benitez in a Chinese dragon tee. (Me, I’m wearing my Comic Book Legal Defense Fund shirt with the tough, healthily-chested cat babe pointing her gun right atcha and politely inquiring “who you tellin’ to shut up!?!”) Last year Carmen and Raquel were here with their Santa vs. Claus feature, the screening of which I missed due to an early departure. This year I’m staying to the very end, which means I’ll get to see their new one, Around the World for Free, which they tell me started as a TV pilot, became a feature and will spin itself off into a TV series after all.

The festival mascots designed by Koji Yamamura.

From the shores of enchanting Rio to Sao Paulo’s urban hustle and bustle, I was lucky enough to attend Brazil’s 2008 Anima Mundi festival. This is the only festival I know about that starts in one city for a week and then moves to another town for another week of festivities. While this makes it one of the longest festivals, I think most people would want it to last even a little longer.

By David Tousek

MIFA is a trade show for studios, producers, individual artists and pretty much anybody involved in animation so they can share time and space intensively for just a couple days of the year to see if they can do business together. And so people talk a lot. Yeah, it’s all about talking and knowing how to start a conversation as well as ending it in the right time.... you can imagine.  That’s basically what it’s all about and how to take advantage of such opportunity to have all the key players and everybody else as well on the same spot. But this is typical for any tradeshow, at least the philosophy and logic behind it. However, MIFA has something much more valuable - being extremely friendly. I cannot think of another term other than a family party (though I assume your family is also pretty cool.)

You may find a tradeshow to be a common gathering event that any industry has. But what I saw and experienced at MIFA is that this gathering is more than unique. How friendly and open minded everybody is, considering that most of the people are competitors one way or another. It’s actually pretty unbelievable.

Winners Adam Elliot (Mary and Max), Henry Selick (Coraline) and Festival Director Serge Bromberg

Some final images from the closing ceremonies.

Gregory V. Sherman and Jeffrey Sherman

A wonderful surprise waited for me Saturday morning, when I went seeing the boys. Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman had been with me through my entire life. I listened to their songs, from Winnie the Pooh and Jungle Book, from Mary Poppins through to Aristocats. All I knew about the artists, that they were brothers, had written unbelievable amounts of music and lyrics, had a close relationship to Walt Disney and that they had also composed the music for “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” which is no Disney movie! Little did I know that there is so much more.

Portofino is just one of three locations for the event.

Opening on April 2nd and closing on April 5th, Cartoons on the Bay debuted in their new, more post-MIPTV friendly location. Now held in the three towns of Rapallo, Santa Margherita Ligure and Portofino, the festival is just one jaw-droppingly stunning ride away from Cannes. Hugging the coast, we went past such varied sights as Monte Carlo and its harbor of yachts, vineyards, old churches and towns clinging to cliffs and tucked in private valleys with sea views. Going, we were in a bus…and that took a few hours… but on my way back to the Nice airport I was in a car and that drive, my friends, was very fast courtesy of a driver. Even including the coffee stop, I think we made record time! The festival is mainly focused in Rapallo with only one location in S. Margherita, a grand old building on a hilltop surrounded by a garden.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

E3 brings the world’s attention to videogames for one week out of the year. This year’s show featured a brand-new portable gaming device from Sony, codenamed NGP, as well as the next console from Nintendo, codenamed Project Cafe. But it was the games, more than anything else, that took center stage in Los Angeles. And with the current generation of consoles showing their age, PC games will shine brighter than ever this year.

“I expect to see a bit of a renaissance in the PC games space over the next few years,” says Todd Hollenshead, president of id Software, which had RAGE at Bethesda Softworks’ E3 booth. “We’ll see more PC-focused games as opposed to multiplatform games because of the faster speeds of the processors and the accelerated graphics. A lot of the coolest technology only works on a PC.”