The inspirational Sayama Forest in Tokyo needs your help.

If you haven't heard about the amazing Totoro Forest Project fund-raising exhibition/auction, which will be held Sept. 6^th at Pixar, then you are missing out on some fabulous artwork being sold for a great cause. Spearheaded by Pixar art director Dice Tsutsumi, the event features artwork from some the top animators and illustrators working today. The proceeds will go to helping preserve the Sayama Forest, an 8750-acres urban forest in Tokyo. The woods inspired Hayao Miyazaki's masterpiece My Neighbor Totoro and the Totoro no Furusato Fund has been the Oscar-winner's most cherished charity for years.

James Cameron's Avatar

Tuesday night proved to be a big highlight of Autodesk University.  The Media and Entertainment keynote featured the first public screening of footage from James Cameron’s highly anticipated 3D feature “Avatar.”  

Simply put, “Avatar” was as stunning as it was rumored.  The 3D works incredibly well, but what impressed this animator more was the level of realism in the virtual characters.  The facial animation/capture was impeccable, the faces no longer looked like rubber masks as they have in so many movies that use facial capture.  In Avatar, the characters truly came to life and were believable in every way.  The audience identified with the characters and that made the story work on a much deeper lever.  The characters inhabited a world that was just as believable.  Much of it was lush jungle with fantastic creatures.  Some of the little details I noticed were highly realistic water, mud, and other subtle effects that helped to make the world that much more engaging.

Asian Television Forum opening ceremony

by Catherine Branscome-Morrissey

If you’re from South East Asia, China, Japan or Korea, Singapore’s modern architectural skylines may not wow you as much as a Westerner.  And I imagine, if you are from the region, the proliferation and impact of Asia’s animation production isn’t news to you either.  After all, Asia’s “animation moon” has been full and shining brightly for many years, decades even for some countries.

David O’Reilly's Please say something won the Cartoon d'Or at Cartoon Forum 2009.

The 20^th annual Cartoon Forum took place September 22-25 in the beautiful town of Stavanger, Norway, capital of the coastal fjord-filled county of Rogaland. The premier European co-production forum for animation for TV and new media platforms takes place each year in a different city and affords participants the opportunity to present their project to all the key players of the animation industry. Always marked by a convivial atmosphere, the event in this milestone year had an especially positive and cohesive vibe, with attendees seemingly enjoying simply being together to share their common enthusiasm.

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.

I took the train to Annecy full of excitement and great expectations for the 50^th Anniversary of the festival. According to the festival press release, they were expecting 6,700 participants from 66 countries, 1,647 companies crowding into MIFA, 300 journalists and 230 international buyers. For a festival to pull off such a grand event with minimum problems would be a miracle indeed. When people tried to get tickets for events, however, it felt like there were twice as many people in attendance.

The first hint of trouble came when there was no invitation to the opening night ceremony or the party. I was looking forward to seeing the opening night film, The Illusionist, but was told that this year no journalists had been given tickets because they were just too many people and 150 seats had been relegated to non-industry VIPs (which translates to money people). Journalists were told that there was no problem: our names had been placed on a request list and we should just keep checking back with the press office to get our passes. To make it even worse, two hours before the ceremony we were finally told that there was no possibility for us to get tickets. I finally managed to get a ticket from my friend and fellow journalist Olivier Cotte, who had gotten two tickets from someone who actually didn't want to see the film. Both Olivier and I wasted a good part of Monday afternoon looking for tickets instead of seeing films.

Silhouettes of Jazz

Evening Theater’s Jury Chair’s Reel included the following shorts. Silhouettes of Jazz Dominik Kaser Martin-Sebastian Senn, Mario Deuss ETH Zurich Switzerland The first video shown was Silhouettes of Jazz. Jazz music plays as the camera takes you though a house where each room has a different 3D objects that look like a blob of plastic are turning in place. Light is casted on them to form shadows on the wall. These shadows turn out to be sculptures that highlight five milestones in the history of jazz. The music changes in each room. The first room represents field workers, the second is instruments that also turn into someone playing them, depending on how the light shines on it. The next is a dancing couple. Then a spade sculpture is hanging from the ceiling. The last objects were music notes. This video captured the jazz is a new light. The music chosen takes you through out different jazz eras.

The Simpsons' David Silverman.Only at OIAF can you get a chance to talk about the crazy Balloon Boy escapade with veteran Simpsons director David Silverman, and get to compare that incident with a Simpsons episode where prankster Bart pretends to be little Timmy, a boy who has fallen down a well. Happily, like Bart/Timmy, Balloon Boy was safe and sound the whole time.

Silverman talks about his work on The Simpsons – both he TV series and movie – with great affection and enthusiasm. “The Simpsons challenges the intellect and stimulates the intellect,” he says. This, despite the fact that the show relies on what he calls a “double act” routine – with one big idiot leading a lesser idiot.

When asked if another Simpsons feature is in the offing, Silverman replies, “I’m sure in future there will be. Right now, we’re too busy on the show.”

Silverman advises that The Simpsons series is being adjusted for HD format. “Backgrounds had to be redesigned and updated, and that involves a lot of fine line work,” Silverman says.

In 2000, Silverman departed Simpsons territory and co-directed Dreamworks’ The Road to El Dorado and in 2001, he co-directed Pixar’s Monsters, Inc. “I had been working on The Simpsons for 10 years, and I thought, ‘This can’t last forever’,” Silverman recalls. As it turned out, after those gigs, Silverman returned to The Simpsons’ comfortable couch for another extended run.

Sorry Film Not Ready by Janet Perlman.

Whatever you call it, abstract/experimental ruled the day in Competition 5.  Here are some highlights.

VFX Animation Supervisor Keith Roberts.

written by Rick DeMott

CTN-X kicked off its first edition on Friday. Nov. 20^th, bringing a new animation conference to Los Angeles. In it's first year, the event had quickly outgrown its home at the Burbank Convention Center with attendees lined up to attend various standing-room only panels. As can be expected from a first time event, there were a few hiccups I heard of from some attendees, specifically regarding registration lists, but overall the event ran smoothly and was put together with an desire to give people the biggest bang for their buck. In the halls of the convention center, there were animation demonstrations from 2D artists. Panels were broadcast in the halls for people to casually watch. A pirate was on hand for artists to sketch. There was plenty to do in between panels and walking the convention floor.

Sessions ran in two rooms in either 45-minute or 20-minute intervals. In a wonderful move, participants went outside after the panel to meet one-on-one with attendees to answer their questions. This gave attendees a more intimate time with panel members and also allowed for a steady flow between panels.