By Brenda Wooding

US networks like CN, Nick and Disney have been producing creator driven shows for years.  Anywhere you find up and coming creative talent showcasing their work, you will find a development executive from these networks on the hunt for the next Spongebob, Adventure Time, or Phineas & Ferb. Once found, the talent, along with their idea is unleashed upon the development team and funneled into their well oiled development and production pipelines. The goal is to keep the creative talent close to the heart while making a commercially viable (and hopefully successful) show.  With few exceptions, it is a fairly new approach abroad.  At the Annecy International Animated Film Festival this year, it was apparent that this method is starting to catch on abroad and regional channels from US studios like CN and Disney have been leading the charge.

Nancy at the Cafe Chat

By Nancy Phelps

I had never thought of Peja, Kosovo as an ideal holiday spot but when I was invited to be on the International Jury of Anibar International Festival, the 22nd through the 27th of August, 2012, I discovered how wrong I was.  Peja is a lovely small town of 60,000 people surrounded by a beautiful mountain range known as the Balkan Alps with a lovely stream running through the center of town.  You can take a small motorized train up into the mountains from the town square.

A Heritage Museum is situated in an urban house dating from the 18th century that contains examples of regional clothing, beautifully crafted jewellery, musical instruments, and every day household items from the past.  The town also hosts a large open air market twice a week as well as the oldest mosque in Kosovo and a monastery located in the mountains is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Robot Chicken panel treats fans to talent and sneak peeks.

When the New York Comic Con premiered four years ago, its exhibit area was a relatively small but instantly overcrowded portion of the Javits Convention Center’s basement space. This year’s exhibitors filled the high-ceilinged main floor, a football-field sized area where you could score anything one’s geekish heart desired while dodging the multitude of Rorschachs prowling the convention.

Cartoon Network’s [adult swim] panels are usually as off-the-wall as the shows themselves, and this year was no exception. CN exec Keith Crofford, the hour’s default grown-up introduced a panel that included Seth Green, Brecken Meyer, Kevin Shinick, Matt Senreich and Geoff Johns. Jokes, ad-libs and non-sequiturs flew fast and furious, as the panel more or less explained the creative process that goes into scripting the free-form show, with the panel at one point riffing for close to ten minutes off a single audience question.

Rob Cook.

Press reports have attendance at about 10,000, which is extremely low, of course. But, as I previously noted, it's resulted in a very appropriate quaintness. You can tell that the people who have come here are very passionate. While one exhibitor lamented the lack of scientific research on display and the commercialization of the event (no need to wait for SIGGRAPH to publish your tech paper), Rob Cook (the recipient of the Steven A. Coons Award) gave what Chris Landreth described as a "spiritual, practical and visionary" speech about "why there still needs to be SIGGRAPH."

By Nancy Phelps

In Ukrainian, KROK means “step”, but to animators, KROK means watching animation, making music, dancing and meeting friends, both old and new.  For me KROK is summer camp for animators and the best ten days of my life every year.

The festival is unique.  Each year an international group of animators boards a multi-decked river cruiser and spends 10 days sailing together.  Every other year, the festival location alternates between the Ukraine, which programs professional films (third film and later), and Russia where the films are student works. This year we sailed down the Dnepr River and across the Black Sea on the ship Princesa Dnepr from Kiev to Odessa in the Ukraine.

Annecy Poster

By David Tousek of 3BOHEMIANS

First time travelling to Annecy, a place that has such a positive canotation just through people talking about how it was like when they visited the Festival, that thinking about coming myself was tempting for quite some time already. Now I took the chance. We have arrived late on Tuesday, June 7th taking it slowly from sunny bohemian Prague to a slightly rainy, but still pretty warm, French town on a lake under the Alps. That’s one nice and picturesque idea to explore this week.

Hai capito? Visual culture panelists (l to r) Phil Stenton, Will Wright, Glen Entis and Michael Rubin get some auditory input.

Friday, the final day of the VIEW Conference, and a time for summing up. Let’s make a list:

• That luscious gianduia chocolate.

• On the technical side, the computer graphics folks such as Paul Topolos of Pixar, Lucia Modesto of PDI-DreamWorks, and Jack Grahm of Double Negative seemed to revel in showing off what they have been able to do with their new toys and techniques.

The shorts jury, led by Jan Pinkava, hands out the big prizes.

By Dan Sarto

Another OIAF Grand Prix gets awarded, another Phil Mulloy feature takes top prize, another grumbling voice can be heard complaining about the winners.  Much like the start of Ontario’s moose hunting season, which I watched in awe Sunday on a TV at the back of a bar, as the Nelvana Grand Prix is announced, second-guessing the judging season once again begins in the province.  Hopefully, you won’t see too many animators hanging upside down, suspended from a crane over the bloody bed of a pickup truck.  But you never know.

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."