Creating Intellectual Properties is like being a parent. In many ways it's better to have more than one child to dote on.  If you become over invested emotionally your heart and your ego take over, not your brain.

Guardians of Luna

In an agreement with Cybergraphix Animation, FUNimation is now the official distributor for the Guardians of Luna animated series.

If you've ever wondered if animation has joined the global economy just see, finally, some work returning to the U.S.  Granted it is not a huge windfall of jobs but we should see this new start-up digital company as at the very least, a start.

Blood The Last Vampire

Having just watched the mediocre live-action adaptation, it was fortuitous that Manga Entertainment sent me the Blu-Ray release of the original anime film. Studio execs everywhere should sit down with both copies. It’s a good lesson in why standard Hollywood tactics are not necessarily the best means of translating anime to the silver screen.

Okay, I just received word from Sony Picutres Home Entertainment that they're launching a mobile Voltron game on wireless carriers this month! Boasting characters and plot line from the retro series, we can apparently now get a taste of defending the universe from King Zarkon

Halo Anime

An interview with Frank O’Connor, Halo franchise development director, was included with the press release I received yesterday from the Halo team. Since Frank is such a great guy (I fortunately had the chance to talk with him during Comic-Con), I thought I should post his words.

Halo The Package

Tomorrow, Dec. 5^th, you’ll have your chance to preview the third installment of the Halo Legends anime project. The mental offspring of Casio Entertainment and legendary director Shinji Aramaki, “The Package” follows the iconic Master Chief as he and four select Spartans stealthily penetrate the Covenant fleet to acquire dire intelligence. 

Autodesk University is primarily a training conference.  There are over 500 classes that fill four floors of the convention center for almost a week.  Seeing the list of classes demonstrates just how broad and deep Autodesk’s design software reaches.  Everyone from architects to product designers to engineers to animators had something to attend.  In addition to classes, Autodesk used the show as a way to introduce products and reveal future directions for the company.

As you probably know, The Princess and the Frog is Disney’s first 2D effort in five years. It took John Lasseter, a Pixar guy who now runs all of Disney animation to get the studio to return to its 2D roots. Lasseter and company knew they had to hit a home run to make people care about hand-drawn animation again. They came to the plate swinging for the fence: would they ground into a double play or hit a grand slam? Is P&F 2D’s rebirth or its last gasp?

Hey, it’s a Disney movie – there’s gotta be a happy ending, right?

Damn straight – a happy ending to both the movie and the studio’s mission to show the world 2D’s still got the goods. CGI? We don’ need no steenkin’ CGI!

Marty Murphy

It's often said that you can't appreciate things unitl they're gone but we shouldn't let that happen.  We should all try to remember how fortunate we are to be working with so many wonderfully talented and creative people.  Animation is not only a small industry, although growing larger due to CGI, it is tradionally an intimate business.  We work closely together and often shoulkder to shoulder with one another.  We should all stand back once in-a-while and enjoy the moment.

A short while ago, without a great deal of fuss, Marty passed away.  He was not one of the industry people whose name and work neveryone knew but he was a fine artist and cartoonist who was known and highly respected within the heart of the animation industry.