To say that Soundwalkers, a fascinating film by director and sound researcher Raquel Castro, sensitives us to the soundscape of our modern world is to minimize its achievement.

Which type of films do you like better, animation or live action? If you are an adult, you’ll probably say live action, but “Animation: The Illusion of Life” aims to change that! It has much of the same themes as live action films, except with more humor, clever storyline, imagination, and fantastic music to match.

The YouTube Play winning entries all have at least some form of animation content. Which tells me that animation's star is rising in the art world.

Frank Gladstone shot me a note about a short animated cg film called Mila being made by former Disney, DreamWorks and Imageworks animator Cinzia Angelini. Hoping to push the boundaries of non-photorealistic rendering to create a painterly aesthetic and character design, Cinzia is also striving to tell a socially relevant story about war’s most tragic collateral damage – the youngest civilians.

The YouTube Play jury list is out and it's mostly made up of hard driving experimental artists. 

VES is pleased to announce that it is now accepting submissions for its annual Student Award, exclusively sponsored by Autodesk, Inc., a world leader in entertainment software.

I’ve known Gary Schwartz since, well, since he was a much younger zany filmmaker and animation teacher. In the Webster’s Dictionary, under the word “energy,” there is a picture of Gary with his infectious grin, a camera and a tripod. This year at the Ottawa Animation Festival, as he does every year, Gary made an extremely cool stop motion short – in one day! Fa Fha Pha Ottawa!, inspired by the Ottawa festival award designed by sculptor Tick Tock Tom, is his best yet!

Since 2005 YouTube has given us a prime venue for quick and dirty moving images. And now the powers that be in the ART world are going to use that forum to judge us filmmakers!

The Seventh Tehran International Animation Festival will be held from 6th to 10th March 2011 by the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children & Young Adults.

Aims and Objectives of the Festival

Providing an opportunity for artists to exchange ideas through gathering purposeful presentation of the animation works.

Discovering potentials and encouraging young animators to innovate and create.

Developing abilities through new techniques and perspectives.

The festival is categorized in four sections: Competition, non competitive category, Special Screening and Panorama.

A Short History of Tehran International Animation Festival

Despite the four decades of animation production in Iran and the three-decade experience of KANOON (Institute for the intellectual Development of children & Young Adults) in Producing animations, screening the animated films in the country was limited to lateral sections of Iranian film festivals (along documentaries and fiction films) until the last year of twentieth century. This was while in spite of the disregard and neglecting, brilliant animations were produced, most of which could have gain diverse success in international fields.

The opening of the first Tehran International Animation Festival in February of 2000 was an end to this neglecting and a starting point for a new period in screening of national & foreign animations in Iran.

From the 896 works received by the bureau of the festival, 488 works were selected among which there were works of artists from 33 countries around the world. Two years later, in the beginning of the third millennium, Iranian animation was no more desperate and isolated. Although the festival was arranged for the professionals of the field, it was welcomed by a huge audience and the animations of 36 countries attended the third edition of festival, showed an improved in quality.

 

The Los Angeles Animation Festival, which is unspooling Friday December 3 through Tuesday December 7 at Cinefamily's Silent Movie Theatre at 611 N. Fairfax in Los Angeles, continues to book great events.

The imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) are looking for proposals from Canadian Aboriginal artists for audacious, innovative and socially relevant digital media works.

Matt Stone and Trey Parker have issued an apology to the unapproved lifting of dialogue from a CollegeHumor short, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) comes to an end with a highly anticipated closing ceremonies which were held this evening at the Canadian Museum of Civilization. OIAF organizers announced the 2010 winners of the official competition during the ceremonies.

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

I have no comment on Competition 3 and only a couple films stood out for me in Competition 4.

There were some tough films in this competition. Three stood out for me.

The highlight of my second day in Ottawa was finding a working ATM. But the “treat” of the day was sitting in on an intimate discussion with former Oscar-winning Pixar and current Laika writer/director Jan Pinkava. Friendly, engaging, entertaining and brilliant – utterly charming. Made me feel like audience extra at a taping of “Regis and Kelly.” And it’s really, really cold here.

Every year I think Chris Robinson can't take it any higher. But every year he ramps it up a notch. This guy is the master of the post-modern introduction. You had to be there to feel the bizarre energy, to share in the intense, quizzical, weird couple of moments. Then we were back to reality.

DreamWorks Animation is in talks with Rodrigo Blaas to adapt his animated short ALMA in a feature, reports Heat Vision.