Search form

Animated Travels

Blogs

3BOHEMIANS Bid Annecy and MIFA Adieu

By Dan Sarto | Wednesday, June 29, 2011 at 11:30am

So what exactly have we learned at MIFA? Have we gained something meaningful? I have to admit I need more time to answer such a question, to see if an event of this kind brings along something worth the effort invested into just coming over. After all, if the animation business is about relationships / partnerships, then there needs to be a lot more work done after the event beside the initial quick flirting.

Blogs

E3 2011 AWN Business and Education Round Up

By Dan Sarto | Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 4:49pm

Another great year of E3 in downtown at the Staples Convention Center. Lots of interesting announcements and events this year. The art exhibition “Into the Pixel” continues to chronicle the ascent of console game graphics from popular culture and street cred to the rare refined air of original paintings inspired by well-known games. It’s a national sentiment, even the National Endowment of the Arts and the Smithsonian have gotten into the act with shows centered around “the art of video games” (http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2012/games/).

Blogs

3BOHEMIANS go to MIFA

By Dan Sarto | Monday, June 13, 2011 at 2:20pm

You may find a trade show 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.

Apps Blogs

iKids: Apps Explained!

By Dan Sarto | Friday, June 10, 2011 at 2:13pm

On Thursday, June 2, 2011, I attended Kidscreen’s day long “everything you wanted to know about apps but were afraid to ask” workshop. It was great! Not only did it cover the basics, the companies attending and panelists were top-notch and the focus was on making better apps for our kids audience. Held at the beautiful Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel, the group was small and intimate and there was plenty of time to network.The attendees were an interesting mishmash as we all convened from our different backgrounds—kids programming, gaming, educators, researchers, etc.—to learn about this new, historically expanding space. How does it work? Who are the best companies in the field? What are the best games? What are the problems facing this new fantastically fast-growing field?

Blogs

3BOHEMIANS Go to Annecy

By Dan Sarto | Thursday, June 9, 2011 at 2:43pm

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.

Blogs

Arrived In Annecy – Kids Should Not Be Allowed on Planes

By Dan Sarto | Tuesday, June 7, 2011 at 4:17am

25 hours after leaving my comfy LA bed, I’ve arrived in Annecy. The calm is in direct contrast to my second flight, from DC to Geneva. Sprawled within 5 feet of my seat were not 1 but 2 families, 6 kids total, 4 parents, 1 nanny and 1 set of grandparents. In an age of fundamental change in airline comfort, service and safety, where the indignities of modern travel begin when you undress to get through security, one thing seems perfectly clear – kids either should be confined in storage or not be allowed on planes at all.

Blogs

Trickfilm Festival Stuttgart

By Dan Sarto | Friday, June 3, 2011 at 11:10am

This year the sun was shining down brightly on the Trickfilm Festival in Stuttgart in more than one way. Outside, the sky was a beautiful blue and in the screening rooms the films were as brilliant as the sun. While the competition programs were strong and the feature films in competition offered some interesting surprises, and the highlight of the festival for me this year was the large number of special presentation screenings.

Blogs

On The Road To Annecy 2011

By Dan Sarto | Friday, June 3, 2011 at 10:40am

My flight to Geneva leaves tomorrow morning at 7:50, an ungodly hour to begin 24+ hours of delirium shuffling through airports, getting groped by stink-eyed security drones, squeezing into airline seats designed for anorexics, all the while wondering why I’m not home asleep in bed, or watching Archer reruns while sipping a delicious Kamikazee.

Animation Blogs

Be There! Corfu Animation Festival

By Dan Sarto | Friday, June 3, 2011 at 10:16am

The debut edition of BE THERE! CORFU ANIMATION FESTIVAL was the first animation festival to be held on this beautiful Greek Island. A large audience from throughout the island enjoyed a wide array of programs and workshops as well as the opportunity to meet Greek and international artists from the world of animation.

Blogs

Anima Brussels Festival Turns 30!

By Dan Sarto | Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 1:05pm

This year Anima Brussels (4 through 13 March 20) pulled out all the stops to celebrate the festival’s 30th Anniversary. In addition to the seven programs of World Shorts in competition and numerous feature films in and out of competition, there was an outstanding roster of who’s who from the world of animation. Read all about this great event!

Blogs

Immersed in Norway's Fredrikstad Animation Festival

By Dan Sarto | Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 12:23pm

Nancy Denney-Phelps travels to Norway to take part in the Fredrikstad Animation Festival. The event has an emphasis on screening Nordic animation but offers so much more. Along with Nordic short film and student competitions and screenings of animation aimed at the family audience, two days were devoted to seminars with international guest speakers from all branches of the animation world.

Blogs

KLIK 2010: 5 Non-Stop Days of The Best of Animation

By Dan Sarto | Monday, November 29, 2010 at 5:40pm

I first met the organizers of the KLIK Animation Festival at the Annecy Animation Festival a couple of years ago and they assured me that their festival is fun, fun, fun. When they invited me to Amsterdam to be on the Short Films and Political Animation jury, I jumped at the opportunity and it did turn out to be some serious fun.

Blogs

CTN Expo 2.0: Day 1

By Dan Sarto | Saturday, November 20, 2010 at 5:02pm

The CTN Expo has returned to Burbank for the second year. The conference has expanded a great deal from last year's event. It also has seen an explosion of attendees, which pushed off the scheduled start times of all the events as the eager guest were being registered. This created some bumps along the road for the two-year old event, which is again valiantly put together by Tina Price and her tiny staff with help from a host of volunteers.

Blogs

Final Thoughts on the Films at Ottawa

By Dan Sarto | Tuesday, November 16, 2010 at 5:22pm

No other festival I’m aware of consistently generates as much controversy as does the Ottawa Festival. People may scratch their heads at the judging decisions in Annecy (insert favorite French joke here), but in Ottawa, beer-fueled grumbling and incessant whining are as much a part of the annual festivities as head-scratching competition screening introductions and the cavalcade of toothless panhandlers lining Rue Rideau.

Blogs

Red Stick 2010: A Glass of Lilac Wine

By Dan Sarto | Tuesday, November 16, 2010 at 12:08pm

Saturday morning. Sitting in P.J.’s, the coffee shop around the corner from the Shaw Center. Except for a handful of sessions today, Red Stick ended Friday night with the awarding of the Golden Baton. The winner (of the three candidates discussed yesterday) was Chris O’Neill’s elegiac (how many times to you get a chance to use that word?) Lilac Wine. Earlier in the fest O’Neill had described his video as the remembrance of loved one who was no longer around, whether via the end of a love affair, or death.

Blogs

Red Stick 2010: Golden Baton and More

By Dan Sarto | Tuesday, November 16, 2010 at 11:50am

Whoops, my bad: what I called Red Stick’s ‘Best of the Fest’ award yesterday is actually their “Golden Baton” prize, and I saw all three films last night. In addition to the music video Lilac Wine, the two other contenders were a Hitchcockian spy spoof (Pigeon: Impossible) and the student effort Blackface, a mystical jungle tale.

Blogs

Red Stick 2010: Tangled Up in Baton Rouge

By Dan Sarto | Tuesday, November 16, 2010 at 11:40am

I arrive at Baton Rouge’s Belle Hotel, which until April was the Sheraton Baton Rouge. (BR from here on, saves space.) The hotel’s terrible online reviews don’t seem to apply, as the place is actually quite nice. (Wish the internet service was a little more steady, but I’m online now – for the moment…)

Blogs

Ottawa 2010 - Scenes from the Awards Ceremony

By Dan Sarto | Monday, October 25, 2010 at 11:14am

The closing ceremonies bring an end to another Ottawa International Animation Festival. And while I await my connecting flight in Newark for the final leg of my journey home, I linger just a bit longer on the images in my mind of all the wonderous activities of the past week. Though I was constantly too warm or utterly frozen and could never get comfortable wearing layers and a heavy jacket, I was able to stop griping often enough to have a thoroughly great time. Here are some images from the closing.

Blogs

Ottawa 2010 - Just the right note with Lou

By Dan Sarto | Saturday, October 23, 2010 at 9:44am

I spoke with Lou Pomanti to get his take on music for animation. Lou Pomanti is an award-winning, performer, arranger, and producer. He’s a keyboard wizard, and worked with Blood Sweat and Tears, James Taylor, Gordon Lightfoot, Leonard Cohen, and Michael Buble. He even was the arranger for the finalists for the Hockey Night in Canada Anthem Challenge, which, in Canada, is pretty much the national anthem.

Pages