Sprockets

Nancy, Nik, and The Animation Conversation guys - Will Ashurst, Morten Overlie, and Erlend Dal Sakshaug.  Unfortunately, Alexey had to leave to catch his plane.
While we were at the wonderful Fredrikstad Animation in Fredrikstad, Norway the Animation Conversation Pod Cast guys did a breakfast interview with Alexey Alexeev, Nik, and me.  Nik and Alexey also play some music during the interview.

The Pod Cast guys have a unique and interesting approach to interviewing - they buy their guests a bottle of their favorite alcholic beverage (or in our case a couple bottles of red wine) and the interview continues until the bottle is empty.  Pour yourself a BIG glass of your drink of choice, then sit back and enjoy three old friends talking about everything under the sun.

Anyone who has been at animation festivals in the past year has probably seen Dustin Grella’s moving film Prayer For Peace.  His very personal animation has won numerous awards world wide culminating this past October with the 2010 Walt Disney Animation Studio award for Best Student Film at the Ottawa International Animation Festival.

Now Dustin has launched a new project called The Animation Hot Line.  During the month of  February,and perhaps even longer if the response is good, Dustin has set up a voice mail service where anyone can leave a message.  He will select messages to animate, trying to do one short strip a day.

The hot line is just not for animators, everyone  is welcome to leave a message but there are a few simple rules.  All messages must be under thirty seconds, preferably around ten or fifteen seconds long.  You can say a few  you overheard.  It can even be a secret that you don’t want anyone to know or something that bothers you.

Nik and I were fortunate enough to be invited to participate in ANIMATOR last year and it was a wonderful experience.  I was on the International Jury and Nik gave a workshop and two concerts.  I encourage you to send your film to this excellent festival.

The International Competition of Animated Films is open to artistic animated films of all techniques up to 30 min. Grand Prix of 60 000 PLN /ca. 14.000 Euros/ will be awarded by an international jury including Amy Kravitz, Piotr Dumala, Olia Lialina, Gerben Schermer and Jaroslaw Kapuscinski. Films can be submitted for selection till March 1, 2011. The entry form and regulations can be downloaded from www.animator-festival.com.

The renowned Prague Puppet Project, a precious source of knowledge and inspiration for anyone who works in the field of puppet animation, has announced the schedule for their 2011 workshops.  With 10 years experience of organizing International Puppet Workshops, Mirek Trejinar and Leah Gaffen combine their know how with special guest instructors to provide classes that are invaluable to the beginner and professional alike.

2011 Workshop topics are:

Puppets for Animated Film - 4 - 13 January and 14-23 October

Marionette Carving:  Carving 1 - 4 - 18 June     Carving 2 - 6 - 20 August
Details for a Carving Workshop in the United States will be posted on their website soon)

Recipes for Reconstruction: The Cookbook for the Frugal Filmmaker, by veteran independent animator and filmmaker Steven Woloshen, is the perfect introduction to the art of camera-less filmmaking.  From artistic strategies in creating fermented and decayed film footage to re-assembling damaged film prints into unique visual experiences, Steven gives us simple, detailed instructions for creating our own manipulated films.
Like any good cookbook there is a clear, concise list of materials and ingredients that are needed along with very easy to follow instructions for the processes used for all of the short films in the book.  A DVD of the films is included in the book to allow the reader to follow the creation process to the end result and lend visual inspiration for us to go to work on our own.
In the preface the Canadian animator pays tribute to two of his early inspirations, the late Stan Brakhage and Len Lye while tracing his own experimental path to manipulating exposed film footage.  Each chapter is introduced with personal antidotes about the inspiration that led to the films creation.  Zero Visibility was his attempt to recreate the harrowing experience of crossing Montreal’s Victoria Bridge in a blinding snow storm by using a fermentation process to achieve decay.  The “what you will need list” includes exposed film, water, icing sugar, yeast, and three or four clear plastic garden bags.  The step by step instructions conclude with “it is best to begin this fermentation process in the early summer months.  The best results should be achieved sometime in the end of December.” Each film description concludes with the results that he achieved and photos of the process, along with Woloshen’s original notes and diagrams.
Recipes for Reconstruction is the perfect book for the first time filmmaker who doesn’t want to invest in expensive equipment.  Building a film printer is the most technical piece of equipment you need to construct.  The printer assembly requires such everyday materials as a small dark colored shoe box, black masking tape and a flashlight or 15 watt incandescent light bulb.
The book is a wonderful way for teachers to give students of all ages an inspiring introduction to film making and should be in every school library.   For professional animators and film makers the DVD of the nine films alone is a priceless addition to any film collection and might even inspire them to get out and plant some film in their garden.
For more information or to purchase the book, contact Steven Woloshen at:
swoloshen@hotmail.com

I just received this news from the folks at the Fantoche Animation Festival:

Let's play together! For once, we're not looking for the latest animated films - no, today we're opening a competition for the development of computer games. For a long time, Fantoche has been interested in the crossover between animation and game design. Now, together with our partners, we have a fantastic opportunity to promote the development of games of high artistic quality.

In collaboration with the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, the Federal Office of Culture and the SUISA Foundation for Music, Fantoche is launching the first call for proposals for Swiss computer games. The "Call for Projects: Swiss Games" is now open, and you can submit your games using the application tool at www.fantoche.ch. The deadline for submissions is 15 March 2011 - a playable prototype of your game must be ready by that date.

If you are anywhere near Brugge, Belgium in the next few weeks a veritable treasure trove of Central European animators will appear in person to  introduce their films as part of a special city wide Festival titled A VISION OF CENTRAL EUROPE.

4 November - Marcin Gizycki - Poland

18 November - Priit Parn - Estonia

25 November - Jerzy Kucia - Poland

2 December - Quay Brothers (they live in London but have done a great deal of their amazing work in Poland)

9 December - Igor Kovalyov - Ukraine

The screenings take place at 20h00 (8:00PM)  at:

Cinema Lumiere  (Blauwezaal)
Sint-Jacobsstraat 36
Brugge

As part of the city wide festival the Groeninge Museum has mounted a major exhibit titled  VAN EYCK to DURER bringing together works from many major museums that have never been on view as a group before.

Winter isn’t here yet but we all know that it’s on its way so a trip to the beautiful Ionian island of Corfu, Greece in April might just be what you will need in a few months to recover from the grey dulldrums.  My friend Vassilis Kroustallis e-mailed me that the BE THERE! Animation Festival has put out a call for animation for the inaugural festival 7 -10 April, 2011.

There are two main competition sections:

Short Films that have been completed after 1/1/09 regardless of their country of origin, and

Graduation Films made as a graduation project after 1/1/09.  This category is open to all students regardless of where you went to school.

There is no entrance fee for submission.  You can read all of the regulations and download the entry form at:

­­“Fantoche, It’s Fantastic” is what I saw  when I first went to the website  for the Fantoche International Festival of Animated Film, and happily the festival  certainly does live up to this claim.  The historic spa town of Baden is a perfect setting for a festival; ruins of Roman baths were just down the street from our festival hotel but the films in the multiple screening rooms were fresh and up to date.

There were four International Competition programs which screened some of the most popular films from 2010, such as Olga and Pritt Parn’s Divers in the Rain and Anita Killi’s Angry Man, both of which have already won an array of awards at festivals all over Europe as well as in Japan, at Hiroshima.

Australian animator Darcy Prendergast’s music video Lucky has been short listed for an opportunity to screen at the world famous Guggenhein Museum in New York City as part of a new exhibition run in conjunction with YouTube.

Whittled down from 23,000 entries, Lucky is among the 125 films in the running for a spot in the new exhibition.  Already earning 380,000 on-line hits, Darcy’s animated piece was produced in collaboration with the Melbourne band “All India Radio”.

Lucky was created using a long exposure technique where Prendergast and his team drew in the sky with glow sticks or colored torches, similar to writing your name in the sky with sparklers.  One 25 second exposure gives you one image.  The process was repeated hundreds of times to form a sequence.