Animation News

Labels: Daily Animation Toonboom

Nocturna - A lesson in Spanish

First Korean, and now Spanish. Fresh from Spain you can see the teaser trailer to "Nocturna".

Here is my attempt to translate the voice over. Titles are in ALL CAPS.

When the last ray of sun disappears, night falls.

And the sky lay covered with a mantle of stars and darkness.

The wind whistles, a ??? extends itself and everything around becomes mystical and, in a way, magical.

Though, is it possible that someone ??? why this nocturnal world is like that?

DISCOVER THE NIGHT

LIKE YOU'VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE.

WHEN YOU TURN OFF THE LIGHT

THE ADVENTURE BEGINS

Wonderful Days

I am amazed at images from a new animation to be released in Korea. Digital and traditional animation in a mix that is unreal and beautiful!

Wonderful Days English site.

Big Fat CGI Deal

Garfield has been on posters, mugs, socks, and stuck on car windows. Now the flabby tabby will make his 3D CGI debut. According to an article on AWN, Twentieth Century Fox plans to release the 3D kitty this coming December.

Is this a sure sign that all cartoons are going 3D? Probably not...

3D is a choice, not a must. People still paint in Acrylic even though digital paint has been available for years. I was a big fan of "Garfield and Friends" and wonder if the cat will make a good translation to 3D. Making Garfield 3D is not going to make him funnier... in fact there's a good chance this movie will flop if it leans to heavily on special effect.

Monsters Inc. is a great example of what 3D animation should be; plot and story driven with characters that are believable. This isn't done in renderman, it's done in the writers head and the animators hand. Story and movement makes you believe in characters, not how well they are rendered.

Hair High Skin Crawl

Bill Plympton's upcoming movie Hair High offers a wonderful view into the work that goes into a LONE animator doing a whole movie. Broadcast everyday, live, are images from his ever-moving pencil. A pencil test was put up recently and ... eww gross.. just watch it.. if you dare

Treasure Planet... Empty!

Reuters.com reports that so much money is expected to be lost on Disney's Treasure Planet that it will restate its earning based on this one movie. Costing around $140 million dollars to make, the movie has only made around $16 million on it's opening weekend.

The article covers some great points such as the choice to simplify Lilo's dress in "Lilo and Stitch" to keep costs down. It's about story people, not flash. Pun intended.

For a movie that's going to lose them so much money, I hope it's good. Review's will be posted next week.

New Look for Donbluth.com

After moving through several versions of Flash, Donbluth.com has a simple, easy to navigate interface. Unfortunately this is only for the first page as the rest is a huge mix of abandoned or changed layout ideas.

We'll forgive them as long as they keep creating such wonderful animation.

STOLEN CHUCK JONES ART!!

Taken from ChuckJones.com.

Dear Friends of Chuck Jones,
On the morning of September 25th, the Chuck Jones Studio Gallery in Old Town San Diego was burglarized for a third time in the past 6 months. Linda Jones Enterprises is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible. If you have any information that could help police find the culprits, please contact them at 619-531-2000 or contact Linda Jones Enterprises directly at 800-660-7791 or via e-mail at stolenart@lje.

New Pixar Trailer

Watch the latest trailer of Pixar's new film "Finding Nemo".

Smooth-as-Pen Pencil

Animators depend on using pencil to draw and redraw lines again and again. What if there was a pencil that wrote as smoothly as a pen, but that you could erase?

A new pencil does just that. Called the Ingenuity liquid pencil by PaperMate, it is filled with graphite suspended in liquid. The liquid absorbs into the paper leaving pure, dry, graphite that you can erase, while writing as smoothly as a pen.

Some of you may consider erasable ink the answer, but fact is that it grows permanent over time. This is graphite and can be erased any time.

Office depot is giving away free samples!

Love to Eat Tu-ur-ur-key

Famous for writing songs about the lunch lady, thanksgiving, and Chanaka, Adam Sandler will be appearing in an animated musical comedy called Eight Crazy Nights.

The new movie, which features a new Chanaka song, will center around a figure that looks,acts, and sounds remarkably like Adam himself plus two very different characters that he also supplies the voices for. A Trailer is available in 3 sizes to watch.

More Wallace and Gromit Webisodes

At Atomfilms.com you can now buy 10 webisodes to watch on-line or download. Each revolves around a Wallace invention including the "The Snoozatron", "The Soccamatic", "Shopper 13" and more. Download "Soccamatic" for free and buy the rest. Also look for the trailer of the upcoming Wallace and Gromit feature length film!

New Animation Book

Time and time again I've seen books that just don't cover the basics. Brian Lemay has just released "Animation: The Basic Principles" which I've ordered and hope that this is the one I keep.

Cracking Toast!!!

After 6 years haitaus, the first new Wallace and Gromit episodes are on-line! A series of shorts will be on-line to download. A full lenght feature is expected... more news later.

inbetween an inbetween

Don Bluth has added a Layout tutorial to this Academy page.

Live Animation

Bill Plympton is broadcasting his animation of "Hair High" live on the internet. No, it's not finished, he's broadcasting his CREATION of the animation on-line! Bill Plympton, creator of "I Married a Strange Person" and "Mutant Aliens", has posted a web-cam at http://www.hairhigh.com/. Tune in and watch animation as it happens... frame by frame.

If you have trouble with the Java applet, click here to see a single frame

So what about cartoons?

There is a difference between a cartoonist and someone who makes cartoons. However, there is a link between comic strips and animated cartoons. After all, you could consider you average comic a 2-4 frame story board no? I've decided to add links and resources here. Please send links and suggestions by e-mail.

Nine Old Men.com

Two of Disney's famous "Nine Old Men" have their own website now.

Schoolhouse Rock Still Rocks

Just picked up the 30th anniversary edition of Schoolhouse Rock on DVD. It features every SHR song ever created and a new one about the electoral college. It includes interviews with the creators and music video versions of the songs by popular artists such as "Better than Ezra".

The style is simple and straight-forward but gets its message across. Unlike todays "Edutainment", it's heavy on the Edu'... not just the 'tainment.

Finding Animation Companies

If you haven't looked already, AWN.com now has an animation database of companies at www.aidb.com.

Origins of American Animation

The Library of Congress has a page titled Origins of American Animation.

Spirited Away

From Hayao Miyazaki, who's film credits include Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, and Kiki's Delivery Service comes "Spirited Away". Disney is funding the american version... it's only fair than an Oni bring it to the USA.

The website contains a trailer in Japanese. Couldn't understand a word but could only think... MUST SEE.. MUST SEE. Made my heart rush and my skin crawl.

New Yogurt for Animation

Yogurt Technologies had shut down it's site for a time and had posted a site in Turkish for the past few months. The English site seems to be up now. They seem to be focusing more on production and consulting. It's not clear if they are still selling their animation software "Archer" or if it's gone underground and a proprietary leverage.

Check out my Tools section for more software

Calvin and Hobbes Movie???

Bill Waterson, author of Calvin and Hobbes, has had a history of refusing to allow his work to be animated. Now a rumor (which I'm spreading) is going around that a movie is going to be made!! Most fans would love to see the little devil-genius boy come alive, as well as his furry sidekick, but is this only a rumor or the real thing? Details at Plastic.com

We've gone Blog

Old News

06/02/02

Sorry for the slight hiccup in updates. I've spend the last few month in an internship at WildBrain and finished just in time to get 30 days notice. I'm now living in Houston Texas where the rent is much cheaper.

02/23/02

View a quicktime movie of Pandora by Nina Paley. The first IMAX film to be made by drawing on 70mm film! See an interview at Apple's website

02/16/02

The broken link to the Loomis book has been fixed. Go to books or drawing to see it! This book costs $600 used!

02/14/02

The company known for Expression 2 uses the technology to make animated movies.

02/12/02

Broken Saint's website mentioned on NPR.

02/03/02

Added a book section the links on the left.

02/01/02

If you get a chance you MUST try to see "Beauty and the Beast" in Imax at they Sony Metreon! In the previews was the 5 minute intro to Lion King Imax!

AdamSandler.com has images from the animation "8 Crazy Nights"

Hollywood Reporter has an interview with Don Bluth about his upcomming Dragon's Lair the MOVIE!

01/28/02

Legos as pixels? Take a new look at an amazing way to animate with White Stripe's video Fell In Love With A Girl.

01/24/02

Cracking Toast! Aardman Studios will be releasing 1min originals of Wallace & Grommit on the net! [Link]

The list of links is getting long enough to where I'll be breaking the page into several pages. Be sure to suggests links and or categories! Added two new links to animators.

01/16/02

First day of class today was fine! Instructor Tony Claar started us in the principles of animation. Everything will be done on good 'ol fashioned paper!

The official text book will be the Preston Blair book which can be found on-line here

01/3/02

Happy New Year! What a better way to start it than by finding the PERFECT animation book. "The Animator's Survivat Kit" by Richard Williams puts all others to shame! Written by the animation director of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", this book contains material found no where else. Easy to understand and covering begining and advanced animation. Cut out the best parts of Preston Blair's book and "The Animator's Workbook" and you have this!

12/23/01

The Sundance Film festival had a huge wash of animation this year!

12/16/01

Looks like my community college (Vista) will be offering a course in "Drawing for Cell Animation". More details soon!

09/10/01

Axa software seems to have moved so I updated the link. Also Animo now exports to Flash... seems like most software are taking that trend! Also I'm going to start to ad banner links to my favorite sites or those that I find most usefull. Let me know if anyone minds the bandwidth.

09/01/01

Allright! Got a custom built animation table from someone in the Bay Area. If anyone needs an animation desk of any size. Please e-mail me for more info!

08/18/01

After a few months down-time. The BAAG is in the bag once again.
COMING SOON! Toon up 2001 in San Francisco