Since I’m on my honeymoon this week, enjoy some of the finer stuff I’ve collected on my tumblelog over the last 4 years or so.
Fun fact, any time I want to watch this cartoon, I simply play it in my head; that’s how well I’ve memorised it.
The Rabbit of Seville Read More »
Since I’m on my honeymoon this week, enjoy some of the finer stuff I’ve collected on my tumblelog over the last 4 years or so.
Pardon the title, but it isn’t mine. It is instead from super-artist Krisztianna who drew these awesome guides to drawing female characters. They are just a little tongue-in-cheek but with enough truth behind them to make people sit up and pay attention. Click to embiggen!
How to Draw Super Chicks Read More »
Since I’m on my honeymoon this week, enjoy some of the finer stuff I’ve collected on my tumblelog over the last 4 years or so.
I’m not even kidding! If someone out there would like to make a decent-sized print that I can hang on the wall, I will gladly give you money for it. It is, of course, from the classic shirt, Rocket Squad.
This Needs To Hang in my Office Read More »
Since I’m on my honeymoon this week, enjoy some of the finer stuff I’ve collected on my tumblelog over the last 4 years or so.
The Chuck Jones Tom & Jerry shorts are somewhat overshadowed by their more famous forefathers, but as a kid, I had a particular fondness for Rock’n’Rodent. Mostly for the music, but it’s funny nonethless.
Since I’m on my honeymoon this week, enjoy some of the finer stuff I’ve collected on my tumblelog over the last 4 years or so.
Elliot Cowan is a devilishly charming Australian whose talents turn many green with envy. His wit rivals that of Dame Edna in its sharpness and ferocity. He drew this mouse.
Elliot Cowan’s Mouse Read More »
Since I’m on my honeymoon this week, enjoy some of the finer stuff I’ve collected on my tumblelog over the last 4 years or so.
A show from years ago that, like it’s cousin Arrested Development, Sit Down, Shut Up was simply too good to continue. I’ve written about it before but you simply cannot deny the wonderful Mo Willems character designs.
Miracle Grohe from Sit Down, Shut Up Read More »
Since I’m on my honeymoon this week, enjoy some of the finer stuff I’ve collected on my tumblelog over the last 4 years or so. This is a repost from May 2011 but the site is updated continuously.
If you’re not even a wee bit jealous of Eddie Shannon, then you’re clearly not into movie posters.
Film on Paper is his website where he is archiving his entire collection (literally thousands) and it is by far the most fascinating that I have come across. Filled with rare and foreign versions, the site includes a couple of animation ones, nice ones in fact. His ones for The Incredibles are unreleased, which makes them even more awesome (check out the one below if you don’t believe me).
You could spend literally hours on the site and I absolutely recommend that you do. Movie posters are a fascinating artform in and of themselves and its nice to see them get some love from a devoted collector.
Repost: Eddie Shannon’s Film on Paper Read More »
Since I’m on my honeymoon this week, enjoy some of the finer stuff I’ve collected on my tumblelog over the last 4 years or so. 🙂
Today, Frida from the awesome series El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera.
And some Frida fanart by SuperMacho on deviantArt
Frida from El Tigre! Read More »
Musician’s Deadmau5 and Imogen Heap teamed up a while ago to create a song, ‘Telemiscommunications’, and now they’re looking to release a video. So far so good. They want it to be animated but instead of going the traditional route, they want fans to animate one second each to be combined into the final film. In their own words:
deadmau5 and Imogen Heap have set up a global competition for animators to produce a segment of the official video to ‘Telemiscommunications’. Tons of people will get to see your work and you’ll get paid a bit for it too if we choose you 🙂 Interested? Follow the instructions below.
Sounds great, right? They’re even willing to pay you for it, something that is often a bone of contention in such affairs when instead of money, you get, y’know, ‘exposure’.
All in all, this seems to be a fairly honest attempt to get each musician’s respective community together for everyone’s mutual benefit, and it is, except for one teeny tiny problem; what they’re paying the artists:
For each second we’ll pay the animators 50 USD
Now I don’t profess to know what the going rate is for animation but presumably it’s much more than $50/second. Over the course of a 4:08 video, the animation will cost $12,400. That sound like a lot, but when you realise that even a middle of the road short film can cost that much per minute, you start to see which end of the barrrel this video is aiming for.
So who exactly is this competition supposed to entice? Clearly it’s too low for any professional animator. At $50 for potentially hours (days?) of work, you’re certainly not doing this for the money. As for exposure, one second of film will not get you anywhere, unless you can make the most singularly brilliant second of animation ever committed to film. See update below. So logically, you must be doing it for your love of Imogen Heap and/or Deadmau5. That’s no bad thing, but I would assume that most artists would rather their fans support them with money rather than time.
Did I mention that you have three weeks to do it? Yup, good luck juggling that in with all the other stuff going on in your life.
To wrap up, it’s a good effort on the part of Deadmau5 and Imogen Heap to engage their fans in such a way, and to at least be willing to offer some form of compensation towards it. However although everyone in the music business is a bit more wary of how money is spent these days, animators have to be wary too, and the payoff to contributing such a miniscule amount of content to a film is hardly worth the payoff being offered.
Update: So yes, I read the article a wee bit too hastily. They’re not asking for one second, but rather closer to 1o seconds per contributor. That would put the total payment quite a bit higher but still not quite enough to make it worth the time and effort.
Deadmau5 And Imogen Heap Crowdsource Animation, But There’s a Problem. Read More »
Back in September of this year, a case came to prominence in the UK whereby Disney threatened to sue independent studio, Brightspark over their strikingly familiar animated films. Take a look at the images below from the 1709 Blog (a really great copyright resource):
There’s plenty of similarity isn’t there? One might be tempted to think that there was some sort of copyright infringement going on. However this case is special because it throws up the devilishly tricky line that is the distinction between copyright and trademark.
You see, Brightspark didn’t simply knock out a film in a similar vein to Pixar’s Brave. Nope that would have been too difficult given the time constraints. Instead, they simply took one of their films that was already made, and being sold even, called ‘A Fairy Tale Christmas’ and re-branded it as ‘Braver’. This wasn’t the first time they had pulled such a stunt either. ‘Tangled Up’ was previously released as ‘Britannica’s Fairy Tales from Around the World’.
So what exactly did Disney sue for? Can you guess?
If you said copyright infringement, you’d be right. if you said trademarks, you’d also be right. Huh? I hear you say, aren’t they both mutually exclusive? Well yes, they are. However in this case, Brightspark made the critical mistake of trying to hit two artistic birds with one stone.
Copyright covers artistic and creative works. Insofar as films are concerned, the title cannot be copyrighted. It can, however, be trademarked. Brightspark went one further though and made covers that also bore a bit more than a passing similarity to their more famous inspiration.
According to Wikipedia, a trademark “is typically a name, word, phrase, logo, symbol, design, image, or a combination of these elements.” So in the context of Disney’s films, the trademark would not only cover the film title itself but would also extend to the title design as well. Ever wonder why studios have a propensity to use custom typefaces for their titles? Now you know why; they get double protection.
With a fairly solid trademark case (dilution of brand, etc.), Disney also aimed for the jugular and sued for copyright infringement, most likely over the title design as well as the covers themselves.
Long story short, Brightspark lost the case and this week, was ordered to stop producing the offending titles and destroy any remaining stock.
Why is this case important? Well there are no shortage of small studios willing to feed off the success of a major film. Chop Kick Panda is probably the more blatant recent example but in that case, the studio made a solid effort to distinguish their product just enough to make it legally distinct. This included a similar, but different title and a wholly distinct cover design for the DVD, not to mention the story. At best, consumer ignorance would be to blame for any parent picking that film up, something the studio no doubt relies on for sales.
Brightspark simply tried their hand and strayed a bit too close to the chalk to get away clean for which they are now paying the price. It’s just yet another example of how one needs to be aware of the legal rules in the entertainment game.
Animation Case Highlights Distinction Between Copyright and Trademark Read More »
