Week Links 37-2013

Driving for 12 hours of your 48 hour weekend is not conducive to bloging at all. Better late than never though.

Animation at the crossroads

This discussion over at The Dissolve touches on a few of the issues and concerns that are surrounding American feature animation at the moment. It’s lengthy, but quite comprehensive. And it’s a discussion too, so it’s not simply a rehash of stuff we’ve heard before.

Cavalier Attitude: Animation’s Just For Kids

Stephen Cavalier over at Skwigly has this breakdown on a topic that’s near and dear to every person connected with the industry:

I remember In a studio I worked in years ago ,a strip from Matt Groening’s newspaper cartoon Life in Hell was pinned to the wall  It was entitled Modern Artistic Creative Types and onto this someone had added the category of animator, to which was added, under the heading of ‘How to Annoy Them’ , the suggestion “Say: animation’s just for kids.”

Sonic’s first CG-animated series revs up for fall 2014 debut

Kidscreen has as many details as there is about this.

 The real boy crisis: 5 ways America tells boys not to be “girly”

Not strictly an animation-only piece, but of the five ways discussed, “stories” is absolutely relevant and forms part of a pervasive problem within the animation industry:

Girls regularly immerse themselves in stories with male protagonists and identify with male heroes, boys and men.  But boys aren’t encouraged to identify with female protagonists or to idolize women as heroes to anywhere near the same degree.

Academy Overhauls Animated Nominations — But Who Will Benefit?

The Wrap has this really good analysis of how the Academy has overhauled their requirements for voting on animated films for the Oscars, and yet they may not necessarily be for the better:

The old system, which relied on a small number of voters who were often craft-minded, and required all films to be seen on the big screen, was thought to help past nominees like “The Secret of Kells,” “A Cat in Paris,” “Chico & Rita” and “The Pirates! Band of Misfits,” which might otherwise have been lost amidst the bigger studio productions.