Week Links 40-2013

Has it been a whole week since CTN already? Why yes, yes it has. Here’s some week links that accumulated in the meantime.

Profanity-Laden Microsoft Paint Summaries of Pixar Films

Yup, pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. pixar8

Tinker Bell: The Life and Times of a Fairy

Sibley_TinkerBellAnEvolutionCover

Brian Sibley [thoroughly] reviews the newly released book by Mindy Johnson chronicling the lives of one of Disney’s most beloved characters. I flicked through it myself at CTN thanks to Brian’s post and was quite impressed.

Industry News: Fred Seibert Talks Bee and PuppyCat and Women in Animation

The Kickstarter campaign may be over (and a success) but this great interview with Fred Seibert goes into lots of detail as to why they undertook it in the first place and some of the perceptions they hope to break:

Network television and movies have pretty much ignored female leads, and when they do [greenlight female protagonists], the productions are rarely led by women. I know it’s been a frustration here at Frederator, as we’ve tried often to shift that balance. We’re thrilled (and honored) to be working with Natasha to break through the wall.

While I’m not a huge fan of Bee & Puppycat, it is great to see more females getting a shot creating and running shows.

And a Child Shall Lead Them: Axe Cop Exposes the big lie of the “Kids” Business.

This post by ‘Novid’ over on Toon Barn contains a surprisingly accurate analysis of the show Axe Cop and how it bucks the notion that kids are incapable of creating sellable content;

But for decades on end, the animation industry has been driven by adults who rely far too much on focus groups, hoping to get what they consider as the best result. In the end, all it did was hurt North American Animation to a point where there are basically no action series outside of Korra, etc. The edutainment business, created years ago and now fully supported by The Government via the E/I edict which these shows are aimed towards, Malachai and his peers are nowhere near close to educating the youth and worse, their shows might be detrimental to development.

Where the post really gets intriguing though is when it gets to the part about the Educational/Instructional requirements mandated in the US by the FCC and how they were detrimental to both kids’ development and to improving the quality of child programming on US networks. All in all, a very thought-provoking post.

Kickass Fictional Ladies – Toph Beifong

Mike Maihack_Toph

One of the best characters in any animated series from the past ten years is Toph Beifong from Avatar: The Last Airbender. The Ladies of Comicazi have this nice look at why that’s the case and what makes her a kickass (besides the ability to hurl boulders at her enemies.)

Where the Jetsons Live and Work

JETSONS-COMING ASTRO

Yowp has this super cool look at some of the art used to establish where the Jetsons lived and worked. Googie eye candy it is!

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