2013

Who Needs Animators? Type Your Animated Film With Plotagon Instead!

Oh dear, we appear to have come much closer to the end of days as far as animators and storyboard artists are concerned. A company called Plotagon has released an eponymous software program that can create animated content from a written script. Is animating as a career doomed???

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The 2013 CTN Expo Recap

Reviews are a rare thing here on the blog, and that’s partly because I haven’t had time to review things properly this past year but also because I’m neither a poet or a truly objective person when it comes to animation.

That said, events are bit different from films and TV shows. This year I was privileged to attend the 2013 Creative Talent Network Animation Expo, otherwise known as CTNx in Burbank, California.

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Fans Attempt Sailor Moon Episode Remake

It’s a long-held tradition that fan-art is one of those things that’s just going to happen whether a studio like it or not. From the professional to the downright weird, fans love to show their love and passion for something by making their own version of it. Apparently, that no includes replicating an entire episode, but what kind of copyright questions does this throw up?

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Animating Dumbing of Age

A while back, I attended the first-rate comic event that is the Small Press Expo (SPX) here in Maryland. It was a blast of a time even if I had to literally run around every single table and still manage to miss Alissa Harris in the process. Afterward, I wrote this blog post analysing why certain comics that I saw and/or read on the day and later were worthy of being animated. Here’s one I missed

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I Know That Voice and You Can Too

Voice acting is one of the more mysterious parts of the animation production process and while luminaries like Mel Blanc managed to garner a high degree of public awareness, there is a legion of talented actors working away behind the microphone that most members of the public would never recognise. One of them, John DiMaggio, decided to change that and went about creating the documentary ‘I Know That Voice’ to highlight the job and the players that take part.

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The Animation Anomaly Podcast Episode 5

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Why Is Common Sense Being Ignored in Animated Features?

Budgets for animated features have been rising consistently for the past decade or so. While large blockbusters at the end of the 20th century struggled to top $100 million, today’s efforts often top 3.5 times that! This rapid rise has been accomplished mainly thanks to the superb commercial performance of animated features at the box office. So why then is common sense missing from the production process of such films?

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Finding the Animation Diamond in the Rough

No, we’re not talking about Aladdin, but rather trying to pick winners. You see, animation as an industry is still heavily based on sales; that is, between studios and networks. Annual conventions like MIPCOM continue to drive large portions of the industry and feed a lot of revenue into it. Here’s a look at why it’s tough to navigate and even tougher to win in.

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