Good collection of animated shorts, mostly in hand drawn, claymation, and rotoscoping techniques. Represented artists include Loren Bowie, Bernard Palacios, Kathy Rose, Derek Lamb, Steven Lisberger, Marv Newland, Paul Driessen, and Will Vinton (“Mountain Music” and Oscar winning “Closed Mondays” featured).
Discovered today (Tuesday) on the animation subbreddit, this is an attempt to bring back the mid-90s cartoon SWAT Kats. It was apparently fairly popular (if the claims in this video are credible) and was produced by Hanna-Barbera/Turner with animation being done by Tremblay Bros.
So, have the instigators of this campaign read this post, or are they falling prey to the classic mistakes of campaigns past?
Perhaps this video will help you decide. You can leave your comments below.
Is the “brain trust” the modern version of Disney’s 9 Old Men, and if so, are we doomed to see the same results when they retire? Here’s four reasons why history may repeat itself.
1. They’re both small groups
You can count the members of both groups on one hand. The respective members are innovators and experts in their fields.
2. They’ve been together since the beginning
Or near the beginning. Both groups were established as their respective studios were trying to find their norms and their tight-knight as a result of the challenges they faced at the start of their existence.
3. They’re THE Source for Ideas
Both groups were/are the go-to places for ideas. The 9 Old Men were experts at animation. The Brain Trust are renowned for their ability to create superb stories and films.
4. No New Permanent Members
The 9 Old Men began as 9 old men and remained that way throughout their existence. No-one ever joined and the only time anyone left was as a result of natural causes. The Pixar Brain Trust is eerily similar, there doesn’t seem to have been any permanent changes made to its makeup at all since its inception. Yes, Brad Bird and Brenda Chapman were members, but they have since moved on, and there is little indication that anyone has managed to get themselves “promoted” to fill their places.
The signs are ominous. The Pixar Brain Trust has had fantastic success, but it is resting on its laurels. Relying on the same people is a recipe for trouble. Disney began a protracted period of malaise in the 1970s, and as of now, history appears poised to repeat itself in Emeryville.
Character Sundays is probably going to take a break until the New Year. Sadly, school deadlines have sapped the necessary time to write a decent post these past few weeks, so there’s no point in doing a half-assed job on something you really like.
Instead, today, here’s a sketch that was posted a good while ago by Jovanna Davidovich on her blog.
Whether it really is the case that Breandan’s design was influenced by these two is up for debate, but I would hazard a guess that the resemblance is certainly striking.
The interesting thing is that Kim Possible and the Secret of Kells share practically nothing in common except Brendan! He’s a great example of how you could potentially use something as inspiration and move in a completely different direction.
Those upstanding lads at the Dead Homer’s Societyhave analysed in detail a scene from last weeks episode of the Simpsons entitled The Ten Per Cent Solution. The scene in question is the one where Joan Rivers drive a golf cart down the hallway while chasing Squeeky Voiced Teen. (I haven’t seen the episode so I can’t comment on the context).
Suffice to say Charlie Sweatpants has done a very good breakdown of a scene that almost certainly could (and should) have been animated to a much higher standard.
The original Looney Tunes shorts are a very special blend of comedic acting that has more than endured the test of time. Sadly, it seems that this particular brand of comedy, in short film form, hsa largely died out.
Oh sure, there are plenty of funny cartoon that are as hilarious and as genius in nature, but they are not nearly as common as they should be.
Naturally this is down to television, and the fact that programming has had to keep to the schedule, ie. fit into 11 minute chunks, slightly too long for a traditional short. Thankfully, the internet has seen a boom in the number of shorts in recent years, and it is on it that we come across this film (via Broadsheet.ie) by David de Rooij and Jelle Brunt:
There’s more than a bit of a reference to the classics isn’t there? And the best part is that it works! It’s a nice homage, not a blatant copy. It’s proof that there’s still more than enough room left in the format.
Over on the Animation Guild Blog, Steve Hullett posted a quote the other day from an article quoting Rango director, Gore Verbinski, where he states that he would like to see more mature animated films being brought to market. Ralph doesn’t reject the notion entirely, but he does point out that studios are in the game to make profits, not movies.
This is true, but it raises the important question of whether animation intended for mature audiences is even profitable to begin with.
The article itself has Verbinksi mentioning Ralph Bakshi as a possible reference point although I say that this isn’t necessarily the best idea. If you ask anyone (in the know) about adult animation, the answers inevitably contain either Heavy Traffic, Fritz the Cat, Ghost in the Shell, Akira and perhaps that particular genre of anime that I won’t mention here.
I’d also hazard a guess that mature animation has suffered more as a result of quality than anything else. Because the main studios won’t go near it, the independents have to take up the slack, and sadly they just don’t have the resources necessary to compete on the same level.
Mature animation can be profitable, provided it’s either done cheaply enough, or it maximizes its potential when released to market. Personally, I think that if a film as superb as the Secret of Kells can be made for about €6 million, there is absolutely no reason why studios are using costs as a factor.
There is a market for these kinds of films, it just hasn’t been tapped to its full potential. That’s an opportunity for someone to explore and when they do, there’ll be plenty of profits to be had.
Word came through the other day that FOX, after what surely must have been a long discussion (/sarcasm), had decided to swing the axe on Jonah Hill’s much vaunted animated show, Gregory Allen.
So this poses an interesting question, and it’s one that will surely have a different answer than if it had been asked the last time we had this kind of situation on FOX:
What does it even mean to “cancel” a TV show any more?
Seriously! So you “cancel” it from being broadcast on TV. Well, as my fiance would say, woop-di-freakin-do! TV (and I’m talking about traditional, OTA, satellite and cable scheduled programming here) is rapidly becoming a smaller and smaller part of the entertainment landscape anyway, why does it even matter?
FOX already hosts its shows in a couple of places online and its fair to say that a sizeable portion of their audience is watching them there rather than “tuning in” during the week.
With that in mind, would it not make more sense to simply release the episodes online instead? Just because you “cancel” the show, does that automatically preclude that you have to suddenly archive the remaining episodes never to be seen again?
No, of course not!
Why not instead just say that Allen Gregory has moved to being exclusively online? My train of thought is that at some point we’ll see a deeper connection between TV and the web. YouTube is currently pioneering the way with original series (shout out to the YouTube Next Lab) whose quality is rapidly approaching that of traditional TV and it’s only a matter of time before we see audience shifts to them. My point? If a show begins life online and become popular, it could easily be “transferred” to TV with a scheduled timeslot while remaining online, thereby capturing both audiences.
Shows could also go the other way. Say they start out on TV but don’t really find their audience, then they could move to the online world and carry on as before.
I will use any excuse to post Mo Willem's charcter designs for this show.
We’ve seen some rudimentary moves in this regard with the likes of Sit Down, Shut Up. Which, after getting canned, eventually returned as FOX burned off the episodes in the middle of the night. However, they also went up on Hulu, where it was possible for fans (such as myself) to finally see them. And apparently they’re now on Comedy Central (somewhere) too!
Just imagine what kind of online numbers they could have gotten if they had put them online straight away!
Animation is slightly trickier than live-action as they shows pretty much have to be produced before the season begins. That means that it really doesn’t make any sense to “cancel” an animated show and then pretend it doesn’t exist.
To be cliched and quote Bob Dylan: the times, they are a changin’.
It’s that time of year again, when everyone hauls out their “best of” lists that are always subjective and no-one ever really agrees on anyway. Well, being the objective, engineering type, I’ve decided instead to use Amazon.com’s sales as a guide to how animated films have fared this year.
To clarify, this list is just DVD sales and is sorted after doing a search for “animation” in the Movies & TV department and is also for films that are dated as being released in 2011, hence there are some films that while released theatrically in 2010, did not come out on DVD until 2011.
So without further adieu, here’s the top 10 animated films of 2011 according to Amazon.com (backwards of course):
