Animation

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The Mouse moves briskly. With Lucasfilm firmly ensconced in Disney land, production has begun the next animated Star Wars TV series. Two months after The Clone Wars was forced to surrender following a five-year run on Cartoon Network, Star Wars Rebels is massing its forces for a fall 2014 attack. It will premiere as an hourlong special before the series kicks off on Disney XD outlets ... But Disney isn't wasting time on the cross pollination process. Phineas and Ferb have ended their regular series, but there are close to a half-dozen hour Star Wars specials featuring P & F that will be unspooling in coming months. Synergy!

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences becomes more generous: The Academy has relaxed the rules for winning an Oscar for Best Animated Feature, allowing more individuals to take home statuettes. In rule changes approved by the AMPAS Board of Governors, the filmmaker with producer credit will now receive an Oscar in the category, along with the film’s credited director. In cases where a two-person team has shared director credit, a third statuette can be awarded. In the past, the Animated Feature Oscar went to the single individual with the most creative input into the film, typically the director. In only two cases over the 12 years of the category – including the most recent winner, “Brave” – two credited directors received statuettes. Because you can never have enough shiny awards ... But what this is REALLY about is ... animated features are no longer the sleepy little sub-category that Disney Feature used to occupy all by its lonesome. Now, animated features are big business, and lots of our fine conglomerates are making them. Disney, Universal, Viacom, Fox-News Corp. Sony, are in the cartoon biz, and delighted with the box office results. In fact, cartoon features are the most profitable type of feature at the world box office. As the Nikkster reminds us: Judged just by genre, average revenues for the decade’s 101 animated films ran 108.4% ahead of costs. DreamWorks Animation’s Shrek 2 led the category with a 462% margin. The 71 sci-fi/fantasy films had a margin of 108.1%. ... This might have a teensy bit to do with the Acadmey's willingness to hand out more glittering trophies. Because if there's one thing the AMPAS does really well, it's being careful not to bite the big fat hands that feet it.

Directed by Ham Luske assisted by Jim Swain. Laid out by Al Zinnen, Thor Putnam and Ken O'Corror. Secretary Ruth Wright.This Final draft dated 9/6/55.

You know how the internet can be...one minute you're looking at pictures of cats and the next one you're reading the Incomplete Manifesto for Growth from Bruce Mau Design and you find yourself nodding your head in agreement, stopping to ponder the veracity of "Creativity is not device-dependent" and generally thinking this is an incomplete manifesto. (How could you limit it?) This then is what they had to say: Allow events to change you.  You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them. Forget about good.  Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth. Process is more important than outcome.  When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).  Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day. Go deep.  The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value. Capture accidents.  The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions. Study.  A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit. Drift.  Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism. Begin anywhere.  John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere. Everyone is a leader.  Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead. Harvest ideas.  Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications. Keep moving.  The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice. Slow down.  Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves. Don’t be cool.  Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort. Ask stupid questions.  Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant. Collaborate.  The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential. ____________________.  Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others. Stay up late.  Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world. Work the metaphor.  Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for. Be careful to take risks.  Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future. Repeat yourself.  If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again. Make your own tools.  Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference. Stand on someo

This week we’re taking a look at some of the artists who contributed their artistry to the production of Blue Sky’s Epic, which opens in the United States on May 24th. First up is Stephen P. Neary, a story artist at Blue Sky who has worked on two Ice Ages and Rio, in addition to Epic. He also creates his own short films such as Dr. Breakfast (embedded below) and Let’s Make Out, which you can find on his YouTube channel. Stephen’s train commute provides daily sketchbook time and he shares a lot of drawings on his blog and Tumblr. Also being a pie enthusiast, Stephen naturally has a pie blog.

Education First came to me with an exciting requetst; to design and animate a music video. The video covers a day through the eyes of an EF student. Friends, activities, accommodations, schoolwork and more. In three fast paced weeks I storyboarded and animated the whole piece, it is also playing on EF's Youtube-channel with interactive annotations.Cast: Anders SundqvistTags:

The State of the VFX Industry and where do we go from here

THE SCARIEST BOARDGAME OF ALL TIME IS FINALLY HERE. Camp Grizzly, the debut title of Ameritrash Games, is a horror/survival boardgame for 1-6 players. The objective is to survive a night at camp with a supernatural serial killer on the loose! If this appeals to you: first seek help, then seek us out this weekend at Kubla Con in the Hyatt Regency SFO where we'll be selling beta versions of the game!Ameritrash is a partner of Steel Wool Games, one of the sponsors of Kubla Con. My co-creator, Jason Topolski, and I will both be available at the Steel Wool Games booth Saturday-Monday, running games, doing drawings, and generally indulging in all manners of mischief and debauchery! Ameritrash Games can be round at AmeritrashGames.com and here on Facebook. 18 days...

Guillermo Tovar C and his wife Nadia Mendoza A have been working on The Esoteric Birthday for over 7 years. It’s a full-length, animated feature film, produced in Costa Rica. It’s not aimed a traditional Disney/DreamWorks audience, but it looks gorgeous and interesting. They’re nearly finished, but using Indiegogo, they’re raising completion funding. Go help ‘em out! According to Guillermo, all animation was “done with Flash. Even the storyboard and some of the concept art. Post-production has been done in Photoshop and After Effects.”