Please contact us
with corrections
or breaking news
Bay Area Animation: The Good & the Bad by Karl Cohen
An image from Mark Fiore's 'Pretty Good Generation', a vigorous spoof. photo: courtesy M. Fiore
Selick’s Stop Motion Feature Shut Down by Disney
Note: this is a breaking story added by CIneSource editorial.
On August 14th, renown stop motion director, Henry Selick—"The Nightmare Before Christmas" (1993), "Life Aquatic" (2004) and "Coraline" (2009)—had untitled project pulled by Disney, putting 150 animators and support staff out of work. Disney said they "lost interest," and others noted, "it just wasn’t coming together in a manner that pleased the studio.'
This is really bad news for Cinderbiter, the premier stop motion production studio in the Mission that was doing the work, as well as for Selick, although he can shop the project around to other studios. The untitled film was due to release in the fall of 2013. For more info see Deadline New York.
Fiore's Amazing Political Animation Plugged on PBS
Mark Fiore has been publishing one animated cartoon a week since he left his job at the San Jose Mercury News in 2001. He covers a wide range of topics and his award-winning work (Pulitzer Prize, etc.) is nicely animated in Flash, has excellent soundtracks and it is often quite astute and funny. He says that whatever is in the news that gets him the most angry each week is what ends up as the subject of his weekly cartoon.
In July Bill Moyers announced he will run Fiore’s work on his PBS website and he showed a clip of his work. The local PBS show "Sparks" also reran a long segment on Fiore. Since there is a national election heating up, check out his humorous takes on the outrageous BS being slung about and other ironic behavior in daily news reports on his site.
Winners of First ASIFA-SF Spring Festival
Leonard Cohen, who moved here from France, won the Best in Show prize for “Plato” (it also won the Best Student award at Anney 2011). Cohen’s “The Parable of the Tulleries” tied for First Prize in the Commissioned Film category with David Tart’s “The Story of Animation.” Tart’s film also won the Funniest Film Award. David is a graduate of SF State.
French animator, Leonard Cohen contributed the masterful 'Plato'. photo: courtesy L. Cohen
In the Independent Animation category Joanna Priestly’s “Dear Pluto” won First Prize, Mark West’s “The Tyger” won Second Prize and an Excellence in Animation Award, and there was a tied for Third Place between “There’s an App for That” by Alan Orcutt and “Hope” by Sabrina Wanie, with music by Nik Phelps. Luke Jaeger’s antique music video “Carolina Shout” and Karen Lithgow’s “It’s all about Perspective” won the Special Jury prizes. Awards for Excellence in Humor went to “Rathle” by Jefferson Thomas and “There’s an App for That” by Alan Orcutt. The Excellence in Experimental Animation award goes to “Cellular Circuitry” by Ben Ridgway.
In the College Student category, “The Last Goodbye” by Rebecca Denton from SF State and “Tule Lake” by Michelle Ikemoto from San Jose State tied for First Place. Ikemoto was also awarded an Excellence in Animation Award. "Warden of the Woods" by Allison Huffman from SF State won Second Prize and “The Pod” by Bronto House Animation, a San Jose State student group, won Third Prize. An Excellence in Humor award went to “Couch & Potatoes” by Chris Lam and Eunsoo Jeong from San Jose State.
In the Young Animators division an Excellence in Humor award went to “Build a Baby Workshop” by Gwydion Brain from the BAYCAT Animation Program. Awards of Merit go to all who entered this category including Perry Chen (“Ingrid Pitt”), Trevor Cartmill-Endow (“Just Say No to Fur,” “Grown at Birth”) , Dani Bowman (Mr. Raindrop), students of Gene Hamm at Alchemia and students of Tim Harrington at BAYCAT.
Free Animation Classes at BAYCAT
Time Harrington is an art director and design instructor at a non-profit media center on Third St. in SF (in the Dog Patch area) that offers free video and animation classes to local youth ages 11-17. BAYCAT is “empowering individuals, transforming communities.” Give them a call at (415) 701.8228.
Dreamworks New Space
On July 1th, Jeffrey Katzenberg cut the ribbon on PDI/Dreamworks new 200,000 sq. ft. building in Redwood City. They are planning to produce more animated films each year and for various reasons his team of artist and technicians is happier living in the Bay Area than in LA. They plan to add about 200 people to their production staff in the coming months—hello film school animation graduates!.
Andrew Stanton, a Pixar titan—director of 'Finding Nemo' and 'Wall-E'—here receiving an Oscar for the latter. photo: courtesy Pixar
Stanton Helms 'Finding Nemo' Sequel
Andrew Stanton, who will direct the first “Finding Nemo” sequel, has won fame for directing two of Pixar’s Oscar winners, “Wall-E” (2008) and “Finding Nemo” (2003, co-directed). He also wrote and co-directed “A Bugs Life” (1998) and has worked as a writer on “Monster Inc.” and all three of Pixars “Toy Story” features.
As for “John Carter” (2012), directed by Stanton, it didn’t turn out to be the $200 disaster at the box office that Disney announced a few days after it opened. About 75% of sales came from abroad, so it ended up grossing about $283 million worldwide. It cost about $250 million to make so it only lost around $100 million, still a major loss. One film trade publication explained his directing the film as a "Thank you present" for making Disney/Pixar millions upon millions through his many Pixar hits. Now that he has directed his live action dream project, it is back to making mega-bucks for the corporations.
Chai and Langan Showing in Ottowa
David Chai, who is know for creating violent and humorous award winning animated shorts, apparently has another side to him. His charming “Why Do They Put Up With Them?" will show in the 2012 Ottowa Film Festival's shorts for kids competition!
In addition, Michael Langan has two films in the competition, his experimental “Choros” and a music video, “Art Circles: Van Gogh to Rothko.” He will moved back to SF in late August.
Great Animator Has New Reel
Animation Mentor has developed an excellent new demo reel of student work on line. It includes really impressive work from their character animation course and animal and creatures master classes. They also have a 50% off sale on their two part animal and creatures course, go here or here.