Please contact us
with corrections
or breaking news
Pixar Problems and IndieFest by Karl Cohen
A Vimeo Staff Pick, Ben Ridgway’s "Tribocycle" continues the grand tradition of mystical animation from the '60s. photo: courtesy B. Ridgeway
Disney/Pixar Problems and Plaudits
Pixar has laid-off 67 people. Needing to make several changes to “The Good Dinosaur” a feature in production, they have delayed the film's release date and have reduced the size of their staff by about 5%. They presently employ of about 1200 people, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The cuts were called “a small reduction in our staffing levels,” noted one exec although it does comes after Pixar closed their studio in Vancouver, Canada. “The Good Dinosaur” will now open November 2015.
Disney/Pixar can well afford to keep the laid off people on staff in some other capacity as “Monsters University” was extremely profitable in 2013. It took in about $744 million worldwide and was the sixth highest grossing feature in the US.
Also the "Monsters"'s line of toys and other products continue to make billion each year, so royalty payments from those sales continue to keep Disney a highly profitable corporation.
On top of that Disney’s “Frozen” has been remarkably profitable, grossing almost $700 million in the first seven weeks and the total continues to climb quickly.
Ridgway Doing Well
Ben Ridgway’s "Tribocycle" Is a Vimeo Staff Pick. In addition, Ben, who teaches animation at SF State, was interviewed for The Creators Project by Vice Magazine .
His new work has already been shown several times at the Detroit Institute of Arts in a program of avant-guarde animation. See the work online at Vimeo.
Title from Bill Plympton’s hand-drawn “Cheatin”. photo: courtesy B. Plympton
Animation Floods February's Indie Fest
This year’s festival will include 3 animated features and a program of shorts. Bill Plympton’s hand-drawn “Cheatin” stars a couple that meets as a result of an auto accident.
They fall in love, but unfortunately the relationship includes the ghost of another woman who drives a wedge of jealousy into the “perfect courtship.” Somehow a not so honest magician also gets involved and other former lovers help make a mess of the relationship. Bill is considered the King of Independent Animation and his humorous work is fairly well-known worldwide.
The festival’s February 6 opening night film is “The Congress” by Art Folman. He is from Israel and his best-known work is “Waltz with Bashir.” His new feature combines a bizarre live action story of an aging Hollywood actress (is 44 really over the hill in LA) being terminated by her studio with an unusual contract. Her image will become an avatar, a computer generated actress.
The second half of the film is a very strange science fiction nightmare about the entertainment industry. It is quite disturbing. This isn’t a sweet film full of the cute ducks and bunnies parents expect in Hollywood animated features.
Also being presented by Indiefest from Feb. 6 to 20 is a program of animated shorts and “an autobiographical psychedelic animated road movie” from Canada titled “Asphalt Watches.”
The feature was an award winner at the Toronto International Film Festival and is based on an underground comix by Seth Scriver and Shayne Ehman. Apparently the characters Bucktooth Cloud and Skeleton Hat meet lots of bizarre people on their journey. For detail about all the programs and special events at this unusual festival, visit sfindie.com.
Scene from the edgey Canadian entry, "Asphalt Watches”. photo: courtesy S. Scriver and S. Ehman
While the main characters Bucktooth Cloud and Skeleton Hat and the unusual the people they meet along the way may sound interesting in print, the execution of this homemade computer generated film leaves much to be desired. It probably can be called outsider art.
I'm sure there is an audience for this film, probably with young hip adults who find MTV a bit too square and are seeking something really unusual. One writer said of the film, "There is something South Park about this... but trippier." If you are looking for a traditional looking narrative feature, look elsewhere. A much safer bet for a fine animated film experience is to see Bill Plympton's "Cheatin".
For detail about all the programs and special events at this unusual festival, visit their site.
Nice Piece by Francis Corrie
Corrie Francis Parks’ “A Tangled Tale!” is a delightful work, innovatively animated with real old-fashioned sand! Her award-winning film can now be seen online on Vimeo here.
Colcord Creates Clay Monsters for Claypool
Webster Colcord's work is part of live concert performances in Les Claypool’s “Beats Antique” touring show and it can be seen on the band's music video.
Webster tells us, “Numerous visual artists, under the direction of Ivan Landau, contributed work to Beats Antique's concert production, which involves projection mapping by Obscura Digital, a San Francisco based company.
Each piece of music has its own unique visual motif that follows a loose storyline over the entire concert, sort of a rock opera. So in addition to being a standalone music video, ‘Beelzebub’ is projected during the band’s live concert onto a screen behind the musicians. There are also geometrical pieces in the foreground on which an additional clay element is projected, so the band is immersed in clay for the duration of the song.”
“Because of the nature of the presentation, it was decided to try to give the impression that the clay animation was done in one continuous take. Most of the time the set was mounted on a geared head and animated to give the impression of camera movement. Most of the animation is on 2's and camera moves are on 1's. Any resulting strobing was treated as a desirable side effect.”
“The scale of the puppets was usually very small and the depth of field was intentionally kept extremely shallow. The design of the characters and animation were intended to evoke the look and feel of clay animation from the late 80's - early 90's. Lighting changes were hand-animated using dimmers and three color schemes are used during the course of the animation.
“Nearly all of the VFX were done in-camera and very little rig removal was done in post. The laser beam coming from the robot was a laser pointer aimed at a raking angle on a thread, shot with a long exposure. The video credits are Director, Ivan Landau; Animator, Webster Colcord; Assistant Sculptors, Rich Zimmerman and Edgar Humberto Alvarez; Set Assistant Dave Waddle; filmed in Hollywood at Shadow Machine.”
Webster has several strange photos on his blog. There are also fan-posted videos from the live concert that shows the foreground projection-mapped elements and how they play with the flat projection of the music video behind the band which can be seen here.
Ronald Searle with his trademark pixie grin. photo: courtesy R. Searle
Ronald Searle Showcased At Cartoon Museum
“Searle in America” focuses on his drawing assignments for major magazines when he visited the US. The exhibit was organized by Pixar story artist Matt Jones who runs a blog about all things Searle. It will be on display through March 30, 2014: see his blog.