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Cohen’s Animation Report SFS MARK FIORE WINS A PULITIZER PRIZE FOR HIS WORK DOING ANIMATED SYNDICATED POLITICAL CARTOONS SEEN ON THE INTERNET
His work is presently seen on the Internet at SFGate.com, Mother Jones.com, CBSNews.com and on other sites. His submissions for the Pulitzer included Science-gate (run 12/09/09) which lampoons skeptics of global warming, Obama Interruptus (12/02/09) which portrays his trying to stay focused despite the distractions of the world around him, and Credit Card Reform (10/28/09) that takes on the fabulous mumbo-jumbo double-talk offers of the credit card industry.
Mark is the political cartoonist/animator who rises above all others on the Internet. In 2000 Mark taught himself Flash, found two customers and started to turn out Flash cartoons. Then the dream job he had always wanted was offered to him. The "San Jose Mercury News" hired him as their political cartoonist and being on their staff was great until he discovered his editor was under tremendous pressure to keep circulation and ad revenues up. Mark says, It was awful. He lasted 6 months with the paper due to their restrictive editorial policy. (That translates as their not allowing him to kick ass and say what he wanted because of his editors fear of loosing income if he really allowed his staff to speak freely.) Since leaving the paper in 2001 he has been syndicating his weekly animated cartoons online.
Marks work has earned high praise. The Wall Street Journal calls him, The undisputed guru of the form. He has received the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and other honors. His work is syndicated weekly to numerous websites run by newspapers and other organizations and it is seen regularly by millions of people.
Fiores cartoons are extremely well produced with excellent voice work, music and animation. More important, he is free to say what he wants. He says he gets his ideas from the daily media and that whatever upsets him the most that week often becomes the subject he makes fun of in his next cartoon. He dares to make fun of any subject that interests him.
One brilliant Fiore cartoon, What If (6/25/08), suggests what might happen if a 3rd candidate had entered the 2008 presidential race. The piece is a negative hit piece attacking the candidates ethics, patriotism, and much more. He has never once been seen wearing a flag pin and he has spent years studying at a religious school in the Middle East. Some call him a hero for the injuries he sustained under torture, yet he would sit down and talk with those who would harm us. His tax plan amounts to making the rich poor and At the end of the piece we find out that the candidates name is, Jesus Christ, not the change we want. You can see all of his work at http://www.markfiore.com
THE OAKLAND MUSEUM OF CALIFORNIA TO CELEBRATE PIXAR: 25 YEARS OF ANIMATION JULY 31 JANUARY 9, 2011
There will be over 500 works on display including several not previously seen by the public. The show began in 2005 at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and over the past five years it has traveled around the world. For the local exhibit that also shows off the museums major remodeling work, they have updated the exhibit so it will include art from Up, Toy Story 3, WallE and other recent projects. Adding a sense of novelty to the show, there will be a giant Pixar Zoetrope that you can enter to see the moving images, and Artscape, An immersive, wide-screen projection of digitally processed images that gives the viewer a sensation of entering into and exploring the exquisite details of the original artwork. The exhibit will fill about 11,000 square feet of exhibit space.
DISNEY/PIXAR ANNOUNCED THEY HAVE SIGNED A LONG TERM CONTRACT WITH HENRY SELICK
Variety announced no details except Henry will work out of Pixar (he is still commuting from Portland but plans to move back soon) and that Henrys stop-motion work could be based on either his own ideas or adaptations. They also said, Selick hopes to benefit from the Pixar brain trust and technology, but will continue to produce toons using his trademark stop-motion style. Henry directed both Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach for Disney. After James was completed Disney decided to only produce computer-generated animation, but now after creating overly expensive cg products that were not highly profitable, they see the wisdom in returning to less expensive stop-motion and hand drawn animation.
GEORGE LUCAS KNOWS HOW TO MILK EVERY DROP OUT OF HIS STAR WARS FRANCHISE
Variety has announced Lucasfilm Animation is working on a Star Wars animated comedy series. The Daily Shows Brendan Hay and Robot Chickens Seth Green and Matthew Seinreich, will be among the writers.
ROBERT ZEMECKIS' IMAGEMOVERS DIGITAL HAS BEGUN WORK ON DARK LIFE FOR DISNEY
This science fiction film set in the near future will be a fall release so it is likely it will contain little or no performance capture work, but I suspect the actors will perform on blue or green screen sets and Imagemovers Digital will drop in computer generated backgrounds. In the film some humans have escaped environmental disasters by living under the sea. The studio is still set to close early next year.K. Cohen April 18, 2010