Animating the cartoon industry

Innovation and cooperation will continue to be the driving force for China's animation industry in the future, said Wang Yansheng, deputy director of China's International Cultural Exchange Center.

Many experts and scholars echoed the view at a forum on animation and cartoon industry held during 2008 China (Changzhou) International Animation Art Festival that opened on Saturday and will run until October 5.

Over the past few years, China's animation and cartoon industry has witnessed rapid development with application of new technology and resources. Many animation and cartoon companies have sprung up across the country, producing thousands of cartoon programs every year.

"But what we lack most is the power of imagination and innovation, which are indispensable in creating animation works," Wang said.

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Animax Asia to produce first original animation movie

Filipino amateur writer Carmelo Junio recently won the Animax Awards 2007 pan-Asia scriptwriting contest.

His luck, however, would not simply end there.

His script has become Animax Asia’s first-original animation movie production called "LaMB," a joint venture production under the US-million Singapore Economic Development Board and SPE Networks- Joint Production Fund.

But that is just the tip of the iceberg for this monumental animation project. Animax Asia has also assembled a heavyweight creative team to produce "LaMB."

"LaMB’s" director is Ryosuke Tei who will be working with Yasufumi Soejima as storyboard artist for the original multimedia and multiplatform animation production.

Tei said he's "very excited" to direct Animax Asia’s first original animation production. He vowed to make the animation a "unique entertainment experience" for Animax viewers.

Soejima, who echoed Tei's excitement, is on board to help Tei create his vision for "LaMB" across multiple platforms: On air (two ½ hour shows and one hour finale premiering February 2009 on Animax channels); online (web manga out this Nov. 2008; online games debuting Oct. 2008); mobile (graphic novels available from Nov. 2008 and mobisodes launching Jan. 2009).

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Nordic animation: short, sweet, bizarre

The main--and only--character in Looking Glass does not talk much. Instead, what mostly resonates in the short, black-and-white animation created by Erik Rosenlund are the sounds of a thunderstorm or of the little girl's footsteps as she runs away from what she saw in a mirror in the dark. Although the film runs for only five minutes, it effectively brings viewers a sensation of horror and reminds them of similar scary memories from their childhood.

"I wanted to make a very short and scary animation," Rosenlund said during a recent interview with The Daily Yomiuri.

"I also was interested in making characters who aren't really attractive," the Swedish director added, referring to the girl with the angular face, a feature shared by some of his other characters.

Along with the use of minimal lines and colors in Looking Glass and other works, Rosenlund said that the characters' angularity is a kind of reaction to his own drawing style when he worked making illustrations for newspapers. "The characters were supposed to be funny, and they were round...in a way to appeal everyone [at that time]. After doing that, I wanted to do something opposite in a way."

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India Animated Film Emerges: 'Ramayana - The Epic'

Feature animation production in India, for regional audiences, was projected go grow almost exponentially just a short time ago. Now, with large-scale productions further becoming the inspiration of animators with a familiar but fresh story to tell, India animation's overall growth is coming more and more in line with initially incongruous projections of the industry's growth to four times it's current value, by 2012. This to which brings animation enthusiasts to India's latest big budget cartoon film, Ramayana - The Epic, a story of Indian mythology that integrates the classic tale's sense of adventure with a youthful confidence.

Based on the ancient epic "Ramayana," Ramayana - The Epic, produced by Maya Entertainment Pvt. Ltd., is another highly anticipated Indian animation that market observers hope to push the industry further toward the precipice of international recognition. Although awareness for India features has yet to edge close enough to that cliff to warrant speculation of the local industry's potential to peer over into the deep and fast-paced ocean of global recognition, Ramayana - The Epic is another intriguing step in a new direction.

"There is a boom in the animation industry and India has immense potential to encash it," Jai Natarajan, Executive Vice-President of Business Development for Maya Ent., stated at a recent press event.

"I am confident that this movie will usher in a new era in the Indian animation industry."

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Learning avenue for animation in city

THE capital city has become an abode for animation training in recent times. Leading names have opened up branches in Bhubaneswar owing to the interest shown by students here towards visual effects courses. Adding to the names like Arena, MAAC and many others, MIDDS Mumbai which has already had success in placements and in getting animation projects for both Bollywood and the TV world, opened up a branch in Jayadev Vihar here recently and this course seems to offer little more than just software.

Satyam Bansal, MD MIDDS says students need to be prepared for the practical use of software and hence their course has included value additions. ‘‘Our focus is not only on the software but on the other important skills that an animator should have,’’ he said.

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Ottawa Animation Festival Review: Terra

Frequent fps contributor, René Walling and I rolled into Ottawa from Montreal fairly late on Friday night, both disappointed to have missed out on The New Wave Of Japanese Animation that had screened at 7pm that evening. Our options limited, we set ourselves toward the Empire Cinema across the street from our shared Novotel room, where we had quickly shed our luggage. We were just in time to catch a screening of one of the films in the running for best feature of the fest: a little independent CG number called, Terra.

Terra sets itself up as an alien invasion tale turned on its head. Happy little, sentient tadpole people float blissfully through their naive lives in a Miyazaki film/Flight GN inspired world of flying whale-things, gliders and airships until the fateful day when a "god" appears in the sky. The god turns out to be a giant, spinning spaceship carrying an invasion force of humans, desperate to take the planet as their new home. Amidst an explosive torrent of sci-fi action and Planet of the Apes riffing revelation, we follow fishy, doe-eyed Mala (voiced by Evan Rachel Wood) through a step-by-step Campbell-style "Hero Journey" to fulfill her destiny and save her people from extinction. To its credit, the film manages to throw enough plot and character curve balls to keep the structure from being too cookie-cutter familiar but rarely ascends beyond anything more than a simple story twist, illustrated with a collection of elements cobbled together from an animation fan's nerd-moist-dreams.

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Animation Festival “KROK” Kicks Off in Saint Petersburg

September 22 saw the opening ceremony of the international animation festival “KROK” in St. Petersburg. It is the world’s only floating festival of animation and one of the biggest events in post-Soviet space of animation art.

This year the festival will run the route of St. Petersburg - Valaam - Kizhi - Yaroslavl - Moscow. It will be dedicated to young animators’ creations that are not inferior to “adult” animation in their quality and originality, the number of interesting works making up an independent large-scale program.

Animators from all over the world seek to partake in the competition - the KROK recognition gives young animators a chance to gain fame in the professional field. After selection procedure 130 animated cartoon films from 33 countries have been included in the competition list.

Source: oreanda.ru

South Florida firms show building designs in 3-D

When Ralph Tapanes graduated from architecture school at the University of Miami a decade ago, he didn't take the conventional career route. Instead of designing buildings, he chose to make renderings and animations of them.

Around the same time, a similar idea was brewing in the minds of a trio of young architects working at Florida International University. During lunch breaks at Taco Bell, Eddie Leon, Kevin Smith and Johann Beckford conceived an architectural animation company of their own -- Spine3d.

It would be the calm before the boom.

Today, the 3-D movement spawned in Miami universities by risk-takers who learned to traffic in the spellbinding allure of the future has reshaped the way architecture and construction are marketed in South Florida.

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Tardy "Potter" delights DreamWorks Animation

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Memo to Warner Bros. from DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg: Thanks!

"The single greatest Christmas gift ever in my 35 years in the movie business was Warners moving Harry Potter to next summer," Katzenberg said Wednesday.

He was speaking, of course, of the decision to push ahead "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" to July 17 from November 21, leaving his studio's "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa" with a lot less competition.

Katzenberg, speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia XVII Conference in New York, told Wall Street analysts to adjust the "multiplier" estimates for the movie. A "good" movie, he said, will earn 3.5 times opening weekend box office, while a "very good" should get a 4 multiplier and an "exceptional" movie a 4.3 multiplier.

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Regional animation not viable

It seems that animation industry in Hyderabad has come of age as producer Bhargava bagged the national award for his animation film Kittu.

"It's a great honour," informs the maker who also bagged the state award some time ago. Buoyed by coveted awards, the young producer desires to make an animation film for international viewers.

"Without universal themes animation films are not viable," says Bhargava who has teamed up a with a popular TV channel to produce a regular film Manorama starring Charmme in the lead. 'It would be an interesting fare," concludes the maker. From animation to commercial cinema — logical progression indeed!

Source : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/

When animators get horny

The American science-fiction author Harlan Ellison tells a cautionary tale about how not to sex up a Hollywood movie. Hired as a writer by the Disney studio, Ellison was in the studio cafeteria on his first day, regaling amused co-workers with ideas for an X-rated Disney cartoon. He was even acting out the parts of Disney characters in pornographic situations. Unluckily for Ellison, several studio executives were sitting nearby, watching his routine. Returning to work, Ellison found a pink slip on his desk: he was fired.

Moral: don't mess with the Mouse. And yet in Japan, an artist and animator as nationally beloved as Uncle Walt took time out from creating adorable family characters to make X-rated cartoons. His name was Osamu Tezuka, and his work is now having a rare English-language screening at the Barbican. And it's not just kids' stuff.

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An animation film on Lord Ayyappa

While animation films do have an audience, very few companies produce them. One such company is India Tales who is coming out with a film on 'Lord Ayyappa' titled Manikantan. Eight different types of animation like 2D, 3D animation, clay mation, toy mation, oil painting and Kerala murals were used in the film.

India Tales, started by Nalin Singh a year-and-a-half back, opted for an animated film on Lord Ayyappa as his company’s aim is to show to the world the rich Indian tradition. “We want to tell Indian stories to foreigners in a way they would understand easily,” says Nalin Singh adding that 200 technicians are working on the film in Hyderabad and 60 in Trivandrum.

Besides using different types of animation techniques, the full-length feature film also has big names behind it. Malayalam actors Mohanlal, Sugumari and Jagathi have lent their voice to the film, while maestro Illayaraja has done the music.

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DreamWorks Animation predicts all films will be 3D

During the International Broadcasting Conference (IBC) held in Amsterdam over the weekend, DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg made a bold prediction. He believes that in the future all movies will be filmed in 3D, but didn’t give any time frame past , “a reasonable period of time”.

The prediction was fitting as the speech he gave was actually broadcast in high-definition 3D with viewers wearing glasses to experience the full effect. The transmission was a first; beaming Katzenberg’s speech from Los Angeles to the attendees in Amsterdam on Sunday. It was made possible through the use of 3Ality Digital image capture and transmission tech, combined with a HD satellite link provided by Arqiva.

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West Bengal will soon emerge as animation hub

West Bengal will emerge as one of the leading hubs of the animation, visual effects and gaming industry in the next three years, DQ Entertainment (DQE) chairman and CEO Tapaas Chakravarthi said here Wednesday.”West Bengal, though a late starter in this sector, has shown a steady growth rate in the last five years. I am sure it will be the next big thrust in the animation, visual effects and gaming industry,” Chakravarthi told reporters during the launch of DQE’s first production centre in Kolkata.

“This centre is the first of its kind in West Bengal with advanced IT infrastructure. Our thrust is manpower growth in this sector as there is no dearth of talent here. We have started off with 300 people at the Kolkata centre and will triple it in the next two years,” he said.

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Dublin firm wins €5m BBC animation deal

Dublin production company Jam Media has secured a major broadcasting contract to produce a new €5 million BBC animation series.

The British broadcaster provided over half of the funding for the ‘Badly Drawn Roy’ series, which will feature a combination of live action and animation aimed at the pre-teen market.

Additional funding came from a number of Irish sources, including the Section 481 government tax incentive for film and television, Broadcasting Commission of Ireland, Irish Film Board and RTE. John Rice, managing director of Jam Media, said the series would air on RTE in early 2010, with additional deals with broadcasters worldwide also in the pipeline.

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Animated Ramayan to hit screens early 2009

Mumbai (PTI): After the success of mythological films like "Hanuman" and "Ganesha", another animation film based on Ramayana is all set to release next year.

"Ramayana-the epic" features actors like Juhi Chawla, Manoj Bajpai and Ashutosh Rana in the voices of Sita, Ram and Ravan.

Director Chetan Desai hopes to introduce Ram to the younger generation as an inspirational idol and the greatest superhero of India.

"He was born a prince and evolved into a hero. Ram is not depicted as a godly character," he said.

The duration of the film is 100 minutes and it has been made at a budget which is more than the normal Bollywood feature film. There will be about 100 characters in the film and it would be dubbed in multiple languages, he added.

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Coming Attractions: Ottawa International Animation Festival

The Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) is trying out some new elements this year, including a new supplementary venue (the Canadian Museum of Civilization), a new free shuttle bus between venues and new additions to programming, like a live art presentation by Daniel Barrow, who uses an overhead projector and narration to create something called “manual animation.”

Read the rest of the item at AWN's new events blog, Animated Travels.

Source : http://news.awn.com/

Get Animated: Filmmakers have a place to work at The Art Place

Moviegoers hurrying from one Traverse City Film Festival venue to another last month might have overlooked the sign in front of the Weaver Building on Union Street encouraging them to stop in and learn more about animation and filmmaking.

Those who checked it out during festival week got a chance to participate in one of several "Get Animated" offerings that were one of the new offshoots of this year's film festival. The mini workshops let children and teens try their own hand at animation and movie making by creating basic animation flip books and short videos.

The workshops staffed by members of The Art Place in Suttons Bay and the Suttons Bay High School Film Club members were so enthusiastically received that TAP has decided to stay on at the location and continue offering filmmaking and animation instruction.

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B'lore: High job potential in animation industry

The Indian animation industry is growing very fast and creating original content for the home market in the country.

With huge employment opportunities in the industry, several schools have been offering courses in animation. There are at least one hundred such schools in Karnataka alone.

The industry, which was a bit late in entering the animation race, is now seeing some significant changes in terms of availability of homegrown talent, growing pool of resources with specific skills catering to various segments of the industry and a more structured training infrastructure to hone the talent.

The success of films like 'Hanuman' and 'My Friend Ganesh' and animation forming an important part of the storyline in blockbusters like 'Krissh', 'Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic' are part of the changing storyline of the animation industry in the country, said Chetan, Director of Ants (Animation Training School).

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Indian animation industy seeing more domestic demand

Bangalore (PTI): The Indian animation industry, which works on the outsourcing model, is now looking at growing demand for the domestic market and creating original content for the home market in the country.

The industry, which was a bit late in entering the animation race, is now seeing some significant changes in terms of availability of homegrown talent, growing pool of resources with specific skills catering to various segments of the industry and a more structured training infrastructure to hone the talent.

The success of films like 'Hanuman' and 'My Friend Ganesh' and animation forming an important part of the storyline in blockbusters like 'Krissh', 'Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic' are part of the changing storyline of the animation industry in the country, said Chetan, Director of Ants (Animation Training School).

Source : http://www.hindu.com/

ASIFA Student Animation Film Festival 2008

ASIFA-Hollywoods' Animator Educator's Forum is hosting its first Student Animation Film Festival at Woodbury University, located on 7500 Glenoaks Blvd. in Burbank, CA 91510 on October 18, 2008 from 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Students enrolled in professional academic programs throughout the United States including NYU Tisch School of the Arts; UCLA; USC; Woodbury University; Loyola Marymount University; CSU Fullerton; Bay and The Art Institute of California-Orange County have submitted short animations.

The winners will be announced at the festival in the following categories: Best Visual Storytelling, Best Character, Best Technical Achievement, Judges' Choice and The Emile Cohl Award for the Best Animated Short.

In addition to the competition portion of the event, a free demo reel and portfolio review will be offered to the public. Students and artists alike are encouraged to bring demo reels in DVD format and/or an organized collection of flat artwork to be critiqued by some of the competition judges and other industry professionals.

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Holland Animation Film Festival Web Competition

Holland Animation Film Festival
Utrecht, The Netherlands
November 5-9, 2008
Deadline: October 22, 2008

This year the Holland Animation Film Festival(HAFF) takes place November 5-9. During these five days, the festival will show international competitions and a range of programs to show the variety of animation. In addition to the regular competitions (applied, independent and student work -- call for entries closed on all three), this year the festival will introduce a new online competition: The Holland Animation Web Competition.

The online competition will take place on HAFF's YouTube channel, HaffTube (http://www.youtube.com/HaffTube). Aside from the competition, the channel will showcase past festival editions, trailers and more. Entries will be accepted starting September 8.

Animation filmmakers from all over the world can enter the Web competition. Call for entries are open now, rules, regulations and the entry form are on HaffTube.

During the second week in September, the Web competition will launch, filling the channel with films from around the world. Festival organizers will vet and rate all films entered for competition. When 50 films have been submitted, voting begins. Each week, films will be voted off to make room for new entries.

Entries will be closed on October 22, 2008, then a jury will decide which one of the 50 films should be the winner out of the final group. The selected winner will be announced on the opening night of the festival at November 5. The winner will receive a guest accreditation and free hotel stay during the festival.

Source : http://news.awn.com/

Maya-Toon Club JV to train kids in animation

MUMBAI: If claims made by Maya Academy of Advanced Cinematics (MAAC) are anything to go by, then a training programme on the fundamentals of hand-drawn animation and creativity could see your kids showing off their animation film-making skills in three months.

MAAC Junior Toon Club (MJTC), a joint venture between MAAC and animation education institute for children Toon Club, is launching a professional training programme in animation and VFX for kids aged between seven and 14 years.

Tehzeeb Khurana, technical head, MJTC, said the company’s focus will be on training students in the fundamentals of classical hand-drawn animation using cells, sticks, sketches and clay. “Our modules are designed to develop the right side of a child’s brain, which will help in her overall growth development process,” he said.

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21st Century Chinese Animation Shorts in Montreal

Marcel Jean is the guest programmer. I've provided a loose English translation of what he wrote on the CQ website.

Faced with feeding it numerous television stations, China has recently become, on a quantitative scale, one of the most important producers of animation in the world. Seeking to limit imported productions from Japan and Korea, Chinese officials are basically encouraging local production by creating high production quotas and encouraging the creation of major schools, equipped with cutting-edge technology, which trains thousands of animators on a yearly basis.

In comparison to this rapid development, auteur animation film are still marginalized. As a result, the Chinese presence in large-scale international animation festivals (Annecy, Zagreb, Ottawa, Hiroshima, etc.) remains weak and, seemingly, purely diplomatic. In Annecy, this summer, for example, just one Chinese film was featured in the short competition and it was... a commercial. At this point the festival organizers can claim to have presented a Chinese film...

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Bleak Japanese animation film brings war to screen

VENICE, Italy (Reuters) - The presence of two Japanese animation movies in competition at the Venice film festival this year has created a contest within a contest, and brought to the big screen two strikingly different pictures.

The revered Hayao Miyazaki is among the favorites for the top prize at Saturday's awards ceremony with "Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea," his uplifting, colorful take on "The Little Mermaid" that has already stormed the box office in Japan.

Up against him in the 21-film competition is Mamoru Oshii, whose bleak yet spectacular "The Sky Crawlers" has received mixed reviews and, according to trade press, fallen well behind Miyazaki in domestic ticket sales over the summer.

In "The Sky Crawlers," humanoids are genetically designed to live forever as teenaged pilots until they are shot dead in fierce air battles.

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Taking animation seriously

If you've been tempted recently to think they aren't making movies like they used to, you're not alone. But before you totally write off today's efforts, you might want to take another look at animated movies.

Here's something to consider: only three movies out of the all-time top 100 movies (as listed by the American Film Institute in "AFI's 10 Top 10") were released within the past 10 years. But, of those three, two were animated—"Shrek" in 2001 and "Finding Nemo" in 2003. (The third was "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings" from 2001.)

Maybe not a very scientific analysis, but it seems to confirm what I've been suspecting for some time: namely that the talent and visual storytelling that used to be invested in live action films are now finding their way into animation.

These creative moviemakers are plying their craft at studios like Pixar or Dreamworks. Or they're sitting at computer screens anywhere in the world, from Japan to Iran.

It may be due to the inherent limitations of live action film or the increasingly powerful computer animation software that the 1930s Walt Disney could never have imagined. But for whatever reason, the best and the brightest of today's filmmakers are telling compelling and contemporary stories through what once were derisively called cartoons. Those who dismiss animation as just for kids really need to give it another chance.

Source : http://www.southsidermagazine.com/

Two-day animation festival from Sept. 5

Bangalore (PTI): The Association of Bangalore Animation Industry (ABAI) will hold a two-day animation festival at J N Tata Auditorium of Indian Institute of Science here from September 5.

Since its formation three years ago, ABAI has been holding the festival to exhibit the best available technology in the industry, it said in a release.

"The festival will provide an opportunity for technicians to be aware of the new available technology in the industry and business opportunities. Several companies from different parts of the country will participate in the event", it said.

Noted cartoonist and Magsaysay award winner R K Laxman, Karnataka IT/BT Secretary Ashok Kumar Manoli, Vishwanath Reddy, Proprietor of Chandamama Magazine, and many experts in the field will attend, the release said.

Source : http://www.hindu.com/