Too Much 3d for Me

The third installment of the computer-animated Ice Age films, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, has been released to excited fans. The film is being presented in three-dimensional formats across the country like so many of its animated contemporaries (Monsters vs. Aliens, Up). Audiences seem to gravitate toward these films. It is not necessarily the format, the animation and kid-friendly material all coagulate to form a gel of a film perfect for soaking up consumer funds. Still, the computer-animated three-dimensional film trend is exhausting.

Computer animation has entered a stage that is enough of a film deterrent in and of itself. If a viewer wants to watch a fully-dimensional film then they should watch an actual film with human actors. Animation was created and meant for a two-dimensional format. Classics like Cinderella, Pinocchio, and the animated films like them are works of art. It is both refreshing and humbling to think each second of those films consisted of multiple drawings, which were made by artists. Computer-animation is made by engineers, while it is not about attacking the person who creates the respective computer-based film, it does seem much of the craftsmanship is dead. It is too bad that artistic integrity has been replaced by monetary interests.

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Animation: It’s Time to Toon In

Cartoon creators and companies are getting animated about the future of the industry. Raziqueh Hussain discovers what colourful capers lie around the corner Cartoons are fast becoming a serious business in the region. New animation companies and talented creatives are gaining international attention for their inspirational characters and shows that focus on life and culture in the Middle East.

Shaabiyat Al Cartoon is a perfect example of this success. Aired on Sama Dubai, Shaabiyat Al Cartoon is a social comedy dealing with the problems of the Gulf community through the lives of people from different cultures living in Dubai. Anyone who has been through the trials and tribulations of daily life in the Emirates will laugh along with the characters Hanafy, Osman, Bu Sulaiman, Daheem, Koty and Umm Sayed.

Companies in the Middle East now see animation as big business, even though the region is a relative newcomer when it comes to producing its own content, lagging behind markets of India and South Korea.

Animated series Freej, meaning neighbourhood, is widely seen as the first indigenous computer animated cartoon about four elderly grandmothers and their dealing with life in the fast-paced, ever-changing, modern-day Dubai.

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NYC show explores Japanese comic books, animation

NEW YORK — The gallery of the normally serene Japan Society has been overtaken by scenes of ruined cities, rocket travel, giant fighting robots, prostitution and teenagers in the throes of eating disorders.

The carnage and dysfunction are central to the elaborate fictional worlds of Japanese comics (manga), animated films (anime) and video games now on display in Manhattan.

On a recent weekend, two mothers and their kids huddled over a model of the 1980s video game Pac-Man, trying to get the yellow circle to devour all the dots in a maze without being killed by ghosts.

In another room, a couple of teenage girls crouched down to get inside a small tea house-like enclosure lined with hundreds of manga, some the size of telephone books.

Elsewhere, six anime were being simultaneously projected along a long wall in a room with cubicles where visitors could sit comfortably and watch the same excerpts on smaller screens. (The complete films are shown at scheduled times in the society's basement auditorium on Fridays through Sundays, free of charge with admission.)

The exhibition, "Krazy! The Delirious World of Anime + Manga + Video Games," has been drawing large and diverse crowds — young, old and in-between — since it opened March 13.

Last spring, the Vancouver Art Gallery launched a larger version of the show, aimed at exploring the connections between the pop world of comics, animation and gaming and more highbrow expressions of visual culture.

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DreamWorks Animation Fourth-Quarter Profit Drops 45%

DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. said fourth-quarter profit fell 45 percent as the studio’s latest DVD release “Kung Fu Panda” failed to match revenue from “Shrek the Third” a year earlier.

Net income dropped to $51.6 million, or 58 cents a share, from $94.1 million, or 98 cents, in the year-ago period, Glendale, California-based DreamWorks Animation said today in a statement. Profit, including a 12-cent tax benefit, missed the 62-cent average of analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Studios including DreamWorks Animation have been hurt by shrinking DVD sales, even with films such as “Panda,” the sixth biggest box-office seller in U.S. and Canadian theaters last year. Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Katzenberg said in December the company will produce TV shows, branch into live events and release 3-D movies to combat the decline. “Monsters Vs. Aliens,” its first 3-D film, opens on March 27.

“ It’s all a shortfall in ‘Kung Fu Panda,’” Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities, said today in an e-mail. He has a buy rating on the shares.

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'Can't stand modern animation'

HONG KONG - IN the age of digital animation and computer special effects, Hayao Miyazaki is a purist.

The 67-year-old Oscar-winning master animator known for his hand-drawn movies said in a newspaper interview on Sunday he hasn't seen any of the major digitally animated films in the last two decades.

'I can't stand modern movies. The images are too weird and eccentric for me,' Miyazaki told Hong Kong's Sunday Morning Post in an interview to promote his latest movie, 'Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea.'

Miyazaki said his recruits are tested in a boot camp where mobile phones, iPods and other electronic devices are banned.

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Animation station stops here

When you think "animation," you probably think of Tinseltown.

But what about Hollywood on the Hudson?

"We want people to know that this area has influenced the (animation) industry," says the Westchester Arts Council's Julia Dixon. "It doesn't just happen in Hollywood.

"Over the years, 500 animators and/or studios have been located in the Westchester-New York City region."

Many of them are among the cast of characters in "It All Started Here," a coming Arts Council exhibit (Jan. 20-Feb. 28) for which Dixon serves as coordinator.

The show - which will be previewed at a Jan. 17 reception at the council's Arts Exchange building in White Plains - surveys the animated stars and technology that have been created in the county and the Big Apple over the past 100 years, from Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), the first animated-cartoon character, to the rascally prehistoric critters of the "Ice Age" movies.

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Using Animation to Explore the Nanoworld

Tiny self-assembling metal cubes dance across the screen in a video posted on the Web site of the Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology. You could read a book — or at least several chapters — on the principles behind how these microcubes build themselves up from microscopic metallic sheets cut by lasers. Or you could watch a one-minute animated video that tells their fantastic story.

The INBT video of the self-assembling cubes is the result of the independent study course Animation in Nanotechnology and Medicine and was produced under the guidance of INBT animation/Web director Martin Rietveld, who shares his skills and experience in 2-D/3-D animation with students from throughout Johns Hopkins who want to learn to use this lively medium.

INBT's animation studio and the independent study course have attracted students from the basic sciences, engineering, the School of Medicine's Department of Art as Applied to Medicine and the Krieger School's Writing Seminars, to name a few. Some students understand the science; others are skilled in illustration or other types of visualization. "My job is to try to guide these forces into something that actually produces a movie," Rietveld says.

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Annie Award nominations

'Kung Fu Panda' masters the field, drawing 17 nominations, far more than other comers for the annual prizes in animation.

"Bolt," "Kung Fu Panda," "Wall-E," "Waltz With Bashir" and "9.99" were nominated Monday by the International Animated Film Society for best animated feature for the 36th annual Annie Awards. The awards honor the year's best animated features, TV productions, commercials, video games and short subjects.

DreamWorks Animation's' "Kung Fu Panda" received 17 nominations, more than any other film. In addition to best animated feature, the box-office hit earned recognition in the character animation, character design, directing, music, production design, storyboarding, voice acting and writing categories.

Walt Disney Animation Studio's current hit "Bolt" received nine nominations, and Pixar Animation Studio's summer blockbuster "Wall-E" earned eight.

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Disney Animation Moves Toward U.K. on-Demand

Disney Animation News in UK

To make a sweeping statement that intimates the phenomenal success of digital television has become increasingly on the mark for television territories where video-on-demand has become less a luxury and more of a genuine, everyday preference for global audiences. Such is the case of course, not only in North America, where leading children's entertainment networks are constantly grabbing at opportunities to project content onto multiple viewing platforms; but such is also the case in international markets, where television networks and animation broadcasters are similarly exposing quality cartoon content to pay-as-you-go audiences.

BT Vision, a British broadband and digital television subscription service, has recently come to into a multi-year agreement with Disney Channel UK under which BT Vision subscribers will now have the option to pursuer a variety of Disney-produced or Disney-distributed content. Effective just recently, the agreement makes available a plethora of quality television animation and children's entertainment, making the on-demand market quite a bit livelier.

"BT Vision's offer opens up a whole new potential audience for Disney Channel and we're delighted to be working with them," Michael Cairns, the General Manager of Disney Channels UK and Ireland, commented.

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Digital animation will be the spitting image of 80s satire

Politicians will come to dread Sunday nights again when ITV reinvents Spitting Image as a computer-animated show with a fresh mandate to be merciless.

So many suffered at the comic hand of Spitting Image’s latex caricatures that the only ignominy worse than being lampooned was to be excluded.

Twelve years after the programme ended, Spitting Image’s head writer, Henry Naylor, and Rory Bremner are preparing to show Headcases, a new £2.5 million topical satire show in the same ITV Sunday night slot.

Instead of puppets, Gordon Brown, Amy Winehouse and Prince William, among others, are captured using CGI-animation in the style of films such as Toy Story.

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Singapore Animation Studio Releases 3D Animation Marketing E-book

Mediafreaks Pte Ltd, a 3D animation studio based in Singapore, has released a free e-book titled ‘True Case Studies of How Animation Can Help Grow a Business’.

Mar 23, 2008 – Mediafreaks Pte Ltd (http://www.media-freaks.com), a 3D animation studio based in Singapore, has released a free e-book titled ‘True Case Studies of How Animation Can Help Grow a Business’.

The purpose of the e-book is to educate business establishments on the benefits of using 3D animation to market and grow their businesses and also using character licensing (http://www.media-freaks.com/character-licensing.html) to increase the salability of their products and services.

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Indian animation industry poised for growth

Mumbai: "Hanuman", "Hanuman Returns" and now "Bal Ganesh"... the string of successful animation movies is an indication of the fast growth that the Indian animation industry is poised for after the development of some very advanced software.

"As far as the Indian animation movie production is concerned, a new phase has now started after advanced software has been developed. Technology is key to the growth of the animation sector," Ashish Kulkarni of Jadooworks, a Bangalore-based animation company, told IANS.

As of today, India has about 200 animation, 40 VFX and 35 game development studios, but the country needs more workstations to make optimal use of the potential that the industry has.

A.K. Madhavan, of Crest Animation Studios, says: "At Crest, we get trainers from the US and Canada to train our staff and help them understand the current trends in animation in the world market. This ensures that the output is on a par with the acceptable levels for international standards, especially Hollywood," he said.

Both Kulkarni and Madhavan agreed that given the demands, animation movie making will soon emerge as a self-sufficient industry and attain a full-ledged stature.

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Huge growth potential for animation in India: British expert

Kolkata: Animation in India is still in the nascent stage but with huge growth potential in the domestic market the discipline has a good future in the country, British author and animation studies teacher Chris Webster has said.

"In India, animation is still in its infancy. There is a lot of scope here, but growth will take time. India needs to make serious efforts in terms of education and setting up of infrastructure," Webster told IANS Thursday.

He appreciated the work going on in India in the field of animation but felt India has a long way to go.

The author of the book "Animation: The Mechanics of Motion" and head of the animation department of the University of the West of England in Bristol, Webster was in Kolkata to speak at an animation symposium organised by Aptech Ltd.

He said animation is not about the present, but about the future. "The industry will grow, but we don't know how far it will go.

"When I started my career, there weren't specialized computers and software available but today students can make use of them", he said, but warned: "Creativity is the heart of animation and so we must not get lost in software."

When asked about the applications of animation, he said: "Animation is not just about fun, frolic and entertainment. It has wide social and educational relevance also. It can be used everywhere."

With a projected growth rate of 24 per cent, the Indian animation industry can to grow to $869 million by 2010, a NASSCOM report recently said. Foreign companies are now outsourcing animation jobs to India because of cheap and efficient manpower available here.

Although animation is new to India filmmakers in Bollywood have taken full-length animation movies seriously. Ace filmmaker Karan Johar will soon be releasing an animation film, "Koochie Koochie Hota Hai", a remake of his debut hit "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai".

Source : http://sify.com/

Magic Of Disney Animation

I'VE always been a huge Disney fan so when I was offered the chance to become one of their animators for the day I was hopping around the office Tigger-style.

I was invited to an exclusive animation tour of the Walt Disney Studios in Los Angeles - home of classics such as Cinderella, Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs and The Lion King - to celebrate the re-release of 1961 Disney classic 101 Dalmations.

Animation experts have restored the Bafta Award-winning movie brilliantly with enhanced picture and sound.

And I went along to get a behind-the-scenes look at how the magic happens.

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Structures always need animation

Pope Benedict's second encyclical, Spe salvi (By hope were we saved), gives us a timely reminder about something we many times take for granted and then forget.

Structures, in whatever form they come and no matter how important and indispensable, are useless if not animated by freedom and love.

It's a reminder for all of us, but most especially for our leaders in all fields of human endeavor, whether in the civil side or ecclesiastical.

The prompter is amply discussed in nos. 22 to 27 of the document, generating a good number of helpful insights, corollaries and practical considerations. It would be good to go through some of these points here, like…

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Argentina becoming animation hot spot

Argentina is becoming a Latin American hot spot for animation, with producers entering the field with projects that fuse local flair with international standards.

Illusion Studios, behind blockbuster "Patoruzito" with Disney-backed Patagonik Film Group, has refashioned its pencil-based production operation into a digital studio with 2-D Toon Boom and Maya 8.5 3-D software.

It gained financial muscle last year with the entrance of the Exxel Group, a Buenos Aires-based private equity fund, as 80% owner. This made it possible to expand its one-feature-a-year capacity to three -- plus content for the Internet, mobile phones, theater, TV and other outlets. Illusion has 120 animation artists in Argentina and this year will open a Mexican house with 25 artists.

"Our aim is to expand the reach of our animated films with U.S. market standards and without leaving behind the essence of the Argentine characters," says Gaston Cami, head of international relations. "They are strong characters for films and TV series."

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1980s Animation 'The Smurfs' Coming to DVD

Over the next several months, fans of 1980s cartoons will never have a better chance to discover their inner smurf. Coming to DVD for the very first time at the very end of the month of February 2008 and readily in development or production for a slew of consumer products and film projects for its celebration, The Smurfs, like many other television programs from its era, now returns to prominence with fans of retro animation. A series that emphasized camaraderie and community relations above all else, The Smurfs offered its young audience how to live the long hard fight, learning to care for one another right from the start… even if there's a crazy guy trying to capture your village so that he (or his cat) can eat you.

Coming to DVD starting this month with the help of Warner Home Video is The Smurfs: Season One, Volume One; the first home video installment of the long-running television cartoon. Featuring a cuddly, miniature town of little blue persons that live in mushroom houses and pride themselves in a strong community, the Smurfs are a curious little bunch of folks that many kids of the 1980s grew close to.

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Indian animation industry faces several challenges

Lack of developed market, low level of professionalism coupled with minuscule investment in technology are some of the challenges being faced by Indian animation industry which needed to be overcome on priority basis in order to put the industry on high growth trajectory.

These were the views of the animation experts during a Conference on Animation and Gaming orgnaised by CII here on Saturday.

Addressing the gathering, KPMG, Advisory Service Private Limited, Director, Jaideep Ghosh said, "Animation industry in India is still at developing stage unlike in US and Canada and it is turning out to be a major challenge for animation industry in India".

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Animation festival helps local businesses to grow

AN annual international Teesside animation festival, which has grown to become a meeting place for some of the best known names in the industry, is helping grow local businesses.

Niel Bushnell, managing director of Hartlepool-based Qurios Entertainment, a visual effects company which provided animated backdrops for BBC1's Omid Djalilili show the BBC2 series Hyperdrive, said the Festival was a unique opportunity to network with global players on their doorstep.

"You meet a lot of people from around the country and the world, and it’s an opportunity to get together with local contacts as well and strengthen those links. It really puts us on the map and helps to say to the rest of the world that this is a place where a lot of good work is happening, but we also appreciate the work that is going on in animation internationally - and this is the place we can celebrate the achievements being made.

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Download the Latest Acrobat Edition of Animation World Magazine Today!

With a theme of television, it's time to download the latest Acrobat edition of Animation World Magazine. How a new crop of international co-productions is changing the Italian animation industry. Russell Bekins lays down the rules for success. As HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL has shown, tweens can be loyal fans, avid viewers and significant purchasers of merchandise. J. Paul Peszko looks at how companies create CG series on a TV budget. Additionally, Craig J. Clark talks with co-creator Bryan Konietzko about the immensely popular action-adventure show. Joe Strike investigates the behind-the-scenes mysteries that go into the creation of THE SECRET SHOW.

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