Linkomania

One more end-of-week linkfest ...

Warner Bros. Animation, having shed one animation executive, acquires another:

Veteran animation executive and producer Sam Register has been named executive vp creative affairs at Warner Bros. Animation ...

Register has been based at Warner Bros. Animation as a producer since November when he inked a multi-project development and production deal. Previously, he was an animation executive and, later, producer at Cartoon Network for 10 years, where he developed hit animated series such as "Ben 10" and "Teen Titans," and created "Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi."

Maybe ... I don't know ... Time-Warner is going to deploy its animation units more effectively? Coordinate them a little? (Here's hoping?)

Kung Fu Panda rolls into a theatre near you ... and we get to see if the crew's enthusiasm is well-placed. Certainly the critics like it.

Just about all animated movies teach you to Believe in Yourself, but the image of a face-stuffing panda-turned-yowling Bruce Lee dervish is as unlikely, and touching, an advertisement for that message as we've seen in quite some time ...

And for those of you going to southern France for your annual dose of animation fest in Annecy, Pixar offers several tutorials in animated film-making:

[Animator] Simon Allen will take you for a tour of Pixar and the Animation Department. He'll touch on the different stages of production and talk about the layering of detail for a scene. Simon will also talk about his love of France as well as the challenges of animating rats and making them compelling characters.

Animation on the sub-continent steams right along. Warners is jumping into India's domestic animation business.

[The untitled project] "marks our entry into the animation genre in India," Mumbai-based WBPI country manager Blaise Fernandes said ... The film's 3-D animation and postproduction will be handled by Mumbai-based Interactive Realities International ...

Blogging stocks asks the questions, 1) Should Fox have given the voice actors a 33% bump? 2) Should the cancel the show? (Hell no!)

... should News Corp. execs have demanded that Fox just end the negotiations and refuse to give in to a 33% raise?

I've got to be honest, a big part of me says "yes." However, there is incentive to keep The Simpsons on the air. Last summer, a movie version of the long-running show made a successful leap to the silver screen ...

I'm not sure how much longer Fox will keep The Simpsons on the air, but the company should do some serious thinking. Shareholders might be better served by moving on from an aging show, even though it is well-loved and well-written, and just making investments in movie sequels ...

We don't spend much time focused on Italian cartoon studios, so here is a piece about Lastrego & Testa Multimedia, headquartered in Turin:

... Founded and operated by Cristina Lastrego and Francesco Testa, their animation production unit since roughly 2002 and has since independently produced award-winning material for Italy's children.

Of the five projects Lastrego & Testa Multimedia will push at Mifa, their 2007-production Amita of the Jungle (Amita Della Giungla) appears most intriguing. All about staying in contact with nature, connecting fairy tale literature with young audiences, and keeping up with contemporary educational needs, Amita of the Jungle places a little girl in a jungle environment with her animal friends.

One last bit on European animation. Too often the U.S. never has a clue about what's going on globally, because a lot of production work across the continent never sees the inside of a multiplex or a television network stateside. But there is still lots of production going on. Take Ireland, for example ...

...[Galway-based] Magma’s 3D animation, ‘Oops! Noah is Gone’, has secured €80,000 funding from the MEDIA Development Grant in the Single Project category. The animation, aimed at 8-12 year olds, is set to be made into feature length film and a 26x26” series, both with a budget of €6 million. Written by Marteinn Thorisson (The Ugly Duckling and Me) and directed by Tobi Genkel, the project has also received funding from the Irish Film Board and the Hamburg Film Fund.

“We will be finished the script in about three weeks and have completed the characters and the design,” confirms Magma CEO Ralph Christians. “The feature film will be produced first. When you work with CGI in 3D it’s different from 2D as it is very expensive to create a character, you have to do the rigging, then create the character and do the compositing. So we take these high value characters that we created for the film and transfer them into the TV series, the same way we did for ‘Ugly Duckling and Me’.”

Have a rejuvenating weekend.