Mini Linkage

No, it's not Mickey's girlfriend in bondage, but a few fresher animation news pieces, rolled out for viewing. (Now with Add On.

Apparently Mr.Spielberg completes his mo-cap direction of Tintin in the next week or so:

Steven Spielberg this week will quietly wrap 32 days of performance-capture lensing on "Tintin," then hand the project to producer Peter Jackson, who will focus on the film's special effects for the next 18 months.

Although the baton-pass is stealthy, "Tintin" is anything but a low-profile project. And that's just the first of many contradictions inherent with the film, which brings together two of cinema's visionaries ...

And a Japanese animation studio is partnering with the world's largest carmaker:.

Studio Ghibli, the toon house responsible for the Hayao Miyazaki smashes "Spirited Away" and "Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea," is collaborating with automaker Toyota to open a new training studio ...

Beginning in April, Ghibli will dispatch 20 new hires to the studio for a two-year course to learn animation techniques while being exposed to robotics and other Toyota technologies. Studio supremo Miyazaki and other veteran Ghibli animators will give lectures ...

A new Disney-type mag called D23 rolls out in the Spring; The Pixar Blog (for there is a blog for everything) has news about a Pixar short that's contained within:

[D23] (Spring 2009) contains a sidebar with the first ever plot details on Pixar's next theatrical short Partly Cloudy, that'll be in theatres attached to Up starting May 29.

The tipster reports that Partly Cloudy will elaborate on the age-old story of babies being delivered to their mothers by storks. In the short, clouds are essentially baby factories, where babies are made out of 'fluffy white stuff'. Each cloud has a stork assigned to deliver the babies produced.

Partly Cloudy's protagonist is a cloud named Gus who makes the 'tougher babies' like alligators and porcupines. Peck is Gus' stork who's grown tired of having to deliver all the tough babies and wants to move on to softer ones like kittens and humans. The short's climax is when Gus thinks Peck quit in search of easier deliveries ...

And please forget a new "Mad Max" opus with Mel G. in the title role. Director George Miller has other ideas:

Unlikely as [it] sounds, some big screen animated “Max” action is shaping up to become a reality, according to George Miller, the writer/director of the previous three films. The catch? He doesn’t want Max himself, Mel Gibson, anywhere near the project.

“We’ll probably go a different route,” Miller told MTV News about the potential talent voicing the lead role. The plot would be partly lifted from the script of the fourth “Max” film, which was set to shoot in 2003 until financing collapsed in the wake of the Iraq War.

Now Miller is resurrecting the idea as an R-rated, stereoscopic anime flick for theatrical release ...

Have yourself a relaxing Sunday afternoon.

Add On: Wildbrain has relocated a studio down in the sun-drenched San Fernando Valley.

W!ldbrain Animation Studios general manager Marge Dean said, “With W!ldbrain's growing pipeline of motion pictures and television series, and a steady increase in long-form, work-for-hire business, the impetus of this move can be attributed to the growth of 3D animation in television.”

The new W!ldbrain Animation Studios space is located in Sherman Oaks, CA and is up and running, effective immediately. The Los Angeles-based studio is being headed by Chris Staples and Michelle Papandrew (Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends).

It would be a fine thing to nudge Wildbrain into signing a fine TAG collective bargaining agreement, yes?