One more week, another dollop of linkage.
Stan Lee is working with the Big Mouse on a demi-animation project:
... [I]t has sound, it has music, it has some motion, although it isn't fully-animated".
Stan Lee's new project with Disney is an animated comic book to be made available online and on mobile phones ...
Lee, 86, will voice a character called Lee Excelsior, "the head of an organisation that the hero works for".
Seth McFarlane holds forth on a variety of subjects:
“Shrek, not funny. The thing that drives me nuts about those Pixar movies, those DreamWorks CGI movies, is they’re gorgeous to look at, impressive beyond belief, but not incredibly nutritious. A lot of the jokes are obvious and kind of tired … With all this money you have and all this access to writing talent, surprise me.”
Important news for hellfire fans. Dante's Inferno, the Movie now has a release date:
EA’s adaptation of Dante’s Inferno is ... being made into a six-issue comic book series in a partnership with DC Comics/Wildstorm, the first of which will be released on December 9th, 2009. An animated feature which is being co-produced by EA and Starz Media will be available the same day as the videogame. Dante’s Inferno has not yet been rated by PEGI, but Electronic Theatre will keep you updated.
There will soon be another shiny trophy in the hands of Mr. Lasseter:
George Lucas has been recruited by the Venice Film Festival to present the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement to John Lasseter and the directors of the Disney/Pixar team ....
And The Phillipine Inquirer profiles two Phillipinos working at J.L.'s home studio:
They call themselves Pixnoys – Pinoys who work at the Pixar Animation Studios.
Ricky Nierva and Ronnie Del Carmen ... remembered the wrap party of “Ratatouille” where the Pixnoys –and there’s quite a number of them – decided to come in their barong Tagalog ...
Ricky, born in the United States to Filipino parents from Camarines Sur, has been with Pixar the longest at 11 years. A graduate of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia, California, Ricky worked on “Monsters Inc.,” “Toy Story 2” and “Finding Nemo.” As production designer of “Up,” his responsibility was to “uphold the vision of co-director Pete Docter.”
... “Ricky is this amazing caricature artist. He can do these really bitingly accurate caricatures of you once he gets to know you. He approaches design the same way that he really wants to know and internalize the characters and then he draws who he feels those characters are ...”
Ronnie, born and raised in Cavite, explained his responsibilities as story supervisor: “I lead a team of story artists. We tell and dramatize the story from beginning to end ...
Another story about Indian animation, this one more optimistic than the last.
The Mumbai studio of Crest Animation is abuzz with activity. A 250-strong team is putting the final touches on the animated feature film Alpha and Omega, ... In another few months, the Crest team will hand over the movie to their colleagues at the firm’s U.S. subsidiary for post-production work. When Alpha and Omega hits the screens in April 2010, it will be a turning point not only for Crest Animation, but for the entire Indian animation industry as well. The box-office fate of the first animated Hollywood film to be produced by an Indian company could well define how the world looks at Indian animators ...
Ashok Rajgopal, partner in Ernst & Young’s media and entertainment practice, adds a note of caution, however. The Indian animation industry is very fragmented, he says, and for the most part the skill sets are at the lower end of the value chain ...
Videoconferencing is getting more and more elaborate. It's not just teevee screens anymore, but huge wall panels that make you feel like those people in New York are standing in the same room (and DreamWorks Animation uses them big time):
... The top-end systems, which can link multiple sites around the world into one video conference, don't come cheap. HP's Halo ranges from $120,000, plus a $9,900-a-month service fee, to $349,000 with a monthly fee of $18,000. Cisco's TelePresence video conferencing technology costs $34,000 to $340,000, with no service fees ....
"If you whisper in a Halo room, the person on the other side can hear it," Starr said of HP's system, which was designed with Hollywood's DreamWorks Animation. She once attended a meeting in which one participant tried to shake hands with other video conference participants -- who were on the other side of the country.
That is not good news for the travel industry, reeling from a recession some experts call the worst in aviation history. Airlines have seen as much as 30 percent drops in the number of business passengers, said Seth Kaplan, managing partner of Airline Weekly ...
Have yourself a healthful weekend.
Posts
4 comments:
I've seen some of the Crest footage...trust me, it won't impress anyone unless you're still living in 1990. It's a real shame.
I've seen better Indian animation being done for other studios....
" She once attended a meeting in which one participant tried to shake hands with other video conference participants -- who were on the other side of the country."
That's either absurd hype or that participant was missing an eye and couldn't recognize an obviously flat screen when he saw it.
I'd put that in the same league as the legend that early movie goers were terrified by pictures of trains.
Have you ever been in one of those rooms? Probably not.
I was in the one at Dreamworks for an interview once....it BLEW my mind. It really felt like you were in the same room.
Speaking of the DreamWorks vidoeconferencing rooms, we had a Madagascar animation crew wrap party in the predecessor to the Halo room. It was uncanny. It felt like the DW/Redwood City animators were in the same room with the DW/Glendale animators. The illusion wasn't perfect, but if you haven't experienced it, it would be easy to imagine that it's a bunch of hype. You really did feel like you were all in the same room, and I understand the Halo rooms are even better.
Post a Comment