Oktoberfest of Links

Another roundup of animated word trinkets.

Rupert's News Corp, ever alert for lucrative money fountains, is adding to its animation franchises in prime time:

The "Robot Chicken" gang is going primetime.

Fox has ordered a presentation and a script for an animated project from Seth Green, Matthew Senreich and Tom Root that is being produced by 20th Century Fox TV and studio-based Chernin Entertainment ...

Nobody else, it seems, has figured out how to do successful prime time cartoons. The ever-crafty Fox, however, lives up to its name and pulls it off ...

And as the previous two Toy Stories come rolling down the pike in Disney 3-D (r), the New York Times writes of the stereo-vision retrofit:

“We have every scene in ‘Toy Story’ and ‘Toy Story 2’ saved, and so we have this bit of action that is frozen in time, “ Mr. Lasseter said. “If we bring that up in our system, we’re going back in time into that moment.”

Without changing any of the film’s action, Pixar’s 3-D specialists, or stereographers, returned to each frame of the film and virtually placed a second camera next to the original, creating left-eye and right-eye views of the scene ....

It took four months to resurrect the old data and get it in working order. Then, adding 3-D to each of the films took six months per film. (Pixar and Disney declined to talk about the project’s cost.) ...

I can speculate on the cost. It was a whole bunch of dollars.

Meanwhile, John Lasseter shares information with the Daily Telegraph about the magic of making Pixar movies.

... “Our core directors and storytellers all work together,” explained Lasseter. “We call it the brains trust. Someone will come up with an idea for a film and we’ll talk about it and work it out. It’s all about coming up with a great story and making a great movie. I believe everything comes from there.” ... “Test studios, marketing groups, focus groups they’re not going to tell you anything. ... There’s no way UP would have been made if we’d focus-tested the idea. And what about Ratatouille - a movie about a rat who wants to be a chef in the best restaurant in Paris? People would have said we were nuts. Who’s going to want to see that? But it’s one of my favourite movies that we’ve made.” ...

Fox and Electronic Arts are teaming up to make a new animated feature.

Twentieth Century Fox has paired up with Electronic Arts to turn the publisher's popular "Spore" game into an animated creature feature, with "Ice Age's" Chris Wedge attached to helm.

Greg Erb and Jason Oremland, who penned Disney's upcoming "The Princess and the Frog" and Ben Stiller pic "The Return of King Doug" at Paramount, will write the script for the "Spore" movie. It will be produced as a CG-animated toon by EA and Blue Sky Studios, which is behind the studio's "Ice Age" pics, "Robots" and its next effort, "Rio."

In the game, which was released in September 2008, players create their own creatures and the worlds they live in and share them with other gamers to create an overall universe.

"I'm always looking for unique worlds to go to in animation," Wedge said. "From every perspective -- visually, thematically and comedically -- the world of 'Spore' provides the potential to put something truly original on the screen." ...

Lastly, we end with the Variety story regarding the bloodsuckers at Meteor, and the tale of how these weasels got a crew of visual effects artists to work at a 30% discount. (Yes, we've posted about this before, but Variety has finally flagged it, and it's not possible to highlight the screwing these folks got at the hands of a cynical management enough.)

More than 100 visual effects artists who did work for Meteor Studios, a Montreal-based effects house that went bankrupt in late 2007, have reached an agreement with the owners to get at least some of the back pay owed them ...

The Meteor case has become a symbol of the shaky standing of the vfx industry and vfx artists in particular. Vfx artists have no union or guild, and no Hollywood union has consented to represent them ...

Simply because the visual effects industry runs on razor-thin margins is no reason to corn-hole the people who do the work. As for Variety's assertion that "no union or guild has consented to represent them", I'd like to announce here and now that TAG will be pleased and happy to represent visual effects artists any time they're wiling to have us do that. (We've been pleased to represent them in the recent past.)

Have a splendiferous weekend.