With Thanksgiving upon us, time for an early Holiday linkfest, starting with Samarai Jack traveling to the Big Screen:
STAR TREK director J.J. Abrams will be joining former Hanna-Barbera president Fred Seibert to produce a feature film version of the hit Cartoon Network animated series SAMURAI JACK. The $20 million film will use a combination of traditional cell animation and stereoscopic 3-D ...
Creative Talent Network's Animation Expo, held this past weekend at the Marriot across from the Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, was a well-attended success. Tina Price put in a lot of hard work to make the expo happen, and the event, based on eye-witness reports, came off wonderfully well:
The first Creative Talent Network Animation Expo kicked off Friday at the Marriott Hotel and Convention Center in Burbank, drawing hundreds of students and professionals for an exhibition in a region that is widely acknowledged as the animation capital of the world.
The event featured seminars from innovators like “Hellboy” comic book creator Mike Mignola and entrepreneurial animator Don Bluth, who split off from major studios to create “The Secret of NIMH.”
The event was an opportunity for animators to learn from industry pioneers, while also promoting their own work, said Tina Price, who founded the Creative Talent Network.
TIME Magazine thinks highly of TP and TF.
Big Fun on the Bayou -- ...Musker and Clements, the New Old Men, have bucked the odds and made a cartoon feature that is true to vintage Disney traditions (like wishing upon a star) yet moves with a contemporary verve and bounce. In an amazing year for animation, The Princess and the Frog is up at the top. Go on, give it a big kiss.
Jeffrey K. explains his studio and ambitions:
"I say our movies always have to have five Wow Wees, " says Katzenberg, in something of a Botticelli moment. "What's a Wow Wee? You see it and you go, Wow. Wee." He explains how Chris Sanders, director of the upcoming How to Train Your Dragon, wanted a beast that could breathe fire under water. "I mean, what kind of particle physics would it require for that to happen? Fire in water?" asks Katzenberg. "Our tech team goes, 'Okay, we'll figure it out.' " He grins. "Did anyone here tell you Jeffrey's Law? More is never enough." ...
"I saw Rupert Murdoch the other day and said, Would you like to be Rupert Murdoch? And I went, No, I don't think so. Would I like to be Steve Jobs? No. I admire him like crazy, but I don't envy him. I don't want Mark Hurd's job at HP. I couldn't do Mark Hurd's job -- I don't have the talent or ability. ... Do I want to be Bob Iger? Bob is doing an outstanding job running Disney. I'm happy for him. ... But actually, I wouldn't want that job. No. I'm doing exactly what I want to be doing." ...
You think that hand-drawn animation has been neglected? What about the Ray Harryhausen school of movement?
From Prince Achmed to The Fantastic Mr. Fox: Great moments in stop motion animation: ... Stop motion was the domain of European animators in the 30s and 40s, and it wasn't until Hansel and Gretel: An Opera Fantasy (see above), released in 1954 by RKO, that American animators gave a go at a stop motion feature. However, the characters in the film, called "kineman", were very advanced, containing realistic attributes and magnetic feet - and they took fifteen years to develop ...
The powerhouse Disney Channel, which was born back when Rom Miller was Chairman of Diz Co. in the early eighties, names a new President.
Walt Disney Co. named Carolina Lightcap as the new president of Disney Channel Worldwide.
The new post puts Ms. Lightcap, 42 years old, in charge of a unit that has become increasingly essential to Disney's broader business. The Disney Channel has generated some of the company's most successful recent properties, including the "High School Musical" series and its offshoots, and has served as the launching pad for pop-music stars Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato.
Artist Todd McFarlane discusses an animated Spawn:
What's the status on the Spawn animation?
McFarlane: The animation, we've put about a year and a half of work into it; ...then we got into a bit of a legal tussle. So it got boxed up and put into a corner. But at the end of this year, all that work and all those rights come back to me. So I'll have them in my hand on December 31st, and I'll walk into Hollywood probably the next month and start going, "Hey! Here's what we got!" And if anyone wants to bring the animation back, we're a year and a half into it. So we could literally hit the ground running. We don't have to develop it; it's done. We've got 90 minutes of it scripted, voiced, backgrounds, characters -- everything is done other than finding the studio to actually do the frame-by-frame ...
Enjoy your Fri ... oops ... Wednesday.
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8 comments:
Is Genndy Tartakovsky involved in the Samurai jack feature? If not, it won't be worth jack.
Let's hope not. He can't tell a story to save his life.
DW films do well, but Pixar dwarfs them by a long shot financially via the longevity of their films and ancilliaries. Cars alone has made 5 billion dollars worldwide, with the Toy Story films coming in a close second.
Jeffy needs to figure out how to get audiences to want to take the characters HOME with them.
Yeah, JK needs to open theme parks and stiores in malls, etc.
The only reason why sales of Pixar stuff does so well is because they have just those things. Why do you think Disney opened all those stores in the malls to begin with? At least, until they so glutted the market that the sales at the theme parks have taken a nose dive.
Add that to the fact that Pixar films skew much younger (to a toy, sleepset and pajama buying audience) and it becomes clear what causes the difference.
Cars is the exception. Pixar has stated that the Cars merchandising surpassed that of Finding Nemo by 10 to 1. Up, Ratatouille, Bugs Life, and several other Pixar hits generated paltry merchandising.
And remember that Pixar/Disney just get a sliver of that $5 billion (which I suspect is an inflated number anyway). The Cars merchandising is still worth a few hundred million to Disney, but that's a far cry from $5 billion.
Hmmm.
That DWA product outgrosses Pixar product seems to have touched a nerve ...
After dvd, tv sales and ancilliaries, Pixar leaves DW in the dust. At least Pixar HAS an audience. Sadly most people think dw films are PIxar.
"I don't want Mark Hurd's job at HP. I couldn't do Mark Hurd's job -- I don't have the talent or ability. ... "
- neither has Mark!!!
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