Friday, July 23, 2010

Your End-of Week Linkorama

High art.

News bits for your perusal. (With a heavy Comic-Con flavor, I wonder why?) And we'll start with:

The L.A. Times touting the age of digital (animated?) comix:

... Technology, which has already upended the music, television and movie businesses, is now gripping the comic book world. Publishers are unleashing a torrent of digital comic books across smart phones, tablet devices, game consoles and digital book readers, portending major changes in how comics are made and marketed.

These new comics ... in some cases come with choreographed presentations that zoom or pan across panels, full-color animated characters, audio from professional voice actors, heart-thumping soundtracks and even the ability for readers to leave comments on the pages ...

Shriley Silvey, Rest in Peace:

Shirley Silvey, one of the first women to work in animation beyond the ink-and-paint department, died Saturday in Fresno, California of heart failure. She was 82.

Born in Los Angeles, she started her career in storyboard, layout and character design at UPA in the late 1950s, at a time when usually, only men would be hired for those jobs.

For most of her career, from 1959 to 1973, she was a Jay Ward Productions studio. There, she was a layout artist for Rocky and His Friends, as well as a designer for George of the Jungle and Hoppity Hooper. She also worked on the Dudley Do-Right and Fractured Fairy Tales, as well as the studio's Captain Crunch commercials. ...

Hasbro Studios displays a first snippet of animation:

During its Transformers: Prime panel this afternoon at Comic-Con International, Hasbro Studios debuted an animation test sequence from the new series, which will debut this fall. ... This first footage shows Bumblebee attacking a couple of Cylon-looking Decepticons on what appears to be a futuristic Earth. ...

Bizarre, but probably true if it had actually happened:

Comic-Con: 1910

... Edison Studios arrived with a huge, splashy panel hosted by Thomas Edison ... including an impressive light show. Some of the works he promoted and screened were Edwin Porter‘s version of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and the first ever film adaptation of “Frankenstein.” There was also a sneak peek at the upcoming movie of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” ...

(They wouldn't have had much of a meeting hall in Sand Diego in 1910. Just saying ...)

Horror Meister Wes Craven moves to a new venue:

Liquid Comics has formed a publishing partnership with filmmaker Wes Craven and producer Arnold Rifkin. It will lead to the first original graphic novel created by Craven, the man responsible for fright films like Scream, The Hills Have Eyes and A Nightmare on Elm Street. ...

For the modern media mogul, it's about having your products on multiple platforms, is it not?

Today at the International Comic-Con 2010, Visceral Games(TM) will announce two all-new products in the Dead Space(TM) franchise; Dead Space Aftermath and Dead Space Salvage. These two brand extensions will be revealed during a panel discussion entitled, 'Building a Horror Entertainment Franchise: Dead Space 2' featuring Dead Space Producer Rich Briggs, Dead Space Salvage Artist Christopher Shy, Dead Space Martyr Writer Brian Evenson

... Dead Space Aftermath is an animated feature that explains what happened during the first-responder mission to Aegis VII. Dead Space Salvage is a graphic novel that tells the story of a rogue group of miners who come across the dilapidated USG Ishimura. Aftermath and Salvage will be available in winter 2010

Jerry Beck cuts me to the quick by belittling one of my childhood pleasures (no, not that) ...

"You can get some hilarious examples of what people would do to pass off something as a cartoon," he said, pointing to the late 1950s series "Clutch Cargo," which superimposes human mouths over animated faces in order to cut down the expense of animating mouth movements. ...

Lastly, Nickelodeon joins the parade:

Nickelodeon has greenlit a live-action television movie adaptation of one of its most popular animated series, The Fairly OddParents, it was announced today ... A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up, Timmy Turner!, based on the hit series from creator Butch Hartman, will combine live-action with CG animation and follow the adventures of a now 23-year-old Timmy Turner ... who refuses to grow up in order to keep his fairy godparents.

Have a life-enhancing weekend.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Film Roman is producing Dead Space Aftermath, but unlike Downfall all pre-production is being outsourced to Korea except for Mike Disa, who's directing it.

Anonymous said...

I read that Jason Alexander will be playing Cosmo in that Fairly Odd Parents movie. Good choice. He's certainly obnoxious enough.

Oh, and by the way, I will NOT be watching it.

Anonymous said...

These new comics ... in some cases come with choreographed presentations that zoom or pan across panels, full-color animated characters, audio from professional voice actors

I seem to be the only one who remembers that "Digital Motion Comics" of our era were first invented by Warner Audiobooks as the only way they could get away with tying in "Watchmen" to the iPod crowd...
Until Warner also discovered it was cheaper than animating real Peanuts specials after Bill Melendez died.

And once "cheaper" kicked in...

Anonymous said...

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