keyleedaud (REAL ESTATE)

I've always been fascinated by Disney's Woodland Cafe (1937) and this scene in particular. Like Mother Goose Goes Hollywood a year later, this cartoon looks both forward and backward in its animation style. There are some scenes that could have been done as early as 1933 or '34 and others, like the above, that point towards the 1940s. The cartoon concludes with an upbeat jazz number, "Everybody's Truckin,'" played by a band of grasshoppers who are drawn to resemble the black jazz bands of the time. The shot above is from the song. This shot has always been the highlight of the film for me. While the surrounding animation is full of energy, this shot just explodes off the screen. This shot is animated by Ward Kimball and I thank David Nethery (see comment below) for confirming that. I wanted to know why this shot stands out for me, so I took a closer look. You can click the images below to enlarge them. The shot is 56 frames long, entirely on ones...

The saying goes that comedy is a man in trouble. There is no shortage of trouble in Cordell Barker's films. In The Cat Came Back and Strange Invaders , a character arrives who is first welcome and then is revealed to be a source of chaos, destroying the lives of those around it. Both films end with the trouble-making character multiplying. In the first film, the main character accidentally kills himself while trying to get rid of the cat, and is then haunted by 9 feline ghosts. In Strange Invaders , the alien child calls down more of his brethren after destroying the home and marriage of the main characters. While it turns out to be a dream, the woman is pregnant with multiple children who resemble the alien child. These films are structurally very similar and both keep the chaos localized. The main characters are unfortunate victims, but their problems are not typical. While we can identify with their frustrations, the films say little about our own lives. With Runaway , ...

Thanks to my friend, the noted animation historian Jim Korkis, I was alerted to this page . Sally Holmes was a Disney employee and when she left the studio, the artists she knew drew personalized farewells in her copy of the book on Fantasia . Besides the fact that these drawings are great, they include work from lesser known Disney artists such as Cliff Nordberg (pictured above), Hal King, Jesse Marsh, Judge Whitaker, Marvin Woodward, George Kreisl as well as artists whose names weren't known to me. Of course, there are drawings by some of the heavyweights like Ward Kimball, Fred Moore, Eric Larson, Milt Kahl and Marc Davis. Take a minute to look at some fun artwork and envy whoever it was who purchased the book recently on Ebay.

Germans in the Woods from Rauch Brothers on Vimeo . In time for Veterans Day (in Canada, called Remembrance Day), here is a film from the Rauch Brothers. Quoting from an email I received from Mike Rauch: In honor of tomorrow, Veterans Day, Rauch Brothers Animation has posted "Germans in the Woods" to the web. In this animated documentary, 86-year-old World War II veteran Joseph Robertson remembers a German soldier he killed at the Battle of the Bulge. Produced in collaboration with national oral history project StoryCorps. Created with pencil on paper, Photoshop, and AfterEffects. I think one of the more interesting developments in animation has been the creation of animated documentaries. Animators routinely interpret audio tracks, looking to find the emotional core of a person's speech. Shifting that skill from fictional to real dialogue extends what animators do while providing an opportunity to visualize events beyond the reach of a camera. I'd like to thank ...

Last week, the 4th year students at Sheridan had a screening of their story reels. I mentor 10 of those students, out of 108 this year. I've been looking at my students' reels as they developed since September, but it's always different seeing work with an audience. It struck me that there are three stages the students have to tackle in order to make a successful film, and various films were already at different stages. The first is clarity. Can an audience understand what's happening on screen? I've asked students to explain something I don't understand about their films and their explanations make sense, but what's in their heads hasn't been communicated on the screen. Things, often important things, get left out. Clarity is pretty easy to achieve once a storyboard or story reel is shown to a few people, as they inevitably ask questions about things they don't understand. Logic is a bit tougher. Getting the events of a film and the character...

Adam Elliot's stop motion feature Mary and Max will have its Toronto premiere at the Bloor Cinema from November 20 to 25. It will screen on Nov. 20 at 7 p.m, Nov. 21 at 9:15 p.m, Nov. 22 at 7 p.m, Nov. 23 at 4:15 p.m. and 9:30 p.m, Nov. 24 at 9:30 p.m, and Nov. 25 at 4:15. The film is paired with Cordell Barker's new NFB short, Runaway . Elliot's earlier film, Harvie Krumpet (2003), won the Oscar for Best Animated Short. The Bloor Cinema is located at 506 Bloor Street West at Bathurst.

The new issue of Flip is out, featuring an interview with Howard Baker, a director who does straight-to-DVD features for budgets as low as $3 million. That's an area that's very interesting to me and one that I think has potential for different kinds of films. However, the real surprise was his reel. At 7:50, you can see a clip from the canceled Disney feature Wild Life . I have no idea how much of this feature actually exists, but this may be all you're ever likely to see of it.

As a follow up to my review of David Levy's book Animation Development From Pitch to Production , I'd like to point out a blog that Steve Schnier, creator of Freaky Stories , has assembled from his own pitch bibles. If you are thinking about pitching, you'll see some good examples of the kinds of materials you'll need at Steve's blog.