keyleedaud (REAL ESTATE)

Michael Barrier was interviewed in the Huffington Post for an article entitled " Animated Man: Cartoon Expert Michael Barrier Decries Pixar, Computers ." This article already has multiple comments about Barrier's views and the article was linked to on Cartoon Brew , where there are yet more comments. Two quotes caught my eye. "What I'd call the direct connection between the animator and the character that you have when the animator is drawing the character with a pencil on a sheet of paper, it simply doesn't have an equivalent as far as I'm aware, or if it has an equivalent, it's much harder to establish." I've already attempted to debunk this based on the techniques of both drawn and computer animation. My opinion hasn't changed. It's not the technique, it's how the production is organized. Should a cgi feature want a strong connection between animator and character, there is no technical reason why it couldn't be ...

Chuck Jones (top) and Friz Freleng. That's a Blackwing pencil in Jones' hands and he spends the interview playing with it. I don't know where the Jones interview was shot, but Freleng's is in his office at DePatie Freleng. I met Freleng there in 1978. For years, Elwy Yost hosted a show called Saturday Night at the Movies on TV Ontario. He would run classic films and TVO would send him to Hollywood once a year to film interviews that related to the films he scheduled. In 1980, he interviewed Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng. Elwy was very much a fan, and not a particularly informed one. His questions were often naive and his reactions were overly enthusiastic. However, he did speak to a great many important Hollywood figures and was genuinely interested in their careers. I have these interviews on VHS somewhere and remember being disappointed by how superficial they were. If I recall correctly, you could see Freleng's patience getting a little thin at times. H...

Scott Caple is having a show of his work at the Toronto Cartoonist Workshop, 486 College Street, just west of Bathurst, in Toronto. The opening is Friday, Feb. 25 from 7 to 11 p.m. Scott is a 30 year veteran of the business, having done effects work on Raiders of the Lost Ark and layout and design for films such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Incredibles . He's worked for Nelvana, Industrial Light and Magic, Don Bluth, Disney and Pixar and has also done designs for videogames and book illustrations. For the last several years, Scott has been teaching layout at Sheridan College, where he also mentors 4th year students in the making of their films. While the art will be up for awhile, it is in the regular classroom space of the workshop. As such, the retrospective doesn't really have regular hours. Scott tells me that he'll try and set up an additional time when the art can be viewed for those who can't make it on Friday.

February 17 is Børge Ring's 90th birthday. I want to wish him the warmest of birthday greetings and thank him once again for the films he has made, Oh My Darling , Anna and Bella and Run of the Mill . All the best to you, Børge!

Yoshihiro Tatsumi is a manga artist who is the founder of the gekiga movement, one which took manga into the area of adult content. In some ways his work resembles film noir, dwelling on desperate outcasts who are driven by their emotions to behave in socially unacceptable ways. Tatsumi's work has been published in English by Drawn and Quarterly . Eric Khoo, a Singaporean director, is adapting several Tatsumi works into an animated feature film. The only information I've found on the film is here . I've admired Tatsumi's work for years and hope that this film will be worthy of it. Tatsumi in Toronto in 2009 for the Toronto Comic Arts Festival.

Teletoon is running another one of those contests that essentially rape creators while pretending to do creators a favour. By submitting your film -- not winning, just submitting -- here's what Teletoon takes: You hereby grant TELETOON Canada Inc., its affiliates, agents and each of their successors and assigns (collectively ,”TELETOON”) the unlimited, irrevocable and royalty-free licence and right to use, display, exhibit, edit, modify licence, sub-licence and otherwise exploit the video (“Video”) you upload to www.teletoonatnight.com (“Website”) without notice or compensation to you or any third party, in perpetuity throughout the world, in any and all manner, media or technology now known or hereafter devised including, without limitation, TELETOON’s television services, websites, or in any promotion or programming for TELETOON. In short, they can do whatever they like with your film without your permission or without any payment to you. They can sell it to a...

"I don't personally respond to the design in "Beowulf," "Polar Express," "Christmas Carol," "Final Fantasy" or anything that skews toward realism. There's an eye-contact issue with those characters. It never seems like they're making eye contact with each other -- they kind of have dead eyes. It's an eye-tracking issue. There's always this blank stare look. "And if you look at "Polar Express," for example, they tried to make the main characters that Tom Hanks played look kinda like Tom Hanks and in some instance really trying to look like Tom Hanks. That's going beyond making your character look real -- you're trying to make him look like one of the most well-known personalities in the world. I would much rather see Tom Hanks in a movie than I would want to see a facsimile of Tom Hanks." Salon interviews character designer Shannon Tindle.

Duke University has put their collection from the D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles Archives online through iTunes. You can access the animated commercials here . Lots of Post cereal and Beech-Nut gum and candy commercials. iTunes is a clunky interface for quickly working through these TV spots, but if you have the patience, you can find some interesting work. (link via Boing Boing )

The Creative Talent Network, hosts of the CTN Expos held the last two years, has posted a series of videos from the Expos featuring industry folks such as Mike Mignola, Steve Hickner, Chris Bailey, Kathy Altieri, Jerry Beck, Andy Gaskill, Dave Master and others. You can find the complete series of videos here .

Warner Bros. animation director Bob Clampett's high school yearbook is up for sale on Ebay . Starting bid is $249.99, but you can buy it now for $324.99 if you are so inclined. The listing includes many cartoons done by Clampett for the yearbook, so even if you're not in the market to buy, it's still worth visiting the link and see what Clampett's high school cartoons look like. The yearbook is from 1930 and shortly after graduating, Clampett went to work for Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising at Warner Bros. on the Merrie Melodies series. Five years later, he became a director and went on to direct some of the greatest Warner Bros. cartoons in the first half of the 1940's. (link via Mark Evanier )