Lilo and Stitch (Jun 11, 2013)

The Emperor’s New Groove / Kronk’s New Groove Blu-ray (Jun 11, 2013)

Atlantis: The Lost Empire / Atlantis: Milo’s Return Blu-ray (Jun 11, 2013)

The 50th Anniversary of The Sword in the Stone. (Aug 6, 2013)

The 40th Anniversary of Robin Hood. (Aug 6, 2013)

The 25th Anniversary for Oliver and Company. (Aug 6, 2013)

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (August 27, 2013)

Little Mermaid is due out after summer on Oct 1, 2013.

Elite Animation Academy is unique offering animation classes to anyone from novice to professional, kids and adults. We are located in Orlando, FL.

Class schedule from the website.

Adult Animation – Traditional Animation for Adults
“Now Registering Traditional Animation for Adults – 15 weeks- April 17 to July 31″
Traditional Animation for Adults will teach the basic principles of hand drawn animation, from the bouncing ball to a character walk cycle.”
More Information on the Website

“Now Registering for Kids Summer Camps”

Traditional Animation – Week 1
Traditional Animation will teach children some of the basic principles of hand drawn animation, from the bouncing ball to a character walk cycle. The students will also work on producing an animated short with a character and story of their own design along with music and sound.

Stop Motion Animation – Week 2
Stop Motion Animation is an animation technique that uses a real object and manipulates it in order to make it appear to move on its own. The children will first learn some basic of animation and then break up into groups to work on creating an animated film using a variety of posable characters and animators clay.

Comics and Cartooning – Week 3
Comics and Cartooning is about the art of telling a story with images and text. Students will briefly explore the history of the medium and learn some of the basic techniques. The students will then focus on putting together a short story, designing characters and putting all these elements together into a finished product.

Character Design – Week 4
Character Design is used in video games, animation, and live action movies. This class is for the artist who loves creating their own characters like robots, monsters or cute fuzzy creatures. The students will work on a variety of fundamental techniques and then focus on creating a model sheet of their own character.

Sculpting – Week 5
Sculpting is all about building a three dimensional version of your own character. Students will work on designing a character and create a rough model sheet from different angles. The students will then work on building a wire armature and sculpt their character in clay.

Human and Animal Drawing – Week 6
Human and Animal Drawing will work on the basics of learning how to draw the human figure and animals. The students will learn techniques and approaches to breaking down humans and animals into simple and manageable forms. The students will also familiarize themselves with simplified anatomy. Classes will be broken into lecture drawing and drawing live costumed models and animals.

Flash Animation – Week 7
Flash Animation is similar to traditional animation except its all digital or in the computer. Flash is a main part of the internet these days, from Facebook games to fun animated cartoons on Youtube. The class will focus on tools and techniques to give a clear understanding of Flash and the students will produce animation that is in color, has sound, and can even be uploaded online to show the world.

Elite Animation Academy
The Shoppes at Windermere
8933 Conroy-Windermere Road
Orlando, Florida 32835
http://www.eliteanimationacademy.com

ADAM AND DOG  (Minkyu Lee)

Consensus:  Featuring beautiful hand-drawn animation by the likes of James Baxter, Jennifer Hager, Mario Furmanczyk, Austin Madison, and Matt Williames, Minkyu Lee’s very personal and profound short film was the highlight of the short selection for me.

I loved the rough-around-the-edges look of the film, and it takes no shame in being drawn. Many hand-drawn films and shows today are so polished looking that they sometimes look a bit too smooth or”vector-y”. There’s a much warmer hand-made feel to the animation here that makes it feel a lot more personal. The story is excellent too. I loved the animation on the dog. Having a dog of my own, I can say 100% that the animators got it spot on.

PAPERMAN (John Khars)

Consensus: This nice little film directed by Pixar veteran animator John Kars, is an interesting hybrid of hand-drawn and CG techniques. It has all the warmth of the hand-drawn “look” (thanks to the likes of animators like Eric Goldberg and Alex Kuperschmidt who contributed to the final line drawings) with all the incredibly subtle animation in the face and eyes that CG can bring to the table.

It’s the best of both worlds and it’s certainly worth seeing just for the incredible visuals alone (though the story held up nicely too!)

Paperman Model Sheets

MAGGIE SIMPSON IN: THE LONGEST DAYCARE (David Silverman)

Consensus: This was definitely the most commercial of nominated shorts. However, that doesn’t mean it’s not charming and funny in its own right. I liked that, for a change, a Simpsons cartoon was made 100% without dialogue and that the animation was allowed to drive the story.

While it’s not as personal as ADAM AND DOG, PAPERMAN, FRESH GUACAMOLE, or HEAD OVER HEELS, it’s certainly a fun little film with a lot of great visual gags. My only regret is that I didn’t get to see it in 3D!

FRESH GUACAMOLE (Pes)

Consensus: Pes’s FRESH GUACAMOLE made me very hungry for sure. He really has a way of making inanimate objects look edible!

__________________________

HEAD OVER HEELS (Timothy Reckart and Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly)

Consensus: HEAD OVER HEELS was a sweet little stop-motion film by Timothy Reckart and Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly. It really has a great hand-crafted look and great emotional kick to it!

Enjoy the Oscars, everybody!

Tom Bancroft is a world renowned artist, director, traditional animator, author, and mentor. His credits include Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Mulan, Tarzan, and many more. He has authored instructional books on character design and animation, and he also has his own hit comic called “Outnumbered.” In this interview we learn about his past achievements, present ventures and future endeavors.

Why did you decide to start teaching online classes? 

TOM: I’ve toyed with the idea of an online- or even brick and mortar- animation/art program for years. I have a real love/hate relationship with art schools. I love them in concept but hate the politics/ economics/ greed/ lack of talent that get in the way of them being good places to learn the art of drawing. What has stopped me in the past is time and the desire to continue to do my own art. I don’t want to retire and be a teacher. So, my two character design books fed my need to share the principles I’ve learned from my experience at Disney and elsewhere. My newest book, CHARACTER MENTOR, is all about learning via mentorship from an experienced Journeyman in your chosen field. The live workshops grew from that since they were something I could manage in my “extra” time, but still could touch as many people as possible.

Now that you have done a few classes, what have you learned or enjoy most about the classes?

The interactivity of them. I’ve really pushed to do LIVE workshops because I love the idea of building a sense of community amongst the group attending. We have many regulars that attend every time- probably around 50- with others coming and going. That core starts to build bonds and learn from each other, not just me. This is the heart of mentorship, learning from experienced artists and your peers alike. We are relooking at how to move forward with the live events because there is a lack of security in the Livestream format. We end up with many Looky-loos that attend without paying and that’s not fair to those that do. I haven’t given up on the LIVE aspect yet though.

Can you tell us what your new book “Character Mentor” is about? 

I look at it as a continuation of the first book, “Creating Characters with Personality”. That book starts people off with the fundamentals of how to design a character. Character Mentor assumes you have a character, now what do you do with it? I concentrate on the three aspects of bringing your character to life: expressions, posing, and staging. I chose to use the “mentorship” concept to illustrate these lessons. I gave out “assignments” to artists online and reproduced a few of the results, and then I went over them giving instructions on ways they could be improved.

Can you tell us about your animation schooling at Calarts, what did you learn that helped you in your career? 

Everything. Cal Arts was a great experience, but it was all too short. My brother and I couldn’t afford to go for all four years, so when Disney came looking for interns half way into our second year, we jumped at the chance and were accepted into the internship. I loved learning on the job, but I am a bit jealous of those that took the time at Cal Arts to experiment and make films like I would have liked to do. Three of the highlights of my Cal Arts schooling were: 1) the Character Design class taught by the talented Mike Giamo (who later became the art director of POCAHONTAS), a brief, semester long class on storyboarding taught by the late Joe Ranft, and the couple times Glen Keane came to the school to lecture about animation to the upper classman. We freshmen would sit along the balcony and listen in. Glen is both the best animator and the best teacher in the world, in my opinion!

Part of the Disney Internship group of 1988: Left to Right: Tom Bancroft, Mark, Pres Romanilios, Tony Bancroft, Trey Finney

When you started at Disney which artists mentored you?

My very first mentor was during our 9-week internship at the Disney CA studio and his name was Leon Joosen. Leon was one of the animators animating Ariel on the Little Mermaid at the time, so it was awesome seeing him work on the film. Even in that brief time together, I found that we had a similar, organic approach to animation. After that, I went to help open the Disney Florida studio and I was teamed up with Mark Henn as his Assistant Animator. This was a clean up position but I learned a ton about how he approached animation and concepts like timing charts. I wanted to be an animator badly and he knew it so he was very free with his lessons on animation and would often ask me what I thought of his first rough passes. I was always favorable, of course. Blown away was usually how I felt when seeing his first, scribble passes but I tried not to be too much of an animation fanboy with Mark. Mark was my main mentor throughout my career at Disney, especially when I moved into animation on Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. We worked even closer together on The Lion King when I was put in his Young Simba unit. Not everyone knows that Mark, besides being one of the top 5 animators for quality animation was also THE fastest animator. He would regularly produce more footage than about three animators put together! This made being in his unit on Simba tough, because there were not that many good scenes left to be done as he plowed through everything. Still, he gave me a few gems. Even when I became a supervising animator on Mushu, I would ask Mark’s opinion on things like dialogue and such. He is a modern master!

You started your internship at Disney during Little Mermaid; do you remember the first scene you worked on? 

Unfortunately, as an intern at Disney you didn’t get to work on production. It’s still heartbreaking to have been around The Little Mermaid and not to have been able to say I worked on it. I have many fond memories of going to screenings of the first rough passes of the film and being enthralled with the process and film. The closest I got to Mermaid was working in clean up on the McDonalds Happy Meal commercial with her and Scuttle in it. It was one of the first projects we did in the new Florida studio. Mark Henn animated most all of it.

Did you help in the design of Mushu being the supervising animator? 

For whatever reason, Disney does not like to let the Supervising Animators lay claim (at least in the credits of the film) on designing their characters. That said, I did design Mushu. There were development people, storyboard artists, and others like Peter De’Seve that did some versions of Mushu, but I did the final version. Along with many, many other versions that didn’t make it. I guess in the end, no ONE person designs a character (usually) in a Disney film. Still, I wish I could have been listed as A character designer in the credits since I was one. It was almost a year process to design Mushu, but much of that time was also spent making experimental animation tests also.

After Disney closed their doors in Florida in 2004, why did you make the move to Tennessee? 

It became a “why not” kind of decision. I had left Disney just after Brother Bear (since there were no new positions on the soon to be canceled “A Few Good Ghosts) so I started my company, Funnypages Productions, out of my house in Florida for a year. I was doing all kinds of freelance including animation and lots of book illustration and marketing art for Disney among others. I realized very quickly that I could live anywhere and work via the internet, so we started looking around and decided on Franklin, TN since I had heard of it when I was working in Chicago (for Big Idea Productions) briefly in 2000. Big Idea had a small office in Franklin and I would hear great things about how small town it was. My wife and I visited and fell in love with it and have been here for the last 9 years now.

Are you currently working on any personal traditionally animated projects? 

No, I’m not. But its not like I haven’t thought about it many times. I haven’t animated much at all in the last 9 years and haven’t animated at all in the last 3 or 4. So, it’s a bit intimidating to think about jumping back in but I sure miss it. My twin brother, Tony, still animates freelance regularly which keeps me thinking I want to jump back in. Still, I’m pretty complete if I never get the opportunity to animate again because I really enjoy this phase of life teaching, designing characters, and creating original stories of my own. Animation is very time consuming and the older I get the less time I feel I have to put into projects.

Lastly, what about Traditional Animation is Special to you?

Traditional Animation will always be an amazing, crazy, fantastic art form. It is still done in basically the same way as it was when it was first invented! How many forms of entertainment/business/art can you say that about? The crazy part of it is the fact that you are literally drawing every movement in slow motion, over and over again. It can be maddening to think about, which is why I never counted frames. I just started at the beginning and would keep going till I got to the end. The most special part of Traditional Animation to me is the people that do it. I think 2D animators are some of the best artists in the world. You have to know so much and have so much experience in such a wide area of subjects to be able to be a competent animator that it makes you an artist that can rival the Masters of Old. We may not paint, but we can create magic with a pencil that very few in the world can do. That’s the magic and I’m proud that I had a small part of Traditional Animation’s history.

Thanks Tom for the great interview! The following is more information about his Character Mentor Workshops.

LIVE Character Mentor Workshop #6 with Tom Bancroft

Subject: “Character Performance”

LIVE webcast on Tuesday, January 29, 2013 at 7:00 PM CENTRAL time zone (5:00PM PACIFIC/ 8:00PM EASTERN)

CHARACTER PERFORMANCE is job one as an animator/storyteller. Giving your character a personality that you clearly communicate is the basis of all acting in animation. With a character that ACTS, animation (movement) is secondary to establishing the personality of the character through its design, poses, expression and clear staging. This subject will be discussed with many illustrations and reference. Assignment draw over/ review will happen after the lecture.

Come be part of the community of artists trying to make their characters the best they can be!

PLUS: a preview of Tom Bancroft’s new Kickstarter comic project coming in FEB!

Some Q and A at the end moderated by Taylor. Email questions ahead of time to taylor@charactermentorstudio.com

This week’s (optional) assignment:

Create a sketch (no color or inking needed please) using the character design of EMMA here: http://tombancroft.deviantart.com/gallery/?q=emma#/d34lciv
Draw a full body pose of Emma looking at something in her hand. -The goal here is to create a clear pose and expression that tells a clear story. Is she scared of what she is holding? Fascinated? Enamored? Mad? Draw it big enough so we can see her face, but remember that her body language should push the attitude.
I am looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

Please make HIGH RESOLUTION scans at 300dpi and save them as jpegs. Make sure your first and last name is part of the file name. (Example: JohnSmith.jpg). I would prefer if your email was somewhere on the artwork also. The reason is that I am preparing a future book and I may ask to use some of these contributions at a later date. Email those scans to info@charactermentorstudio.com

PLEASE GO TO www.CharacterMentorStudio.com for more information and links to sign up.

IMPORTANT:
We will contact you within an hour or two of the workshop webcast with an email that will contain the link to the email account you have on file with PayPal. PayPal will send you an email that will state we received your payment. PAYMENT and Registration for the workshop ENDS TWO HOURS BEFORE THE EVENT!

Donate to the Citrus Cel Festival through Kickstarter.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/91340898/the-2013-citrus-cel-animation-film-festival?ref=card

The Citrus Cel Animation Festival was created by Shane Douberly (left) and Bill Waller (right) in 2009. This is the third year of the festival.

From the Citrus Cel website, “The Citrus Cel Animation Film Festival (Citrus Cel) celebrates animation as a cultural and commercial medium with three days of screenings, parties and panels in Jacksonville, Florida. Citrus Cel will act as a hub for students and professionals from the fields of animation, design, illustration, and film, as well as add to the growing cultural landscape of festivals and events in northeast Florida.

Why an animation film festival?
Showcases animation’s amazing diversity as a creative vehicle, from features to advertising to music videos to title sequences Provides an annual forum for Northeast Florida design professionals, filmmakers and students who use animation in their work Allows local and regional design-related businesses and colleges to recruit and network Builds Jacksonville’s identity as a regional cultural tourism destination, exposing audiences to a different kind of film festival. Offers unique sponsorship opportunities for area and regional businesses and corporations.”

Festival Overview

Film Programming: The following categories will provide audiences with a broad array of animated projects to enjoy:

Three features
Student short films (software prize to winner)
Movie and TV title sequences Broadcast Advertisements
Animated music videos
Visual effects
Classic animation
Experimental and mixed media
2D animation
3D animation
Stop motion
Gaming animation
Shorts for kids

Guest Speakers

Vincent Di Nguyen has illustrated children’s books “Louis and the Dodo”, “Not Another Tea party”,”Jungle bullies”, “Whoosh Went the Wind!”,”Stella the Star, “The Crabfish” before joining the art department at Blue Sky Studios where he worked on movies such “Robots”, “Ice Age 2″ and”Hortons hears a who”. His work can also be seen in “The Art of Robots” and the “comic anthology Out of Picture, 1 and 2″.
Ty Primosch, Layout Artist, Camera & Staging Artist and Workbook Artist at Blue Sky

http://citruscel.com/2013-the-art-of-storytelling-exhibit/
http://www.citruscel.com

I had the pleasure of meeting him last year while visting the Disney studio when I was in California for the 2011 CTN Animation Expo. He’s a great guy and a great animator. Bert directed, produced, and animated on Pups.

Pups of Liberty was produced in Bert and Jennifer’s spare time over a two year period. Though the film was completed in 2009, it hasn’t gotten any distribution to the public until this year (though it’s been featured at several film-festivals).

Animation talent on Pups of Liberty includes Mark Henn (supervising animator), Eric Goldberg (animator), Hyun-Min Lee (assistant director), James Lopez (production designer), Frans Vischer (animator), Barry Atkison (background supervisor), and Tony Derosa (animator).

I am definitely going to pick a copy of Pups of Liberty up. I’ve been excited for this short for several years and I’m so so glad for Bert and Jennifer that it’s finally found some distribution! It looks amazing and I encourage everybody here to purchase a copy and support Bert and Jennifer as well as the art of traditional animation!

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Links:

Pups of Liberty can be purchased at Izzit.org and Amazon.com.

Join the Pups of Liberty Facebook Page here!

More info, activities, and behind the scenes can be found here.

A really great interview with Bert and Jennifer can be found on Michael Sporn’s blog.

Videos:

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I spent a good hour or so on Friday at the Toonboom booth chatting with John Krisfalusi (pictured above) and the crew from his Cans Without Labels short. It was great getting to meet some of the younger talent working on that film and also catching up with Jim Smith who is known for his work on Ren & Stimpy. The Toonboom crew was also giving a presentation at the time of some of the tools in Harmony such as their pencil line technology, deformation technology, and the new particles plug-in.

I also got to see Glen Keane’s animation demonstration. it was such a great demonstration from an animation master. He animated Ariel from “The Little Mermaid” up on the monitor. He answered questions from fans and animation enthusiasts. Here is some video of his panel.

The Gravity Falls and Hotel Transylvania panels were FANTASTIC. Gravity Falls is a great hand-drawn TV show that I highly recommend checking out and it was great getting to see their process.

The highlight of the Hotel Transylvania panel was definitely seeing Genndy Tartavosky’s hand-drawn short Goodnight Mr. Foot. I also liked seeing how the crew at Sony was applying traditional animation techniques to CG to get a looser feel to the animation. There was some great artwork at that panel as well.

My only regret was not being able to attend Andreas Deja’s panel, but from what I heard it was great! If you were one of the lucky ones who saw him speak, please comment and let us know how it was. I know I will be attending next years CTN; every year they never cease to amaze me. Thanks CTN 2012 for a great experience!

Join the Forum discussion on this post

This is phase two of the new Fantasyland with the grand opening set for December 6th, 2012. This phase includes two brand new attractions: Enchanted Tales With Belle, an interactive show based on Beauty and the Beast, and Under the Sea: Voyage of the Little Mermaid, a slow moving “omnimover” (think Haunted Mansion) ride based on… The Little Mermaid.

The first phase was the opening of the Storybook Circus section of Fantasyland (this area replaces “Mickey’s Toon Town Fair”), which includes the revamped Dumbo ride (now with two “dueling” rides), the re-imagined Barnstormer mini-coaster, and the newly opened Pete’s Silly Sideshow character meet-and-greet spot.

The third and final phase, set to open sometime next year, will include the Seven Dwarves Mine Ride, a rollicking musical roller coaster/mine-train ride based on the one and only Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. 

As you walk into Fantasyland you can see a little bit of the ride being built over the construction wall along with the massive crane behind it. If you walk around to the other side, you can even see a bit of the track.

When you enter the new section, the first thing you see is a replica of Belle’s cottage, and right next to that is a mountain with the Beast’s castle peering down at you. If you go to the left, you enter the queue line for Enchanted Tales With Belle (more on that later) to the right is this massive bridge leading to the Be Our Guest restaurant.

My first stop was the attraction I was most excited for: Under the Sea: Voyage of the Little Mermaid. I’ve always been a dark-ride nut and I have to say that the ride totally exceeds my expectations in every aspect.

From the moment you walk into the beautiful (and interactive!) queue line you know you’re going to be immersed in the underwater world of The Little Mermaid.

My next stop was to get a bite to eat at “Gaston’s Tavern” which is located in a pretty accurate replica of the village from the film.

I ended up getting a pork-shank, a cinnamon roll, and a Fanta. The food was a little expensive ($8.99 for a pork-shank so my meal ended up being about $15 with the roll and the drink) but tasty. However the atmosphere of the restaurant made up for it. Other flavorful options included an interesting concoction of sparkling apple juice with french vanilla topped with cream served in a souvenir cup of your choice (either Gaston’s stein or Belle’s goblet).

I then made my way over to the Enchanted Tales With Belle. To be honest, this attraction was the one I was least looking forward to since it was based on a former show/meet and greet that was located in “Fairytale Garden” where the Brave meet and greet is now located, which was… how do I put it… lame, so I was pretty skeptical going in.

But this new version totally blew me away! It is a completely immersive experience starting from the incredibly detailed queue line and pre-show to the actual show/meet and greet with Belle.

This show includes some of the most advanced animatronic work I have EVER seen including a life size figure of the Wardrobe and Lumiere, which are pretty groundbreaking in terms of getting fluid and life-like movement and animation out of robots essentially.

That alone makes the show worth seeing. It is a great show for kids and adults, and I will be sure to make my way back to see it next time I am at the Magic Kingdom!

In final consideration, the new Fantasyland is well worth the effort to go see. If you happen to be there on a soft-opening day when it is open to the public, definitely go take a look at it before the lines get incredibly crazy come December!

His comic Little Nemo originally ran in newspapers between 1905 and 1914. It has been adapted for the stage, screen, even a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) video game release, titled “Little Nemo: The Dream Master.” Which I can remember playing quiet a bit.

I did a video capture of the Google animation.
Watch Google’s Tribute to Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo – Click Here

Here are a few related Winsor McCay goodies you should check out:

Winsor McCay – The Master Edition DVD

Gives a great background story on Winsor McCay:
http://www.amazon.com/Winsor-McCay-The-Master-Edition/dp/B0001UZWNY/

Little Nemo (1911 35mm Partially Hand Colored)

Little Nemo (1989 Full Movie)

Little Nemo – The Dream Master (NES Gameplay)

These are just some of the great things to come about from Winsor McCay’s character Little Nemo. To find out more simply google “Winsor McCay” or “Little Nemo”. Google is asking for it!

Happy 100th Birthday to one of great masters of Animation, Chuck Jones born on this day September 21st 1912. With one of his many characters, Michigan J. Frog from “One Froggy Evening” often consider one of the greatest cartoon shorts of all time. Chuck Jones has also created characters such as Wile Coyote, the Road Runner and Pepé Le Pew.

He also has directed such classics as, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”, “Mowglis’s Brothers”, “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” and “The White Seal”. Also Chuck Jones has animated such characters as Tom and Jerry, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, the whole Looney Tunes gang.