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We explore the inventive visual style used in a new commissioned short film project.

The post How ‘Paperman’ Director John Kahrs and Chromosphere’s Kevin Dart Combined to Make This Animated Short For Lyft appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Discover the art of Clio Chiang, Cartoon Brew's Artist of the Day.

The post Artist of the Day: Clio Chiang appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Rarities like "Lorenzo" and "Tick Tock Tale" will be released alongside recent favorites like "Feast," "Paperman," and "Frozen Fever."

Cartoon Brew talks with Patrick Osborne about his Oscar-nominated Disney film "Feast."

A look at the work of Jeff Turley, Cartoon Brew’s Artist of the Day.

"Feast," a new short by "Paperman" head of animation Patrick Osborne, will debut at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival on June 10, Disney announced this morning.

Oscar-winning Paperman director John Kahrs, who quit Walt Disney Animation Studios last week, gave the following statement to The Wrap about his decision to leave the company:

“I will miss working with them, and feel lucky to have played a part in the revitalization of the studio. They have an abundance of projects; an incredible development slate, but I’ve decided to develop my own projects and pursue directing elsewhere. It was very amicable — they were very gracious about that — and I believe we all left the door open.”

A Disney studio spokesperson also issued a response:

“John is an incredibly talented filmmaker and artist and all of us here at Walt Disney Animation Studios are proud of his vision for the stunning and innovative ‘Paperman. We wish him the best in his future endeavors.”

Per the official Twitter account of Walt Disney Feature Animation, Academy Award-winning animation director John Kahrs, of Paperman fame, has left Disney. Good luck wherever you’re headed, John!

Earlier this month, College Humor took on the toothsome irrepressibility of Disney’s Oscar-winning short film, Paperman, with its original parody, Paperman Threesome.

Picking up where the original short left off, the urbane meet-cute of two young sweethearts brought together by a torrent of sentient paper products continues through their first date, first kiss and into the bedroom where the loose leaf matchmaker reveals ulterior motives. “Originally, the character of Paper was even more aggressive and unlikeable,” College Humor’s President of Original Content, Sam Reich told Cartoon Brew. “Paper isn’t a jerk; he just finds himself in the middle of a misunderstanding, and has to cope with his disappointment.”

Even those who turned their nose up at the cynical addendum could not help but be impressed by the level of accuracy in the aping of the source material’s groundbreaking, much debated faux hand-drawn style. This new short, produced by the Australian animation house, Studio JoHo and directed by Joe Brumm, achieved the original film’s look using Celaction, a versatile and intuitive 2D-rigged animation program that is rising in popularity in the U.K. and Australia. “They’re fans of the original piece,” says Reich “and were excited to create something that looked authentic.”

Among the factors that makes Paperman Threesome such a successful parody, Reich cites CH’s streamlined animation process that allowed them to make its timely deadline, the mutual trust between them and the animation studio, and of course, their choice to focus less on physical action and more on expressive performances. “Nothing really happens in our piece, apart from a conversation,” Reich said.

What is with animation folks being thrown out of the Oscar ceremony? Tonight’s hot gossip is that Paperman producer Kristina Reed was kicked out of the Oscar ceremony after she began throwing paper airplanes off the mezzanine when her short was announced as a winner. The planes had lipstick kisses on them—just like the film. According to the Hollywood Reporter

Disney swept the Oscars this year with wins for both animated short and feature. Congrats to John Kahrs and Walt Disney Feature Animation for taking home the Animated Short Oscar for Paperman. Congrats to Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman and the Pixar crew for winning the Animated Feature Oscar for Brave.

The Oscar for Visual Effects was awarded to Life of Pi. Congrats to Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik-Jan De Boer, Donald R. Elliott, and the crews of Rhythm & Hues and Moving Picture Company. Unbelievably, as the Life of Pi winners tried to comment on the recent situation in the VFX community, the Academy cut off their speech mid-sentence. Not classy, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

For the record, Paperman is quite an accomplishment for Disney. The last time the studio won the Oscar for Best Animated Short was 1969 and the winner was this guy:

When Rasta meets Disney—a parody by Eddie Holly.

Apologies for the blog silence--I've been a bit under the weather. On the upside, I'm all caught up on Justified, and I started writing the third book in the Double Vision series. Exciting!

Oddly, I gained a ton of Twitter followers while I was away, so perhaps I should shut up more often.

On the topic of silence, I thought I'd share this short silent film by the Disney people called Paperman. When I first saw it as a preview to some other movie I was about to see, I loved it, and you could hear a pin drop in the theater. I think it's up for an Oscar, so fingers crossed.

 

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has shortlisted ten films for the Best Animated Short category. From these ten selections, five nominees will be selected:

Adam and Dog, Minkyu Lee, director (Lodge Films)

Combustible, Katsuhiro Otomo, director (Sunrise Inc.)

Dripped, Léo Verrier, director (ChezEddy)

The Eagleman Stag, Mikey Please, director, and Benedict Please, music scores and sound design (Royal College of Art)

The Fall of the House of Usher, Raul Garcia, director, and Stephan Roelants, producer (Melusine Productions, R&R Communications Inc., Les Armateurs, The Big Farm)

Fresh Guacamole, PES, director (PES)

Head over Heels, Timothy Reckart, director, and Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly, producer (National Film and Television School)

Maggie Simpson in The Longest Daycare, David Silverman, director (Gracie Films)

Paperman, John Kahrs, director (Disney Animation Studios)

Tram, Michaela Pavlátová, director, and Ron Dyens, producer (Sacrebleu Productions)

For the record, I tweeted a few days ago about the four films from this year’s qualifying animated shorts that I felt were truly Oscar-worthy. Not a single one was selected for the shortlist, but don’t let that stop you from seeking them out. They are all fantastic shorts that engage and challenge the viewer in a meaningful way:

After several months of monster/horror animated features, it feels down-right refreshing to see a simply funny new “cartoon” from Disney. Wreck-It Ralph (along with the innovative cg/hand drawn hybrid short Paperman) opens today – and just in time.

I dare say, between Tangled and Ralph, the Disney Feature team has found their footing – and personally I was much more satisfied with this high-concept comedy than I was with Pixar’s most-recent original. Could this be the year Disney’s SoCal home-team beats its upstate sibling? Wreck-It Ralph is executed with as much entertainment and humor, visually and verbally – and a healthy dose of “Disney magic” – as one could expect. It has an obvious appeal to adults, and even more so to kids, which bodes well for its box office results.

I’m not the only one to feel this way. A.O. Scott in The New York Times calls Ralph a big “success”, managing “to be touching as well as silly, thrilling and just a bit exhausting”. Betsy Sharky in The Los Angeles Times says, “the movie’s subversive sensibility and old-school/new-school feel are a total kick”.

“Old-school/new-school” might also describe John Kahrs sublime new short Paperman, which is attached to all showings of Wreck-It Ralph. We’ve been anticipating this short for several months and it plays like icing on the cake. A sumptuous boy-meets-girl story told in an exciting new/retro way – crossing my fingers this begins a transition back to the hand drawn craft of animation, in the classic Disney tradition, at the Disney studio.

So, what about you? If you’ve seen Wreck-It Ralph and/or Paperman, let’s have the discussion. Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below.

Seems like everyone is talking about Paperman, the new Disney short that recently premiered at the Annecy Animation Festival and is scheduled to be released with Wreck-It Ralph on November 2nd. I’ve seen the film and will join in with chorus praising it for its innovative look, its touching story and its refreshing new take on Disney character animation. It’s a breath of fresh air – and one can only hope it portends good things for hand-drawn animators – and its enthusiasts.

Paperman pioneers a new technique that seamlessly merges computer-generated and hand-drawn animation. I recently spoke with director John Kahrs (formerly of Blue Sky, Pixar and since 2007, a supervising animator at Disney Feature, primarily on Tangled) about the production.

Jerry: How did Paperman get started? Is this part of the Disney Shorts Program?

John Kahrs: After Tangled ended, they had a gap between the ending of that film and the beginning of production on Wreck-It Ralph. Management was wondering: “Is there anything around to push the technology? Anything that we have that’s going to fill the space between films, to utilize as much of the crew as possible? I had ideas about maybe doing a bit of animation that involved 2D and 3D together. So I just pitched it and they were like: “Ok, let’s try this.” But they didn’t really know how far we were going to take it technologically.

Jerry: Did John (Lasseter) know how the film was going to look – that it would be in black and white? And what inspired the story?

John Kahrs: John didn’t really know what we were doing until I showed him the test – that finally got him on board with the technique and the technology. The idea for the story has been in my head since I lived in New York, when I was first starting out in my career. I was commuting through Grand Central Station, I was in my mid twenties and feeling like I should be enjoying living in the city much more than I actually was – and I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t. New York is a pretty intimidating place; people have their guard up. It’s odd to feel alone while being surrounded by people all the time. Sometimes you can make random connections with strangers, and I started thinking about that idea. What if someone made a connection? What if this guy made a connection with a girl and he lost her, and he spent the rest of the story trying to get her back? You know, if they were really meant for each other… it’s fate. It’s romantic.

Jerry: I always like to ask this question: how long did it take from when you basically got a go-ahead, till its being finished. How long was that, about a year?

John Kahrs: Yeah, about a year. Maybe 14 months.

Jerry: So tell me about this new technique used on the film… how did it come about?

John Kahrs: It really came out of working so much with Glenn on Tangled. Seeing all that drawing, being at Disney, being surrounded by that legacy. How exciting, and how much punch there is in the drawn line, how expressive it can be. And how hard the CG guys have to work to try to match that charm. I thought, why do we have to leave these drawings behind? Why can’t we bring them back up to the front of the image again? Is there a way that CG can kinda carry along the hand drawn line in a way that we haven’t done before?

Ultimately, the problem was solved in a much more sophisticated way than I ever expected by teaming  with Eric Daniels first, then Brian Whited who is a young guy and a world class programmer. He deve

Seems like everyone is talking about Paperman, the new Disney short that recently premiered at the Annecy Animation Festival and is scheduled to be released with Wreck-It Ralph on November 2nd. I’ve seen the film and will join in with the chorus praising it for its innovative look, its touching story and its refreshing new take on Disney character animation. It’s a breath of fresh air—and one can only hope it portends good things for hand-drawn animators—and its enthusiasts.

Paperman pioneers a new technique that seamlessly merges computer-generated and hand-drawn animation. I recently spoke with director John Kahrs (formerly of Blue Sky, Pixar and since 2007, a supervising animator at Disney Feature, primarily on Tangled) about the production.

Jerry: How did Paperman get started? Is this part of the Disney Shorts Program?

John Kahrs: After Tangled ended, they had a gap between the ending of that film and the beginning of production on Wreck-It Ralph. Management was wondering: “Is there anything around to push the technology? Anything that we have that’s going to fill the space between films, to utilize as much of the crew as possible? I had ideas about maybe doing a bit of animation that involved 2D and 3D together. So I just pitched it and they were like: “Ok, let’s try this.” But they didn’t really know how far we were going to take it technologically.

Jerry: Did John [Lasseter] know how the film was going to look – that it would be in black and white? And what inspired the story?

John Kahrs: John didn’t really know what we were doing until I showed him the test – that finally got him on board with the technique and the technology. The idea for the story has been in my head since I lived in New York, when I was first starting out in my career. I was commuting through Grand Central Station, I was in my mid twenties and feeling like I should be enjoying living in the city much more than I actually was – and I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t. New York is a pretty intimidating place; people have their guard up. It’s odd to feel alone while being surrounded by people all the time. Sometimes you can make random connections with strangers, and I started thinking about that idea. What if someone made a connection? What if this guy made a connection with a girl and he lost her, and he spent the rest of the story trying to get her back? You know, if they were really meant for each other… it’s fate. It’s romantic.

Jerry: I always like to ask this question: how long did it take from when you basically got a go-ahead, till it being finished. How long was that, about a year?

John Kahrs: Yeah, about a year. Maybe 14 months.

Jerry: So tell me about this new technique used on the film… how did it come about?

John Kahrs: It really came out of working so much with Glen on Tangled. Seeing all that drawing, being at Disney, being surrounded by that legacy. How exciting, and how much punch there is in the drawn line, how expressive it can be. And how hard the CG guys have to work to try to match that charm. I thought, Why do we have to leave these drawings behind? Why can’t we bring them back up to the front of the image again? Is there a way that CG can kinda carry along the hand drawn line in a way that we haven’t done before?

Ultimately, the problem was solved in a much more sophisticated way than I ever expected by teaming with Eric Daniels first, then Brian Whited who is a young guy and a world class programmer. He developed this p

This is the poster (designed by Jeff Turley) for Paperman, a Disney short that’s been generating buzz for its distinctive melding of CG and hand-drawn animation. It’s the directing debut of veteran CG animator John Kahrs (Toy Story 2, Tangled, The Incredibles). Paperman will debut at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in June. It will be distributed more widely in November when it plays in front of Wreck-It Ralph.

The synopsis below is from the film’s Facebook page:

Using a minimalist black-and-white style, the short follows the story of a lonely young man in mid-century New York City, whose destiny takes an unexpected turn after a chance meeting… with a beautiful woman on his morning commute. Convinced the girl of his dreams is gone forever, he gets a second chance when he spots her in a skyscraper window across the avenue from his office. With only his heart, imagination and a stack of papers to get her attention, his efforts are no match for what the fates have in store for him.

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