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Filmmaker David OReilly reports on his experiences at the one-of-a-kind Georama animation festival in Tokyo.

The post David OReilly on Tokyo’s Georama, A Different Kind of Animation Festival appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

The mind-expanding Georama returns to Tokyo next month for a new edition with some major American guests.

The post Bruce Bickford, David OReilly, and Don Hertzfeldt to Headline Toyko’s Georama Festival appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Low-budget features and South American contenders are competing alongside Pixar this year.

The post 2016 Oscar Nominations: Animation Analysis appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Don Hertzfeldt comes out on top in a survey of international animation experts.

The post Don Hertzfeldt’s ‘World of Tomorrow’ Selected Best Animated Short of 2015 appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

The creepy "Teeth" topped the field of competitors at the world's only animation festival taking place in an airport.

For the first time in the 39-year-history of the Ottawa International Animation Festival, a student film received the festival's top honor.

Don Hertzfeldt continues his winning streak in Switzerland.

Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci's sci-fi fable and Konstantin Bronzit's short exploration led awardees to the outer limits.

The award-winning independent filmmaker drops some truth in this "Vanity Fair" interview.

A full list of animation winners from SXSW in Austin, Texas.

SXSW has announced the animated film selections for their upcoming edition, which will take place in Austin, Texas next month.

Don Hertzfeldt's 'World of Tomorrow' has won the top short film at the Sundance Film Festival.

Indie animator Don Hertzfeldt will work with a crew for the first time ever to produce his new feature "Antarctica."

The Sundance Film Festival has announced the film and installation selections for their upcoming edition, which will take place in Park City, Utah between January 22 and February 1, 2015. Among the sixty short film selections are 13 animated projects, including new works by indie favorites David OReilly and Don Hertzfeldt, animation-to-fine-art-world crossover Takeshi Murata, and Réka Bucsi’s Oscar-shortlisted Symphony No. 42. Also worth listing are the installations in Sundance’s New Frontier programming. The New Frontier space is dedicated to exploring “the crossroads of film, art, and media technology as a hotbed for cinematic innovation.” The thirteen projects selected for the exhibition include numerous pieces that incorporate animation.

The Sundance Film Festival announced that they will launch a touring animation short program next month.

Adapting animated films for the stage is no longer just the domain of feature films like "The Lion King" and "Shrek." Italian dance/theater troupe "eVolution" has adapted an unlikely animated short for live performance: Don Hertzfeldt's "Billy's Balloon."

McLaren’s Workshop is a free iPad app from the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) that provides access to over fifty films by experimental filmmaker Norman McLaren and allows users to create their own films with animation techniques used by McLaren. I was impressed when I previewed the app last fall at the NFB’s Montreal headquarters, and now that I’ve had a chance to play with it more extensively, I can confirm that it’s a no-brainer download for anyone with even the slightest interest in animation.

The fifty-one shorts on the app include all of McLaren’s best known works such as Begone Dull Care, Blinkity Blank, Le Merle, Neighbours and Pas de Deux as well as plenty of rarities dating back to the early-1930s. The colors are vibrant and lush thanks to film restorations that were done in 2006 for the DVD set Norman McLaren: The Masters Edition. In addition to the films, there are eleven documentaries in which McLaren and his colleagues discuss process, an illustrated biography, and an extensive essay by McLaren documentarian Donald McWilliams.

The app points forward to a new way of learning animation history in the 21st century, in which understanding a filmmaker’s work isn’t done through passive activities like reading a book or watching a film, but rather by making films of one’s own. McLaren’s Workshop contains three separate programs that allow the user to create animation using digital tools that approximate the techniques of cut-out animation, scratch-on-film, and synthetic sound, the latter of which will appeal particularly to those with a music background.

The cut-out workshop is free, the other two workshops are each a $2.99 in-app purchase. While pinching-and-zooming on an iPad doesn’t create the same visceral, sensory experience of manipulating paper cut-outs by hand or scratching onto film stock, the workshops are elegantly designed for simplicity and intuitive usage. They provide an excellent entry point to McLaren’s animation techniques for students and novices, although as you’ll see below, the tools are robust enough for professional filmmakers to have fun, too.

A couple other features worth pointing out: firstly, the app allows users to store McLaren’s shorts for up to 48 hours of off-line viewing, and additionally, during the first two months of the app’s release, users can upload their own films from the program directly to Vimeo accounts.

Start your weekend right and download a copy of McLaren’s Workshop on the Apple Store. And to get a little inspiration for what can be done with McLaren’s Workshop, check out these films made by top indie animators using the new app:

I Am Alone and My Head is On Fire by David OReilly (scratch-on-film)

Day Sleeper by Don Hertzfeldt (scratch-on-film)

Bon App by Regina Pessoa (cut-out)

Five Fire Fish by Koji Yamamura (scratch-on-film)

Barcode Transmission by Renaud Hallée (synthetic sound)

Cyclop(e) by Patrick Doyon (scratch-on-film)

(Disclosure: The NFB is a sponsor of Cartoon Brew.)

I returned a few days ago from the Czech Republic where I judged the feature film categories at Anifilm, a fun festival filled with great people and positive energy that is situated in the quaint lakeside resort town of Trebon. The three-person feature film jury consisted of Portuguese filmmaker Regina Pessoa (Tragic Story with Happy Ending, Kali the Little Vampire), Slovenian festival director Igor Prassel (Animateka International Animated Film Festival) and myself. (That’s us in the photo above.)

The Anifilm organizers smartly divided features into two categories: adult and children’s films. We watched five films in each category. In the Adult category, we awarded the top prize to Chris Sullivan’s sweeping and uncompromising Southern Gothic tale Consuming Spirits, and also gave special mention to Don Hertzfeldt’s feature It’s Such a Beautiful Day. These two films alone don’t make a trend, but add Paul and Sandra Fierlinger’s My Dog Tulip and Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues to the list, and you could argue that American indie feature animation is experiencing a renaissance right now. All of these films utilize animation effectively to express deeply personal visions.

The other three features in the Adult category—O Apóstolo from Spain, A Liar’s Autobiography from the United Kingdom and Fat Bald Short Man from Colombia—each had positive qualities and exhibited the kind of maturity and narrative ambition that is often lacking in mainstream feature animation fare.

The children’s category was less impressive. The five features were European co-productions that relied on cliches borrowed from popular American films. Three of the films featured hot air balloons (UP, of course), and a number of them used the ‘dead parents’ trope that is an all-too-common fallback for lazy animation scriptwriters. We awarded the children’s prize to The Day of Crows (Le jour des corneilles) which was unquestionably the most interesting film of the bunch. The hand-drawn animated film featured appealing (if inconsistent) animation and character designs, along with gorgeous backgrounds. It reached for Miyazaki-style mysticism before attempting to hamhandedly explain everything in the last act. Imperfect, but worth a look.

Animation director Bill Plympton wrote about his recent experience judging the feature animation categories at the Stuttgart Animation Festival in Germany. He watched eight features at that festival, and it’s interesting to note that not a single one of those films was in competition at Anifilm. It’s a reminder that feature animation is a flourishing art form today. The handful of mega-budget corporate-studio films that dominate American multiplexes barely scratch the surface of what’s available in the marketplace.

The good news is that institutional support is growing for more diverse types of feature animation. Most major animation festivals now have feature film categories, and of course, there’s the Oscars, which hands out an Academy Award specifically for animated features. The American distributor GKIDS has made a commitment to distributing foreign animated features, and this site you’re reading attempts to cover independent and foreign animated features as few other major animation media outlets have in the past.

More and more companies are turning their attention to the rich world of feature animation, but there is still plenty of room for others to join. For example, when will Criterion begin releasing art house animated features? When will distributors bring foreign animated features into multiplexes across the country? Exciting times are ahead in the feature animation field.

(Jury photo by Jan Hromádko)

Annecy, the longest-running and largest animation fesival, has announced the feature film selections for their upcoming festival in June. Nine films were chosen to compete for the Cristal award for feature film, which will be decided by a jury consisting of producer Didier Brunner (Les Armateurs), Cartoon Network exec Brian Miller and director Robert Morgan (The Cat with Hands, The Man in the Lower-Left Hand Corner of the Photograph). An additional fourteen features will screen out of competition.

Marcel Jean, the festival’s artistic director, said of this year’s feature selections:

“Many films have been created in a totally independent way, using traditional means, which illustrates the change in production habits that is opening the way for smaller companies and happening at the same moment as the production of digital 3D features is becoming more accessible. Japanese production has also particularly stood out through the number and quality of science fiction, horror or genre films.”

Feature Films—In Competition

• Arjun, The Warrior Prince
  Directed by Arnab Chaudhuri (India)

Feature Films—Out of Competition

• After School Midnighters
  Directed by Hitoshi Takekiyo (Japan)

“Animation is a young man’s game,” Chuck Jones once said. There’s no question that animation is a labor-intensive art that requires mass quantities of energy and time. While it’s true that the majority of animation directors have directed a film by the age of 30, there are also a number of well known directors who started their careers later.

Directors like Pete Docter, John Kricfalusi and Bill Plympton didn’t begin directing films until they were in their 30s. Don Bluth, Winsor McCay and Frederic Back were late bloomers who embarked on directorial careers while in their 40s. Pioneering animator Emile Cohl didn’t make his first animated film, Fantasmagorie (1908), until he was 51 years old. Of course, that wasn’t just Cohl’s first film, but it is also considered by most historians to be the first true animated cartoon that anyone ever made.

Here is a cross-selection of 30 animation directors, past and present, and the age they were when their first professional film was released to the public.

1. Don Hertzfeldt (19 years old)
   Ah, L’Amour

Last week at SXSW, Vimeo announced that Don Hertzfeldt will be among the introductory group of filmmakers to use their new Vimeo On Demand platform. Hertzfeldt has always been very selective about how he distributes his work online, which may be the first sign that Vimeo is doing something right with this new service.

The new platform allows anybody who has signed up for Vimeo PRO to distribute their films online. Hertzfeldt is selling his new feature It’s Such a Beautiful Day for $2 (to view the film online for one week) or $6 (to download a DRM-free version).

Vimeo’s On Demand set-up is fully customizable. Films of any length can be distributed, and prices can be set by filmmakers as can viewing periods for films. Here are some of its key features:

90/10 revenue split: You keep 90% of revenue after transaction fees, and we cover all delivery costs.

Your audience can watch anywhere: Your work is available online, as well as on mobile devices, tablets, and connected TVs, all in gorgeous HD quality.

Customizable design: You can completely personalize your Vimeo On Demand page to match your work and bring it to life.

Flexibility + control: Sell films, episodes, and more at the price you want, anywhere in the world you want — including on your own website.

I haven’t delved into all the particulars yet, but Vimeo On Demand appears to be quite filmmaker-friendly. The system isn’t perfect: for example, they might be better off with a credits-based system instead of the currently cumbersome pay-per-view model. But such issues are resolvable over time. The important thing is that Vimeo has spent years building a solid foundation including its elegant video player and a large userbase interested in independent filmmaking. Their On Demand service is a positive development, and has potential to be a game-changer for indie animators and filmmakers.

Don Hertzfeldt‘s first animated feature It’s Such a Beautiful Day is screening through this Thursday, October 11th, at both the Bijou in Eugene, Oregon and the IFC Center in Manhattan. The 70-minute film is a recut version of the shorts trilogy that Hertzfeldt has created over the past decade—Everything Will Be OK (2006), I Am So Proud of You (2008) and It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2012). Despite the post we published few weeks ago, Hertzfeldt tells me that he did not qualify the film for Oscar consideration, which is a shame because it would have been among the more distinguished animated features in contention.

The feature-length It’s Such a Beautiful Day will continue to tour around the U.S. through the holidays. The screening schedule can be found on BitterFilms.com.

It’s Such a Beautiful Day reviews: The Hollywood Reporter, NY Times, Slant Magazine, Village Voice

The winners of the 2012 Ottawa International Animation Festival were announced earlier tonight at the National Arts Center in Ottawa. The top prize for short film went to Dutch filmmaker Hisko Hulsing for his short Junkyard. The animated feature prize went to the Spanish feature Arrugas (Wrinkles) directed by Ignacio Ferreras. It’s Such a Beautiful Day by Don Hertzfeldt picked up the audience prize.

I Am Tom Moody by Ainslie Henderson picked up two awards, including the grand prize for best student animation. Two films in this year’s Cartoon Brew Student Animation Festival were also recognized: Kyle Mowat’s Ballpit won best graduate animation and Noam Sussman’s Gum won the Canadian student animation award.

The complete list of winners is below:

Nelvana GRAND PRIZE for Best Independent Short Animation
Junkyard directed by Hisko Hulsing, Netherlands

GRAND PRIZE for Best Animated Feature
Arrugas (Wrinkles) directed by Ignacio Ferreras, Spain

Walt Disney GRAND PRIZE for Best Student Animation
I Am Tom Moody directed by Ainslie Henderson, Edinburgh College of Art, UK

GRAND PRIZE for Best Commissioned Animation
Primus “Lee Van Cleef” by Chris Smith, USA

Best Animation School Showreel
Supinfocom (France)

BEST Narrative Short
A Morning Stroll by Grant Orchard, STUDIO AKA, USA

BEST Experimental/Abstract Animation
Rivière au Tonnerre directed by Pierre Hébert, Canada

Adobe Prize for BEST High School Animation
The Bean by Hae Jin Jung, Gyeonggi Art High School, South Korea

Honourable Mention:
La Soif Du Monde (Thirsty Frog) by a Collective: 12 Children, Camera-etc, Belgium

BEST Undergraduate Animation
Reizwäsche by Jelena Walf & Viktor Stickel, Germany

BEST Graduate Animation
Ballpit directed by Kyle Mowat, Sheridan College, Canada

BEST Promotional Animation
Red Bull ‘Music Academy World Tour’ by Pete Candeland, Passion Pictures, UK

BEST Music Video
The First Time I Ran Away by Joel Trussell, USA

BEST Television Animation for Adults
Portlandia: “Zero Rats” by Rob Shaw, USA

BEST Short Animation Made for Children
Beethoven’s Wig directed by Alex Hawley & Denny Silverthorne, Canada

Honourable Mentions:
Au Coeur de L’Hiver directed by Isabelle Favez, Switzerland
Why do we Put up with Them? directed by David Chai, USA

BEST Television Animation Made for Children
Regular Show: “Eggscellent” by JC Quintel, Cartoon Network

Honourable Mention:
Adventure Time: “Jake vs. Me-Mow” by Pendleton Ward, Cartoon Network, USA

The National Film Board of Canada PUBLIC PRIZE
It’s Such a Beautiful Day directed by Don Hertzfeldt, USA

Canadian Film Institute Award for BEST Canadian Animation
Nightingales in December directed by Theodore Ushev, Canada

Honourable Mentions
Ballpit directed by Kyle Mowat, Sheridan College, Canada
MacPherson directed by Martine Chartrand, National Film Board of Canada, Canada

BEST Canadian Student Animation Award
Gum by Noam Sussman, Sheridan College, Canadaa

Honourable Mentions
Ballpit by Kyle Mowat, Sheridan College, Canada
Tengri by Alisi Telengut, Concordia University, Canada

The Ottawa Media Jury Award
For the best short competition film, as deemed by the local Ottawa Media, consisting of:

-Peter Simpson (Ottawa Citizen)
-Sandra Abma (CBC)
-Fateema Sayani (Ottawa Magazine)
-Denis Armstrong (Ottawa Sun)

I Am Tom Moody by Ainslie Henderson, Edinburgh College of Art, UK

Heads up! Animator Don Hertzfedlt (Rejected) is publicly screening his first feature this week at The Cinefamily (at the Silent Movie Theatre) in Hollywood.

This special engagement of It’s Such A Beautiful Day – a feature-length combination of his magnificent “Bill” trilogy of short films – will qualify the 70 minute film for Academy Award consideration. Screenings begin tonight at 10:30pm – and will play through Monday (each subsequent night at 10pm, except Sunday at 9:30pm). Tickets and info here.

Hertzfedlt has already begun self-distribution of the film and will be bringing it to Portland, Dallas, New York City (Oct. 5th at the IFC CEnter), Tucson and Chicago, among other cities, in the next few months. Complete list of theatres and dates is posted on Don’s Bitter Films website. Here’s a glimpse of what to expect:

On February 1st, indie animation rockstar Don Hertzfeldt kicks off a coast-to-coast 13-state US tour. The main event is the debut of It’s Such A Beautiful Day, which completes his ambitious trilogy about a mysterious man named Bill. Head to BitterFilms.com for ticket info, and go there quick because tickets have already sold out for a number of the cities.

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