Earn Big Money At Last! Learn Animation!

"If you can draw a circle, we can teach you animated cartooning."

Animators, the 1938 ad claims, can earn up $20,000 a year, which would be the equivalent of nearly $700,000 in today's money. That probably didn't happen very often, if at all, but animator Art Babbitt did make $11,363 at Disney in 1936, which would be $455,000 today. That's nothing though compared to what comic strip artists used to earn. Mutt and Jeff creator Bud Fisher pulled in $150,000 in 1916, or $11.9 million in today's dollars.

Alvin Epstein, the co-owner of the animation school in the ad, published How to Draw Animated Cartoons in 1945:

New Trend? Looney Tunes Characters With Human Bodies

Twenty Years ago, we had 'urban' versions of the Looney Tunes plastered onto merchandise. Today, we have the characters being pasted on top of human bodies. Bugs, who is traditionally male, is gender-fluid now, with a male head and female body. These shirts are being sold by Spanish clothing retailer Pull & Bear. Click on any of the images for a larger version.

Netflix, Scholastic Reboot 'The Magic School Bus'

Just in case you were worries that Netflix's slate of upcoming animated programming was looking a little too Dreamworks heavy, the streaming site has announced plans to launch an updated version of the Scholastic Media educational series The Magic School Bus.

The new iteration, which reflects Netflix's continuing growth as a children's broadcaster, will be a computer animated show entitled The Magic School Bus 360 degree. Twenty-six half-hour episodes will launch in 2016. Like the original show, it will teach kids about science by way of an anthropomorphic school bus and a kooky educator named Ms, Frizzle, however, the new bus will be upgraded to reflect the advancements in robotics, wearables, and camera technology. The original series was produced for PBS between 1994 to 1997 and remained in syndication until 2012. Since Netflix acquired the streaming rights in 2013, it has become one of their most watched educational shows.

'Paddington' Trailer Generates Entire Tumblr Devoted To Its Creepiness

Based on Michael Bond's 1958 children's book A Bear Called Paddington, the live-action/CG hybrid Paddington tells the story of a Peruvian bear who finds himself living in London. The film will be released on November 28, 2014 in the UK, followed by a Christmas Day release in the United Stated by the Weinstein Company/ Dimension Films.

The characters has had remarkable longevity. The orginal book had over twenty sequels and inspired three television series-the first of which ran from 1975 to 1986 and featured an innovative stop-motion style in which Paddington himself was a model while the human characters were illustrated cut-outs. The film version instead goes for the now commonplace approach of combining live action with a quasi-realistic anthropomorphized CGI animal.

The first images from the film were released earlier this week, to a less than positive reception. Certain viewers found the new-look Paddington just a tiny bit creepy, as evidenced by an entire Tumblr devoted to images of the CGI bear Photoshopped into scenes from horror films. He looks a little better in motion, although gags involving him tasting his own earwax and immersing his head in toilet water continue an unfortunate trend that previously gave us Alvin eating Theodore's droppings and Hong Kong Phooey chomping on a urinal cake. I don't remember Paddington Bear's creator Michael Bond ever making use of gross-out humor, although admittedly I am unfamiliar with the later books in the series.

The film is due to be released in November and is helmed by Paul King, who previously worked as a director on the television series The Mighty Boosh. Colin Firth, of all people, stars as the voice of Paddington, while Framestore provides the film's effects.

Disney Junior To Premiere 'Lion King" Spinoff Series in 2015

"It's kind of like The Lion King meets The Avengers," says Nancy Kanter, general manager of Disney Junior, when describing their upcoming preschool series The Lion Guard.

A sequel series to The Lion King and its two direct-to-video sequels, The Lion Guard follows the second child of Simba and Nala, Kion, who assembles an assortment of jungle animals to protect the Pride Lands.

The idea was conceived a couple of years ago when Disney CEO Robert Iger suggested Disney Junior come up with something that could correlate with the 20th anniversary of The Lion King. Kanter points out that tying new content into the company's "heritage" has proven successful with shows like Jake and the Never Land Pirates and Sofia the First, whose main character is taught by the fairies from Sleeping Beauty.

The story will premiere as a TV movie in fall of 2015 before going to series the following year on Disney Channel and Disney Junior. While Timon, Pumbaa, Rafiki, Zazu, and Mufasa are set to make appearances, the show will feature an all-new cast of characters that include "Fuli, a confident cheetah; Beshte, a happy-go-lucky hippo; Ono, an intellectual egret; and Bunga, a fearless honey badger," who may or may not give a crap.

DreamWorks Releases 'Home' Trailer

DreamWorks Animation released a trailer on June 12th for Home. The Tim Johnson-directed film will be released on March 27 2015. In the credits provided with the trailer, the screenplay is listed by "to be determined, based upon the novel The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex." This is the latest in a film's production process that I've seen this credit remain undetermined, and leads one to wonder what exactly is going on at DreamWorks. Have there been significant rewrites or some other situation that has prevented them from crediting the film's writers?

Here's the official synopsis:

When Earth is taken over by the overly-confident Boov, an alien race

in search of a new place to call home, all humans are promptly

relocated, while all Boov get busy reorganizing the planet. But when

one resourceful girl, Tip, (Rihanna, who also contributes a song)

manages to avoid capture, she finds herself the accidental

accomplice of a banished Boov named Oh (Jim Parsons). The two

fugitives realize there's a lot more at stake than intergalactic relations

as they embark on the road trip of a lifetime.

Short Film Review: Disney's 'Feast'

Disney's Feast debuted yesterday to a raucous packed house at the Annecy International Animation Festival, alongside some never-before-seen clips from the studio's next feature Big Hero 6. After its premiere, Feast's director Patrick Osborne and the production designer Jeff Turley delivered a presentation about the project's conception and production techniques.

As suggested in the sparse teaser image that has been released for the film (above), the film uses some of the same non-photo-realistic rendering techniques that were explored in the studio's earlier Oscar-winning short Paperman, but the effect this time is more lush and immersive. Unlike Paperman, which relied heavily on character outlines, Feast explores an aggressive stylization, minimizing the exterior line and steeping itself in the possibilities of color, shape and form. If you've ever looked at the concept art in an 'art of' book and wondered why the finished film couldn't look like that, you'll wonder no longer. This film is concept art come to life.

Without giving anything away that's not already in the synopsis, the story is fundamentally the same as Paperman or even Pixar's The Blue Umbrella-boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl again. Osborne's deft directorial choices avoid sappy sentimentality and expand the scope of this time-tested tale with a willingness to push cinematic language beyond the usual tendencies of Hollywood animated film-making. Osborne employs a unique point of view, showing us the world from the shallow depth of field perspective of the owner's dog, Winston, and makes striking use of quick-cuts and time compression techniques. The narrative fragmentation lends the film a contemporary feeling that evokes the eye-blink editing of a Vine or instagram video. (This technique was, in fact, inspired by one of Osborne's personal digital projects: a video diary that he created over the course of a year documenting one-second daily snapshots of his meals.)

Food plays a key role in the film. During their presentation, Jeff Turley joked that all the artists who worked on the film gained weight during the production because of the 'research' that they had to do. Their weight gain paid off though. Feast is the first time in my memory that CGI food has actually looked appetizing onscreen. It's certainly Disney's strongest effort in their nascent revival of short film-making, and suggests exciting possibilities for how the studio could blend hand-drawn craftsmanship and digital technology in future projects.

'Caveirao' by Guilherme Marcondes

Not many people know this, but every night at 3:33 Am time is frozen 

for a moment. During what is a fraction of second to mortal  eyes,

there is a second night, a secret one where the spirits of the city 

come out to play. That is the story of the eternal battle for the soul of 

Sao Paulo, the clash between bohemia and authoritarianism,

between comedy and horror. Inspired by the darker side of Brazilian 

pop culture, Caveirao crosses over genres and techniques. Fantasy,

horror and cartoon meet through live-action, 2D animation and 3D

vfx. This is the first film from 'The Master's Voice' project about ghost

stories based on urban folklore.

CREDITS

Director/Writer: Guilherme Marcondes

Cinematographer: Pierre de Kerchove

2D animation: Birdo

Production Designer: Olivia Helena Sanches

Music and sound designer: Paulo Beto - Anvil FX

Post Production Supervisor: Eddy Moussa

Editor: RJ Glass

Lead Compositor: John Harrison

Principal Cast: Carlos Dias as Caveirao

Mexican Mo-Cap Feature 'JOYFLUID'

The animated feature JOYFLUID opens in a limited number of IMAX 3D theaters in Mexico. The Mexico City-produced motion capture animated film was directed by Alejandro Rodriguez Huerta and made by the Rodriguez Brothers Animation Group.

The look of the film reflects its small budget, which was under $2 million. In its defense, that's only one-tenth the budget of the Indian mo-cap film Kochadaiiyaan, which looks only marginally better. No indication is given in the trailer, but JOYFLUID apparently has a socially aware message that deals with child development issues and disorders like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

The film has a Twitter account with frequent updates. If any Mexican readers see the film, please let us know what you think in the comments.

'Maleficent' A Hit, Seth MacFarlane Western Flops

Last month at the U.S box office, two films with strong animation ties opened in very different fashions. Disney's Maleficent, a dark fantasy re-imagining of the 1959 animated feature from the perspective of the villain, launched with $69.4 million. The Robert Stromberg-directed film tried to recapture the 2010 success of disney's live-action Alice in wonderland, but fell short of that earlier film's $116.1M opening. Even if it didn't reach the heights of the earlier Tim Burton film, Maleficent still posed a debut, including a $100.6M international opening, and certainly won't be the last Disney classic reheated as a live-action pic.

Meanwhile, A Million Ways to Die in the West, directed by and starring Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, sputtered with $16.8M. According to Box Office Mojo, "That's less than one-third of Ted's $54 million debut in June 2012. The movie even managed to open lower than past Summer comedy flops like Year One ($19.6 million), Land of the Lost ($18.8 million), The Dictator ($17.4 million) and The Internship ($17.3 million)."

The weak opening of Million Ways marks a rare miss for MacFarlane, who has generally enjoyed great success with his animated projects. The difference here is that MacFarlane relied on his own celebrity and acting instead of animation, which is what his fanbase likes about his work and has come to expect from him. The stark difference between the opening of Million Ways and Ted suggests that perhaps the earlier film's success owes a bigger-than-acknowledged debt to its animated star.

In other box offices news, Happy Little Submarine 3: Rainbow Treasure opened with $3.3M in Chinese theaters.

After Reading This, You'll Never Watch 'Finding Nemo" In the Same Way Again

Pixar's Finding Nemo told of a touching bond between a clown fish father and son. But according to this fascinating excerpt from Stephen R. Palumbi and Anthony R. Palumbi's new hook The Extreme Life of the Sea, Finding Nemo director Andrew Stanton bypassed the most intriguing trait of clown fish, which is that they can change their sex. Had Pixar stayed true to clown fish biology, they would have ended up with a quite different story:

The 2003 Disney film Finding Nemo formally canonized the

anemone dweller's adorability. The eponymous clown fish vanishes
 from his home anemone, forcing his widowed father to take off after
him. Finding Nemo gets many things right-the anxiety of leaving 
home and the obnoxious yelping of seagulls-but it punts away 
the most fascinating aspect of clown fish. As sequential 
hermaphrodites, they lead unique home lives. All are born male, with
the ability to change sex. Like a wild card, it's only good once: once
males turn into females, they can't turn back into males. The film 
supposes a lifelong romance for Nemo's parents, but genuine
clown fish live only as part of larger groups. A handful of fish share
each anemone, all beginning their lives as immature males. The 
largest and most dominant male turns into a female; the next-largest
develops functioning testes. She lay eggs, he fertilizes them. The
others bide their time, defending the anemone and the family's 
precious eggs. One of the mated pair will eventually die, to be swiftly
replaced by someone down the ladder.

If the matriarch dies, the fertile male who was #2 now takes her place 
as #1, metamorphosing into a female himself. A simply hierarchy of 
size and strength determines the family's whole structure, conflicting
with the acceptable social norms for children's movies. Finding 
Nemo painted a simple picture for more than just the sake of 
simplicity: a real clown fish father who lost his mate would not develop
a psychologically complex system of grieving and over protection. He
would simply become Nemo's new mother. Nemo (the only other fish 
remaining in the anemone) would rapidly develop mature gonads. He
would become his own father while his father became his mother,
and they would raise little incestuous Nemos together without a drip
of sentimentality. In retrospect, the producers at Disney probably
made the right call.

'Song of the Sea' Teaser Is A Sensitive Hand-Drawn Treat

Here's our first look at Cartoon Saloon's highly anticipated hand-drawn pic Song of the Sea, which will be released in the US this fall by GKIDS. The Irish film is directed by Tomm Moore whose debut feature The Secret of Kells was nominated for an Oscar in 2010:

Song of the Sea tells the story of Ben and his little sister Saoirse-

the last Seal-child - who embark on a fantastic journey across a 

fading world of ancient legend and magic in an attempt to return to

their home by the sea. The film takes inspiration from the

mythological Selkies of Irish folklore, who live as seals in the sea but

become humans on land. The film features the voices of Brendan

Gleeson, Fionnula Flanagan, David Rawle, Lisa Hannigan, Pat Shortt

and Jon Kenny. Music is by composer Bruno Coulais and Irish band

Kila, both of whom previously collaborated on The Secret of Kells.