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Here’s the latest animated video for a They Might Be Giants song: an artsy craftsy, naive-yet-sophisticated interpretation of “Davy Crockett in Outer Space”. It’s a great use of chalk board animation. For insight into this advanced, high-tech process, check out a comprehensive behind-the-scenes page at the Tiny Inventions site.
(I am glad to see that cartoon workers protect themselves from chalk-dust inhalation by wearing stylish mouth masks.)
And these folks are deft with cotton balls, for sure!
We’re just thirteen day away from the season premiere of Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!on Nick Jr. New episodes will air Monday through Friday, August 18 through 22, at 1:30 p.m. This season, Wubbzy gets not only a new neighbor, Daizy, but also visits from Michelle Kwan and Ty Pennington. Get ready for Wubbmania, like it’s 2006 all over again.
It doesn’t seem possible, but the networks don’t just beat a path to Frederator begging us for shows. Our team works hard behind the scenes, often for years at a time, to convince folks that our creators’ series deserve a shot. The creators write elaborate presentation pieces to give executives an idea of what’s in store for characters and stories in a series, and they go in person often to get everyone comfortable with what will be eventually a very expensive investment totally sometimes in the hundreds of millions.
A few weeks ago we contracted with one of my favorite directors, Jon Kane of Optic Nerve in New York (sometimes better known as the DJ behind FischerSpooner) to put together a video for some of our current presentations. Whenever I work with Jon it makes me wonder how I can lure him into cartoons.
This animated gif (click for larger version) shows the voting results for Presidential elections from 1960 - 2004. The results are color coded, county by county, for the entire continental United States. It was interesting to see the color shifts that happened from year to year, and how voting results seemed to pool together in sections. The graph comes from a Princeton study. It will be interesting to see what this year’s map looks like.
The always entertaining website Dark Roasted Blend is home to a two-part series about fright-inducing playgrounds from around the world. Cartoon characters—most of them unidentifiable—are featured. Russia predominates in this area of kid-centric creepiness.
The Paley Center in New York City (probably still known to many of you as The Museum of Television and Radio) has just opened an exhibit of artwork based upon the animated series Family Guy. It’s a Freakin Art Show opened Friday, August 1st, and runs through September 7. The roster of 21 artists includes animators Joel Trussell and Joe Vaux.
(A West Coast version of the show (“What The Deuce Are You Staring At!?!”) appeared at Los Angeles Paley Center back in 2006, so this is an encore for Easterners.)
The artwork was commissioned by Fox, making it a clear commercial tie-in , but worth seeing nonetheless. (Not surprisingly, you can buy giclée prints here.)
After the jump, a bonus music video for Morcheeba, directed by Joe Trussell. Just because I like it.
“Scooby-Doo: In the Beginning” will feature an all new cast of lesser-known actors replacing the original quartet of Freddie Prinze Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar, Matthew Lillard and Linda Cardellini. Rob Amell (”Life With Derek”) will play Freddy, joined by newcomers Kaitlyn Melton as Daphne, Hayley Alcroft as Velma and Nick Palatas as Shaggy. The computer-generated Scooby-Doo will be voiced by Frank Welker, a longtime voice actor on the animated “Scooby-Doo” series.
Who knows? This film could be good. The problem is that the Scooby Doo universe has been done to death, with a few takes on the subject matter from the same prequel perspective as this new film, including the very well done “A Pup Named Scooby Doo”. That series included a lot of inside jokes from the original series, and never took itself too seriously. It will be interesting to see if a similar approach is used for this project.
This piece of film, which was created around 1975, shows off the Synthavision process for creating an animated film. It was created by Larry Elin of Computer Visuals, Inc., of Elmsford, New York.
The new animation technique is called Synthavision and is marketed commercially by Computer Visuals, Inc., of Elmsford, New York. Using the process, dimensional, shaded objects can be made to perform a countless variety of complicated movements and captured on film. Amazingly, the objects don’t have to exist. The need for art work, photographs or prototypes has also been eliminated, since Synthavision enables the animator to produce his ‘actors’ within the software of the computer mathematically
This incredible attribute is an offshoot from the work which inspired the development of Synthavision in the first place. Scientists at Mathematical Applications Group, Inc., Computer Visuals parent company, were conducting experiments in which whole environments were mathematically described to a computer (an IBM 360/65). These mathematical models were then ‘exposed’ to a hypothetical dose of radiation. The program then in use diagnosed the effects of the radiation on the objects in the environment—how much reflected off, detracted within or penetrated. Although neither the environment nor the radiation existed, the findings were accurate and applicable to real life.
