Animation Nation

The other day I caught the end of an interesting documentary on the life of Walt Disney. Since I missed most of the television broadcast, I turned to YouTube to see the rest of it. It's an inspiring program, produced by the Disney family in 2001 and narrated by Dick Van Dyke. I learned a few things that I hadn't known before about Walt and enjoyed viewing rare footage that was new to me. I've compiled the film in the eight parts that are on YouTube onto a topic on the Forum for easy viewing. Follow this link to check out "Walt: The Man Behind the Myth". Here's the first part to get things going and to give you an idea as to the quality of this documentary.

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A surrealistic animated experience thanks to Composer and Musician Peter Luha and Visual Artist Lucia Cernekova. This is the film's official website. Here's the Forum topic.

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The Ringling College of Art and Design is one of the leading schools in the world for animation. In 2009, Liron Topaz created this whimsical student film in which his character struggles with his patience as he waits for a download. Liron is currently an animator at DreamWorks. Heres the Forum topic. 

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HoBSoft is the production system used on several recent animated films of exceptional notoriety including "Asterix and the Vikings", "Brendan and the Secret of Kells", "Chico & Rita" and currently "A Monster in Paris".  With all the experience gained from the production of these movies, they've learned that making textual notes really limits the communication to the artist during approval situations. So HoBSoft has upgraded the Web interface for their production management and automation system, adding new technologies. Now it's possible to draw directly on the movies in the HoBSoft Web application. No more writing text based notes. Just draw! Take a look at how it works through this video. The Forum Topic is here.

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Gobelins School of the Image in Paris is one of the reasons why French animation continues to reach new heights of creativity and excellence. This film was produced in 2008 by animators associated with the school. It's made the film festival circuit and certainly warrants a spotlight on AN's homepage. The Forum topic can be found here.

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From the album Highway Collection released earlier this year, Lovett's "Eye of the Storm" is an enigmatic and masterfully animated video that is as haunting as the song. Directed by Chris Alender and produced by Kris Eber for Soapbox Films, you can view the making of this project by following the link to the Forums. Thanks to Adrian "Skynet" Foster for showcasing this earlier. 

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Here's a different rendition of the story of Thor from CAOZ, a leading European 3D animation studio located in Reykjavík, Iceland. This is part of a CG adventure set in the Nordic mythology universe scheduled to premiere this Fall 2011. Here's the website for the film and the link to the Forum Topic. Enjoy the trailer...

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Here's another video of impressive animation posted on the AN Gallery, this one by a student who's graduated this year from Bournemouth University in the UK. There's a list describing the different animated scenes in the reel at this link to the Forums.

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Whenever a member posts a demo reel of theirs in AN's Gallery that features exceptional work, I like to share it with our homepage audience. Here's what animator Harry Paakkonen has brought to our attention. The Gallery topic is here. Click this link to visit Harry's website

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Whenever a member posts a demo reel of theirs in AN's Gallery that features exceptional work, I like to share it with our homepage audience. Here's what animator Harry Paakkonen has brought to our attention. The Gallery topic is here. Clink this link to visit Harry's website.  

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