Animation Nation

Just learned about this through the blog of Pixar story artist John Nevarez who is formerly of my school, The Animation Academy in Burbank.

There's an art auction fundraiser going on for the benefit of relieving victims of last year's massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Here's the blog dedicated to the effort.

This is your chance to get some great artwork from several legendary Pixar artists. Participating artists include John Nevarez, Ronnie del Carmen, Enrico Casarosa and many others. It was organized by Dice Tsutsumi.

All of the proceeds will be going to MercyCorps which is dedicated to the cause of providing earthquake / tsunami relief in Japan. The auction goes on until April 5, two days from today. Check it out on Ebay.

In a twist based on the current hit movie "The Hunger Games", Sony released a fun parody of the film using the upcoming Aardman Studios animated feature "The Pirates: Band of Misfits" due out the end of this month on April 27. There's a dedicated topic on the Forums for Pirates that features several trailers for the film, and this latest video trailer been added to it. Thanks to our friends at Animation World Network for the lead on this video.

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A beautiful and intriguing animated short that's been brought to our attention. "Childhood of a Circle" features sound design by multi award winning John Kassab. The original sound track is composed of 11 tracks with assistance from associates. Directed and animated by Kadavre Exquis with voice over by Julian Smith and foley sound by Adrian Medhurst. The sountrack is available here. There's more to explore including the Facebook page as well as two "Making Of" sites here and here. Follow this link to the Forum topic. Enjoy the film.

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Four beautiful posters featuring characters from Pixar's upcoming "Brave" are available online. Here's one of them. To see a fuller version of the image plus the other three that go along with it along with a link to higher resolution files click here. Brave will be released on June 22, 2012.

Valuable for the perspective and advice that this offers for those in the video game development business. At around 1:00 there's a breakdown of where the money goes when a video game is purchased. At about 6:20 Jason Rubin is featured. He's the co-founder of Naughty Dog and the fellow I worked with on the development of Crash Bandicoot and also Jak and Daxter. Great insights. Interesting how they mention that game publishers don't want superstar artists to emerge so they actively work to keep that from happening. Lots of good info. As is the norm for AN homepage articles, here's the link to the Forum topic.

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A recent upload to YouTube provides a valuable lesson in lip syncing for animation and is especially helpful if you use Flash. The subject is from the popular series My Little Pony currently airing on The Hub Network. Although the video is fan produced, it gives a good explanation of how lip syncs work for animation in the manner of a show such as this one. The video is getting a surprising number of views considering its content. The topic is featured in Education on the AN Forums where you can find a link to the source files and other links related to the video.

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Happy to report on the formation of a new organization. It's called RECA and is a network of the top 15 animation schools in France. This is significant as French animation schools are leaders in education for the art and among the finest animation schools in the world. Here's a website associated with the new organization. For the official press release and more info about RECA and the schools associated with the network follow this link.

An incidental conversation with a friend brought this video and topic to the forefront, concerning Walt Disney drawing a picture of a pig on the side of the family barn in tar, where he was growing up as a youngster in Marceline, Missouri. You can see the reference to it at around 10 seconds into this video from the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. The video is a nice encapsulation of Walt's life in a minute's time. Thanks to ANer 9oldmen for bringing it to my attention. Here's the link to the Forum topic.

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Fans of Cartoon Planet are happy to see its return to television. Although Space Ghost won't be part of the line up, Dexter's Lab, Powerpuff Girls, Flapjack and several other favorites will be.  Among the changes, there'll be a couple of new hosts and you can see who they'll be by watching the promotional video below. Thanks to ANer socklessM for bringing this to the Forums. The all new Cartoon Planet debuts this evening.

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Must be the season for trailers as we're suddenly seeing several of them come around for anticipated animated features. The most recent being "ParaNorman". Here's the official website for the movie. The production house is Laika in Portland, Oregon in the US. The release date for the film is August 17, 2012. Take a look at how it's shaping up. The Forum topic has been in development for some time and showcases several trailers for ParaNorman leading up to this one. 

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