Wallace and Gromit's Grand Appeal Nov 1-10 '11

There's a landmark art auction taking place from November 1 - 10, 2011. An online Animated Art Auction will take place to raise much needed funds for Bristol Children’s Hospital in the UK. It's called "Wallace and Gromit's Grand Appeal". This will give animation fans all over the world the opportunity to bid on original pieces and signed prints from some of the greatest talents in animation. There's a collection of over 30 pieces of artwork including original sketches, paintings and prints created especially for the auction that will be sold.

Most importantly, the auction will raise funds for a charity that supports some of animation’s biggest fans - children.

There's donations from Pete Lord, Nick Park and a host of Aardman artists and animators, John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Ray Harryhausen, Adam Ellis, Pete Lord, Dick Williams, Arthur Leonardi, Brian Cosgrove, Tom Moore, Terry Brain, Nick Park, and many more.

Head to the Wallace and Gromit Grand Appeal website to see what's up. Updates will be posted in the Forum topic.

WIA presents 'Union: A Debate' - Burbank - Oct 21 2011

You're welcome to attend a significant industry event in Burbank, California on the evening of this Friday, October 21 at the headquarters of The Animation Guild. It starts at 7:00 PM and will go until 10:00 PM. I'll be among four panelists as I represent the independent perspective at a landmark debate in the heart of the animation community. This is sponsored by Women In Animation.

You'll find all the details here at the Forum Topic.

Skylanders - Spyro's Adventure

Imagine my surprise when I went to YouTube's homepage over the past few days and found a major advertising campaign underway for the "Skylanders - Spyro's Adventure" video game. Spyro the Dragon is a character I designed and developed for Insomniac Games back in early 1997. It's been a very successful franchise and is still happening as is evidenced by this new interpretation of the property. It's on all major video gaming systems, including Wii, Nintendo 3DS, XBOX 360, Sony PlaySation 3 and PC/MAC computers. It became avilable on October 16, 2011 in North America, October 15 in Europe, and October 13, 2011.

Here's the official website for Skylanders. You can also see the original development art I created for Spyro the Dragon here.

Enjoy the trailer for Skylanders...

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Walt Disney - The Man Behind the Myth

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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