Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- When Cartoon Brew posted their comment about Yoni Goodman‘s site, DailyMation, I didn’t expect to be clicking into a daily inspiration. But that’s what it’s become.

Goodman, the Israeli animation director of Waltz With Bashir, says that he designed the site because he was tired of moving cut-outs around with Flash and wanted to break loose with some free-form animaton based on moving masses and having fun with it.

This shows. The pieces he puts up frequently are filled with life and are great to watch. All of the film clips are animated bits he’s pulled from life – his children are a major source of inspiration. This is alien to most American animation I’ve seen lately which seems more designed to rework other animated films rather than on the real world.

I wonder how many times Milt Kahl or Marc Davis went back to study past animated scenes? We study and learn from these old masters, but there has to be a time to let go and start looking at how real people act and react. This is what we have to animate. Yoni Goodman is doing great work, and it’s hard to understand why I’m not doing the same, myself.

I will.

- Aardman Animation seems to have fallen into good hands. Sony has just agreed to a deal which would have them distributing the new features coming from the Bristol-based factory. The first of their joint films will be Arthur Christmas, a film Aardman had in the works which employs hand-held cameras in a cg environment. The film, Sarah Smith and Barry Cook are directing from a script by Peter Baynham, would be released next November.

A sampling of Pirates!

They’re also planning a difficult and elaborate stop-motion film in Pirates! based on “”The Pirates!”, the best-selling series of books by Gideon Defoe. This film will be a swashbuckling affair directed by Peter Lord.

Hopefully, this deal with Sony will be more productive than the one they had with Dreamworks.

– Darrell Van Citters‘ blog Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol seems to be going right up to the wire. Will posts continue even after Christmas? After his Abe Levitow career bio, he posted information about the films UPA did immediately after Magoo’s Carol. and there’s also the “Unknown Christmas Carol”, segments that were deleted from the show even after being planned and animated.

The film recently played to full houses in LA at the Egyptian Theater and the Aero Theater. It was a treat to see it on a big screen when they screened it last year on the occasion of the book’s initial publication.

As I said back then, this book is a gem, self-published by Darrell Van Citters. I highly recommend you get it for your collection.

The first time in 372 years that a Lunar Eclipse took place on the Winter Solstice. (There was also a meteor shower.)
Many thanks for sharing, Steve.

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