Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Darkhorse Comics announces Will Vinton‘s first graphic novel in a recent press release.

Jack Hightower is an action adventure story created by Vinton and his writing partner, Andrew Weise and features the art of Fabio Laguna. It sells for $10.17 on Amazon.

My hope is that this book will be able to jumpstart some life into Vinton’s animation career. I don’t miss the California Raisins, but I do miss the strong, Independent vision of Vinton. He formed Freewill Entertainment after being ousted at his own company, Will Vinton Productions and they bacame Laika.

I encourage you to check out the link above to Freewill to see what animation work Vinton has been up to. There’s also Will Vinton‘s personal site, worth a visit.

- The screening of the animated shorts on Tuesday at Kodak was fun. Three of those shortlisted for the animated short Oscar were there, and they were all on pins and needles.

Chris Wedge and a couple of others from Blue Sky were there representing Bunny which was screened in 35mm. He’d, of course, won the Oscar for that short, but Blue Sky is up for No Time for Nuts which was directed by Chris Renaud and Mike Thurmeier. Chris is an Executive Producer of the short. We had a nice conversation about the Oscars and Motion Capture.

Alex Weil from Charlex was the most buzzed about his chances at a nomination for One Rat Short. This is the cgi film he wrote and directed.

It’s a very sensitive film with a quiet persistence. The photo-realistic style took me a while to accept, but Alex did it well with a floating wrapper that the lead rat follows into adventure and love.

Bill Plympton has gotten to be an old hand at it, and he was more concerned with how his new short went. He’d previewed the new film, Shut Eye Hotel, and he was trying to read the reaction of the crowd and get some feedback. I won’t say much more than that it’s different, slicker than past films and includes some use of 3D animated Bg’s.

It was a good turnout for a NY screening; kudos to Kodak’s Anne Hubbell and Signe Bauman who did the work.

– Today’s NYTimes review by Neil Ganzlinger of Arthur and the Invincibles includes the following paragraph:

The press packet for “Arthur,” a children’s film directed by Luc Besson, includes lots of tidbits on the magic that enabled the merging of live actors and a computer-generated world, but who can really keep track of this technogoo anymore, or get excited about it? The real question isn’t how these hybrid movies are made, but why. In this case, it’s a tad unclear.

Jack Matthews in the NYDaily News‘ ** in a review headlined Fairy Confusing said about Luc Besson:

Luc Besson, a sort of French version of Steven Spielberg without the intuition, has tried a lot of genres in his young career and has had his greatest success with slick action films like “The Fifth Element” and “La Femme Nikita.”

Animated movies for kids he should stay away from.

In an NPR interview Besson talked about doing a sequel.
Read the Times if you’re looking for a bit more of a laugh.

Clean your palate after thinking about that film. Journey to Part II of the the program from the Bill Tytla show that John Canemaker organized. This is on the ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive. Go here for Part I.

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