Enjoy Some Lovely Stop Motion

This insanely cool video by Renana Aldor and Kobi Vogman explains the process of Lost-Wax casting. The video was made for the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and you can read more about it here: http://directorsnotes.com/2016/05/02/kobi-vogman-renana-aldor-hadrian-bronze-casting/

 

If you're now in the mood for fantastic stop motion films, check out Kubo and the two strings (HU DVD 13637). And if you're interested in lost-wax casting, we actually have a streaming video that covers that called Feuer & Flamme. And for more about Hadrian, check out this selection from The Great Courses on Roman Jerusalem.

10 years of LAIKA

Over the weekend, I was completely blown away by LAIKA's Kubo and the Two Strings (HU DVD 13637). As an animation studio, LAIKA creates some of the grandest and unique worlds in film. Kubo is an incredible accomplishment, and an example of the offbeat humor, powerful storytelling, and, of course, artistic prowess LAIKA has come to be known for.

LAIKA is currently celebrating their 10 year anniversary:


Come to Media Services to check out Kubo, or LAIKA's three other feature length films: The Boxtrolls (HU DVD 11911), ParaNorman (HU DVD 11030), and Coraline (HU DVD 7449).

Before there was Sailor Moon...there was The Dull Sword

As highlighted on Hyperallergic, the National Film Center of Japan’s National Museum of Modern Art has uploaded a ton of early Japanese animation to mark the centennial of Japan's oldest known animated film.

You can see all the films here, and the very oldest--a 1917 work discovered in an antique store in 2008!--is The Dull Sword (pictured above), available here.

Take a vacation to the worlds of Studio Ghibli

Ghibli films are notoriously immersive and transporting. From the forests of Princess Mononoke, to Yubaba's bath house in Spirited Away, the worlds of Studio Ghibli are complex, beautiful, and utterly real. How is this feat accomplished? Here's one take:



Even if you're not an anime fan, after watching Asher Isbrucker's video essay, you might be inspired to check out some of AU's collection of Ghibli films:

Castle In The Sky - HU DVD 2978
The Cat Returns - HU DVD 13290
From Up On Poppy Hill - HU DVD 8901
Grave Of The Fireflies - HU DVD 823
Howl's Moving Castle - HU DVD 2979
Kiki's Delivery Service - HU DVD 6077
My Neighbor Totoro - HU DVD 4709
(Nausicaä Of The Valley Of The Winds - HU DVD 2977)*
Only Yesterday - HU DVD 13276
Ponyo - HU DVD 6937
Porco Rosso - HU DVD 10216
Princess Mononoke - HU DVD 1206
Spirited Away - HU DVD 586
Tale Of The Princess Kaguya - HU DVD 11898
The Secret World Of Arrietty - HU DVD 7986
When Marnie Was There - HU DVD 13297
Whisper Of The Heart - HU DVD 10126
The Wind Rises - HU DVD 11597

*Did you know, Nausicaa is technically not a Ghibli film?!

New Acquisitions - September 2016

With the first week of classes almost in the bag, we have the Labor Day weekend to look forward to. And with a tropical storm possibly bearing down on us, what better way than to escape a long, stormy weekend than grabbing a few movies?

We're continuing to add new films to our collection that classes are using this semester, but we're also getting more blockbusters, critical favorites, and historically significant movies – like BellaDonna of Sadness, a Japanese animated film that has never been available since 1973.

Other interesting titles this month include ESPN's riveting documentary series OJ: Made in America; Miles Davis biopic Miles Ahead; and The Mermaid, the highest-grossing Chinese movie ever. (And we also got the extended cut of Batman v Superman, which runs a whopping three hours.)

We could go on and on this month, but we'll just let you read the list. Follow the link to see what's new for September...

New Acquisitions - August 2016

One month left in summer! Everyone panic!

Well, don't actually panic. We're getting everything set for the fall semester, and we're stocking up on more new acquisitions. As before, we're in the process of replacing as many of our VHSes with DVDs as possible. But we're also plugging other holes in our collection. We've added Hercules, A Bug's Life, The Good Dinosaur, and Zootopia, which we think completely rounds out our collection of Disney animation.

We also want to highlight Gaming in Color, a documentary about queer experiences in gaming, and Anomalisa, an adult stop-motion film by Charlie Kaufman.

Hit the link for a list of what else is new for August...

Media Services at the Movies: Finding Dory

The summer blockbuster season is here! "Media Services at the Movies" will look at what big movie is coming out this week, then offer a few movies like it from our collection.

We can't think of much new to say about Pixar. The studio has some of the best talent in animation – second only to Studio Ghibli and infinitely greater than whoever made Norm of the North. Although the quality of their films has wavered a bit in recent years, you can still depend on Pixar to bring out the heart in their stories.

Pixar sequels in particular can be hit or miss. For every Toy Story 2, they put out a Cars 2. From early impressions, Finding Dory sounds like it lands in the upper levels of Pixar for its poignant take on  disability. Dory will also be beautiful, as Pixar films tend to be. They look even more beautiful in HD; we'd go as far as recommending animation as one of the reasons to make the bump up to Blu-ray.

Don't believe us? We have several of Pixar's movies in Blu-ray (not all, since we bought many before Blu-rays were a thing). If you have a Blu-ray player, check one out and see the quality difference for yourself. It'll definitely encourage you to opt for the Blu-ray of Finding Dory went it comes out.

Ratatouille – HU BLU 3814
Up – HU BLU 6690
Toy Story – HU BLU 7768
Toy Story 2 – HU BLU 7769
Toy Story 3 – HU BLU 7770
Monsters Inc. – HU BLU 8596
Inside Out – HU BLU 12881

Hear Betty Boop and Max Fleischer favorites performed live

Discussion about the early history of animation tends to focus on Walt Disney and Looney Tunes, ignoring good old Max Fleischer. Fleischer was the man behind Betty Boop, Popeye, and other Depression-era classics. We could talk about those for a week, especially the censorship of Betty Boop, but one of the most critical parts of Fleischer's cartoons was the music he used. Compared to Steamboat Willie's stereotypically peppy score, Betty Boop was jazzier, riskier, and a little more culturally savvy.

In celebration of Max Fleischer's career, the currently ongoing Washington Jewish Film Festival will host a screening this weekend of some of Fleischer's cartoons with the music performed live, as improbable as this sounds, by a Max Fleischer cover band. Hear Betty Boop sing! Marvel at how Fleischer's animation reflects the Jazz Age rather than glossing it over!

The video embedded above should give you an idea of what to expect. This is really novel performance idea and a great way to celebrate Fleischer's body of work.

The screening-concert will be at 8:30pm on Saturday, March 5th, at the AFI Silver in Silver Spring.

A grueling look at making The Simpsons, start to finish

Digital techniques have greatly sped up the rate at which animation is produced. South Park can turn out a full episode in a week, and some topical YouTube videos can be cranked out even faster. But the producers of The Simpsons have opted to keep things slow, spacing our production over nearly a year to ensure that every little background detail and facial tic has been revised and remastered. For maybe the first time, The Verge offers a look behind-the-scenes, telling the story of how an idea for a Simpsons script grows into a full episode.

Despite the lengthy turnaround, it sounds like this process still often comes down to the last day, and the staff certainly never gets a break. Of particular interest is the work of the "timer," a production member who breaks down every action and detail frame-by-frame as a blueprint for contracted animators. Ongoing quality issues aside, you'll develop a lot more respect for the show's craftsmanship when you see how every single detail – even character fidgets and mouth movements – have to be spelled out for an entire 22-minute episode.

If you want a practical example of why all the revision matters, check out our DVD copy of "Some Enchanted Evening," the last episode of The Simpsons's first season (HU DVD 14324, disc 3). That episode had a famously troubled production cycle, eventually produced twice and resulting in the quality control process described by The Verge. The DVD includes commentary explaining the process as well as a few select clips of the doomed original episode. It's a great complement to the article to prove why the show needs a longer production cycle.

75 years later, celebrating Bugs Bunny – and looking at his contentious history

Today marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of Bugs Bunny, Warner Bros.'s de facto cartoon mascot and a symbol of the golden age of animation (and maybe LeBron James's future co-star?). Though Bugs is an immediately recognizable icon today, it took hundreds of theatrical animated shorts and countless years of Saturday morning television shows to get there. And those decades have left behind countless historical artifacts of the birth of popular animation that Warner has thankfully preserved and shared for future generations – including the unseemly current of prejudice and xenophobia that sadly defined Looney Tunes for years.

This DVD set, the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, remains the best collection of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts available anywhere. Across six volumes, the compilation includes a breathtaking 360 animated shorts, spanning from 1929 (before the Looney Tunes name even existed) up to the 3D, CG-created Road Runner shorts from 2010. Each disc includes audio commentaries for select shorts from famous animators, as well as fascinating Looney Tunes ephemera such as interviews and behind-the-scenes footage. If you ever wanted to see Mel Blanc recording the voice of Bugs Bunny, you can find some candid footage on the first disc of Volume 1.

But as mentioned, many of these earlier Bugs Bunny shorts were produced at a time far, far less attune to the hurtfulness of racist and sexist stereotypes. A number of the shorts in this collection traffic in insensitive and damaging racial humor that was unchecked, and Warner Bros. has thankfully included those unedited where possible. Several cartoons known as the Censored Eleven have never been released on home media. Warner Bros. eloquently defends their inclusion in the collection with a message that appears at the top of each DVD:

The cartoons you are about to see are products of their time. They may depict some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that were commonplace in American society. These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today. While the following does not represent the Warner Bros. view of society, these cartoons are being presented as they were originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as to claim these prejudices never existed.

That's a powerful statement in defense of artistic history, and with that unfortunate past acknowledged, it's easier to appreciate the wealth of animated joy Bugs Bunny and directors Tex Avery and Chuck Jones helped bring into the world.

The AU Library proudly circulates three volumes of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, as well as a massive collection of Tex Avery's adjacent work from the golden age of animation. Any are suitable viewing for Bugs's big milestone.

Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 1 – HU DVD 3231 - 3234
Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 2 – HU DVD 3235 - 3238
Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 6 – HU DVD 8181 - 8184
The Compleat Tex Avery – DVD 9781 - 9789
Space Jam – HU DVD 7990

Animation fan? Check out hard-to-find shorts from The Animation Show of Shows

Yesterday in our new acquisitions post, we mentioned The Animation Show of Shows (HU DVD 12101 - 12154), a giant collection of world animation we recently added to our shelves. We want to talk a little before about this series; it's a remarkable showcase of diverse talent that any animation fan should seek out.

The Animation Show of Shows is a traveling exhibition of animation from across the globe that began in 1999. The event has emerged as one of the leading showcases of short-form animation, especially as it has hosted many Oscar-nominated shorts. As a supplement to their shows, the organizers also publish DVD box sets of collected animated shorts, many of which were previously unavailable or only in limited distribution.

The complete Animation Show of Shows collection – totaling a whopping 54 discs – includes decades of terrific animated shorts in nearly every conceivable format and from nearly every continent. We previously highlighted the famous Logorama short (HU DVD 12148), but there are 161 other shorts worth your attention in this box set. Highlights include:

• Let's Pollute (HU DVD 12150), a satirical educational video about the benefits of being un-environmental
• Harvie Krumpet (HU DVD 12127), a Geoffrey Rush-narrated claymation film about a very unlucky Polish man
• Oktapodi (HU DVD 12121), an octopus love story
• Ski Jumping Pairs (HU DVD 12102), coverage of the fictional, impossible doubles ski jump Olympic event

If you consider yourself an animation fan (or even if you've just felt guilty about never watching anything in the Animated Short Film category), you'll want to check out at least a disc or two of this collection. Many of these shorts are unavailable anywhere else!

Learn the secrets of Disney animation in 3 minutes

Walt Disney once employed a team informally known as the "Nine Old Men," nine of the greatest animators of all time and the artistic forces behind nearly the first forty years of Disney animation. If you watch classic Disney movies today, their bold and fluid animations are still astounding and a great artistic accomplishment. Two of Nine Old Men, Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, explained the "12 basic principles" behind their iconic style in The Illusion of Life, a book that is now considered one of the most important animation reference works.

But let's face it, this is about animation. You want to see it in motion, right?

Artist Cento Lodigiani put together a great 3-minute clip demonstrating each of the twelve principles, from basics like "staging" to advanced ideas like "follow through." Lodigiani is not a Disney animator, but it's easy to see how many of the illustrated principles apply to films like Snow White and Fantasia. Especially "secondary action," which you can see at play in "Whistle While You Work."

There's of course more than twelve principles to quality animation, but this is a fun, non-technical peek into what goes through the minds of great animators.

Animated GIFs: The Birth of a Medium | Off Book | PBS

Here's a great little piece on animated GIFs from the PBS art series, Off Book.

Animated GIFs: The Birth of a Medium | Off Book | PBS

Create a cool animated photo montage in After Effects

This 14 step online tutorial from Layers Magazine teaches you how to create a really cool animated photo montage. It's structured in a way that easily enables you to switch out the photos in the animation for new ones as well. Your final result will be a short animated Quicktime movie. Check it out!

How to create an Animated Photo Montage

1 IMPORT SLIDESHOW ASSETS
In After Effects, double-click in the Project panel to bring up the Import File dialog, then locate and import the images you wish to use. For our project, I’m importing three folders of photos of yours truly training in the Italian Alps before a big race in Spain and one paper-texture image I downloaded from iStockphoto to use as a background. Note: Though not imperative, ensuring your snapshot images are all the same pixel size will make this project a breeze to complete at the end.

Continue on to the Layers Magazine tutorial

Live Action Test Footage from Disney's Alice in Wonderland

Film archivist lostvocals4 has posted live action test footage for the mad tea party scene in Disney’s 1951 animated rendition of Alice in Wonderland. Upon comparing the live action test to the final film, the archivist discovered much of the test audio was used in the final film.

lostvocals4 says:

"Walt Disney often filmed actors as models for his animated features. What's surprising is that the audio from this crude footage for "Alice in Wonderland" is the actual audio used in the film. When Ed Wynn was brought back in to the recording studio to re-do his lines, the reading was not as good as the reference tests, so the test audio was used for the film.

I've synched up the test and the released film with black placed where edits were made."

As seen on Laughing Squid and The World’s Best Ever

Check out a version of Alice in Wonderland from the Media Services Home Use Collection!

Alice in Wonderland (1951) - HU DVD 995

Alice in Wonderland (2010) - HU DVD 7719

Alice in Wonderland (2010) - BLU-RAY DVD 7719

Fox Considering An All-’Simpsons’ TV Channel

THE SIMPSONS: Season 1 - Season 3 - HU DVD 6581 - 6591

Where can The Simpsons, television’s longest-running American prime time, scripted series, go from here? If Fox executives have their way, everyone’s favorite yellow family might get their own TV channel. At a recent media conference, News Corp.’s Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey said the company is looking for ways to increase revenue from the long running show and said an all-Simpsons channel has been discussed. Read more after the jump.

Slice of Sci-Fi alerted us to this surprising, but fairly logical, turn of events. Carey was at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media Communications & Entertainment Conference in Beverly Hills and said The Simpsons, well on its way to 500 episodes as its 23rd season is about to kick off, shows “no signs of slowing down.” However, there’s only so much money to be made from merchandising, syndicated repeats and DVD sales after 20 plus years.

Carey said there have been a “number of meetings” to determine how to capitalize on its library of episodes of The Simpsons and he mentioned a digital channel featuring nothing but Homer and the gang as being a possibility. Carey said it is incumbent on the company to take advantage of a show that is “unique in television with a volume, too, that is unprecedented.”

Read more.

As seen on the Slashfilm.com

Must-see animation: Bayeux Tapestry (2009)

A simple concept done to perfection. The Battle of Hastings as depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry with sound effects.

link


The producers, Potion Graphics, also came up with this entertaining short, Fear with Alfred Hitchcock.

Terry Gilliam shows how he creates cut-out animation in this 1974 video clip!

In this BBC clip from 1974, Terry Gilliam shows viewers how he creates cut-out animations, a technique he used to hilarious effect on Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The clip is from the Do-It-Yourself Animation Show, a children’s educational series about animation that was hosted by British animator Bob Godfrey.

As seen on Laughing Squid blog, by way of Cartoon Brew.

Interactive Media: Flash, pt 4 - Getting Started with Animation

Once you get to the point where you can draw in Flash with some competency you need to learn how to animate.

For those of you who are AU students, the best place to go for this type of training is Lynda.com. But, if you're not or you just want to learn how to do some pretty amazing stuff with Flash animation (such as 3D graphics or even augmented reality), Adobe's Developer Connection website has a large number of tutorials on animating in Flash. Most of these tutorials are text tutorials, though there are a few videos, but don't let that dissuade you. You can learn some REALLY amazing things from these tutorials.

So check out the listing and learn to make some amazing animations and more.

Interactive Media: Flash, pt. 1 - Introduction

If you've been on the internet at all in the past five years, you've used flash. Most of the time it manifests itself as the Flash Player, a plugin for your browser which allows you to view Flash content online.

But what if you're not just interested in viewing Flash content, what if you're interested in creating it? If that's the case you're in the right place.

For starters it's important to understand what Flash is and what it can do.

Flash is a development environment acquired by Adobe when they bought Macromedia. It allows users to do two distinct things: animate and create interactive media (usually games). Flash is also the basis for many popular websites, YouTube, most notably.

But there are a lot of other websites out there that feature Flash content. For animation it's worth looking at Newgrounds. There is a HUGE amount of Flash animation on this site and most of it is fairly well done.

As for games the best place to see a lot of excellent Flash games is Addicting Games.

Stay tuned to learn how you can start churning out some animation or Flash games.