Oscar news is enough to animate studio boss

'An Auckland animation company got an Oscar thrill yesterday - its work is part of a documentary in line for one of the Hollywood awards.

The Grey Lynn-based company, Flux Animation Studio, worked with former United States Vice-President Al Gore on his global warming movie, An Inconvenient Truth, which is a frontrunner for best documentary at the Academy Awards on February 25 in Hollywood.

The feature-length film follows Mr Gore's campaign to spread the word about the effects of climate change and the dangers of global warming.

Flux created two animation sequences for the movie. The first, directed by Andrew Newland, is about a polar bear searching for a piece of ice.

The other, directed by Fraser Monroe, shows what happens to a frog when the water he is swimming in is heated to boiling point.

Company founder and creative director Brent Chambers was excited to find the movie was among the nominations yesterday.

"We're absolutely rapt because it was a bit of a punt initially but it seemed like a good cause," he said.....'

Source : NZ Herald

I'm really happy about this. I did some contract work for that studio on another project and thoroughly enjoyed working for them. It's good to see people's hard work being recognised.

Power of the Dark Crystal

Nothing I can write here can really do justice to the original Dark Crystal. It had Jim Henson's signature attention to details, an involved story and vibrant characters. The puppetry was excellent and even the jungle and swamps looked appropriately alien.

I couldn't contain my excitement when I first heard a sequel was being made, and anticipation doubled when I heard that Genndy Tartakovsky was tagged as director (by far one of my favourite directors and creator of cartoons..)

According to Variety.com, "The Power of the Dark Crystal" picks up several hundred to a thousand years after the conclusion of the first film, with Jen and Kira as rulers of the land. A myserious girl appears, trying to save her world, located within the centre of the planet. The sun of her world is dying, and the only thing that'll save it is a shard from the Dark Crystal.

Like the original film, this production will star puppets crafted and operated by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. However, the backgrounds will be CG. Normally I'd be against this (personal preference: I like the look of old fashioned sets and animatronics) but I think it'd work for this one.

I'm really looking forward to this. Release slated for Spring 2008.

In related news, it sounds like a Fraggle Rock movie and a sequel for The Labyrinth are also in preproduction.

Made a list. Checked it twice.

I have indeed made a list of things. O, the things on the list! Many may be too out of date to be called "news", but certainly it's mostly interesting stuff. Not only does it have a few new things, but it has old things that I never posted and even a notation for the entry that disappeared.

Enjoy your Festivus.

My first Flash.

I've only been trained in traditional 2D animation, so I'm very proud of making a(very simple) Flash animation.

This is the protagonist, Chuck Grimes from my 2005 student project "Pigeon Problems". He's actually quite out of character in this, he's hardly tranquil. Has a thing about cleaning windows: He likes to clean windows. Has another thing about pigeons: He doesn't like to clean pigeons. He doesn't like them at all.

I had never entirely finished the film. All the animation was done, but there's still at least 20 seconds of clean-up remaining. Recently I brought it out of storage to work on until my next work contract.

I put up a post a few days ago, but it seems to have vanished into the nethers of the internet instead of appearing on here, so I'll see if I can find it. Until then, a floating Grimes. :)

Tim Biskup

It'd been a few days since I had read through the Drawn website, and I found this neat link to an article by Mark Frauenfelder from BoingBoing.net: 7 Things You Should Know About Tim Biskup. It's a very good read, gives a lot of insight into Tim Biskup's work history, some of the people who have inspired him, and his sleeping habits.

His paintings have got to be seen to be believed. Find more about Tim Biskup here

Tenacious D-Classico

This may be the funniest thing I've seen all year. From John Kricfalusi, and Tenacious D's movie "The Pick of Destiny", comes "Classico". It was released on October 30th. Be sure to go see the movie, buy the album. If we don't support the artists, we won't see gems like this. This vid does contain mature content so if you're easily offended, or a prude, I recommend you watch this anyway.

Dark Fury

The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury.

I've had this sitting around for a while, meaning to watch. I wish I had watched it sooner. Directed by Peter Chung (creator of the Aeon Flux animated series that a later movie was loosely based on, he also directed "Matriculated" for the "Animatrix" collection of short animated films set in the Matrix universe.), this is a made-for-DVD movie that takes place "Pitch Black" and provides the setup for it's sequel, "The Chronicles of Riddick".

The plot follows the characters of Riddick, Abu, and Jack (aka Kyra in CoR). Riddick and Co. are picked up by a mercenary ship run by the creepy art-loving noblewoman Antonia Chillingsworth and her numerous hirelings. The catch: her taste in art is death, and Riddick is the perfect artist. Riddick is forced to fight for her entertainment, and is forced to consider that he may be fighting for more than just his own survival.

The film is another example of Chung's directing talents and style. His characters are complicated and quirky, with a definate trend towards the surreal. Chillingsworth herself conjurs images harking back to AeonFlux, though so do the numerous minions coming to unfortunate, bloody ends. I quite enjoyed this, but I recommend using a screen that isn't burnt out as the images on screen are quite dark for the majority of the time.