Friday, October 26, 2012
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Figurines by Jake Waldron..
Friday, October 19, 2012
Rise of the Guardians
I
first met Bill Joyce at the Stuttgart Animation Festival with his buddy Brandon
Oldenburg, where they were presenting “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris
Lessmore”, which eventually won the Oscar for best animated short that
year. You also may know him from
his other films, “Robots” and “Meet the Robinsons”. I've just seen his new film
“The Rise of the Guardians”, which will be released by Dreamworks later this
month.
What
a tour de force! Amazing story, great character design and fantastic animation!
It's a story about children's fantasy characters like the Easter Bunny, Santa
Claus, The Tooth Fairy, Sandman and Jack Frost, as they fight the evil
nightmare goblin.
According
to the director, Jeffrey Katzenberg left his influence off the production of
the film and that’s why it’s such a great film. If I have one complaint about it, it's that for a
roller-coaster ride of a film, there are a few too many ups and downs on the
coaster. But otherwise, it's full
of great fun and fantasy.
Tell
your friends to go see it – I give it an “A”.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Cheatin' Production Blog - Episode Ten - Animation - Part 01
First of several episodes about my animation process, I use my layouts to discuss principals such as squash and stretch while drawing a sequence of pencil test footage
Cheatin' Production Blog - Episode Ten - Animation - Part 01 from Bill Plympton on Vimeo.
Enjoy!
New York Comic Con
Once again, it was time for the New York Comic Con, and now that I'm a responsible father with a 3-week old child, I had to cut down on my booth time. However, I was able to spend a few hours each day at the table selling merch, especially my new book, “Make Toons That Sell Without Selling Out” from Focal Press.
And I was able to cruise the convention to see some of my friends – I visited Bob Camp (“Ren & Stimpy”), Larry Hama (“G.I. Joe”), Bobby and Kei Chui from Toronto and illustrators Tom Hachtman, Felipe Galindo and Randy Jones.
Thank God, they gave us a much better booth location than last year, when we were hidden behind the Marvel/DC juggernaut and too close to the garbage landing. But even though we were much more visible, we were stuck among the toy vendors – what does that have to do with animation? I don't know. Some people said we were the only animation booth (indie or corporate) at the convention.
Regardless, we did pretty fair business, and it's always fun to meet my fans and talk about animation.
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Monday, October 15, 2012
Bicicleta Sem Freio..
Great imagery, obviously skate culture influenced (blue skin is the give-away, conjures up screaming hands aka phillips:) by Bicicleta Sem Freio, enjoy..
Friday, October 12, 2012
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
"Cloud Atlas" review.. and a cartoon.
Last week I saw the controversial film "Cloud Atlas" by the Wachowski's and Tom Tywker.
It's a very experimental film despite it's large budget- 100 million. If you haven't heard it's 6 semi-related stories in different eras of history. Although the common theme is love of humanity, it's a very large concept to tackle and I believe the filmmakers are largely successful.
The acting by Halle Barry, Tom Hanks, Hugo weaving and others playing multiple roles is very engaging. The problem is it takes too long to get to the end. The story is so complex and convoluted that I lost my patience about 2 thirds of the way though. It's a 2 hour plus film.
I believe it will be the darling of the critics but it's going to be tough to sell to the American public. I give Cloud Atlas a B-
Here's my cartoon of the week- Although I generally don't like verbal puns- I just thought that its a timely idea for these green times:
