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Neum

A few years ago, I was at the Banja Luca Film Festival in Croatia, and I met Jurinko Rajic, the director of the Neum Animation Film Festival (NAFF). He invited me to his festival, and I was a bit indifferent. Then he showed me the brochure for the fest, and I noticed it was at a fantastic hotel at the beach of the lovely Adriatic Sea. I said, "Sign me up."

So, after the Moscow experience, I flew down to lovely Dubrovnic, and then onto Neum, "The Riviera of the Adriatic." I must say this festival is one of the most unique that I ever attended. The screenings take place on this lovely outdoor terrace, with a view of the stars, and a picture-perfect harbor. As the warm summer breeze blows by, you get to witness some of the region's best animation. Some of them are amazing!

The most endearing quality about the festival is that it's truly a family-run one. Jurinko and Sanja run the day-to-day operation, and his 2 daughters Rhinea and Aleta take care of hosting the attendees. Also, other cousins, nieces and uncles take care of other festival duties. Unfortunately, the town is quite small so that audiences are not as massive as Annecy, but the intimacy has its own special charm.

Every morning I'd go swimming in the delightfully clear and warm harbor, along with numerous tourists from Poland, Czech Republic, and France. There were wonderful daytime excursions to fascinating places: the ancient bridge at Mostar, the Catholic shrines for Pilgrims at Medjugorje (where 6 little girls saw The Virgin Mary in 1981), and of course Dubrovnic; a very charming a picaresque ancient fortress and harbor.

My former producer, Biljana Labovic, has been raving about this town for years, and I am happy to confirm her claims of this special place. I hope to return to this marvelous festival and I urge all of you animators to send your films there. By all means, try to attend; you'll have the time of your life. The hospitality can't be beat.

I give the Neum Animation Film Festival an A-.

Gold Coast FF

I've been a friend of Donna Dickman, a fellow academy member for a long time. And when she first invited me to the Gold Coast Film Festival I wasn't that excited. But just that night on T.V. there was a story of the demolition of the famed "Great Gatsby House" supposedly the model for F Scott Fitzgerald's famous book. The newscast went on to explain how at one time the northern shore of Long Island was the resort area for Manhattan rich and famous – hence the "Gold Coast." The next time I saw Donna I said count me in! I planned a master class and a film screening but since I was in the middle of two big projects I could only attend for one day.

The highlight was the master class because it took place in the NYIT de Seversky Mansion (he's the guy who helped developed the helicopter). It was quite a juxtaposition, me showing my rude crude animations in the beautiful old 19^th century mansion. But the coolest thing was the tour I got after my show. I came to find out that it was on this property that computer animation was born. It was here that the New York institute of technology amassed the first group of people to experiment with CG people like Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith. I also heard that Chris Wedge also learned CGI at NYIT. They should put up a plaque commemorating this hallowed ground. They even talked to me about holding some kind of animation festival here, to bring together all the people who started animation. What a great idea. In any case for the 1^st year The Gold Coast Festival was a big success and I hope to return. Thanks Donna!

I give the festival a B-

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One of the best movie posters ever..

"Rocketeer" is a bit of a forgotten classic if you ask me.  Stumbled upon this epic art deco poster.

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Adam Haynes... Rad.

Bend Oregon area artist Adam Haynes defines his vision of the world through the language of his surroundings—the vivid geography of the Cascade Range and the off-kilter character of its rural inhabitants. That was from his bio off his epic blog. Enjoy.

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Julian Callos.. rad.

Some great illustration from Los Angeles artist Julian Callos, Enjoy

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The weather finally turned better and the crowds got bigger. I met with Lucie Marijeau and we did organized signing of our book "Bill Plympton; portrait of a Serial Cartoonist." It's a wonderful book half in French and half in English.

We had a talk set up at the wonderful B.D. Fugue by Vincent. I sold a lot of the large Rizzdi book "Independently Animated." In fact we sold out in two days. But the French book didn't sell as well because it was priced way too high. I hope the publisher is able to bring the price down because it's a wonderful book but way too expensive.

After talking to Leslie Iwerks and hearing more Disney/Pixar gossip (which I can't divulge because I don't want to lose her as a friend) at the Disney BBQ, I raced over to the Le Code bar for the 6^th annual Annecy + Festival. The bar was somewhat smaller than usual but jam-packed. We again had the Annecy + band starring Nick Phelps and the wonderful Jonas Realm as our projectionist. We used a LED sheet against a wall for our screen. The films that Nancy and I selected were big hits with the audience (they were all rejected by the Annecy select in Jury). The party went late into the night and even the gendarmes showed up to block up the noise. I am happy to announce the winning films: "Bottle" by Kirsten Lepore, "Things You Better not Mix Up" by Joost Lieuwma and "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mrs. Morris Lessmore" by William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg. By the way all the winners will receive valuable prizes.

The next morning I could finally relax and enjoy some leisure time. I went to see competition #3 (very good), sold the last of my DVDs at the Bonlieu with Spike, and I finally went for a swim in the delightful crystal clean Lac d'Annecy.

I then attended the closing ceremony. This being the year for American films, Serge Dressed as a cowboy and road in on a horse. I was disappointed in the feature film winners but I liked all the choices for the shorts. Get the complete list here.

It was a very rich and entertaining festival for me and as usual I look forward to attending next year. And if your film is rejected by the Annecy selection jury, remember you can always send it to Nancy or I at the prestigious Annecy + Festival.

And you should make plans to go for next year.

Au Revoir Annecy et Serge!

Annecy Animation Festival - Part 2

Since there were so many great events at Annecy I've decided to break Scribble Junkies up into different installments. Being that I've been going for so many years I was invited to a very exclusive luncheon with The Culture Minister of France, The Mayor of Annecy and the US Ambassador Charlie Rifkin (who actually has an extensive background in animation being once the head of Henson Productions.) You could tell that Charlie Rifkin was important due to being accompanied by two CIA agents in a very large black vehicle that had heavy bullet and bomb proof protection.

One of the major reasons I attended Annecy was to make some money. My current income stream has been quite meager lately so I look to these festivals as great sources of income. Hence I brought a large collection of my DVDs, books and drawings to sell.

There are two main sales locations in the festival center in Bonlieu, one is the graphic novel bookshop, The B.D. Fugue and the other is The Bibliotek that specializes in DVDs. However, I prefer to keep all the sales from my merch so I do the maverick thing and just take over a table in the middle of the boutique and sell my merch out of my suitcase.

The outrageous Spike Decker often joined me. He always dressed up in some completely custom costume. This time it was as a cowboy in a 30-gallon hat and with his booming voice he would attract would-be-buyers with such corny talk as "Come see Bill Plympton actually make drawings using only his hand! No computers!" or "Come say hello to Winsor McCay, Carla Bruni and Woody Allen!" or "Two sailors and a nun walk into a bar…" His booming voice was heard by everyone and soon we had a large buying crowd around our tables, typical sleazy American sales tactics. We also plan to work together at the San Diego Comic Con where our talks will be side by side. So watch for us.

Then on Thursday evening I held my master class to a sold out audience. It was a lot of fun and I gave everyone a drawing of the famous dog. I showed "Guard Dog Global Jam" and we had two of the international team contributors up on stage to talk about their experience on the project.

Stay tuned for part III of my Annecy experiences coming soon.

New Work from Sam Gibbons..

Posted some stuff by artist Sam Gibbons a while back.. just a quick update with new images. enjoy. his site is here.

Annecy Animation Festival - Part 1

It's simply the greatest festival on earth for many reasons: the beautiful location, great films, super food, and the best audience anywhere. I've been coming to Annecy since 1985 and I've only missed one festival; I hope to continue attending every year.

This year I arrived late because of a stupid screw-up with my passport that forced me to get an emergency passport the day after my planned departure. But fortunately I arrived in time for the premier of Alexia Anastasio's wonderful documentary about me called "Adventures in Plymptoons". It was a big crowd and they seemed to love it, and no one complained about the nude scenes of me in the mud (spoiler alert).

I was very busy at the festival – lots of events – but I was able to see one feature film "The Cat and The Rabbi". I have some complaints about the film. It was hard to "read" the character because the gestures were almost invisible against the bright backgrounds (that’s going to be a big drawback when it appears on T.V.). Also the story was more of a lecture on Jewish history. I felt like I was being talked down to. And also all the Arabian characters were stereotypically evil. I did however like the character and background design.

One of the sponsors of my appearance in Annecy was a startup festival off short called "Annecy Off". It's an outlet for young animators from around the world to get their films shown. I was the special guest so I did a master class and a lot of publicity to help promote the event. I created some art for their program and I wish them continued success with their events. Their staff Thibault, Bernont and Antoine treated me very well and I had a great time.

Later that night I attended the opening night party of MIFA (the market part of the festival). It was there that I got to catch up with a lot of old friends in the biz – Will Vinton, Pez, Mark Shapiro of Laika Studios, Spike (of Spike and Mike) and Tom Moore.

And I met some new friends – Michael Callaghan of the fantastic new Road Runner series in 3.D. and "Curious George" the feature.

And I got to meet the great Leslie Iwerks the creator of the wonderful book and documentary about her legendary grandfather Ub Iwerks. She was there to show her two newer documentaries about Pixar and ILM, both of which sadly I missed. She had some fantastic inside dirt on the big Hollywood animation studios.

Stay tuned for the next installment of Scribble Junkies and perhaps I'll divulge the hot gossip.

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