Animation screening

I wanted to detail an event that came together seamlessly and on very short notice the other evening due to some great collaboration between our staff.  Bardel Entertainment, which hires a great deal of our animation grads (current number is around 15) was stuck for a venue last Tuesday to hold a private screening of a ‘soon to be released’ animated feature film they had worked on.  Anne Denman, the studio manager, called me and asked if we could facilitate this event which was happening in 2 days.  This required the quick action of Meredith Schuurman to communicate with her instructor Tony Lewis And ask if his lecture theatre class could be re-located as it conflicted with the time and place needed for the screening.  Thanks to Meredith and Tony’s quick dialogue, I was able to confirm with Bardel that we could indeed hold this event, which required seating for close to 40 people, including several local economic luminaries, Bardel artists and CATO alumni who had worked on the film.  The event was to be catered and alcohol provided.  The event was invite only and due to the private nature of the film being screened, it needed to be viewed in our lecture theatre with all windows blacked out and any recording devices confiscated.  The party and screening came off without a hitch and there was much applause and congratulatory dialogue during the credits.  Anne gave a big shout out to CATO for hosting this event in such short time and providing such nice facilities.

In addition to Meredith and Tony, I want to give my own big shout out to Randal Typusiak who’s own event in the lecture theatre (planned much more in advance) preceded mine by about 15 minutes and who showed such unselfish professional concern that my event not be negatively affected.  To Ryan Campbell and Scott Rees for their dialogue and coordination to ensure that things got set up according to Bardel’s specifications and that it provided as little distraction to the ongoing scheduled classes as possible.  To Anne Pawlowski and Suzanne Kruse in scheduling, Carrera Teal and Amy Nutt in marketing, Trista Godfrey in the equipment cage, all of whom played a role in making this happen.  All in all it just reconfirms what an awesome team we have and I was moved how everyone jumped in on short notice to help me coordinate this event and make it the success it was.  Thank you all!

On a personal note, I was quite emotional due to the inspiring nature and quality of the animated film, but also this was a watershed moment for the animation program in how hard it has worked to foster local industry relations and for the celebration of our alumni whom all talked glowingly of their jobs and how it felt to be back at CATO in this capacity.  It was also very cool to learn that this film had only been screened at TIFF, Cannes and now CATO!

Industry night for our grads

Well last night was the final nail in the proverbial coffin for our 2D and 3D grads.  They presented their work and revealed their goals in a presentation in front of animation representatives from Yeti Farm Creative, Atomic Cartoons, Bardel Entertainment and Disney Online Canada.  I can't believe how fast the time goes, but I'm very proud of each one and feel honoured to call them our grads.  Check out the links to their portfolios.

Classic film from Tim Burton

Check out this 1982 version of Hansel and Gretel.  It was written and directed by Tim Burton while still with Disney.  Once again, this was a case of Tim Burton's unique genius and originality that the old guard at Disney did not get at first.  It aired once during a Halloween special and has since never surfaced publicly...until now!

It is a bizarre little film, also demonstrating his love of Japanese culture.  Hard to believe he was only 7 years away from directing the first big budget Batman movie.

Hey it's been a while since my last post.  I'm very excited to be returning to the 'blogsphere' to announce our new 2D Animation and Digital Arts program at the Centre for Arts and Technology in beautiful Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada.

We have 5 new students who are in their first quarter of the program and have just created their first animation blog.  Follow the links, view their work and leave some comments for them.

A few additional pics of Ottawa

Parliament Hill

Art Gallery

Double decker bus from picnic

Judges for the pumpkin carving contest (David Silverman, director of Simpson's movie, is on the right)

Pumpkins!

Day 4

Ronnie Del Carmen

Peter Sohn

Henry Selick

Wow, last night was Henry Selick discussing his career and creating 'Coraline'. A very animated and funny guy. He has been doing stop motion a very long time. I throughly enjoyed listening to him and was very inspired by his passion for this artform.

This morning I finally took in some animated short films. I bumped into Clive, the Australian composer and we had coffee and then took in the screening. Some very good animation, some experimental. The overall tone of the films were very personal and at times depressing. I would have liked to laugh more. It seems everyone wants to use this as some kind of cathartic therapy or something. Again, very interesting styles, but too personal and dark for my liking. I hope to catch one more screening at 9pm, but with a 6am wake up call, that might not happen.

I visited the Arts court where Disney, Studio B, Nelvana and such were looking at portfolios. Some other animation schools also had booths there, so I took some information and chatted them up.

Eric Goldberg from Disney (he created the Genie from Aladdin and is working on Princess and the Frog) sat with me on the bus to the Museum. Very lovable looking old guy, just taking the bus and enjoying the festival like the rest of us. A few fan girls were bugging him and wanted to show their Genie watch. He really laughed at that.

This afternoon was Peter Sohn from Pixar, the director of 'Partly Cloudy'. Amazing, amazing presentation. He had us laughing and marveling at this work so much. He pretty much storyboarded his whole presentation for us (see above picture as an example) and went through the entire process of making the film from the 'seed' of an idea, the pitch process, story, character and technical development right down to the rendering challenges. Very interesting and he showed tons of drawings and shared a huge amount of development work. I wish the students could have seen this one. Afterwards he signed posters and I got one made out to the students at school.

Tonight is Ronnie Del Carmen, the story supervisor on 'Up'. That again will be a packed house and I will need to get there early.

Ronnie was great. He talked all about the story process of 'Up'. He shared tons of artwork, storyboards, anecdotes and photos about their research trip to South America. We also got a special advanced screening of the new short that will appear on the 'Up' DVD in November. It's called 'Dug's Secret Mission' (I believe). Very funny, but what else would you expect.

I feel very privelaged to have heard these artists from Pixar talk about their processes. Hugely insightful and inspiring. They have it all figured out.

And that my friends will wrap up my festival itinerary. It has been amazing! Great weather, great people, tons of info and animation geekery alike.

Day 3

TAC is over, now I can start enjoying more of the festival things. I get to sleep in until 8am and then have some breakfast before I head over to 'Big Jump Productions'. They are about as far out as Mercury, so I make sure I have time for the cab ride. Big Jump was started about two years ago by brothers Rick and Cory Morrison and has risen from the ashes of Funbag. Cory is great and really took time to show me around and answer my questions. They are doing some gorgeous work using Flash, which thankfully doesn't look like Flash. They have a really talented group who can draw, design and animate. It's not a big studio, but they are growing and have a strong slate of work coming. They are currently hiring right now as well.

I've discovered that due to the Ontario tax credit, which is what allows the animation studios to survive, is that the studio's in the province are limited to only hiring within the province. They hope to see that change, but as for now they cannot afford to hire an artist without that tax break.

Next it was off to Strathcona park for the Animator's picnic (as seen in the photos), in which I took a whole wack of photos. There was tons of free booze and food. It's mainly outdoors and chilly, but a perfect sunny day with lots of beautiful fall scenery. Lots of networking again and catching up with people. I met up with Anne Denman, head recruiter of Studio B and hope to set something up back home with her. I also got to catch up with Robyn Budd, who was our DisneyToronto director on 'Peter Pan 2-Return to Neverland'. He is a very talented and widely respected director. I got to talk with two guys who sold their idea to Teletoon a few weeks back and have another show idea that is looking promising. They are very cool guys and are really getting an edcuation about giving birth to an idea and handing it over to others to produce and develop.

That brings you up to date. I'm going to get another swim in and then head over to the Museum of Civilzation to hear Henry Selick talk about 'Coraline'. That is going to be packed so I should head early. It starts at 6:30.

Later everyone!