Scott Mayhew's Miraculous Self.

What I get to see everyday when I turn around from my desk.
this is true

Sonic the Hedgehog Movie Coming in 2018

Sonic the Hedgehog is set to stars in his first feature films, which will be produced by Sony Pictures and combine live-action with animation and very special. In a statement, Sega chief executive, Hajime Saito, confirmed the movie is set for release in 2018 and will be at cinema.

"Sega Sammy Group is currently planning with Sony Pictures to create a live-action and animation hybrid Sonic The Hedgehog movie scheduled for release in 2018," he said, speaking to The World Folio.

"Like with this CG animation production, we would like to expand our business into other entertainment areas beyond what we are currently involved. "

Sega is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its blue speedster this year and, as part of this, is expected to make a number of announcements over the coming months.

On February 9, it posted an image on Twitter that sparked speculation a new game was in development and made everyone surprised.

Manning’s Broncos come

With Manning’s Broncos coming away with a thrilling two-point victory over Brady’s Patriots, the Taiwanese animation creators had some fun putting together a pretty bizarre recap. Let’s break it down, shall we?


But, for as good as Manning was, the Broncos’ defense was the real MVP of the game. They constantly put pressure on Brady all day long, forcing him to take hits and make some terrible throws we’re not used to seeing him make.
They gave Manning credit for having a great game, but still found ways to poke some fun at the aging veteran.




Apparently, the pressure was so intense that Denver’s defenders managed to turn Brady into a joint.

Weird, but that’s just the beginning. From there, things took a pretty dark turn.

With Manning coming out on top on what might be the final showdown between the QBs, he now gets to sit on the throne. That throne is apparently a toilet.

Like, really dark. Here we have Broncos defenders — likely stoned on that Brady dank — dabbling in mutilation and dismemberment.

top animated film

The late '90s and mid '00s were a dreary time for Disney activity: that pre-"Solidified" period paid nothing off in the cinema world, in extensive part since movies such as "Sibling Bear" and "Home On The Range" were amazingly poor. Be that as it may, the real sparkling light (alongside "The Emperor's New Groove," which is outstandingly Chuck Jones-esque) was "Lilo and Stitch." It's a riff on "E.T." at first glance — unpredictable young lady becomes a close acquaintence with intergalactic runaway—however executives Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois (who'd go ahead to make "How To Train Your Dragon") make it sing through specificity: , who are being researched by social administrations. It maybe doesn't remain with the mid '90s late brilliant period of Disney, however it's a magnificently peculiar and hugely fulfilling film.the dazed devilishness of the delightfully maniacal Stitch, the flawlessly acknowledged Hawaiian setting, and the amazing tenderness of Lilo and her more seasoned sister 

Each era feels a feeling that the offspring of today are passing up a great opportunity for some indispensable piece of youth because of the mechanical headways of cutting edge life (right back to the first Neolithic Dad who shook his head unfortunately at his child's utilization of those brand new bronze apparatuses). However, Disney's hand-enlivened "Winnie the Pooh" from executives Don Hall and Stephen J Anderson inspires less difficult times with appeal and mind and even — pant!— recommends the joys of perusing, with the characters associating with content on the page in a constantly innovative manner. . In any case, this is a short, quiet, tenderly peculiar reverence to one of the sweetest and best-cherished youngsters' characters ever that regards Pooh's unique source material — AA Milne's superb books It's honestly for exceptionally youthful kids, and a few grown-ups who grew up with past Disney Pooh movies were clearly frustrated this wasn't exactly as, very much, Disneyfied 

In light of a tenderly dreamlike French-dialect TV appear and bearing the refinement of being the first stop-movement activity ever to be appeared in Cannes, "A Town Called Panic" from Belgians Stéphane Aubier andVincent Patar is the silly story of Cowboy (a plastic toy cattle rustler), Indian (a plastic toy Indian) and Horse (a plastic toy you get the thought) who live respectively in a house in the nation and get into baffling scratches. An endeavor to observe Horse's birthday goes amiss when a web request for 50 blocks incidentally is confused for 50 million blocks, thus they assemble huge dividers which are stolen by noxious ocean animals, so they go track them down through a territories cold, airborne, underground and forested… the plot has neither rhyme nor reason and the story can feel as jerky as the charmingly unrefined liveliness. But on the other hand it's contributed with an absolutely insane person vitality that is less about fabulous account circular segments than the passing communications and weirdnesses that pack each and every b

Long Winter Sale and New Character Benny

Head on over to Long Winter and check out the new character they just released. Benny! He is one of their first creature type characters and is super fun! I like that he still fits in the world of the rest of that cast so if you have gotten any of the previous rigs then he will look great interacting with them.

Check out some of his Demos

Benny Face Demo from Long Winter Studios on Vimeo.

Benny Body Demo from Long Winter Studios on Vimeo.

Long Winter also has a great sale going on right now with their rigs. There are a bunch of Combo Packs to check out, so Login and explore.

Enjoy!

JP

How to Create a Great Animation Pitch

Learning to pitch is an important skill for any artist. Sooner or later you will be called on to persuade a client that you have a great idea to sell their product, or perhaps try to sell your own idea for a TV series or feature film to a network or production company. Either way, you're going to need to learn how to pitch your ideas. Pitching is not just about standing up and delivering a persuasive summary of your awesome idea, it's also about what should go into it in the first place. How much character work and design do you need to do? How well thought out does your story need to be?  In this excellent blog post, Disney designer Chris Oatley explains what goes into a great animation pitch and bible.

For more on the experience of studying at Bucks New University, come and visit us at one of our Open Days,  take a virtual tour of one of our animation studios, check out what our students think of our course, and see why we're ranked in the top 12 creative universities in the UK. Find out why we're giving free laptops to all our students, and why we give all our students free access to videos at Lynda.com. Also, see what financial assistance might be available to you. Learn which is better for animation, a PC or a Mac? Get hold of a copy of a map so you can find your way around campus, and learn about motion capture at Bucks.
 

Profit Margins

The Fool (not me, another fool) shines a light on Disney movie grosses and Disney profits.

... Marvel's The Avengers set new opening weekend records in May 2012, going on to earn over $1.5 billion worldwide. Among Disney pictures, only Frozen has produced more profit since the studio took full control of Pixar in May 2006.



Most Profitable Films -- Total Gross -- Gross Profit -- Profit %



Frozen -- $1,274,219,009 -- $628,559,074 -- 40.57%



The Avengers -- $1,518,594,910 -- $621,295,630 -- 35.82%



Toy Story 3 -- $1,063,171,911 -- $447,485,580 -- 34.13% ...

... From the close of the Pixar acquisition on May 9, 2006, to today, Disney has added roughly $90 billion in market cap -- from just over $62 billion to more than $155 billion as of this writing. Pixar is probably responsible for over half those gains. ...

Which isn't to say that Marvel's been a slouch, just that buying Pixar (which, let's face it, wouldn't have happened if Michael Eisner had remained in charge) has been one of Iger's better strategic moves.



One management team (Catmull and Lasseter) runs two successful cartoon studios; also, too, the less successful DisneyToon Studios. So all in all, the $7.2 billion purchase of Pixar in 2006 has paid off.



The Marvel acquisition has worked well too, just not as richly as the Emeryville pick-up.



And with the torrent of good news, there was today this announcement:

Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios promoted both Walt Disney Animation Studios' Andrew Millstein and Pixar Animation Studios’ Jim Morris to president.



“We're fortunate and proud to have an abundance of strong creative leadership at Disney, and Andrew and Jim are two incredible talents that embody the perfect blend of business and artistic focus,” said Ed Catmull, president of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios. ...

To give you the chronology, Mr. Millstein was a DreamQuest executive when Disney bought the visual effects house in the late '90s. (This was long before VFX studios were dying like fruit flies. Andrew was part of the Disney team that negotiated the Secret Lab contract in 1999. I was part of the union group on the other side of the table).



Andrew Millstein ran The Secret Lab -- feature animation's internal visual effects facility -- and after that Disney Animation Florida. When the Orlando facility closed in the mid oughts, Mr. Millstein returned to the California studio (now known as The Walt Disney Animation Studios, and has worked there ever since.



Congratulations to both Andrew and Jim Morris.

"B.O.O." Push

The Times reports:

... DreamWorks has decided to push back the release date for "B.O.O.: Bureau of Other Worldly Operations," one of two original movies (rather than sequels) planned for next year, two people close to the studio said.



One person said DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg was unhappy with the progress of the film, while another said the decision had more to do with the competitive landscape the studio faces next summer. Pixar also will release its movie "Inside Out" in June. ...

The story I got from staffers during a trek through the studio last week was that the story needs work. A recent presentation of the feature to lead creatives and execs indicated weaknesses, and so the shift in release dates maybe isn't a surprise, eh?



A note to the uninitiated: In Animationland, stories almost always need "tweaking". Sometimes a whole lot of major league tweaking.

Pixar's orphan movie "The Good Dinosaur" has a new parent — and a new story..



First-time feature director Peter Sohn, an artist at the studio in Emeryville, Calif., since 2000, unofficially took over the film a few months after Pixar executives removed its first director, Bob Peterson, amid creative concerns in the summer of 2013.



Over the last year, Sohn has been quietly streamlining the story, a buddy comedy about a teenage dinosaur and a human boy, in preparation for a November 2015 release. ...

THE RESCUERS Pan B/G

THE RESCUERS (Disney, 1977) was a landmark film, marking the passing of the animation baton from the Nine Old Men to the new generation of animators. It's a beautiful film, visually and emotionally. Lots of old school Disney charm!

Today I've digitally re-assembled a fabulous pan background. Our hero Evinrude flies across this swampy landscape to escape some nasty bats.

I left Evinrude in the first frame. He's to cute to digitally eradicate!

As usual with a pan B/G, I'm posting the entire image, then broken it into thirds so you can savor the detail. As this was a night scene, out of necessity I've lightened the artwork so the details POP.

Beautiful artwork from a lovely little film!

Disney Renewal

Diz Jr. has re-upped a high-performing cartoon half-hour.

Disney Junior has ordered a second season of its breakout series Sheriff Callie’s Wild West. The series starring Mandy Moore as the voice of Sheriff Callie was the first Disney/ABC Television Group show to launch on the company’s Watch mobile platform. It amassed more than 23 million views in its launch window. The success translated on-air, with the back-to-back premiere telecasts in January ranking as Disney Junior’s Top 2 telecasts of all time in total viewers. Since its linear premiere, Sheriff Callie has been the No. 1 series across preschool-dedicated TV networks in kids 2-5. ...

Sheriff Callie is produced in Toluca Lake by Wild Canary Animation*.



(For whatever reason, Diz Co. doesn't do this one in-house, but instead sub-contracts the production. WHY does the mouse sub-contract the Sheriff? Because it's likely cheaper than building additional corporate infrastructure to get the show made. Disney Television Animation is just now bursting at the seams, but there's this ongoing market demand for more cartoons. So the Mouse improvises.



* Wikipedia says that "Callie" is produced by Wildbrain Entertainment, which is a different Wild altogether. But Guild records say that Wild Canary Animation is the production entity.

Bucks Animation Student Kalim Momen is Rusty - For a Day

As everyone at Bucks knows, Rusty is our official university mascot, the big furry character with antlers who welcomes you to our University Open Days and to Freshers’ Week. This week we did some filming for a short video about life at the university, and we needed someone to play Rusty. Fortunately, Kalim Momen, one of our 2nd year animation students, was game to try out the Rusty suit, and see what life is like as a loveable cartoon deer.

Kalim gets suited up

Animators sometimes forget that we are actors too. Unlike most actors, we act out our performances (for the most part) with a mouse, or a pencil, and most of our work is done in our imaginations. If we act something out, it is generally for reference only. The final product will be the animation itself.

On this occasion, Kalim had to try something different – using his body to become the character, like regular actors do. To get into the part, he had to get dressed up in the Rusty costume - which took a lot longer than you might think.

As it turned out, Kalim was a great Rusty; he quickly got into the swing of things, doing silly walks, hugging visitors, and generally putting a smile on everyone’s face. Rusty is the official mascot of the Bucks Students' Union, and the SU could not have been more helpful getting us up and running.

Kalim also discovered some other things about spending the day as a cartoon buck. Big antlers make it hard to fit through doorways, and even on a cold day in November, the inside of a thick fuzzy deer suit gets very, very hot indeed.

Suited at last!

I know this from personal experience because years ago I got to play Goofy at DisneyWorld. Out in the Florida heat and humidity I thought I was going to boil alive. Twenty minutes was enough for me. Kalim on the other hand managed well over an hour – a fine achievement of endurance.

Rusty gets a big hug. Go Rusty!

In the end, we got the footage we needed, and Kalim got some great experience being an actor and performer. Now all he has to do is apply those skills to his animation....

For more on the experience of studying at Bucks New University, come and visit us at one of our Open Days,  take a virtual tour of one of our animation studios, check out what our students think of our course, and see why we're ranked in the top 12 creative universities in the UK. Find out why we're giving free laptops to all our students, and why we give all our students free access to videos at Lynda.com. Also, see what financial assistance might be available to you. Learn which is better for animation, a PC or a Mac? Get hold of a copy of a map so you can find your way around campus, and learn about motion capture at Bucks.

ARE YOU OUT THERE?

I'm resuming posting and I'll continue - but the last two posts got ZERO comments!

No need for elaborate notes - but if you're seeing this please let me know. Thanks!

101 DALMATIANS

Home theatre isn't really a new concept - Pongo and Perdida had one in the 60s!

I love the modern look of all the 101 background art, very linear with color washes. This BG was printed and distributed as a backing for cels sold at Disneyland's once-upon-a-time Art Corner - imagine Disney cels for a dollar!

I've recreated the piece digitally as usual, erasing the tail-wagging pup. :)

At Prospect

Today I took a quick spin around Marvel Animation's new location on the eastern edge of old Hollywood. (Seen above ... a few years ago).



Marvel Animation's Guardians of the Galaxy (the cartoon version) moved to Disney's Prospect Studios three months back, and is now in full-bore production ...



The newly minted series is headquartered in the middle of the Propsect Street lot.



A lot that was built in 1915 as a Vitagraph Co. outpost on the Left Coast (which complimented its Brooklyn studio). The Vitagraph had been a going concern since the 1890s, but by the roaring twenties the movie company was fading, its market share beaten down by the likes of upstarts MGM, Warner Bros., and Paramount. The Prospect Street Studio was sold to Warner Bros. in 1925, then the ABC network purchased it, and years later the Walt Disney Co. swallowed up the TV network and ... here we are.



Marvel board artists and designers sit on the second floor of a building that dates to the beginning of the lot, looking out on a lumber warehouse, sharing the facility with General Hospital and Gray's Anatomy. But it's fitting that animation has returned to the old Vitagraph Studio, since Vitagraph was one of the pioneers of screen animation.







Could we say that Vitagraph/Warner Bros./ABC/Disney has come full circle? Probably not, but Prospect isn't that far from the old Hyperion Studios, right?

On This Date (But Actually Yesterday) ...

The last Disney animated featurette painted on cels was released with the first Disney animated feature painted digitally. ...



The Prince and the Pauper, one of Mark Twain's literary nuggets, was colored in the traditional way in the ink and paint building in Burbank, while the picture was animated in Glendale at the Flower Street studio. (This was the last animated theatrical painted on the lot, wrapping up five decades of cartoon production work at 500 S. Buena Vista Street.)



Meantime, The Rescuers Down Under was done in Glendale, start to finish.

Ground Zero of Animation's Renaissance

It happened a quarter century ago.

... The Little Mermaid, which opened 25 years ago, on Nov. 17, 1989, realized its makers’ dream: recapturing the magic of classic Disney as destination entertainment to enthrall generations of moviegoers. More than two decades after Walt Disney’s death, and following a series of less-than-fabulous cartoon features, this was the picture that launched the Disney Renaissance that soared with Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King. ...

I was there are at the birth of Ron Clements' and John Musker's movie.



But nobody knew (at the time) that it was the start of animation's renewal. The scene was just a big pitch meeting in a back room of the Disney commissary. Just another Eisner/Katzenberg "gong show", the kind they had hosted numerous times before.



But the session in the summer of 1985 brought forth Oliver and Company, The Little Mermaid, and Treasure Planet. Ron Clements proposed the Hans Christian Anderson story as an animated feature, but Jeffrey and Michael shot it down. Ron, never one to be stopped by a first refusal, wrote a treatment anyway, and sent it to Jeffrey.



And Jeffrey changed his mind.



Development work started on The Little Mermaid, and four years later, the second Golden Age of Animation commenced

Bucks Animators Go to Blue GFX

Blue GFX

Last week Bucks New University students went to the Blue GFX Expo in London – a massive annual visual effects event sponsored by Autodesk, and a great opportunity to find out about the latest developments in our industry. There were presentations about Autodesk Maya, 3D Studio Max, a chance to try out the latest Cintique tablets, and best of all a talk by Framestore about the work they did on Gravity, a film that looks and feels like a live action movie, but is entirely animated. OK, George Clooney and Sandra Bullock were real – but the rest is CG magic.

Nomad Games

I went to a fascinating lecture by Don Whiteford of Nomad Games, who talked about how his company got started – an excellent introduction to the challenges of starting up a small games business and adapting to new technology and changing markets. They created Talisman – now a 30 year old game, and he talked about how business need “not just one product, but something that gets updated and can be rolled out over time, with expansions and extensions” to the existing game. He also explained that here in the UK, Creative Skillset will fund creative salaries at 50% for a year – hugely useful for a start-up company short on cash.

Autodesk Maya

Graham Bell of Autodesk introduced some of the latest features of Autodesk Maya, including how to use their hair tools to create realistic fur and grooming for CG animals and creatures.

Overall, the event was a huge success, and a great way for students and lecturers alike to catch up on new developments in our business.

Blue Zoo

To see more about Blue GFX 2013, see this post about the use of Maya's latest hair and fur tools, read about how Blue Zoo revealed the secrets of making a new animated TV series, find out about how Frame Store did the title sequence for Skyfall, and learn about how graduates can get a job with Blue Zoo, the UK's largest indie TV animation company.

---Alex

For more on the experience of studying at Bucks New University, come and visit us at one of our Open Days,  take a virtual tour of one of our animation studios, check out what our students think of our course, and see why we're ranked in the top 12 creative universities in the UK. Find out why we're giving free laptops to all our students, and why we give all our students free access to videos at Lynda.com. Also, see what financial assistance might be available to you. Learn which is better for animation, a PC or a Mac? Get hold of a copy of a map so you can find your way around campus, and learn about motion capture at Bucks.  

JIMINY CRICKET - I'M NO FOOL

The educational films Disney created in the 60s are beautifully crafted and still charming over 50 years later. The "library" background art using books as sets was inspired. Lookie!

The JIMINY title card art (digitally restored)

opening shot

opening medium shot

restored pan background

various book backgrounds - beautiful little set

s!

Should Freelance Animators Set Up a Limited Company?

A freelancer at work

Part of our job at Bucks is to teach our students to be working professionals, which includes not only the ability to do excellent work at a high level of professional skill,  but also the ability to run a small business and tackle freelance work. Almost all digital artists take on freelance work of one kind or another, and we help our students out by bringing in small commercial projects at our virtual online studio at nano-films.com, giving our students paid experience on live briefs. Being a freelancer involves learning a lot of new business skills, and one of the most common questions asked by students is: "Do I Need to Set Up a Company before I become a freelancer?" The short answer is "no", but it's not quite as simple as that - it all depends on your personal circumstances.

Render Under Caesar What Is Due To Caesar

Both in the UK and the USA it is very simple to be an independent freelancer. You just start working for clients, send out an invoice, and get paid. At the end of the tax year, you report to the IRS or the Inland Revenue all your income, less your expenses (computers, software, travel expesnes etc) and you pay tax on the difference - which is your profit. It's called being a sole trader, and it is very simple to do. It is the same basic structure for anyone selling a product, whether it is a shop on ebay or a stall at the farmer's market. You don't need to register with the Revenue - you jut start trading.

Setting up a company is different. You have to pay fees to set the company up in the first place, to register it, and also to file annual reports, as well as paying annual corporation tax. It's much more of a hassle than being a sole trader, and there aren't really any tax advantages.

So why set up a company? There are three main reasons:

1. Because your customers and clients make you. Once you reach a certain size, plenty of companies won't like doing business with a sole trader. They are used to dealing with companies, and they will insist on it. 
2. Liability. As a sole trader, you are personally liable for everything the company does, down to your last penny.  Most companies are Limited Liability Companies (hence Ltd) which means that if the company goes bust or gets sued - you won't lose your house.
3. It's the grown-up thing to do. Once you start to grow and employ people, it makes sense to have a formal vehicle for your operations. Sole trader status is convenient, but it only makes sense for small operations of low complexity.

In effect, company status is something that, sooner or later, will likely be forced upon you as you grow. It is one of the perils of success. While you are still small then, you are probably better off being a sole trader, but with size and complexity comes the need for a more formal status.

To see more about the benefits and burdens of setting up a company versus being a sole trader, see this link:  http://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2013/sep/12/sole-trader-limited-company-freelances

For more on the experience of studying at Bucks New University, come and visit us at one of our Open Days,  take a virtual tour of one of our animation studios, check out what our students think of our course, and see why we're ranked in the top 12 creative universities in the UK. Find out why we're giving free laptops to all our students, and why we give all our students free access to videos at Lynda.com. Also, see what financial assistance might be available to you. Learn which is better for animation, a PC or a Mac? Get hold of a copy of a map so you can find your way around campus, and learn about motion capture at Bucks.  

International Box Office

The animation, it rolls along well.

Weekend Foreign Box Office -- (World Totals)



Interstellar -- $106,000,000 -- ($321,909,855)



Big Hero 6 -- $11,900,000 -- ($148,353,891)



Penguins of Madagascar -- $11,300,000 -- ($11,300,000)



Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles -- $4,200,000 -- ($474,362,931)



Dracula Untold -- $3,100,000 -- ($208,825,500)

The Chinese opening of Penguins (the only country where it's open) garners the DreamWorks Animation feature the Place position:

The Eric Darnell-/Simon J Smith directed Penguins took $11.3M from 3,500 China locations after bowing on Friday. That was good for a No. 2 slot.



Interstellar and Penguins will now run for another three weeks and will have to face off with local competition. ...



Big Hero 6 started rolling out internationally on October 25 and now has an overall cume of $148.4M worldwide. It added a total $11.9M overseas this frame in 23 territories for an international total of $36.7M. ...