ADV Films Announes Partnership With Sentai Filmworks
ADV will localize and distribute anime for its newest business partner, Sentai Filmworks. Among the newest properties is Clannad, a 24-episode Kyoto Animation series based on the PC game, and Indian Summer, a robot maid comedy previously announced at Otakon '08. Clannad's first volume, consisting of four episodes, will be released on 4/21/09, while Indian Summer's OVA collection will be released on 3/10/09.
Also, ADV is re-releasing a number of older series from various companies, such as Mahoromatic (in a complete set on 1/13/09 for $44.98) and its sequel (2/17/09 for $44.98), Tsukihime (complete set on 1/20/09), Pet Shop of Horrors, and Jewel Bem Hunter Lime.
Turner's Animation Media Bumps Up Consumer Research
Research, Research, Research
As Cartoon Network aims to balance positive audience returns and primetime ratings for its original animation and additional cartoon acquisitions, with its untold potential for reinventing its image as a key children's network day-in and day-out; research is the name of the game. The TBS Group's Animation, Young Adults & Kids Media group is the business operations body that oversees the expectations and long-term information gathering for its control areas, which include Cartoon Network and Adult Swim programming.
It is in this vein that the Animation, Young Adults & Kids Media group sees the hiring Lanie Richberger as the division's Vice President of Research, where she will oversee a wide variety of research strategies and tactics. Just as Cartoon Network and its multimedia business plans depend on the timely access of new, relevant audience statistics, so will it be imperative for Richberger to organize and analyze focus group material the kid's entertainment hub can readily use.
"Lanie's expertise with kids television, consumer market research, audience trends, branding, licensing digital media and international markets make here the ideal person to help us evolve and grow Cartoon Network, Adult Swim and our digital properties," Jon Marks, Senior Vice President of Turner Research, commented in an official press note.
As the Vice President of Research for the Animation, Young Adults & Kids Media group, Ms. Richberger will be charged with providing guidance for all of the division's establishment and collection of audience ratings reports, delivery numbers, as well as information for online businesses and digital efforts. Additional responsibility includes providing usable information to Cartoon Network New Media that allows the network to plan entertainment endeavors in multiple media outlets.
Richberger will oversee all consumer focus group testing and other quantitative studies, including annual brand studies and syndicated research; serving as the anchor of information distribution for western enterprises of the TBS Group (contrast with east vp of research and market development, Duncan Morris: June 2008). She joins the Animation, Young Adults & Kids Media group from the noted kid's entertainment producer Sesame Workshop, producer of Sesame Street and other kids-targeted properties, where she was the leader of its Strategic Trends and Audience Research department.
Chapman, Pukeko Team for Trooper Tom
Children’s television production and licensing company Chapman Ent. and Pukeko Pictures entered into a joint venture to produce a CG-animated kids’ show being developed under the working title Trooper Tom. The partnership was forged at MIPCOM in Cannes last week, and has generated interest from 15 broadcasters, according to Chapman Ent. Pukeko Pictures is a new children’s television venture of writer Martin Baynton (Jane and the Dragon) and Richard Taylor, a five-time Academy Award-winning creative director and co-owner of New Zealand’s Weta Workshop.
Trooper Tom is an adventure series aimed at boys 6-12. Half human, half robot all hero, Trooper Tom is a futuristic Pinocchio, an experimental android infused with human DNA. The show promises to deliver epic tales with Shakespearean villainy, a wry sense of humor and breathtaking action.
“We are incredibly excited by our relationship with Chapman Ent. and the first property that we have developed with them,” Richard Taylor comments. “The experience of presenting our show together in Cannes was nothing short of fantastic and the reactions to Trooper Tom was very rewarding.”
Taylor, Martin Baynton and Chapman Ent. creative director Keith Chapman will oversee production, which will be handled by Weta Workshop. The first season will consist of 26 half-hour episodes.
Guerilla FX Hires Miller as TD
Vance Miller has joined New York-based independent production, design, effects and post finishing house Guerilla FX (GFX) as character animator/technical director. He comes to Guerilla from graphic design company Eyeball in New York where, as technical director, he served as lighting and rendering specialist on most of the studio’s 3D projects, supervised and fine-tuned the rendering pipeline and worked as both 3D animator and 2D compositor on campaigns for such clients as AT&T, Best Buy, Cinemax, Cingular, Country Music Channel, Jeep, McDonald’s, MTV, Mystic Aquarium and VH1, as well as the video game Bioshock.
Earlier in his career, as VP of CG operations for Pixel Light Communications in New York, Miller served as chief animator on all in-house projects, oversaw the graphics creation for multimedia productions and worked with design firms on animation concepts and storyboarding. He was a computer graphics artist at Electric Image Center, where he created computer graphics for film, video and print output, demonstrated software to prospective system sales clients and provided training to clients on software usage. Miller also spent a number of years freelancing as a computer graphics artist, supervising graphics editing sessions, creating artwork for magazine covers and product packaging, and producing 3D animation for corporate and broadcast clients.
Miller’s work has earned various honors, including a SIGGRAPH award for the lighting, textures and animation he created for the indie short Protest, a SMPTE Student Film Honorable Mention for a stop-motion film titled Out of Sync, and a NCGA third-place (secondary/undergraduate level) for an early computer-animated film called Conscience of the King. In addition, he was lead 3D animator/artist for a Warner Music interactive CD that won both the New Jersey Business Association Award for Best Multimedia Presentation and HOW Magazine’s 1995 International Design Award of Merit for Multimedia.
There Was A Screening Of Watchmen...The Whole Thing This Time...
There was recently a screening of Watchmen in Portland.
Strangely, to the best of my knowledge, AICN received no reviews from this screening - although folks who were there have posted their perceptions of the film on several forums.
These communications are, evidently, being removed from boards; those who saw the film were subject to NDA. None the less, quick-acting cyber folk managed to cut & paste some of the now-banished forum postings. These posting have been conveniently rounded up by a few sites, and are linked below for your consideration.
BEWARE SPOILERS!!! Some of the material being discussed involve Watchmen elements that may or may not have made it into the movie adaptation.
Also, you can catch some footage from the film on Spike TV - Oct. 21 at 9 p.m. ET/PT (tonight) - during their Scream Awards broadcast.
Exclusive: A Heroes Intervention
When a loved one is in trouble, we can gather all the friends and family around to stage an intervention on their behalf. Help them kick drugs, booze, karaoke, whatever is destroying them. Well, what if millions of viewers love a show, and we just need to get the creators' attention to nip some problems in the bud? Our shame-free correspondent Fred Topel at SciFi Wire steps up with his own intervention for the producers of NBC's Heroes, which airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Tim, Jeph, Jesse, et al.: We have brought you together because we love you. Heroes is our dream of a superhero show. The show has top-notch effects, and the writing and acting deliver the most believable world of everyday people doing extraordinary things.
But we feel that you're losing your way. So we are staging this intervention to help you find it again. Here are some suggestions, offered with love.
--No more trips to/from the future. The first time Future Hiro came back to tell Peter to save the cheerleader was awesome. It opened up possibilities and major evolutions for the series. The "what if?" of "Five Years Gone" was cool, too, just having fun with possibilities. Now you've overdone it. Peter goes to the future and loses his girlfriend there. Future Claire is all dark and brooding. Hiro visits the future and sees himself fight Ando. It's all variations on the same thing: future=apocalyptic. You've used up all your future trips. It's time to tell stories in the present.
--No more end of the world. Not every story needs to have cataclysmic consequences. So far, all three volumes have dealt with the end of the world. It would have been four if you'd gotten to do your virus story last year! If it's always the end of the world, then the end of the world is just that thing they always save us from. Give us some subtler stories with only dire moral consequences, or just some fun little adventures.
Zachary Quinto as a rejuvenated Sylar snacked on Claire's brains.
--Tell everyday stories. Part of the fun of Heroes is that it's about extraordinary occurrences in everyday lives. That's what made season one so great. Show how these characters use their powers in everyday situations. Maybe have Micah fight the economic crisis with his influence over ATMs. Or show Parkman on a date! Have some fun exploring the mundane. That's what 22 episodes are for.
--Stop pretending to kill people. You clearly don't want to lose characters or actors, since you always come up with ways to bring them back. Nathan's been revived twice already, and now Nikki has a twin? Listen, it's OK. We don't need you to pretend that there's danger for even the A-list series regulars. We're watching a show about superheroes because we want to see people who can always survive and escape danger. So do away with the fake threat of mortality. Just have fun with the cliffhangers, like the movie serials of yore. We'll keep coming back.
--Put a moratorium on new characters. Daphne the Speedster is great, but every time you introduce someone new, you take time away from characters who are already underserviced. Already Maya doesn't have anything to do but show up after Mohinder goes on a rampage. We're still waiting for more on Elle, and we understand there's a scheduling issue with Kristen Bell there, but you've still got Micah and Molly just being neglected. Relax, you're going to be around for many, many years. Sure, there are new cool superpowers, but just file them away in your notes for now. Save them for season six or seven, when contract negotiations force you to recast, like ER.
--Less talk, more twist. The season premiere started off with so many bold moves, like Ando killing Hiro and Claire learning she's immortal. Then Hiro kept looking at Ando funny and hurting his feelings. Claire has had to keep convincing her parents she's immortal. It's fine to tease things, building up to a reveal, but once it's out there, it's time to move on. Hiro finally took some drastic action, though seeing the above entry on character deaths, we're skeptical about even that. All his banter with Ando was just anticlimax. If there are worse fates for Claire than death, let's face 'em. By season three, nobody expects HRG to successfully convince Claire that he knows what's best for her protection. Frankly, HRG should know better by now, too. We like the twists. Change is good. Go with it.
Brea Grant (right) plays Daphne, and Masi Oka is Hiro Nakamura, in the third season of Heroes. (Chris Haston for NBC)
--No more volumes. Face it, it didn't work. It was a novel idea to divide seasons into shorter arcs, but it's not making the stories more exciting. It may even be hurting you to force things into this structure. We've already bought in to the real-world superheroes. It doesn't have to be exactly like a comic book. The goal of volumes is to have more than one big finale a year, but we're not asking for that. We just want to live with these characters week to week. No one's ever happy with a finale anyway.
--Try stand-alone episodes. Maybe the heroes can face smaller threats on a slow week, and everything can wrap up by 10 p.m. Nathan can get a cat out of a tree, or Parkman can work a hostage negotiation by reading minds. Sure, there are questions everybody wants answered, but it doesn't have to be the only thing going on. You've created a world with so many possibilities; we want to see the simple tasks as well as the major adventures.
Trick 'R' Treat Trailer Here!
A new trailer has gone up on YouTube.com for Michael Dougherty's (X-Men 2, Superman Returns) Halloween-themed horror movie Trick 'r' Treat. The movie stars Anna Paquin and Brian Cox in a story that interweaves four different narratives about the holiday. The film doesn't have a release date yet.
Orci Addresses Transformers Sequel Rumors
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen co-writer Roberto Orci addressed some of the rumors about the sequel on TFW2005.com. The site says:
He states that some of the leaked TFW insider information may be misinformation. Specifically, he states that Soundwave is not a pick up truck, although he doesn't rule out Soundwave being a truck of some kind.
On the subject of misinformation, Roberto mentions that the false information generally has not been working very well, in fact he says it usually does not work.
In other postings, he stated that the "Fallen" in the title may be a robot, or just a synonym for the defeated side. We can also look forward to fights like the Freeway Brawl in the first movie between Optimus Prime and Bonecrusher, only longer this time around. There's also a good chance we might see a Decepticon who is ridiculously loyal to Megatron and the Decepticon cause. Just don't expect it to be Tidal Wave - Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and the other writers just could not find a way to make him work in the sequel's story.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen hits conventional theaters and IMAX on June 26.
The Green Hornet Gets Less Serious?
CHUD talked to Seth Rogen, who talked about how Stephen Chow coming in to direct and co-star in The Green Hornet might have changed things slightly. Here's a clip from the interview:
"Me and Evan [Goldberg] talk a lot of sh*t. We have one rule when writing, and that's don't get attached to anything. One day we want to make a serious film and then Stephen Chow comes in with a good idea and we're like, 'Well it's funny.' Should we not do it because we originally wanted to do a serious film? We come from, nah f*ck it, we'll just take the idea that seems good. So it's definitely less serious than a serious film, that's for sure. We want the action... I say now that we want the action to play serious but Stephen could come in tomorrow and say 'You know what? I want to throw you 400 feet in the air!' and I'd go, 'OK, that sounds cool.'
Would Elizabeth Banks return as Betty Brant in a fourth and/or fifth "Spider-Man" movie? It doesn't sound like it, as she tells CHUD:
"If it's that small, I probably won't do it. They don't need Betty Brant. It's purely, at this point - and I don't think they see it this way - it's kind of a favor, at this point."
She talks more about how she landed the role at the link above!
Frank Miller On The Look & Feel Of ‘The Spirit’ And Robert Rodriguez’s Influence
During this weekend’s Scream Awards, Frank Miller offered up a bit more insight regarding the vibe of his upcoming adaptation of Will Eisner’s “The Spirit” comics, telling Sci Fi Wire that the film was “romantic, but as in ‘Sin City,’ you don’t know what date it is.”
Miller described his take on “The Spirit” as a “very urban/Zorro story,” and said he attempted to make the story “as timeless as possible.”
Miller also name-checked director Robert Rodriguez, with whom he shared credit on “Sin City,” as being a major influence on “The Spirit,” Miller’s first solo project behind the camera.
“I learned everything I know about directing from Robert Rodriguez. Everything,” said Miller. “Mainly, I learned never to waste anyone’s time.”
“The Spirit” opens December 25, 2008.
Comedian Rudy Ray Moore, "Dolemite," dead at 81
Filthy-mouthed African-American comedian and rapper Rudy Ray Moore, better known as Dolemite, died Sunday in Akron, Ohio after an extended illness, the Electronic Urban Report site reported. He was 81.
Nicknamed "The Godfather of Rap" and "King of the Party Records," Moore -- whose real name was Rudolph Frank Moore -- died from complications of diabetes, said his only child, Yvette "Rusty" Wesson.
A mainstay of X-rated comedy records during the 1960s and 1970s, Moore was the voice of Mr. Slippers in the Revolution Pictures feature film Lil' Pimp (2004). Made entirely from Flash animation, the movie was originally slated as a theatrical release. However, in a bid to cut its losses, Revolution Pictures had it released directly to video.
He also guested as Rudy in Readin' The Bowl, a 2006 episode of the Canadian animated comedy-metal series Sons of Butcher.
Wikipedia described Moore as possibly best known as Dolemite, the "rappin' and tappin' is my game!" pimp from the 1975 film Dolemite and its sequel, The Human Tornado. It was a character he had developed during his stand-up comedy records, in which he was even ruder and filthier than such contemporaries as Richard Pryor and Redd Foxx.
Born on March 17, 1927 in Fort Smith, Arkansas, Moore was the oldest of seven children. He moved to Cleveland, Ohio at 15, peeling potatoes and washing dishes to make a living. After appearing at various amateur and talent shows, he moved at 17 to Milwaukee, where he got a job dancing at The Flame Show Bar and the Moonglow Night Club.
Initially, Moore was a fairly conventional R&B singer. While in the United States Army, he gained an interest in comedy in the Army after expanding on a singing performance for other servicemen. He remained a singer throughout his comedy career.
Although Moore's vocabulary kept him away from TV and major films, he definitely had his fans, developing a cult base. 2 Live Crew used his records as scratch samples on its early work, especially "Throw The Di*k." He guested on Big Daddy Kane's 1990 CD Taste of Chocolate.
He played Dolemite for the first time in over two decades in the 2000 direct-to-video movie Big Money Hustlas, created by and starring the Insane Clown Posse.
Once again, he took on the character Petey Wheatstraw ("The Devil's Son-In-Law") earlier this year for "I Live For the Funk," a song featuring Blowfly (an equally X-rated singer) and Daniel Jordan. It was 30 years since the movie Petey Wheatstraw was filmed, and the first time that Blowfly and Moore had collaborated together on the same record.
Besides his daughter, Rudy Ray Moore is survived by his 98-year-old mother Lucille.
Funeral services are planned in Akron, Ohio, as well as in Spokane, Washington where his mother and other members of of his immediate family live. No dates have been set.
At the seminar, Andreas Deja will be talking about Disney’s Nine Old Men and PES will offer a masterclass on his approach to directing stop-motion animation. They’ve also wrangled me into being part of the program, and while I don’t exactly qualify as a master in anything (unless you ask my mom, in which case I’m a master in everything), I’ll be doing a lecture about the works of Fifties design masters like Bobe Cannon, Ward Kimball, Tom Oreb, Ed Benedict and John Hubley. Even more exciting, I’ll be interviewing Gene Deitch, an honest-to-goodness animation legend, live on-stage.
I’m going to pick Gene’s brain about everything he’s done, from creating the classic TV series Tom Terrific…
…to making mind-bendingly trippy political allegories like The Giants…
…and who knows, maybe we’ll even talk about these:
In other words, this Friday will be damn awesome if you’re in Norway! There are also plenty of other fine screenings and presentations planned throughout the week. See you in Fredrikstad!
The membership meeting panel "The Internet for Animators" on September 30 was zesty and informative.
Moderator Mark Farquhar hosted a free-wheeling discussion on how animators can use technology and the internet and thrive on it. The panelists were Rick DeMott, Kevin Freeman, Kevin Geiger, and Charles Zembillas ...
Farquhar, a veteran c.g. animator at various studios and now a prof at Cal State Northridge described how the internet as opened doors for independent animators.
There are more and more distribution channels for content, and its increasingly more easy to create content. Technology is more accessible. Chinese artists are now producing 3-minute shorts on-line that have captured a worldwide audience.
Kevin Freeman, proprietor of animationrigs.com and a veteran rigger and animator, talked about how the web has made it possible for him to work with aspiring riggers and provide them with the tools they need to learn and pursue the craft:
... "I began talking to my co-workers and friends about how they would like to contribute and ultimately decided to open the site for industry professionals to contribute anything they would like: how tos, interviews, work flows, tips and tricks, and more on the topic of character rigging" ...
"We're distributing original content, providing an opportunity for artists to have a platform for their shorts. As for financing the site, pre-roll ads rather than banner ads provide more revenue to the site.
The internet launches people [and their creations] in different ways. There's guerrilla marketing, there's viral growth. AWN takes animation submissions from around the word. Fifty percent of our traffic is in north America ... "
"I started Animation Nation as an issue-oriented website. I think it's important to prepare students to be warriors. They can write a web log, and build a community. I had a lot of material in my files about aspects of animation, and I learned Photoshop and created a book, then created a website to promote it, and I'm now selling enough copies to recover the costs to publish it.
I don't think studios will disappear because of artists doing original content on the internet, but they'll evolve.
Kevin Geiger, a longtime c.g. supervisor who now runs his own consulting firm and will shortly be relocating to China to work on an animated feature, had this to say about the continually morphing internet:
"There's a lot of discussion now about artists' images being stolen on the internet, but Internet Opportunities puts a copyright bug on its images. You can also insert copyright data into data and jpeg image..
... There's going to be a huge market for content on the web. There's 1.5 billion cell phone owners in the world. Apple charges 99 cents for anything. For mobisodes, creators will get around 12 cents out of each 99 cents. Mobisodes could generate artists $100,000 per year. Lots of content will be distributed for free, with revenue generated by ads.
And the internet has made video conferencing very cheap. When I started at Disney, we had to go into the big conference room and conference on the big screen with lots of equipment. Now with Skype, you can now conference anywhere in the world for very little money. You can conference and work from West Los Angeles, Shanghai, the location really doesn't matter.
Members were encouraged to get started by signing up with a free bloging service (blogspot.com, AWN.com, etc) and start sharing your work and opinions.
Here is a list of the various sites that were mentioned during the discussion:
EXCLUSIVE: Your First Look At ‘The Incredible Hulk’ DVD And Blu-Ray Special Feature Clips
“The Incredible Hulk” hits DVD (and Blu-ray) shelves today, and the long list of special features found on each version of the film is pretty impressive, to say the least. The 3-disc set of DVDs and 2-disc Blu-ray versions will contain more than two hours of extra footage, including a heap of behind-the-scenes featurettes.
Oh, and there’s that Captain America cameo everyone’s been talking about, too.
Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Marvel Studios have providedMTV with EXCLUSIVE clips from two of the “Incredible Hulk” featurettes, including the following look at “Becoming The Hulk” — featuring a cameo by none other than TV’s “Hulk,” Lou Ferrigno:
Ben studied animation under former Disney animator Milt Neil at the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art. He has been in the animation industry since 1984. He started doing animation for small commercials, then years later moved on to J.J. Sedelmaier Productions working on the "Cluckin' Chicken" parody for Saturday Night Live, which led to MTV, where he worked on "Beavis and Butt-Head", doing storyboard revisions, character and prop design, layout. animation on the hallucination sequence on the feature "Beavis and Butt-head Do "America" and also MTV's "The Maxx", doing character layout. As a freelancer, he's worked for various companies including Disney TV, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, HBO Family, Miramax, Warner Bros., Saatchi and Saatchi, General Mills and Comedy Central. Currently, he's still doing the freelancing thing, while developing some personal projects for pitching.
Children’s television production and licensing company Chapman Ent. and Pukeko Pictures entered into a joint venture to produce a CG-animated kids’ show being developed under the working title Trooper Tom. The partnership was forged at MIPCOM in Cannes last week, and has generated interest from 15 broadcasters, according to Chapman Ent. Pukeko Pictures is a new children’s television venture of writer Martin Baynton (Jane and the Dragon) and Richard Taylor, a five-time Academy Award-winning creative director and co-owner of New Zealand’s Weta Workshop.
Vance Miller has joined New York-based independent production, design, effects and post finishing house Guerilla FX (GFX) as character animator/technical director. He comes to Guerilla from graphic design company Eyeball in New York where, as technical director, he served as lighting and rendering specialist on most of the studio’s 3D projects, supervised and fine-tuned the rendering pipeline and worked as both 3D animator and 2D compositor on campaigns for such clients as AT&T, Best Buy, Cinemax, Cingular, Country Music Channel, Jeep, McDonald’s, MTV, Mystic Aquarium and VH1, as well as the video game Bioshock.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen co-writer Roberto Orci addressed some of the rumors about the sequel on TFW2005.com. The site says:
During this weekend’s Scream Awards, Frank Miller offered up a bit more insight regarding the vibe of his upcoming adaptation of Will Eisner’s “The Spirit” comics, telling Sci Fi Wire that the film was “romantic, but as in ‘Sin City,’ you don’t know what date it is.”
Filthy-mouthed African-American comedian and rapper Rudy Ray Moore, better known as Dolemite, died Sunday in Akron, Ohio after an extended illness, the Electronic Urban Report site reported. He was 81.
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