The 'All About Animation' Blog » Hollywood

Toonz to animate Santa Claus for 2010 Christmas release.

akshata — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:19:53 +0000

Toonz Animation is all set to foray into feature-length 3D animation, and how! The Thiruvananthapuram-based studio which had earlier created the animation for Hanuman is now going to animate the life of Santa Claus.

Singapore based Toonz Entertainment, which owns the Indian animation studio Toonz Animation India, has tied up with Gang of 7 Animation USA and Hyde Park Entertainment USA to produce a CG animated feature film “The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus”, based on the classic book by L. Frank Baum, the creator of ‘The Wizard of Oz’.
Apparently, this is the first time a story explaining Santa Claus and all the Christmas traditions has ever come to the big screen. The movie chronicles the life of Santa Claus and will be directed by Tom Tataranowicz, Rich Arons and Dick Sebast, who have supervised Disney, Marvel and Hanna Barbera features. A supporting team of artists, who have worked on pictures like ‘Finding Nemo’, ‘The Lion King’ and ‘Iron Giant’, will also work on the Santa Claus movie.

The project is currently in its pre-production stage, with production set to commence in November at Toonz’ Technopark campus. The movie is expected to be released in time for Christmas 2010. Hyde Park will distribute it internationally and share North American rights with G7 Animation. Looks like mythology will just not let go of its spell on Indian animators!

14 contenders named for the Oscar for Best Animation

akshata — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:39:50 +0000

As we approach the end of the year, it is time for a lot of speculation over the Oscars. This year 14 films have been shortlisted, the front-runner being (my personal favourite!) Wall-E, Disney/Pixar’s latest masterpiece, and the others being DreamWorks Animation’s Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa and Kung-Fu Panda, Israel’s award-winning animated documentary - Waltz With Bashir, London-based Framestore Feature Animation’s first film The Tale Of Despereaux, Blue Sky Studio’s Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears A Who!, Disney’s stereoscopic 3-D Bolt, CG Fantasy films - Delgo and Dragon Hunters, stereoscopic 3-D film - Fly Me To The Moon, Igor, Australian stop-motion film $9.99, and the Japanese anime titles The Sky Crawlers and Sword Of The Stranger.

Waltz with Bashir does mix in some live footage towards the end of the film and I hope it doesn’t go down the same path as Alvin and the Chipmunks did last year, getting disqualified later on a small technicality.

Meanwhile, we Indians patiently wait for someone to create an Oscar-worthy animated film. It is interesting to note that the official Indian entry for the Best Foreign Film category - Taare Zameen Par - has animation integrated into its story. In fact, for the very first time clay animation has been used in any Indian mainstream aka Bollywood film. Will be nice to have it in the final 5 nominations - would be a mini-salute for our talented animators - Dhimant and his team, Vaibhav and his team and the team at TATA’s Visual Computing Labs and TATA Elxsi.

Bringing Robots To Life… the ILM way!

akshata — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:43:59 +0000

I just received an email from Lucasfilm Animation Singapore, which has a center in Hyderabad in India, about a session with ILM Artist - Nigel Sumner, that they are organizing. Though the only details they have provided are the date (11th May), time (2 pm to 5:30 pm) and speaker (Nigel Sumner), once we have more info, it will be uploaded here on the website.

You can register online by going to: lasjedi.com/events Though entry is free, there is limited seating so if you want to attend, you better hurry up!

Nigel Sumner has worked on numerous Hollywood films as Sequence Supervisor and from the poster, I am assuming that he will be talking about his work on the Hollywood VFX-rich film, - Transformers.

To know more about Nigel Sumner, you can read this interview from ILMfan.com (It’s an old interview but it should help you get some idea about the speaker and his past work): Read the interview.

Nigel Sumner - Filmography:

Transformers (2007)
Role: Effects Supervisor

Eragon (2006)
Role: Digital Effects Artist

Poseidon (2006)
Role: Digital Effects Artist

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)
Role: Digital Effects Artist

War of the Worlds (2005)
Role: Visual Effects Supervisor

Van Helsing (2004)
Role: Animation Supervisor

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)
Role: CGI Artist

The Hulk (2003)
Role: Technical Director

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
Role: Supervisor

Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones (2002)
Role: Visual Effects

Jurassic Park III (2001)
Role: Graphic Artist

(information courtesy - movies.nytimes.com)

VES Vice Chair Tim McGovern speaks about the VES India Tour

akshata — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 05:33:18 +0000

In this month’s edition of “The Digital Eye” on VFXworld.com, Tim McGovern recounts his participation in the VES’ recent five-city tour of India as the first step in creating a VES section there.

He describes in detail the entire tour spanning five cities - Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, and Mumbai. He was accompanied by Eric Roth, Executive Director of VES, Peter Chiang, Chairman & Founder, Double Negative Ltd (UK) and Indian VFX stalwart and first Indian member of the VES, N Madhu Sudhanan.

Read the complete article on VFXworld.com

Newsflash! Indian studio in Dreamworks Alliance

akshata — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 20:36:59 +0000

(News courtesy Reuters)

Thomson today announced that its Technicolor Services division has formed a strategic alliance with DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc. to develop world-class animation capabilities in India. The alliance leverages Thomson’s recent investment in Paprikaas Animation Studios, a leading animation and game content provider in Bangalore, India. Read the details on our website .

Incidentally, Paprikaas was the first studio we featured on the All About Animation website.

Indian Animation Archive: A vacuum that urgently needs to be filled!

akshata — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 04:50:14 +0000

Here is something that should inspire those who care about Indian animation and spur them into action.

The Animation Archive is a project of ASIFA-Hollywood, with support from The Walter Lantz Foundation. In operation for two years now, they have put together a wealth of information. It is an ambitious project to expand the offerings of the current ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Center in Burbank to include a virtual archive, museum, library and research facility for the benefit of the animation community, students and general public.

ASIFA-Hollywood Archive has been in operation now for two years. In their own words,

“To date, we have digitized well over 15,000 images and 2,500 animated films. There are nearly 450 articles available here on the Archive blog covering a wide range of subjects. The blog is followed by readers all over the world. We recently had our 1 millionth unique visitor; and in the past two years, we have served 2.5 million articles. We’ve mounted several exhibits in the archive space, which has been visited by artists from all corners of the globe. The animation database has now completed its proof of concept phase, and volunteers are working nearly every day to build it out as quickly as possible.”

I think it is high time we have an archive for Indian animation as well. The history of Indian animation doesn’t go back as far as perhaps the history of World animation does. All the same, we have had some brilliant work done, especially in the black and white era of television. How do today’s Indian animators and audiences get access to these?

Perhaps some of us born in the 60s and 70s might remember seeing “Swimmy”, “Tree of Life” and “Ek Titli, Anek Titliyan” in the days of Doordarshan. I would love to see those again and also learn more about the makers, but there is no information available readily.

Those were times when most of the Indian animation was original. The animators back then tried to develop their own style, experiment with the medium. It was new to them. They revelled in the art. Today, much of our animation is Disney/Pixar ‘wannabe’. If we could view and study the work that was done by our predecessors, it would inspire the current generation of Indian animators to create their own animation style instead of limiting themselves to pre-established styles.

Sadly, all we ever do is lament what is missing. There is an urgent need to start archiving our own animation and recording the history of animation in India. With a little bit of help from the government and active participation of those in the know, it won’t take too long to build this kind of archive. Preservation and presentation are both equally critical. Else we will keep churning out poor imitations of Hollywood animation and feel proud for doing it well!

News from the Oscars: Alvin and the Chipmunks out of the race!

akshata — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:12:32 +0000

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has concluded that Fox’s live action/animation hybrid “Alvin and the Chipmunks,” (yet to release), does not qualify for the best animated feature category.

The animated feature screening committee made this decision based on the rule that in a qualifying film, “animation must figure in no less than 75 percent of the picture’s running time.”

However, the Academy also ruled that the motion-capture technology used to create Beowulf has not made it ineligible for Oscar consideration in the category of Best Animated Feature.

Now there are just 11 films vying for the three potential nominations.

Its a Wild Wild World at the Oscars… with bees, rats, penguins and ogres!

akshata — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 18:12:05 +0000

On Thursday, 8th November, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences announced the names of the 12 movies competing for top animation honours at the Oscars. (How I wish that there was at least ONE Indian animated film in this list!)

Three nominees will be picked by a committee of academy members and will be announced on Jan. 22, 2007. The entire academy membership will be eligible to vote on the winner for the 80th Academy Awards on Feb. 24, 2007. In the running for the feature-length animation this year are:

RATATOUILLE

Poster | Official Website | Trailer

BEE MOVIE

Poster | Official Website | Trailer

SHREK 3

Poster | Official Website | Trailer

SURF’S UP

Poster | Official Website | Trailer

AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE COLON MOVIE FILM FOR THEATRES

Poster | Official Website | Trailer

THE SIMPSONS MOVIE

Poster | Official Website | Trailer