To help promote new episodes of the returning series The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack on Cartoon Network (Thursdays at 8:30pm E/P), Sean Szeles and some of the other production team members created 4 live-action shorts. Here’s one called Laughing.
The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, Vol. 1 DVD has been announced as well – hitting shelves on September 15th, 2009.
Brook Barnes’ recent article in the New York Times, titled Animation Upstarts Are Joining the Fray, effectively illustrates the recent upswell in feature animation in the marketplace.
Here’s a few quotes that caught my eye:
Computer animation, once one of the most isolated corners of Hollywood, is rapidly becoming one of the most crowded.
We’ll see who has the story chops. Anyone with $50 million and some patience can make CG animated feature, but building that army of talented story artists simply takes time.
In 2009 14 animated movies — most of them computer-generated — will have a wide release, compared with 8 such films in 2005.
I remember when DreamWorks Animation launched, and Disney trembled. These days, it seems a new studio, like Ilion (Planet 51), pops up every month.
Read more »
For a while there, Up was basking in perfect “freshness,” holding steady at 100% over at RottenTomatoes.com. 
But with 2 negative reviews submitted, a little air has leaked from the balloon. You can’t please all the people all the time, or so the saying goes, but what I’ve found even more interesting is how the critical community over at RT has leaped to defend the film’s honor. The New York Press’ Armond White, who didn’t care much for WALL-E either, picked Up to pieces, calling it “sentimental” and a “rip-off.” The Wall Street Journal’s Joe Morgenstern lobbed in the second rotten grenade, writing that “I admired the film much more than I enjoyed it.” Subsequently, White and Morgenstern were drawn and quartered in the comments section at RT; dismissed as heartless villians bent on ruining Up‘s grand reception.
Read more »
Tonight at 7:00pm, Don Hahn, producer of animation classics like Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, will be at the Barnes & Noble at the Americana at Brand mall in Gledale, California, discussing and signing his book, Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes. A portion of each book sale will go to widow of Walt Stanchfield, the Disney teacher who is essentially the co-author of the book.
Get your Disney/Pixar Up screensavers here. This video screensaver features a big, animated version of Dug the dog licking your screen clean. To get your free screensaver, click the image below for your PC or MAC version.
The Goodes are the blue-state analogues of the Hills, Mike Judge’s venerable 
Texas-twangers who will soon be packing up the propane after a staggering 13 seasons. A bespectacled father voiced by Judge, an overweight son, a midriff-baring daughter, a cantankerous old coot of a father, and a dog named after a political figure; Judge’s creations for his new series The Goode Family, which premieres Wednesday May 27th (9:00-9:30 p.m., ET) on ABC, are the cultural and political negative images of his previous ones. Rather than chugging beer on the front lawn, the Goodes are more likely to be found swigging soy milk in their solar-powered home and then painstakingly recycling the containers.
Here’s a few clips from the pilot:
The pater familias here is Gerald Goode, a poncho-wearing member of the liberal academe. His wife is a local activist with whom he has two children, one adopted and one biological. The dog is an unwilling vegan and they shower outside in a home-made rainwater catchment system. Read more »
FOX is really stoking the animation development fire these days. They launched their Inkubator project last year, and now they’ve teamed up with aniboom.com for the FOX-Aniboom Holiday Animation Challenge. The trailer below explains the basics, but in case you enjoy the typed word more, I’ll spell it out: animators are invited to submit a 2-4 minute animated holiday short that fits the FOX tone, of which 5 will be chosen for a $5K prize. The grand prize winner will take home an additional $10K, a development deal with FOX, and a date with Seth MacFarlane (one of these prizes is a decoy). They’ll begin accepting submissions on May 27th, so sharpen your comedy chops and get chopping.
