EXHIBITION: FRAME BY FRAME: ANIMATED AT HARVARD

Lorelei Pepi, an SMFA Visiting faculty, taught animation in Harvard's VES program for 3 years before coming to the SMFA. Her work-in-progress, "Happy & Gay" is included in this exhibition.

January 28–Feb 14, 2010
Reception Thursday, February 4, 5:30-6:30 pm

Caroline Leaf, Sand, or Peter and the Wolf, 1969, still from the collection of the Harvard Film Archive.

The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University presents Frame by Frame: Animated at Harvard, an exhibition showcasing Harvard’s animation history: rarely-seen films retrieved from the Harvard Film Archive, works by world-renowned recent animation faculty, and a survey of films by current and former students of the department.

The birth of animation at Harvard goes back to the opening of the Carpenter Center in 1963. Former director Robert Gardner engaged John and Faith Hubley as teachers, the first in a long line of distinguished animators to teach at Harvard. In the mid-1960s, Derek Lamb, via the Film Board of Canada in Montreal, taught and mentored Caroline Leaf and Eli Noyes, both pioneers in their field. Subsequent faculty in animation have included Jan Lenica, George Griffin, Mary Beams, Frank Mouris, David Anderson, Dennis Pies, Janet Perlman, Suzan Pitt, Caroline Leaf, Piotr Dumala, Steven Subotnick, Wendy Tilby, Lorelei Pepi, Michaela Pavlatova, Simon Pummell, and Andreas Hykade. Ruth Lingford is currently professor of the practice of animation, and the 2009-10 visiting faculty are David Lobser, Dan Sousa, and Sarah Jane Lapp.

Animation tends to be a condensed art form, using metamorphosis and metaphor to collide and expand meaning. In this way it resembles poetry. It is a way of expressing and communicating invisible, abstract ideas, allowing us to analyze and deconstruct time and to understand movement as both a liquid flow and a sequence of distinct infinitesimals. While only a few students specialize in animation for their final thesis work, a wide range of students take one or two animation classes during their time at Harvard. Students are encouraged to use the particular demands and rewards of animation to help them think differently about the world.

Maya Erdelyi, plume, 2006

Frame by Frame: Animated at Harvard will feature classic films from the Harvard Film Archive including Caroline Leaf’s Sand, or Peter and the Wolf, a loose interpretation of the fable Peter and the Wolf. The film marks the start of Leaf's technique of under-the-camera animation, which she developed in subsequent films; in her hands the extraordinary graphic possibilities of sand are revealed. Produced during a stay at Harvard’s Film Study Center by famed Polish animator and poster designer Jan Lenica, Landscape (1974) invokes the artist’s Nazi occupation experience. Asparagus (1979), by Suzan Pitt, was called “…one of the most lavish and wondrous animated shorts ever made, an overwhelming visual experience.” by award-winning animator and animation historian John Canemaker.

Suzan Pitt, still from Asparagus, 1979

Frame by Frame will also feature a wide selection of student films, including early films of historical significance as well as work from animation classes at Harvard over the last five years. The pioneering Clay or Origin of Species (1965), by Eli Noyes, received an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short Subject and is one of the earliest examples of clay animation. Frank Film (1973), by Frank Mouris, won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Subject in 1974 and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1996. On view by Amy Kravitz, BA Harvard, MFA Cal Arts and currently professor of animation at the Rhode Island School of Design, is River Lethe (1985), an abstract visual poem in five parts created using atypical materials such as rubbed and erased graphite, pigment, and aluminum powders. I hate you don’t touch me or Bat and Hat, by Becky James (Harvard ‘07) won Special Jury Award for Animated Shorts in the 2008 SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas.


Eli Noyes, Clay or the Origin of the Species, 1965


Becky James, still from I hate you don't touch me or Bat and Hat, 2007

Other student work includes Rorschach (2006), by Tessa Johung, an inkblot test that asks us to recognize the subconscious within the physical human body; Plume (2006), by Maya Erdelyi, a cut-paper animation about birth, love and the cycles of life; Leftovers (2006) by Tim Reckart, a story of unrequited love between an old man who wants a friend and a squirrel who wants a sandwich; Katharine Woodman-Maynard’s The Space Inside (2008), a film that looks at the relationship between rural and urban life; Do Rivers (2009), by David Rice, exploring the relationships between people and landscapes as mediated by fantasy and nightmare; and Kapsis (2009), an 8 minute video-art piece by Yen-Ting Cho, portraying a Nahua myth of a young girl who becomes a starfish.

Exhibition co-curated by Ruth Lingford and Terah Maher. Exhibiiton design by Terah Maher.


Tim Reckart, Leftovers, 2006

Tessa Johung, Rorschach, 2006

Puppets in Prague

Looking for inspiration and a great learning experience this summer? Puppets in Prague is an ongoing workshop for introducing animators and students of animation to the rich history of puppet-making and performance in Czechoslovakia.

For ten years, Mirek Trejtnar and Leah Gaffen have been organizing puppet workshops for students from around the world. Mirek heads the workshops - he is a puppet-maker himself and also a designer of toys, sculpture and much more with a special background in wood. Leah is an American who takes care of the organizational side of the workshops. Together Leah and Mirek bring together a team of leading Czech artists - woodcarvers, puppet designers, puppeteers, film animators, etc.- who bring the students into the world of puppetry in Prague.

Check out their program on their website: http://www.puppetsinprague.eu

11th Annual Animation Show of Shows

The 2009 Animation Show of Shows (ASOS) was hosted in the MFA Boston Remis Auditorium for a Boston appearance. Curator Ron Diamond was invited through the combined efforts of animation faculty at MassArt, AIB and the SMFA. A good crowd turned out for the screening, which was filled with 72 minutes of festival quality animation films.

The 2009 Animation Show of Shows (ASOS), curated and presented by Acme Filmworks founder Ron Diamond, began touring the United States and selected international venues from October - November. Featuring the best animated short films produced worldwide in the past year, the Show of Shows will be screened at major studios including Pixar, Blue Sky, DreamWorks and Disney, as well as at Harvard, Rhode Island School of Design, New York University, UCLA and other universities. The program will also travel to a number of ASIFA chapters across the country.

The Animation Show of Shows was created by Diamond to give greater exposure to exceptional animated shorts that normally would receive only very limited, if any, distribution. Often these works are at the cutting edge of animation, pushing creative boundaries and using the latest technologies to achieve groundbreaking results. The Animation Show of Shows provides an opportunity for animation professionals and other artists to see these films, opening a window onto the most interesting and creative work being done around the world.

As in previous years, the 2009 program features films in a variety of styles from all over the world, most of which have won awards at major festivals. Highlights include:

The Spine - The new CGI film from Oscar® winner Chris Landreth (Ryan) continues the director's explorations into the dark side of human psychology with a harrowing portrait of a co-dependent couple. At once deeply disturbing and revelatory, The Spine pushes the boundaries of both subject matter and computer-generated character design.

Santa: The Fascist Years - Another satirical masterwork from veteran director Bill Plympton, Santa uncovers and explores a dark chapter in St. Nick's history. Featuring Plympton's trademark frenetic energy, eccentric characters, and in-your-face humor, the film ensures that no one will ever think of Santa in quite the same way again.

Chick - Michal Socha's graphically stunning Chick is a design tour de force that casts a jaundiced eye at male-female relations, all set to an irresistible neo-Klezmer score. Featuring enough visual imagination for half a dozen films, this compulsively watchable short demonstrates Socha's complete control of his medium.

Runaway - Two-time Oscar® nominee Cordell Barker's new film about class war aboard an out-of-control train once again demonstrates the director's crisp, rhythmic style, talent for rapid-fire gag sequences and love of traditional animation. With an extraordinary score by Benoît Charest (The Triplets of Belleville), Runaway is both a pointed moral tale and a thoroughly engaging and very funny chronicle of love and death on the tracks.

FLAHERTY NYC: EXPERIMENTS IN ANIMATION

Monday, November 9, 7:30 pm
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The November installment of Flaherty NYC is entitled Experiments with Animation and will feature short works by a number of artists prominent in the field, including Phil Solomon, Martha Colburn, Signe Baumane, and Jeff Scher.

Select filmmakers will be taking part in a post-screening discussion of their work.


Animated films come in all shapes and sizes. In the Experiments with Animation program, The Flaherty will bring together a broad spectrum of animated works, ranging from quirky and humorous to dark and haunting, and often falling somewhere in-between. The program is sponsored in part by the Leo Dratfield Endowment, honoring the late Charles Samu, an ardent supporter of animation.

Featuring Works By:

· Jesse Epstein (in person)
Jesse Epstein was selected for "25 New Faces of Independent Film" by Filmmaker Magazine, for her series of short films on physical perfection, the latest of which, 34x25x36, was broadcast on P.O.V. this summer.

· Steve Subotnick
Steven Subotnick's animated films are associative explorations of themes found in history, folklore, and his own unconscious. He has worked as an animator, director, illustrator, author, and has taught animation at numerous institutions, including Rhode Island School of Design and Harvard University.

· Jeff Scher (in person)
Jeff Scher lives and makes films in Brooklyn, NY. His films may be seen on The New York Times blog, The Animated Life. Time Out New York said his "quicksilver shorts are like Muybridge motion studies for the MTV generation."

· Phil Solomon
Phil Solomon is an American experimental filmmaker and professor at Colorado University. In 2007, The Village Voice named Rehearsals for Retirement one of the top ten experimental films of that year.

· Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung (in person)
Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung makes socially conscious art using Hi-Definition video animation, video game, net.art, digital graphics and mixed-media installations. In 2008, Ken Johnson of The New York Times described Hung as a "fierce, funny and inventive political satirist."

· Martha Colburn (in person)
Born and raised in the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania (USA). Based in Holland and New York since 2000, Colburn is a self-taught filmmaker who has completed over 40 films since 1994. Her films have screened at Sundance, Rotterdam International and New York Film Festival, MoMA, and Cannes.

· Signe Baumane
Signe Baumane began her New York career working in the studio of Bill Plympton before starting her own studio in 2002. She has produced and co-produced, written, directed and designed more than 9 independent animated shorts, which have screened at such prestigious festivals as Tribeca, Sundance, Berlin, and Venice.

TICKET INFORMATION:
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General admission tickets to the Flaherty NYC series at the Anthology Film Archives are $9. Tickets are $7 for students with valid I.D., and $6 for Anthology members with membership card.

Tickets can be purchased at the Anthology box office the day of the show. For more information, call the Flaherty at 212-448-0457.
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Anthology Film Archives is located in the old Second Avenue Courthouse building in the East Village at 32 Second Ave. at the corner of 2nd Street.
Contact Information
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The Flaherty/International Film Seminars
email: ifs@flahertyseminar.org
phone: 212-448-0458
web: www.flahertyseminar.org

Own a Pal!

re-blogged from Cartoon Brew post today:

Auctioneers Profiles In History are currently having an incredible entertainment memorabilia sale which is including a Lot of 100 puppets and pieces-of-puppets from the George Pal’s Jasper Puppetoons. The bids start at $1,000 (and go much, much higher.) Here’s the link.

There are also separate lots for puppets from individual non-Jasper films such as The Gay Knighties, Rhythm In The Ranks, Two-Gun Rusty, John Henry, Tubby The Tuba and on and on! This lot was part of the estate of William Nassour who, with his brother, produced several Hollywood movies and experimented in stop motion animation. Apparently they took over the Puppetoon shop when Pal moved on into feature production - and held onto these puppets until now!

The Fantastic Mr. Fox

OPENING SOON! Watch the TRAILER!

This trailer includes a "behind the scenes" look at the production.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox is a fantastic creature, but his food foraging forays tangle him up with some of the the "meanest, ugliest, nastiest" farmers, and that's the root of Mr. Fox's trials. And what makes it a tangibly tantalizing tidbit is that it's stop-motion puppetry!

The Fantastic Mr. Fox is directed by Wes Anderson (Rushmore, Royal Tennenbaums, Aquatic Life) and was looking to sign on Henry Selick (Coraline, James and the Giant Peach, Nightmare Before Christmas) as a co-director. But, Selick was pulled away when his own project' Coraline" was given the green light by the studios. Anderson tapped Mark Gustafson, another Oregon / Will Vinton Studio stop-motion director to join him instead.

Too Art for TV

In January of 2006 [Stay Gold Gallery, Williamsburg], Too Art for TV opened as New York's first large scale fine art exhibition for the artists who work in the animation industry. Drawing in an excited, elbow-to-elbow crowd of artists, illustrators, filmmakers, animators, gallery goers, and fans of the animation genre, Too Art for TV, was the beginning of what became an annual event started by animation painter Liz Artinian, Too Art for TV's mission is simple: to foster, promote, encourage, and organize the talented many whose collective efforts bring television cartoons alive.

Too Art for TV, due to its multi faceted and pop origins, is an umbrella movement inviting pop surrealism, geek-core, graffiti, low-brow, and the finer arts into its shade.

Featuring the artists who brought you; Venture Bros. (Adult Swim), Superjail! (Adult Swim), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Fox Network), Ice Age (Blue Sky Studios), A Scanner Darkly (directed by Richard Linklater), SpongeBob SquarePants (Nickelodeon), Fairly Odd Parents (Nickelodeon), Samurai Jack (Cartoon Network), Star Wars: Clone Wars (Lucasfilm Animation), Metalocolypse (Adult Swim), Powerpuff Girls (Cartoon Network), Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends (Cartoon Network), TV Funhouse (SNL/NBC), Beavis and Butthead (MTV Animation), Home Movies (Adult Swim), Daria (MTV Animation), Pale Force (Conan O'Brien/NBC), Code Name: Kids Next Door (Cartoon Network), Stanley (Disney TV), Daria (MTV Animation), Blue's Clues (Nick JR), and more.

Ralph Bakshi: Surviving in Tough Times

Ralph Bakshi made his name in the 70s and 80s by coming up with his own frisky and controversial features like "Fritz the Cat" and "Wizards," to name only 2 out of many. He appeared at the San Diego ComiCon this summer, and answered the question: what advice can you give to the animators trying to survive in this awful economy?

Ponyo

The amazing Hiyao Miyazaki and his animation team at Studio Ghibli agreed to work with the Disney Animation Studios to create Miyazaki's re-telling of the traditional fairytale of the Little Mermaid.

It is the tale of a magical goldfish (voiced by Noah Cyrus) that wishes to break free from her overbearing, wizard of a father (voiced by Liam Neeson), and become human to maintain a friendship with a five-year-old boy (Frankie Jonas) in a nearby seaside village. Although he has loving parents (Tina Fey and Matt Damon) his father is rarely home so they have their own issues to work out.

Interview segment from AWN.COM's Bill Desowitz

AWN: How do come up with your worlds?

Hayao Miyazaki: I do all my work on storyboard, so as I draw my storyboard, the world gets more and more complex. And as a result, my north, south, east, west sense of direction kind of shift and go off base. But it seems like my staff as well as the audience don't quite realize that this is happening. Don't tell them about it.

AWN: How important is it to get elements [about preserving the environment] into your films?

HM: The most important thing is, I think, that even within such an environment, children grow up, they learn to love and they enjoy living in that environment.

AWN: What was the original inspiration for Ponyo?

HM: I think John Lasseter knows as well, but it's really hard to explain what becomes the motivation or the instigation to do a film. I feel like I'm searching in my subconscious with a fishing net and I happened upon catching a goldfish in that net and that was the inspiration for starting to make this movie.

read more here...

New AstroBoy Poster!

The Playhouse project

what will you draw on Dublin’s Liberty Hall?

re-blogged from http://www.culch.ie/2009/08/26/playhouse/
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

What would you draw on one of Dublin’s most recognizable buildings? Your name in lights? A giant tetris animation? A stickman walking? A giant pen? Is that unrealistic? It’s basically filling in lots of squares! It’s your canvas and you can do as you wish with it.

Daft.ie and the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival – September 24 to October 11 – are taking one of Dublin’s tallest buildings and allowing you to play with it. All you have to do is download their software and animate your thoughts to be broadcast onto the city skyline.

Just head on over to here and use playhousefan as password. That’s pre-launch information, that.

It’s easy enough, honest. Who knows what you could put up there!

Basically Liberty Hall will be a a 50 metre, low resolution, TV screen. You can create animations with sounds and music via the website and get them onto the building. Powering the display are 100,000 low-energy LED lights, installed into 330 windows on the south and west faces of the building. These lights can illuminate each window as a solid colour turning it into a tiny pixel that’s part of a giant display.

A narrow strip of ultra-bright LEDs were installed into every window frame along with a small controller box. The controllers connect to the central computer using existing CAT5 network cabling in the building – meaning the team didn’t need to install any additional wiring.

Peter Donegan will no doubt be glad to hear that the LEDs used are super-efficient. Each floor of the installation uses less energy than a standard kettle. Overall the lighting technology carried a tiny footprint, meaning it could be installed for a full two months before the project started without impacting the people that work there.

There’s a big team behind the project, born from a series of conversations and connections made in the Science Gallery . Originally inspired by the Blinkenlights installation in Berlin, Playhouse raises the technological bar with the ability to produce colour animations. SOme of the people involved include Adrián Acosta, Brian Fallon, founder of Daft,ie, Carina McGrail, Tim Redfern, Jack Phelan, Jonny McCauley and Ruaidhrí Devery from Fluid.ie.

You can find out all this over on the Playhouse website or follow the Playhouse project on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/playhousedublin

Here’s a look at what they did at Blinkenlights in Berlin:

School Starts Once Again

Hi SMFA animation folks! It's time for the 2009-10 school year to kick in, and we're looking forward to some great new changes. There are new state-of-the-art digital cameras in our studio, so be sure to check them out. Many thanks to Joel and Greg for taking care of that for us!

A REMINDER to all SMFA animation students: YOU can post on this blog site. Check the studio for password and ID.