More State of the Industry

Tom Sito at last Friday`s State of the Animation Industry panel at Comic Con talking about Film Studies and the importance of lighting in animation. The clip starts out with Jorge R. Gutierrez, Creator and Executive Producer of El Tigre, talking about the films that inspired him as an animator.

State of the Animation Industry

I am back from Comic Con and back on the Internet. I will be posting a lot of cool stuff in the next few days but I am going to start with the important stuff first.

Here is a section from my Comic Con State of the Animation Industry panel. The question in play is what filmmakers, animated or non animated, should an animation student study. The clip starts with Tom Sito just finishing his answer about how Akira Kurosawa studied the films of John Ford. I add Hitchcock to the mix and Lennie Graves and then Ryan Ball talk about the importance of Hitchcock to any students of filmmaking.




Lennie`s answer gets into the 3 elements of scene layout and gets way into the neglected element, light and shadow. This is the reason I chose to post this clip first. Let us let the man speak, he has some important things to say.

The Neglected Scene Layout Element

Thursday Wrap Up

Floyd Norman with his Ink Pot Award


Scott Shaw presenting





Bill Plympton Idiots and Angels (feature) His Hot Dog Short was also killer


Wall to wall at the crossing. People leaving the convention after 7 PM.

Thursday at the Con

Click and Clack Panel





Howard Grossman Exec. Producer


Bill Kroyer The God Father of CGI Animation (Tron)


Flyod Norman and Ton Minton Storyboard Artists


Tom Sito Directer


Animation On a ShoeString(tm)


The Dancing Baby Meets Cthulhu (You never know where your Internet animation is going to go)



Learning the Walk Cycle



On the Floor:

Ghostbusters the Video Game


Thursday is the slow day

From the War Zone: Day 1 (sic)

First day at Comic Con. Preview Night was packed. Fighting my way past the Warners` booth and left the floor at 8:45. It took me over an hour to drive 3 blocks to get to my hotel.

Before leaving I talked to Al Feldstein, a man who distorted my childhood. He said that he couldn`t see any damage but I think he was just covering himself.

A CalArts student had a piece of free animation software called Go Animate. It is basically a library of drag and drop pre-animated characters for a Flash like animation product. Not too impressed. It would be very hard to do real animation with this product but they gave me a free thumb drive so I can get behind that part of their handout.

Thursday (today) I have my Animation on a ShoeString panel 2:30 to 3:30 in room 30 A&B. Tom Sito has his Click and Clack Panel at 10 AM in room 2. I plan on seeing that one. Spotlight on Flyod Norman is 5 to 6 at room 7 A&B.

Mark Evnier has a number of killer panels which I intend to see on Friday. Friday at 12:30 PM he has a 70s comics panel with Howard Chaykin, Paul Gulacy, Jim Starlin, Joe Station, Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson followed by a 2 PM 70s animation panel with Ruby Spears. And then at 3 a Spotlight on Al Jaffee panel.

Once more into the breach.

From the Front Lines

Packing the troupe-ship for deployment to San Diego. Had a great meeting in Burbank last night at Woodbury University with a tour of the theatre and facilities for the up coming student film festival. Awesome new theatre. This event is going to be outstanding.

Comic Con is going to be Comic Con. I will be bringing you up to the minute reports through out the week. For now I have to pack my laptop and hit the trail.

Animation Educators` Forum

Our next meeting will be at Woodbury University, Tuesday (tomorrow) July 22 at the Fletcher Jones Foundation Auditorium.

Here is a link to driving directions:
map

You can also link there to a campus map. The auditorium is in the Business Complex next to the library on the right hand side of the quad as you enter campus.

James Morse, from Woodbury Advancement will be present. He is in charge of the Founder's Day events that will be happening at the same time so this is our chance to get that coordinated and be sure to arrange for any additional space we need.

William Moran, a graduate of Woodbury, will be present to demonstrate the projection equipment. A member of IT may also join us if necessary but William was our "projectionist" for the Woodbury Animation Showcase. We may want to arrange his assistance for this event as well.

Foreign Correspondent

Are you going to San Diego Con, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme? Not is you aren`t already registered.

REGISTRATION IS CLOSED! THERE WILL BE NO ONSITE REGISTRATION!

Comic Con sold out every day last year. This year they have sold out before the doors even opened. That means that there will be about 130,000 people going through the doors this year. Which is all the fire marshal will allow.

I remember Comic Con back in 1986 as a small intimate convention. I think it was at the Grant Hotel that year. You could get around to all the booths and see everybody.
Comic Con is larger that a lot of cities.

If you are looking for me at Comic Con here are some of the events I will be going to because I have some involvement it their running.

Animation on a Shoe String Budget
Thursday, JULY 24
2:00-3:30pm
ROOM 30CDF

State of the Animation Industry
Friday, JULY 25
6:00-7:00pm
ROOM 3

Worst Cartoons Ever Made
Friday, JULY 25
9:30-10:30pm

Treasures of the ASIFA-Hollywood
Saturday, JULY 26
4:30-5:30pm
ROOM 10

I will also be on the dealer`s floor a lot more this year. And will be able for the first time in a long time to actually go to some other people`s programs.

There are going to be a couple of ASIFA-Hollywood parties on Friday and Saturday nights that I should also be part of.

See you in the war zone.

Round Up

It is strange not to have looming deadline doom over my head. I spent time yesterday catching up on my email. Everything had been on hold during the mad rush of back to back deadlines. So sorry if I am just getting back to you.

Had a long talk with my good friend Fred Ladd 2 nights ago. Fred is going to be at Comic con on Friday at the McFarlane booth. He has a book coming out. He also has a project at the Japan Cultural Center that sounds like lots of fun.

Here is a link to my alien getting his head blasted (which also sounds like a lot of fun) :

The 7th Edition of My eBook is Finished

Weeks of Research and a lot of 18 hour days and the new version of my eBook is updated. It will be available at Comic Con and I will be updating my website in the near future.

Blasting Aliens

Here is another FX animation. This is one I showed the early steps of in these pages a few months back. But I never showed the finished piece.

Have a Blast

Muriel Kubert Passes Away

Muriel Isabel Kubert
77, co-owner of art school

She was a resident of Dover since 1962, and moved here from Towaco.

Mrs. Kubert was born in New York City, N.Y.

She was a member of Temple Adath Shalom of Parsippany.

She received her bachelor of business degree from Rider College.

She was the co-owner and operator of The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art Inc., Dover.

She was a member of the Montville Historical Museum and a former member of the Dover Board of Education.

She is survived by her husband of 57 years, Joseph; five children, David of Dover, Danny of Chester, Lisa Zangara of West Virginia, Adam of Flanders and Andy of Randolph; 11 grandchildren, Jacob, Becky, Katie, Zachary, Orion, Troy, Max, Elizabeth, Jay, Sam and Emma; a brother, Joel Fogelson of Calif.; and a sister, Lenore Millian of Connecticut.

Visitation is on Thursday, July 10, 2008, from noon to 1 p.m. at Tuttle Funeral Home, 272 Route 10, Randolph. Funeral service to follow at 1 p.m.

Interment at Dover Mount Sinai Cemetery, Randolph.

Donations may be made in her name to Compassionate Care Hospice, 400 W. Blackwell St.,
Dover, N.J. 07801.

Muriel Kubert was very formal and a little stand-offish with the students. When I introduced John Totleben, . . . and John this is Muriel Kubert she corrected me . . . Mrs. Kubert.

She was never easy with the students. She was thrown into a world of mad people and she was more refined, saner than us. I don`t know how she survived those early years in the old Baker Mansion? It was never easy for her. But the school would not have happened without her authoritative iron hand.

Joe gets all the credit for the school but without Muriel he would never have made a go of the Joe Kubert school. She gave him the room he needed and was often a protective wall for her husband. And yes, even a bit of a dragon lady at times.

I never really got to know Muriel. She would not / could not be a person with any of the students. She never could have done what she needed to do. But I came to respect her for without her there would be hundreds of cartoonists doing something else for a living today. That includes me.

A Clip in Time Saves 9 From Outerspace:

As I said in yesterday`s post I am uploading a lot of animation clips for my online resume. Here is a clip from one of the files that has already up loaded. It is from an unpublished game I worked on a few years ago.



A lot of the animation I do falls into that area of Special Effects. I started my career right out of the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon & Graphic Arts by getting into real world Special Effects for slasher flicks; blood pumps, prosthetics, dental acrylic fangs, latex monster suits and body parts, Computer Driven Animatronics, go motion and stop motion animation and the like.

It seems that I have been doing Effects Animation of one kind or another since the early 80s. In the 90s I got into computer animation and most of the stuff I do on the computer has a major element of effects or effects and environment for blue screened stop motion.

This clip is a lot of fun. An alien spaceship hiding in the Asteroids as enemy aliens blast away with lasers. The hard part of this clip was animating the spaceship threading its way through a Particle System asteroid field. There are a number of layers to the asteroids. The laser blasts were fun and easy but the asteroids were killer.

Too Many Projects:

Comic Con, Animation Educators` Forum Student Film Festival, producing the 2006 Comic Con ASIFA animation jam, a book to update, and 2 classes to prep for Fall and now that I have 2 kids in college it is time to get my online resume updated. Which is what I have been doing for the last number of weeks. That has cut down on online time and posts since I have been rendering 24 / 7.

The online resume is uploading as I type. Sorry all for being late on everything promised. Here are some of the highlights of said resume in still image form with links to clips later after the upload: