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February, 2016:

The Annie Awards, Part 2

In addition to the industry-voted honors, each year the Annies celebrate several talented individuals with special honorary awards. This year, all four recipients had a history of anthropomorphic works of one sort or another. The June Foray Award (for service to the community and art of animation) went to veteran Disney producer Don Hahn, who of course helped to shepherd Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King (among many other films) into existence. The Windsor McCay Award went to three individuals for their lifetime achievement in cartoons. Isao Takahata (co-founder of Stuido Ghibli with Hayao Miyazaki) is celebrated far and wide for anime films like The Grave of the Fireflies and The Tale of Princess Kaguya, but he also directed the tenuki adventure Pom Poko. (And, early in his career, he directed episodes of Panda! Go Panda!) Phil Roman founded his animation studio Film Roman in the 80’s, and they have since become famous as the home of The Simpsons and King of the Hill. But they are also the studio that gave us furrier works like Garfield and Friends, Cro, Mother Goose and Grimm, C-Bear and Jamal, and The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat. Finally, a special posthumous McCay Award was presented to the memory of Joe Ranft, Pixar Studio’s head of Story, who died in a tragic car accident ten years ago. Over the years Joe worked on numerous animated films at Pixar and Walt Disney Animation, but he may perhaps best be remembered as the voice of Heimlich the caterpillar in Pixar’s movie A Bug’s Life.

image c. 2016 Pixar, Walt Disney Company

image c. 2016 Pixar, Walt Disney Company

Furry Winners at the Annie Awards

Once again your humble ed-otter was lucky enough to attend the Annie Awards for 2015, presented at UCLA’s Royce Hall on February 6th. Presented by the International Animated Film Society (ASIFA), the Annie Awards honor the best of the animation industry — as selected by members of that industry. Surprising no-one, the night belonged to Pixar’s Inside Out. (It has already won almost every major award it has been nominated for, and of course it’s nominated for an Oscar as well.) Inside Out won in the Best Feature categories for Storyboarding, Editing, Character Design, Music, Character Animation, Production Design, Voice Acting (Phyllis Smith as Sadness), Writing, Directing, and (of course) Best Animated Feature. Bing Bong himself even helped to present some of the awards. (*sniff* Bing Bong…) A few other features managed to sneak in awards, and some of them were even for animal characters! The Good Dinosaur won in the category of Best Effects Animation. (It’s been celebrated far and wide for its realistic backgrounds and water effects.) And The Revenant won Best Animated Character In A Live Action Production for the bear that nearly eats Leonardo DiCaprio. Over in the TV and other divisions, furries were well-represented in several award categories. Disney’s new Mickey Mouse Shorts won for Best Storyboarding, Best Music, and Best Editing. ASIFA favorites. Dreamworks TV had two wins, as Dragons: Race to the Edge won for Best Character Animation and The Mr. Peabody and Sherman Show won for Best Production Design. Previous Annie favorites Tumble Leaf and Wander Over Yonder won for Best Production for Preschoolers and Best Production for Children, respectively. Psyop (home of those infamous Orangina commercials!) won Best Commercial for their Coca Cola ad Man and Dog, and Best Animated Game went to the monster adventure Evolve from 2K. [To save space, tomorrow we’ll tell you about the special awards presented at the Annies — and why you should care!] You can find out more about all of these and more over at the ASIFA Hollywood web site.

image c. 2016 Pixar

image c. 2016 Pixar Animation

Behold The Modern Monstrosity

That’s how Image Comics describe their new full-color series Cry Havoc. “X-Men Legacy writer Simon Spurrier and superstar artist Ryan Kelly present fiends, fragility, and firepower in an all-new series, mixing the hard-boiled militaria of Jarhead with the dark folklore of Pan’s Labyrinth. This is not the tale of a lesbian werewolf who goes to war. Except it kind of is.” Over at the Image web site, Mr. Spurrier continues, “Folklore is saturated with monsters. Centuries ago these wonderful fictions were at the bleeding-edge of the Zeitgeist, but they’ve faded from relevance. Cry Havoc asks what happens when those bright-eyed and bloody-fanged stories force themselves back into the modern limelight. Who resists them, and who gets caught in the middle?” Issue #1 is available now.

image c. 2016 Image Comics

image c. 2016 Image Comics

Furries on your Neck, Furries on your Feet!

And other places. Fluff Buddies describe themselves as “a team of two creative minds who adore the cute, fluffy and fun!” To that end they offer several lines of cute funny animal faces and poses on items like hanging charms, buttons, magnets, and (believe it or not) socks! You’ll find it all there on their web site.

image c. 2016 by Fluff Buddies

image c. 2016 by Fluff Buddies

There Was A Crooked Man, Who Drew Some Crooked Art…

Nathan “Crookedwolf” Johnson admits that art is not his full-time job (yet?), but he likes to work on commissions as often as possible. “I love painting imaginary things and I like painting them with a combination acrylics, watercolors and pixels,” he says on his web site. “Starting with wall scribblings and school book additions my mind has always been wandering about fantastical places filled with monsters and creatures of all sorts. Illustrations for video games and the art that goes into them has always been my biggest influence. The drawings that Samwise Didier and Mark Gibbons did for Warcraft 2 were among my first obsessions. Many of the artworks done for the Games Workshop tabletop games had a big effect on me and are now also wandering about somewhere in my head.” You’ll find him as Crookedwolf on FurAffinity and Deviantart, also.

image c. 2016 by Crookedwolf

image c. 2016 by Crookedwolf

Art to Haunt You

Savannah Horrocks is an illustrator of fantasy and furry works that are of a notably spooky nature. She has created both single works and comics, and she’s even been a guest artist on such well-known comics as Prydwen and Peachy Keen. Lately she’s been branching out into creating original creature dolls as well, which you can see displayed at her web site. She has an Etsy store, a Redbubble store, and a Society 6 store as well (whew!), and there you can see her works on pillows, t-shirts, prints, and other such stuff.

image c. 2016 by Savannah Horrocks

image c. 2016 by Savannah Horrocks

He Can’t Not Draw

Or so he says, anyway. “Physically incapable of not drawing.” You might be glad for this when you view the works of Nero O’Reilly with his decidedly modernist graphic arts style. He’s created several short comic-book style pieces with titles like Carnivore Planet, Red Rivers, and Crystal Wizard, as well as plenty of stand-alone art pieces in both color and black and white. Which you can view at this web site, Trumpet Shark. (Fair warning: Some of his works are of a decidedly adults-only nature.) His site also includes his personal store where you can pick up his works in print form, on buttons, or on stickers.

image c. 2016 by Nero O'Reilly

image c. 2016 by Nero O’Reilly