For those of us cartoon fans (and would-be animators) who’ve been following the controversy between ASIFA Hollywood (the largest chapter of the International Animated Film Society, and home of the Annie Awards for animation) and Disney/Pixar, this is some big news: A shake-up in the leadership of the Hollywood Chapter, and news of some big changes planned for how the organization works. Cartoon Brew has the story, quoted here from the ASIFA-Hollywood Press release: “ASIFA-Hollywood has announced the selection of its new President, Frank Gladstone, at its February board meeting. Gladstone replaces Antran Manoogian who held the position for over 20 years. Longtime ASIFA-Hollywood VP [and TAG President Emeritus] Tom Sito chose not to run for re-election; taking his place is Jerry Beck [one of the head-honchos at Cartoon Brew — ye ed-otter]. ‘First and foremost, we owe Antran Manoogian an enormous amount of respect and admiration for his many years of selfless devotion to ASIFA-Hollywood,’ says Gladstone. ‘Antran has seen the organization through a period of unparalleled growth and success, going from a small club to an organization of over 4000 members. During his stewardship, Antran established, among many achievements, a digital archive, and built the Annie Award into the most important honor in animation. Though I’ve been part of ASIFA and the animation community for a long time, I am looking forward to being the ‘new face’ of the organization and to making some significant changes to the status quo. For starters, this includes updating our membership qualifications, establishing a representative voice for every animation studio and creative technique, building an advisory board of animation luminaries and revising the voting structure of the annual Annie Awards. In the next few weeks ASIFA-Hollywood will be holding meetings with executives from all the major studios to get their input on how we can improve our infrastructure. ASIFA-Hollywood will take this time to ask its members, both individual and corporate, to come together and advise them on how best to chart the course for decades to come. In addition they will invite many of its members to join the executive board.’ Frank Gladstone has been a professional animator, producer, director, writer and teacher, first managing his own studio, and then working in management positions for Disney, Warner Bros. and DreamWorks, among others. He is currently the CEO of the animation consulting firm, Gladstone Film, teaches worldwide and is the ‘artist-in-residence’ for the ACME Network.”
The Isle of 100,000 Graves
The European artist known only as Jason is known for is stark graphic style and his rather eccentric stories, often told without dialogue — works like Werewolves of Montpellier and Meow, Baby! Now, Jason has returned with a new hardcover, full-color graphic novel for Fantagraphics Books, and he’s enlisted the services of award-winning French writer Fabien Vehlmann. The Isle of 100,000 Graves comes to stores this April. In it, we meet a little girl searching for her father, who encounters blood-thirsty pirates… and an island where young executioners go to learn their deadly art! Of course there’s an entry for the book at Amazon.
image c. 2011 Fantagraphics Books
Go Back to the Planet of the Apes — Again
It seems like we just can’t get away from those damned dirty apes — not that a lot of us actually want to! Now BOOM Studios is premiering a brand-new Planet of the Apes full-color comic book series this April, written by Daryl Gregory (an award-winning novelist) and illustrated by Carlos Magno. The story this time takes place prior to the original 1968 Planet of the Apes movie, a time when humans and apes have formed an unsteady truce — very unsteady, it seems. Ape Central.net (a division of ComicBookMovie.com) has the story, as well as links to the brand new Planet of the Apes movie Ceasar: Rise of the Apes, starring James Franco and directed by Rupert Wyatt. Recently the film’s premier was moved back from this summer to this coming Thanksgiving.
image c. 2011 BOOM Studios
Hood vs. Evil
One of the box-office surprises of 2005 was a little film called Hoodwinked — the first independently produced CGI film, which went on to make a rather tidy little profit. Talk began almost immediately about sequel for the film — and now, that sequel is coming to theaters on April 29th. Hoodwinked introduced us to Little Red Riding Hood, her rather resourceful (and butt-kicking) Granny, and a big-but-not-so-bad Wolf. All three of them return in the new film, Hoodwinked Too: Hood vs. Evil. They’re joining up with an outfit known as the Happily Ever-after Agency (HEA) on a mission to save Hansel and Gretel from a wicked witch. Some things have changed — Hayden Panettiere (Alpha and Omega) replaces Anne Hathaway as the voice of Red, and the director this time is Mike Disa, previously known as a director of video short films. But once again we have Patrick Warburton as the Wolf, Glenn Close as Granny, and David Ogden Stiers as the frog Nicky Flippers, head of HEA. You can view the current trailer for the film on YouTube here.
If you like Talking Cars, try Talking Planes
Cartoon Brew recently put up an article letting us know about a new project from Disney’s Movietoon Studios (creators of A Goofy Movie and other works). It’s a new direct-to-DVD CGI called Planes, and it’s all about — you guessed it — anthropomorphic airplanes. Here’s the Press Release from DMS: “Planes will introduce an entirely original and hilarious crew of daredevils from every corner of the globe and draws inspiration from the immensely popular Disney/Pixar’s Cars world. ‘We had such a great time exploring the world of Cars over the course of two films, so it seemed only natural for us to see where our imaginations would take us in a film where planes were the main characters. By expanding the Cars world, Planes gave us a whole new set of fun-filled situations and a great opportunity to introduce some fantastic new characters,’ commented John Lasseter, Chief Creative Officer, Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios. Planes takes off with an international cast of the fastest air racers around, in a comedy packed with action and adventure starring Dusty, a small town dreamer who longs to enter the most epic around-the-world air race … despite his fear of heights. With the help and support of a fleet of new and hilarious characters, Dusty wings his way into the biggest challenge of his life.” Look for Planes to take off in the spring of 2013.
Little Pedro c. Walt Disney Pictures
Polar Bears Pushing Beer
Empresas Polar is a well-known brewer of cerveza (beer) in Venezuela. Recently they decided to create a campaign bringing their company logo, a polar bear, to life. Enter The Character Shop, an outfit famous for their creation of animatronic characters for use in advertising — a great many of which are anthropomorphic animals. They helped Empresas Polar create the character of Pedroso the Polar Bear for their new line of TV commercials. And the people of Venezuela seem to be taking to them — and Pedroso, the 7-foot tall bear himself — quite well. The Character Shop has a page dedicated to their creation of Pedroso, and of course you can see some of his actual commercials on YouTube.
Get Ready for Kung Fu Panda — Again
Anticipation is building for the return of Dragon Warrior Po the panda and his compatriots in this summer’s Kung Fu Panda 2, hitting screens in May from Dreamworks Animation. Before that though, Kizoic Comics (an imprint of Ape Entertainment) brings us a new one-shot Kung Fu Panda 2 full-color prequel comic, illustrated by Dan Schoening. Taking place between the two movies, the new comic follows the story of Po struggling to balance being the Dragon Warrior, a good son, and a noodle waiter all at once! The one-shot will be followed by a new Kung Fu Panda comic book series beginning May 4th, as well as a special Kung Fu Panda mini-comic for Free Comic Book Day. Ape Entertainment has a preview of all of this on their web site.
Amity Blamity
Now how could you miss a title like that? What is it? A new black & white graphic novel written and illustrated by Mike White, coming this May from Slave Labor Graphics. Here’s the publisher’s press release: “Meet Gretchen & Chester. Gretchen is a shy 4 year old girl and Chester is a talking potbellied pig. They live with Gretchen’s Grandma and listless Uncle Downey in rural America. Mistaking their afternoon activity of playing ‘office’ for entrepreneurial gusto, Downey recruits the duo to assist in his deluded aspirations of running ‘moonshine’. Unbeknownst to the outlandish family and their activities, strange forest critters begin to lurk in the woods nearby, disrupting their quirky daily life and sending them on an adventure to save their degenerate Uncle from a strange genetic mutation!” You read it here folks. Amity Blamity, in softcover this May. Yep.
Here Comes Super Dinosaur!
This April the creative team behind The Astounding Wolf Man, writer Robert Kirkman and artist Jason Howard, return with a brand-new full-color comic book series for Image Comics called Super Dinosaur. Mr. Kirkman refers to the series as “a Pixar movie on paper”, which is sort of a clue that the violence quotient will likely be much lower than in their previous comic series. The story goes like this: The evil Max Maximus wants to rule Inner Earth, home of the last remaining dinosaurs (who have become largely anthropomorphic). Standing in his way is a 10-year-old human boy and his best friend, a 9-foot tall T-Rex in a suit of battle armor. Meet Derek Dynamo and Super Dinosaur!
image c. 2011 by Jason Howard
