16th Brussels Cartoon and Animated Film Festival
Brussels logo by Johan DeMoor.The sixteenth edition of the Brussels Cartoon and Animated Film Festival, organized by Folioscope, was held from February 4-16, during the Mardi Gras school holiday.
Apart from a retrospective held at the Museum of Cinema, this year's event was limited to one movie theater (Passage 44). The organizers, essentially, had not been able to reach a satisfactory agreement with the Botanique (a publicly-subsidized cultural center) that had served as the venue for specialized programs for previous editions.
Festivalgoers nevertheless didn't suffer because of this,...
Imagina 97
Heather Kenyon reports how Balbir Mathur and his organization, Trees for Life, with help from Frick Back, are using animation in to help people in the third world plant trees.
An Interview With George Griffin
Ann C. Phillipon talks with "quintessential independent American animator, George Griffin" about his life and art.
Folk Animation: Low Tech Art in the High Tech Age
John Serpentelli relates his experiences teaching the folk art of animation to children in Philadelphia.
Sporn's Choice: An Independent's Struggle
New York producer Michael Sporn's commitment to making films about human issues has lately led him to animated documentaries for which the children's market has been most receptive. Janet Benn reports.
The Thief And The Cobbler
Ann C. Phillipon talks with "quintessential independent American animator, George Griffin" about his life and art.
Animating Web Sites: Macromedia Flash
Guillaume Calop gives Macromedia's Flash a spin.
On a Desert Island With....Three Kinder Folk and an Animator
Nicolas Bellanger, Arlene Sherman, Yvonne Anderson, Alex Williams
Dirdy Birdy
March 1997's Dirdy Birdy by John Dilworth.
KLIC's Online Animated Musical: Real-Time Animation on the Web?
Kids' Light Intertainment Channel (KLIC) has produced the first animated musical for children on the Internet, using Enliven Viewer, one of the hottest new technologies available for creating interactive content on the Web. With Enliven, a plug-in application for Web browsers like Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape, the animation begins to run right away, using a streaming technology to play the first segment, while the other segments download in the background.The Body Shop.Hardly a traditional musical, KLIC's site features Swampland of Gross, Snitchragula, and Alien Body Shop, animated...
The Tail That Wags The Dog, And Other Tales From the 1997 American International Toy Fair
William Moritz gives a quick and dazzling historical overview attempts to create visual music using "color organs."
Death Laughs Among Us: The Films of John Schnall
John Schnall.Independent animator John Schnall has put together a home video of his short films in association with Poteet Music, an independent record distributor based in New Jersey. Among the community of East Coast independents, Schnall is notably prolific; in this regard, his colleague Steve Dovas said that, "To me, what has been most admirable about his career has been the regularity with which he's turned out his funny, wierd, and wholly singular, self-produced animated films." All this abundance has driven Schnall to be able to release a 40-minute video collection at a relatively early...
Where the Action Is
Harvey Deneroff sums up the current state of America's animation industry, with an emphasis on recent mergia mania, feature films and prime time shows..
Dirdy Birdy
February 1997's Dirdy Birdy by John Dilworth.
Staying Ahead of the Game
Jerry Hibbert, drawing from his own experience, provides some thoughts on the need for production companies to embrace change.
Animation in Singapore
Gigi Hu reports on the current attempt by the island nation to bolster its fledgling animation industry.
Desert Island Series....Animation Industry-ites
Piet Kroon, Pat Raine Webb, Jerry Hibbert, Steve Hulett, Jeff Massie and Georges Lacroix
Susan Pitt: An Animator's Journey
Jackie Leger explores the visions of painter, designer and animation filmmaker, Suzan Pitt.
Shin Dong Mun, An Old Warrior in Korean Animation
John A. Lent interviews one of the pioneers of Korean animation, who had a profound effect on the course of the nation's indigenous production
Remembering Al
Animator Alfred Eugster, whose career started in the silent era and ended doing animation for TV, passed away the night of January 1, 1997 at the age of 87. The following memoir and biofilmography was prepared by his friend and sometime colleague, Mark Mayerson.Left to right: Otto Englander, Shamus Culhane, and Al Eugster at Disney in 1935. From Shamus Culhane's Talking Animals and Other People (St. Martin's Press, 1986). Collection of Bernie Wolf.I first met Al in 1975 when I was researching an article on cartoons released by MGM when he let me interview him about the Iwerks studio.
When I...
NATPE '97: The Buzz of the Biz!
Jean-Luc Ballester talks how a 1983 government proposal changed the French animation industry and how the major entertainment union used it to improve working conditions for animation artists.
The Changing Winds of Korean Animation
Chung-bae Park explains why South Korea is turning its attention to animation as part of its economic strategy for the 21st century.
Heard at NATPE 97
At the 1997 Convention and Conference of the National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE), our reporter on the scene, asked animation distributors: "What are some of the considerations involved in developing, producing, and ultimately distributing animation to the international market?" Herein are a selection of answers followed by some comments drawn from a panel discussion "Animation: The Universal Language," moderated by Cartoon Network President Betty Cohen , which discussed the realities of the much-hyped global marketplace for animation.Joel Andryc, Saban's Senior Vice...
Editor's Notebook
Animation Families
Don't Quit Your Day Job, Work the Night Shift
Dutch filmmaker Piet Kroon contributes the first in an occasional series devoted to a day in the life of an animation artist. Herein, Kroon explores the whys and wherefors of how he balances working as an independent filmmaker while holding down a full-time job at Warner Bros.
