We were delighted to have Olivia play in competition in Annecy last week but unfortunately we came away empty handed.
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I was recently in Shanghai for a week as part of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year annual retreat. I was nominated last year and as one of the alumni I attended the World Expo in Shanghai with over 70 Irish business people, and spent some time meeting local businesses and networking with each other.
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The Looney Tunes are set to return to our screens!
Being big fans of the old Warner Bros cartoon here in Brown Bag it’s great to see our favourite characters brought back to life.
New Looney Tunes line-up by Jessica Borutski
But the old, wary and cynical animator in me will wait and see what it’s like before I make any comments.
Here are a few articles on it that you can judge for yourselves…
Article on Collider.com about the new launch…
Cartoon Brew article on Character Designs
Designer Jessica Borutski’s Blog
So what do you think of the designs and approach to the format of the new shows?
Getting the character design is always a tough part of any film. We’ve been through the mill on this short already and have done quite a few versions:
This was the first design of Professor Orit that we settled on, drawn up by Derek Horan:
(click on all the images to enlarge them)
Was it just me or was Professor Orit looking a bit like this bloke? more »
One of the big advantages of working on a 3D show over a 2d show is that it’s easier to keep the character on model! The problem with 2D shows is that you have so many artists touching the characters at various stages that it is essential you keep them all drawing the character the same way or the model can drift and end up not looking right.
Because we had created Olivia as a 3D model, it meant that she would always look the same, although animators still have to keep her movements on model so that the things she does still feels like it is Olivia and not something another character might do. more »
Coming to our cinema screens in the near future are two all time classics tv series shows.
Yogi Bear and The Smurfs are getting their first full length feature adventure next year but now they are going 3D!
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An animated film has never been nominated for an Art Direction Oscar!
Beauty and the Beast (1991) and Up (2009) are the only animated films ever to be nominated for Best Picture, while Waltz with Bashir (2008) is the only animated picture ever nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.
However an animated film has never been up for Best Art Direction.
Now saying that, Avatar did win last year but many would not regard this as a solely animated piece as the lines are very blurred with this film. I must say though it thoroughly deserved the win for an absolutely remarkable achievement, and perhaps it will be the turning point for the animated films to be recognised. more »
Olivia has won a silver medal for television at the Parents Choice Children’s Media & Toy Reviews.
Gina Catanzarite writes that “‘Olivia’ is all about diving into life and creating those joyous moments of discovery and pure fun that are the stuff of a happy childhood. For parents who limit their kids’ television viewing, this half hour is a worthwhile investment”.
We’re in the middle of producing of ‘Olivia’ Season 2 for Chorion and Nick Jr – updates coming soon!
One of the first things you need to think about when producing a short film is what aspect ratio you want your film to be in. We’re going to use ‘23 Degrees..’ as a way of testing our feature film pipeline for future projects so right from the beginning we have decided that we will be going to film.
This is an expensive process so in the past we have waited to see how successful the short is before we made the expensive decision to make a digital film print. However this is isn’t always the best option as there are certain choices you should make early on to increase the cinematic experience. more »
It’s that time of year again when the seaside village of Gortahork in the heart of the Donegal Gaeltacht turns into a film Mecca for the Guth Gafa International Documentary Film Festival (11th to 13th June). Having been lucky enough to have worked at Guth Gafa for the last four years (The Octonauts and Olivia the Pig stole me this year!), I have watched it grow from humble roots to one of the main film events in the Irish calendar.
This year, in addition to the documentaries, Guth Gafa are screening a series of short animations as part of their special family programmes: Tricks for Kids. Presented by Heinz Hermanns (the man behind Interfilm Berlin’s “Going Underground Festival’ held in the trains of the Berlin subway), Tricks for Kids will be showing a series of short animations told through different animation techniques.
The Tooth by Nathan Stone
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