All posts in animation news

So Kung Fu Panda blew me away. I saw an early screening of it here at the Metreon in San Francisco last Tuesday with a bunch of my animator friends and everyone enjoyed it. The story is very strong, the characters are likable, the design is beautiful, and it’s the perfect blend of comedy and drama. The voice acting is great – Jack Black is terrific as Po and Dustin Hoffman pulls off Shifu with ease.

Clip:

I bought the “Art of” book a week ago and it is awesome. Highly recommended. Beautiful art from Nico Marlet, the character designer.

Enough said.

Happy Birthday to the most important man in the history of animation!

ASIFA-Hollywood held a free screening of Beowulf tonight in San Francisco. We sat in the theater for 25 minutes while the projectionist attempted to focus the projector and get the 3D print to work. We then sat through the first 20 minutes of the film in broken 3D, where everything was misaligned and quickly gave me a headache. Eventually everyone in the audience got fed up and walked out and they shut the film off because they couldn’t figure out the problem. I wonder how many other theaters around the country this is going to happen at. Funny how they seemed to have a handle on this technology back in the 1950′s, but now it’s much more difficult to get working! What I saw of Beowulf was ugly, raunchy, and extremely boring. Facial expressions were lifeless and the CG animation made the movie a joke…had it been real actors, I may have taken it more seriously. I will admit I saw a small portion of the film, but there’s no way I’m paying to see it in the theater.

And just to renew your faith in CG animation (after that Alvin horror) here is the new trailer for Horton Hears a Who. This movie looks beautiful! (We’ll see how the story goes…)

Alvin literally eats poop in this trailer. Enough said.

The new Robert Zemeckis mo-cap adventure flick has posted a trailer over on Apple. The CG humans hold up decently for about…3 seconds. Then it suffers from Final Fantasy-itis, where all the characters look slightly too perfect and move just a little bit off. I love Zemeckis and Neil Gaiman wrote the script…I just wish it was made with real people. (I wonder how people will feel about a hot naked CG Angelina Jolie…why not the real thing, huh??) What’s with making actors over in CG anyway? Yes, its Anthony Hopkins voice…does the character have to BE Anthony Hopkins? The official site says that the film will be shown in IMAX 3D and Digital 3D – sounds like the only option is 3D. If they could come up with a way to show 3D movies that didn’t involve glasses, and didn’t feel like a gimmick that took me out of the film…I might enjoy it.