John Hubley's Moonbird

insight and history via Michael Sporn:

"In 1959, Moonbird took a giant leap forward. The art style borrowed from the expressionists, but used a method of double exposures to layer the characters into the backgrounds. Each animation drawing was painted black outside the border of its lines. Moonbird, the character, was colored with clear wax crayon and painted with black ink. The black resisted where the wax stood and gave a loose scribbled coloring. All of these painted drawings were photographed as double exposures, shot at less than 100%, to combine characters with Bgs.

The soundtrack involved an improvised track of two children, Mark and Ray Hubley, playing. These were recorded in sessions within a recording studio and massively edited down to create the final tracks."

I would love to see the non-YouTube version. The expressions of the kids are so human.

Wall-E

Whenever Pixar puts out a film, animators and the public as a whole take notice. They've kind of replaced Disney as the standard bearer for animated feature films. So far, the buzz around Wall-E has been extremely positive—some are already touting it as Pixar's Best to Date. One early circulating "spoiler" is that the first half hour of the film is almost entirely silent...just Wall-E hanging out on Earth all by himself---little to no dialogue. Which intrigues me.

However, I just came across the first heavily negative review I've seen. And it comes from Michael Sporn, one of the top bloggers in the animation community. He says that "the film, to me, felt less like an animated film than a special effect film." Which is an interesting statement in it's own right....heavy on spaceships and robots (obviously). But, here's the essence of his criticism:

"The technical abilities are high, and the film is done with the greatest professionalism. But they’re machines being animated, and I never felt close to them. The Iron Giant, from that film, was a hostile, war machine and was supposed to stay a machine, but I felt more for that character than I did for Wall-E or his cutely developed girlfriend, EVE.

The film has a better concept than story. It’s the bane of all movies these days. If you can narrow the story down to one sentence, it’s more concept than story and has a harder time being successful. Wall-E feels a lot like Short Circuit 3 with no humans - for at least the first half."

Definitely disappointing if true. I'm gonna hope for better. I think that for me, it will fall on character development. R2-D2 and C-3P0 were extremely likable robots. But it IS an interesting choice for Pixar to work with less animated-looking characters. What are people's thoughts and expectations for the film, based on reviews and trailers you've seen? It hits theaters tomorrow.

Storyboarding and Color Design Galore!

Howdy, folks! I was just over at Michael Splorn's blog and saw a fantastic series of posts he has about the concept art for The Little House. Links here--> 1, 2, 3. He has samples of Bill Peet's storyboards and Mary Blair's color concepts. Be sure to look at the hi-res scans of the storyboards, they are truly spectacular. Check out the ones that he did on black paper (for night)...a practical solution, but ingenious!

The two worked as a creative duo designing the look of the film. I find it interesting that two of the comments point out that so much of film relies on the front on shot of the house. Which is one of the reasons why color design plays such a big role (same shot, but different look everytime). MMMMMM....gets my juices bubbling just looking at this artwork! I thought it was relevant, as I've been talking with a couple of you about the importance of storyboarding. Michael Splorn often posts concept art for animated films, so be sure to stop by his blog when you're surfing for creativity.