Some final images from the closing ceremonies.

Hanna Heilborn and David Aronowitsch, who won for Slavar - Slaves

Adam Elliot, winner for Mary and Max, delicately balances his Cristal prize

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written by Johannes Wolters

A wonderful surprise waited for me Saturday morning, when I went seeing the boys. Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman had been with me through my entire life. I listened to their songs, from Winnie the Pooh and Jungle Book, from Mary Poppins through to Aristocats. All I knew about the artists, that they were brothers, had written unbelievable amounts of music and lyrics, had a close relationship to Walt Disney and that they had also composed the music for “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” which is no Disney movie! Little did I know that there is so much more.

So in the last hours of the festival there is time to relax a bit, you have time to meet friends, you go to Nik and Nancy´s picnic with the obligatory boat race with animators around the little island in the lake of Annecy.

But in the end of the day there lies the Closing Ceremony, in which all the Cristals will be handed out by the Jury, after that those who were lucky enough to get a invitation will gather for that last party at the end of the festival. So there time for some numbers, which I will quote from the official press release of the festival:

That´s it. I am going to sleep now for a whole week!

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Max of Mary and Max fame.

written by Johannes Wolters

Stop the printing machines! Hold everything! I have seen the film of the festival.

Sorry, but I am still under heavy shock and I think my feel-good hormones are still busy on the merry-go-round called my brain. And this happens only, when I see a truly overwhelming film.

It had been an already busy day full of big events, when we, me my friends and I went to the Grand Salle, sat down and saw “Mary and Max.” And this one hour and 32 minute long stop-motion movie turned out to be an outstanding, brilliant movie, which has to, which must, which will win the Cristal for best feature. The Clay Puppet-Movie tells the story about a strange and bewitching pen-pal friendship between two very different people: Mary Dinkle, an 8-year-old Australian, and 44 year-old obese Jewish American Max Horowitz. Based on a true story, the funny heartwarming film was written, directed and designed by academy award winning artist Adam Elliot from Down Under, who already enchanted us with his four short films, the trilogy “Uncle”, “Brother” and “Cousin” and of course the beloved “Harvie Krumpet”.

Runners up for the Cristal are Henry Selick’s “Coraline” and Tomm Moores “Brendan – The Secret of Kells” both wonderful imaginative movies, full of heart, art and beautiful design. Selick´s extraordinary picture doesn´t need any further explanation, you simply have to see that movie- period! “Brendan” by Tomm Moore sweetened my first day at Annecy and was my favorite movie until I saw “Mary and Max.” The Cartoon Saloon Production has been sold to the United States, the next feature is already in early stages of pre-production. So we will meet those wonderful artists again at Annecy.

Also in competition is Dreamworks “Monsters vs.Aliens,” directed by Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon. The delightful 3D-film full of references to monster films and many other movie-classics uses the new stereoscopic tool in a cool and dramaturgically great way, but the film will most certainly have no chance at a festival, which is in this year hailing the non-commercial, non-mainstream visions of single artists.

My Dog Tulip, directed by Paul and Sandra Fierlinger, tells a personal love story based on the eponymous book about a man and his dog, written in the late sixties. And so the film is very lovable and has a strong point about how and why to keep a pet at home, the story is a little bit to short or better not strong enough for a long feature film.

“Jeh Bool Chal Shee E Ya Gee - The Story of Mr. Sorry” is a film from South Korea, a little bit longer than an hour and made by five women: Eun-mi Lee, Hae-young Lee, In-keun Kwak, Il-hyun Kim and Ji-na Ryu. The story tells how Mr Sorry becomes a spider and is based on a famous song by an even more famous Korean singer/songwriter.

“Battle for Terra”, also a 3D-stereoscopic movie, directed by Aristomenides Tsirbas, tells the story of a interstellar conflict between the people of a peaceful world and the warriors who want to inhabit it. The film was produced in the USA and can certainly be seen as a comment on the Bush-Era.

Red Line by Takeshi Koike and produced by Madhouse, Inc. is a story about love, conspiracy, mass-destruction and the battle to survive revolving around the world´s deadliest automobile-race. These themes have never been before tackled by Japanese animation and unfortunately the screening of this film had to be cancelled.

Last but not least, there are two films left, which should be very special mentioned.

“Boogie, El Aceitoso” directed by Gustavo Cova from Argentine, produced by ILLUSION STUDIOS is worth a look as is the norvegian production “Kurt blir grusom – Kurt Turns Evil” by director Rasmus A. Sivertsen and produced by NORDISK FILM AS.

So, that´s quite a range of style and story, and this year´s competition has proofed to be an excellent one. And of course “Mary and Max” will win the competition.

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Bob Peterson (Co-Director UP), Peter Sohn and Kevin Reher (Director and Producer from Partly Cloudy)

written by Johannes Wolters

Sorry for writing so late. But yesterday evening I suffered from severe animation illness, information overload and heavy small talk. After seeing the commissioned film program filled with commercials and music videos up to the brink – sitting next to an equally tired Ron Diamond – I hardly reached my apartment and went into dreamland seconds later.

But if you had the opportunity to talk to Conrad Vernon, the Co-director of “Monster´s vs. Aliens,” to interview director Peter Sohn and producer Kevin Reiher from Pixar´s “Partly Cloudy” or to have a chat with Bob Peterson, who not only worked on “Monsters, Inc”, “Finding Nemo” and many, many more legendary features but also co-directed “UP”, then may be you would be a little tired and exhausted too. I ran into Nick Park, who is presenting his fourth short with Wallace and Gromit called “A Matter of Loaf and Death” and had a friendly conversation with Ruth Lingford, who is now teaching animation at the University of Harvard (sic!) This by the way during the charming Dutch party on the little island at the famous “Café des Arts”, which proves once again to be a place like Rick´s Café in “Casablanca” where everybody is coming to.

But I have to tell you about the Pixar event of the festival. There both films, the short “Partly Cloudy” and the feature “Up” were presented by its directors. First Peter Sohn entered the stage and explained en Detail how he got the idea as a kid to tell a story about the origins of babies, who get delivered by storks. He described how he went to the cinema with his mother and saw “Dumbo” for the very first time. This was a special occasion, because his mother didn´t understand the American language well enough to understand most of the movies she went to. So Peter often had to explain what was happening on the screen but his mother did not understand a thing. But during the film when Dumbo and his mother are reunited during the “Baby mine” sequence, young Peter turned to his mother with tears in his eyes and there he saw that she was crying too. So Dumbo had a deep impact and the idea was born to tell the story about the origins of these babies.

While Peter Sohn told those stories to the festival audience he showed the events also in wonderful story sketches and he brought down the house with his story how he pitched the idea to Pixar´s Story Trust. The sketches of Lassetter and his men and their reaction to various drafts of the screenplay were absolutely gorgeous. Sohn had to change his ideas about the story, a very hard and painfully process. “It is like your brainchild should become a baseball star but out of the blue the child tends to become a great violin player.” So he had to let go and he changed the story from explaining how the babies were made to a story about friendship and miscommunication. The result is one of the best pixar shorts ever. It took a year and half from start to finish and although they don´t tell you anything about the budget itself, the team was proud that “Partly Cloudy” came in under budget. One of the biggest problems of the production was ironically the production of “UP”, so all the artists had to work on the feature film during its crunchtime, so the short had to deal with that. From now on, the shorts will be produced after the production of a feature. And producer Kevin Reiher added, that films didn´t get finished, they are just released.

Afterwards Bob Peterson told us about the origins of “UP,” how Pete Docter and he developed the idea from a single sketch of an old grumpy man holding a bunch of ballons. Old people have experienced so much, having raised families, lived through wars and terror, but are rarely seen on the screen. So both decided to center the plot around the old guy and found an interesting counterpart in the young boyscout, who has a remarkable resemblance with Peter Sohn. During the presentation he shared his opinion about writing with the stunned audience. Here are his advises:

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written by Johannes Wolters

Partytime at Annecy! Do you know which party is going on today? Are you invited? How do you sneak into a party? And why should you do that?

When I first went to Annecy, I was totally concentrating on watching as many films as possible. I thought that´s the proper way of behaving while being away on a big event like Annecy. Then I discovered the possibility to talk to the people, who actually were responsible for some of the magic I experienced while watching their movies. You could meet them after the screenings, standing patiently in the foyer of the Festival Center called Bonlieu. If you were lucky they would answer some of your questions and draw you some very nice sketches. Then it went back to the next program.

But the festival offered a wonderful possibility to start a new festival day.  On every morning, except the very first day, you can meet some of the filmmakers during the Shorts and Breakfast Events hosted by Serge Bromberg. There he talked to the filmmakers, whose short films had screened the evening before. You are invited to ask questions and most of all you can do that while drinking a wonderful cup of coffee for free. And of course you instantly begin to meet people. People sitting next to you, people who like you are interested in animation and visual effects coming from every place of the planet to talk about animation.

So I began to ask my neighbours what they were doing and so on. I remember sitting next to a tall, friendly looking guy, who humbly replied that he was the director of Disney´s “The Lion King”, Roger Allers. I ended up with a nice drawing of Puumba. That´s one of the things I love most here at Annecy. You can approach almost everyone, even if it is Henry Selick or Bob Osher, who runs Sony Imageworks. I spoke to Conrad Vernon today, the co-director of “Monsters vs. Aliens”, who did a signing hour at the foyer at Bonlieu, I met Academy Award winner Michael Dudok deWitt, ran into character designer Harald Sieperman, with whom I went into a café for a short Café au Lait. Minutes later we were joined by German animator Felix Herzog, then entering the scene was Fabian Erlinghäuser, supervising animator of “Brendan – Secret of Kells.” Together with him six guys from Cartoon Saloon sat down at our growing table, one of them Cartoon Saloon founder Tom Moore, who is the author and director of “Brendan.” I took the opportunity to interview both of them, we exchanged cards, - never go to a festival without business cards!!! While interviewing them, Victor Antonov arrived at the scene, the artistic director of “The Prodigies,” we met at fmx at Stuttgart, he sat down for a drink and joined our conversation. Welcome to Animator´s Land.

You never know who you could meet like AWN founder Ron Diamond or animator Raimund Krumme (back in gray).

To meet interesting people, someone probably thousands of years ago had the magnificent idea to throw a party. This was my last step into the secrets of the festival. Annecy has wonderful parties, hidden ones, open ones, and forbidden ones. Even in times of credit crunches, the amount of parties did not alter very much. So today you could join the Zagreb-Party, run by the organizers of the Zagreb Film festival, you could join the Swiss Party, the Danish party or go to the MIFA-party, traditionally held on the opening night of the big International Animation Film Market at the Hotel Imperial. There is the DreamWorks Picnic or the famous Dutch Party and those are just the ones I am aware of. The trick of course is to get invited. Or to boldly go where you never have gone before and to sneak in somehow. The reward: sometimes wine and food, sometimes music and dance but always interesting, creative people, which you love to talk to.

So, if you go to Annecy, keep in mind you should not spend the time entirely in the cinema. Not entirely! So, that it is for the third day of Annecy.

Sorry, I almost forgot to mention, that I sat through a Renderman Session hosted by Pixar and listened there to “Up” co-director Bob Peterson, who talked about his and Pete Docter´s trip to South America, especially to famous Angel Falls, researching the scenery for Pixar´s latest sensational feature film.  Did you know that Peterson was rejected three times before he made it into Pixar? His advise to all the young students: Never give up! I met Henry Selick again by the “Talk to the Filmmakers”, where he patiently answered all the questions of his many fans. And Bob Osher and Hannah Minghella from Sony Animation and Sony Imageworks did a beautiful presentation of “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”, which look very, very promising. They actually showed 13 minutes of the film, which left you wishing to see the whole film right then and there. You simply cannot avoid meeting interesting people at Annecy. It is absolutely impossible! And that is the beauty of it!

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written by Johannes Wolters

It’s a tough job to be on a pre-selection committee. I had the opportunity to talk to Alexey Alexeev, who together with Vanja Andrijevic (Producer, Croatia) and Francis Gavelle (Journalist, France) had the gigantic task to select the programs for short films from thousands and thousands of films. They also had to put together the out of competition program. So Alexey told me about the big discussions they had, what to choose, what to select within the pressure to work for the most influential animation festival of the world. So he sought for something new, something bold, something sharp. Describing himself as a little bit cynical, he adores “South Park” and Andreas Hykade but also the old Hanna-Barbera “Tom & Jerry” cartoons. He tries to combine creativity and professionalism, which means less boring films, less long format, less is more. Alexey Alexeev himself is in the TV competition with his lovable “Log Jam” series produced by Andras Erkel and his Hungarian Studio BAESTARDS.

Titanic Club? Anyone? It is an inside joke for all who went to Annecy in the past years. There was at legendary screening of a short film in competition where you saw the ocean from an iceberg by night, the camera rolling with the waves. After unbelievable boring 30 minutes during which the audience began to get slightly upset, you finally saw a ship on the horizon coming nearer, very slowly by the way. You get it? But moments before the Titanic crushes into the ice, the camera went to the left and you didn’t even get the main event. The audience went mad! We all sang, “My heart will go on!” Some people swam literally across the stage in front of the big screen. It was hilarious. Afterwards Serge Bromberg admitted, that they wanted one film in the program that was provocative beyond any limit during the festival. So for insiders the title of the film “Titanic Club” is like a definition for a certain festival genre.

So yesterday evening was the time for this year´s provocation. Pritt Päärn, director of “Night of the Carrots”, presented his new film called “Elu Ilma Gabriella Ferrita  - Life without Gabriella Ferri.” It was the last film in Section One of the Short Film Competition. And there it was. The film every festival needs to have there in the program: 43 minutes and 44 seconds. You lived through a surreal nightmare of strange characters doing even more strange things. The film created a special kind of atmosphere, tranquillity which will be hailed by some, hated by many – the guy behind me fell asleep during the very first minutes and began to snore heavily. So the front row had the opportunity to watch the film with an additional sound design.

The wonderful thing about this film for me was the big discussions about good or bad animation afterwards: “You have to do it the Pixar way!” “No that´s totally boring!” “Pixar is big fast food!” It has to have atmosphere!” “It doesn´t need to be cleverly animated, it has to have a good story.” “A clever design!”

So Alexey and Serge did it again with the help of Prit Päärn. They destroyed for a while our own well built vision of how to do it and created an atmosphere, where you can reconsider your opinion. What more can a festival do?

Coraline was the first stop-motion feature originally created in 3-D.

For instance, conferences. I went to the conference about technical and narrative constraints in 3-D. Producer Didier Brunner, the famous producer of “Triplettes of Belleville,” Jeremie Degruson (nWave pictures, Belgium) and Guillaume Jallot (Antefilm France) talked about the experience with 3-D on the screen, while Guillaume Hellouin (TeamTo, France) and Gilles Marcellier (Alioscopy, France) explored the possibilities of 3-D on television. Marcellier and his team developed a television set that do not need glasses. Guest of Honor of this meeting was director Henry Selick, who talked about “Coraline” and showed how he used the new tool to enhance his story, which he described as a modern version of “The Wizard of Oz.” All the rooms of Coraline’s real house had to look claustrophobic, small and depressing, while in the other world, the same rooms had to look big, friendly and overwhelming. So Selick and his team played very cleverly with perspective lines, light and shadows and of course colors.

Didier Brunner had a very strong point in describing the difficulties he has to get the money for a European production. The average budget is 12 to 15 million Euros, now with the 3-D tools it is roundabout 15-17 million. That means a lot of big problems for the business model European producers have developed over the years. Jeremie Degruson showed a 13 minute clip of “Around the World in 50 Years,” a feature film that will be completed in October 2009 and hit the screen probably 2010. For all who liked “Fly Me to the Moon,” they will love this story about a turtle’s environmental journey around the world. Guillaume Hellouin and his TeamTo are currently working on a feature film called “Ocho Kochoi,” which is still in production.

Afterwards “Coraline “ went to the big screen in La Grand Salle at the festival center. The film isn´t released in France and Germany yet and the audience cheered the film and its director with big applause and standing ovations.

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Director Henry Selick, Madhouse Producer Jungo Maruta and Marie-Pierre Journet are the Jury Members for Graduation Films at Annecy 2009

written by Johannes Wolters

Here we are at last! Welcome to the most fantastic, most exciting and I think “the” animation festival of them all. The 33rd edition of Annecy Festival began today, as always with the great welcome at festival centre Bonlieu next to the big, wonderful lake with the wonderful view on the French Alps. It’s like Casablanca, where everybody comes to “Rick´s.” Here at Bonlieu you can meet all the people of Animationland during the one week, when the old town of Annecy with its old French charm becomes once again “Animatorsland”.

Between all the “Hellos” and “How are you, what did you do in the last year?” you have to manage to get all your tickets, you have to make up your mind about a few last minute changes, but with the help of the marvellous team behind Festival-Chefs Patrick Eveno, Tiziano Loschi, Dominique Puthod and the wonderful Jack of all Trades Serge Bromberg, who again did a excellent job as the artistic director of the Festival, you know it will be a great week. Like Serge wrote in the editorial of the Annecy festival catalogue, “Because animation is made of these worlds where there is neither gravity nor limits to the imagination and dreams. For one week long, you will be able to discover the riches from faraway horizons and take a trip deep into the heart of laughter and emotions. You can forget about the heaviness of daily life and you won´t even need a spacesuit to take a tour around planet Animation.”

And in terms of global financial crisis Patrick Eveno and Dominique Puthod state in their foreword, “Together we have recently had several spectacular years, marked by the global dynamic expansion of the animation sector. Now in 2009 we are facing a more difficult period, but we are convinced that creativity and the quest for excellence will allow us to overcome these difficulties and satisfy those people for whom culture, images and animation remain a means of sparking the imagination.”

The opening show of the festival on Monday evening showed the wide diversity of animation. First Serge showed us the very first animated film ever produced, a film recently discovered animated by a Russian dance star named Alexander Shiryaev years before Emile Cohl did his famous drawings. Shiryaev tried to capture the dance movements of his ballet and his own, so he first drew the key poses and built up some kind of early storyboard. Then he traced those drawings onto paper strips, which could be projected with an optical device like the praxinoscope. More then 100 years later one of this strips were screened at the grand sale at the Bonlieu and cheered by the impressed animators of today.

A shot from Partly Cloudy

After that it was Pixar-time. Director Peter Sohn presented the latest Pixar short film “Partly Cloudy”, which will be shown in front of “Up”. Both films will be honoured with a making of session on Friday hosted by Sohn and “Up” Co-director Bob Peterson, an event everybody wants to attend. “Partly Cloudy” is once again a hilarious masterpiece of storytelling concentrating on one important question: Where do babies come from? And please note: this short film alone is worth going to cinema. The feature film of the opening night was “Panique Au Village – A Town called Panic” directed by Vincent Patar and Stéphane Aubier. They transferred their prize-winning TV series onto the big screen and they managed to keep the unique childish charm and the playful, almost surreal and breathless tone alive. The big applause afterwards indicates a sure hit at the box office.

During the day I managed to see TV-Competition No. 1, which led me into dark depression, but afterwards I was rewarded by seeing “Brendan and the Secret of Kells” which is a truly amazing movie and my favorite in the feature film competition so far. The team did a stunning job. The strong story about the origins of the famous “Book of Kells,” a book containing the four gospels, written and illuminated around the year 800 AD is beautifully designed, recreating the style of the famous paintings within the book. This film is a must see!

Chris Landreth (right) and animator Spela Cadez,

Biggest surprise of the day was the Out of Competition-Program No 1, where you could see Chris Landreth’s amazing new short film “The Spine”. The quality of this particular program was so excellent, that either the real competition programs are of gigantic quality or the pre-selection jury had developed a special taste, which we will discover in the next days. Anyway, check out films like “The Surprise Demise of Francis Cooper´s Mother” by Felix Massie, “Dog With Electric Collar” by Steve Baker or “Melvin” by Magnus Holmgren , you won´t be disappointed. There was the very clever “Der Da Vinci Time Code” by Gil Alkabetz, “The Royal Nightmare” by Alex Rudovsky and the truly hilarious “Photograph of Jesus” by Laurie Hill. The program closed with the remarkable “Varmints” directed by Marc Craste and produced by Studio AKA. This 24 minute-film was far more entertaining than most feature films from Europe I have seen in the last decade. So all in all it was a very promising first day of the Annecy festival.

A shot from The Spine

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The festival’s last day begins with Red Stick’s now-annual Pitch Contest. It might not as well attended as KidScreen’s similar event, but the presenters are every bit as passionate about their projects and after several days of tutoring from industry pros they’re ready to rock: Tim Raglan wants to turn his beautifully illustrated kids’ book Uncle Mugsy (featuring a stuffy bulldog and his mischievous niece and nephew in a Victorian canine universe) into a movie, followed by “many episodes or sequels depending on your personal preference;” Greg Farren and Jeremy Melton merge hot rodders (only their characters race spaceships, not cars), 1950’s-style sci-fi and rockabilly music into an inspired mixture called Crazy Eights; Digital Tap’s Martin Grebing presents Zap Squad, a team of adolescent superheroes (“they’re not your average kids next door”) on time travelling adventures; Patrick, a local cartoonist whose last name I missed offers Guns McMenanin, “the most bad-ass repo man in LA,” and Chris – again last name missing – does as much stand-up as pitching (“this is the most attractive crowd I’ve ever seen at an AA meeting”) while presenting two projects – Spells, a gross-out effort starring a trio of macabre witches (“mean-spirited fun for everyone”) and El Mucho Grande, Wrestler for Hire. (“He’s so big it took two women to give him birth.”)

Tim Raglan and his creation Uncle Mugsy.

Although Raglan’s project and pitch are charming (and his characters would definitely shine in animation), Crazy Eights deservedly takes home the Red Baton award. Beyond its fresh/retro look, the complex interrelationships (and conflicting agendas) of the show’s main and supporting characters promise plenty of juice beyond their week-to-week adventuring; if I ran Comedy Central I’d sign Farren and Melton up tomorrow.

Igor was Max Howard's first indie production with Exodus Prods.

The festival is in wind-down mode as producer Max Howard intros a screening of the independently-financed Igor. Afterwards Howard does a q&a, describing its labor-of-love creation headed up by former staffers of Disney’s shut-down Paris studio and the challenges – and freedom – of producing animation without major studio backing.

Howard outlines his career move from the London stage to American animation, beginning with allocating animation resources on Who Framed Roger Rabbit (“it was an 18-month job versus uncertain theater gigs”) and eventually heading up Disney’s Paris operation and exec-producing DreamWorks’ animated Spirit feature. According to Howard, Steve Buscemi signing on as Igor’s suicidal rabbit Scamper attracted other actors from the independent animation community, including Igor voice John Cusack and Molly Shannon as his monstrous (but charming) creation Eva.

All that’s left are screenings of Comet’s Around the World for Free and Nina Paley’s one-woman animated feature Sita Sings the Blues – before the evening’s Lifetime Career Achievement dinner in honor of Disney’s Mark Henn. It’s more than appropriate, considering the Disney/Princess and the Frog-centric tone of this year’s Red Stick: Henn is the animator of P&F’s Tiana, not to mention Ariel and Belle from you-know-which movies.

The event’s waiters are whisking our plates away before we have a chance to finish our meal when Max Howard intros Mark by calling him “the engine of the film” with the personal career goal of “having more personal footage onscreen” than anyone else. Howard adds that Henn’s way with Disney heroines has earned him the nickname of “the leading lady of animation.” Stacy Simmons presents the award, warning him that when Andreas Deja took home last year’s trophy it was mistaken for a bomb at airport security – “be careful how you wrap it.”

Henn comes to the podium, praising Red Stick as “up there with the world-class animation festivals…I thought you had to be 80” before receiving a lifetime award, then adds “I’m glad it didn’t take that long.” He acknowledges his debt to Frank and Ollie and calls himself “the tip of the iceberg” compared to the animators working on the film under him. He looks down at angled top of the trophy: “Andreas said it was sharp and pointy.”

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Friday is field trip day at the Red Stick Festival – It seems as if half of Baton Rouge’s school population has been bussed in to take part in the festivities. I share an elevator With Walt Santucci of Duck Studios, on his way to lead an all-day animation workshop with the local school kids. I bump into him again at days’ end; his group produced some 9 anti-global warming PSA’s, with some of the best work done, he says, by kids with no previous animation experience. If you teach them too much at once they start worrying if they’re doing it right or not…

I head down the hill to the Louisiana Art & Science Museum (aka LASM) auditorium where Rhythm & Hues’ Hans Rijpkema is waiting for a few field trippin’ classes to arrive so he can begin his session on how R&H built last year’s bigger, better, hulkier Incredible Hulk. We see the test clip the studio produced to snag the assignment (it goes on for a while as Hulkie smashes his way thru an office skyscraper), low-rez motion & anatomy tests, live-action video reference of the R&H animators grunting and snarling, and their after-houses goofball reel, starring a two-legged moose wearing a Speedo, the Hulk making funny faces and exploding into a half-dozen mini-Hulks, a quick glimpse of Cheney that draws boos from the crowd and Wilbur the pig transforming into a package of Oscar Meyer bacon.

Illusion of Life has taught a many an animator.

I meet Disney’s Doeri Welch-Greiner, hiding out in the Shaw Center intern’s lounge, editing down her next presentation to fit inside an hour’s time slot. The subject of Thomas & Johnston’s Illusion of Life pops up again, and Doeri talks about how Prince Naveen’s (from the upcoming Princess and the Frog) animator taught himself out of said book, not to mention the fellow from Brazil who did the same and in spite of knowing no English, showed up at the front door of Don Bluth’s Ireland studio and got himself a job.

Across the street in the ornate Old State Capitol Building (a fanciful structure perfect for that evening’s ‘Princess Ball’ – make sure your tiara’s on straight, girls!) Stuart Sumida offers a kid-friendly anatomy lesson on the topic of What Makes for Cute. Somebody give this man a cough drop! He’s growing hoarser by the second as he explains it’s all in head-to-body proportions and jaw-to-head ratios. He reveals his favorite Disney scene is when Tarzan realizes he’s been adopted (thanks to the difference in finger length between his and his mother ape’s hand) – “I freaking cry when I see this scene.”

Back at the LASM, Marlon West (P&F’s effects supervisor) is recapping a career path that led him to Disney. (Seems that animating nasal hairs for Encyclopedia Britannica was the perfect training for becoming an effects animator.) Rachelle Lewis takes over, sternly shushing a yakky crowd (“shut up or leave!”) to show a series of outstanding student reels that earned their creators industry employment. “7200 people applied for [a Disney] job and I had to watch all their reels – that’s why martinis are my friend.” Her final words of warning: “anything worth doing is hard.”

The disembodied voice of Blue Sky animator Jason Sadler (a sudden family emergency kept him home) fills the Shaw auditorium, narrating the slides onscreen tracing the conceptual and development art behind their Horton Hears a Who adaptation to the biggest crowd I’ve seen at the festival so far. The best photo reference for Horton’s elephantine wrinkles: chubby babies with overlapping rings of body fat. In a fascinating scientific tidbit, too long to go into detail here, Sadler explains how the visual impact of an endless, hot pink field of flowers was enhanced via ‘successive contrast.’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Successive_contrast)

Technical whiz Scott Johnston surveys the use of three-dimensional objects and backgrounds in 2D animation, including those that preceded CGI (Cruella DeVille’s Rolls Royce in 101 Dalmations – a high-contrast miniature photographed and Xeroxed onto cels for painting) or clever use of distorted perspective going back to Pinocchio.

Bolt redesigned anatomy might have trouble walking let alone running.

Sumida returns, his voice all but gone as he outlines ‘The Biology of Bolt.’ The animal’s original, full-sized look would not have sold many plush toys, but a real-life dog with Bolt’s cuter look and redesigned anatomy might have trouble walking. (“His limbs are so short his knees would bang into his elbows.”) Sumida, a real-life biology professor who’s served as advisor to any number of animated features admits that thanks to his sideline “I get to hang out with incredibly cool people.” (Kinda like me, but don’t tell anybody.) By the way, the secret of giving animals human expressions: “it’s all in the eyebrows,” even when the real-life animal doesn’t have any).

Marlon West is back with the goodie we’ve been waiting all day for: story sketches, animation tests and a few finished shots from The Princess and the Frog. The transformed Prince Naveen, now a frog but still quite impressed with himself, kisses Prince Tiana with unfortunate results. (Fans of cool movie transformation scenes will be disappointed that neither metamorphosis takes place on camera.) A Bolt screening is supposed to follow the P&F preview, but first a bunch of plushie Bolts are tossed into the audience. (I had to elbow a grandma out of the way to snag mine.) I had intended to stay for the action sequence that begins the movie, but whoever was running the PlayStation was having a bit of trouble; for all I know he’s still in the Manship Theater scrolling through the machine’s endless menus and submenus in search of the blu-ray ‘play’ button…

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written by Joe Strike

Day 2 of Red Stick, and the multiple events begin. Oh for the power of Dr. Manhattan to split myself up into several Joes so as to cover everything, but all I can manage is to run to and fro, capturing a taste of this and that.

In an upstairs classroom at the Shaw Center Chris Williams and Dougy Pincott are handing out modeling clay to middle school students who are about to learn the rudiments of stop motion animation. Chris and Dougy are visitors from Animex, Red Stick’s partner festival in Middlesbrough England. “We’re similar towns,” Dougy explains, “we’re both post-industrial and regenerating ourselves” through a focus on digital technology and animation. He adds that their town also features a bridge running across a major river, like the one carry I-10 across the Mississippi just south of the Shaw Center.

Heather Kenyon gives the animation devoted a bible lesson.

Heather Kenyon’s bible clinic is well attended, as the AWN and Cartoon Network alum provides a PowerPoint primer into the mysteries of assembling a book that will help you sell your show to a skeptical executive. Her impression of a clueless would-be producer going on an endless discursive ramble is pitch-perfect, in all likelihood honed from hearing variations of it dozens of times. “People bring in their pet Chihuahua, or play their ukulele. One time an animation ‘Manly Man’ [she leaves unnamed] insisted on singing a romantic song” as part of his movie pitch.

A session on “The Future of the Content Market.” One panelist (you come in late, you miss the introductions) refers to a cable channel as “linear,” as opposed to non-linear, pick-&-choose online sites like YouTube and Hulu. Another notes her 22 year old stepdaughter isn’t just a multi-tasker but a “mega-tasker.” Tina Satomaro (I got her card at a session yesterday) advises that character development and story arcs don’t play online, where people are looking for a quick, free-standing entertainment zap.

Gerald's Last Day tugs at the heartstrings.

The first program of entries in the Student Film Competition takes place across the street at the Louisiana Arts & Sciences Planetarium auditorium. The room’s already dark when I arrive, but there’s no mistaking the presence of a reasonably sized crowd – perhaps 50-60 people, as opposed to the smaller turn-outs (perhaps 20-30 people) for the sessions at the Shaw Center’s Manship Auditorium. The films are mostly cgi, with some nice moments of performance, lighting and effects animation. My favorite of the bunch is cOcO nut, starring two characters who look like aboriginal drawings come to life, battling over the biggest coconut on their tropical island. I’m also impressed by Gerald’s Last Day, a stop-motion Chaplin-esque tearjerker about a pound-imprisoned bulldog scheduled to be put to sleep at 5 o’clock if he’s not adopted beforehand. (I’m told the extended freeze-frame happy ending was a technical glitch and not a lead-up to an Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge-type surprise.)  There’ll be several other screenings of competition entries (Stephen Beck, the festival’s host at the LSU Computational Center says a record 450 films were entered this year) but it looks like I won’t be able to attend them.

At lunch Stephen and Clint Ourso of the Illinois-based game design company ‘volition’ discuss video game platforms. Who knew the Wii doesn’t have enough computational power to support photorealistic games? (They did, not me.) Turns out its better at low res arcade games and its charm is in its simple interface, the one you wave around in your living room to play tennis on your TV screen.

Rachelle Lewis hosts a killer session: Hooray for Hollywood: Getting a Job in Animation. The secret: figure out what you’re good at and become very good at it, whether it’s modeling, rigging, lighting or personality animation. No talk of monetizing content here; instead Rachelle offers nuts-and-bolts advice and screens way-impressive student films that won their creators early entré into the business. She advises the attendees to study Thomas and Johnston’ The Illusion of Life (“carry it with you at all times”), find yourself a mentor, and oh yeah, “it’s very difficult to get a job right now.” Becoming a conceptual artist for an animation studio? “It’s the cherry on top of the cupcake on the yacht in the harbor.”

Stuart Sumida gives his presentation to an intimate crowd.

Speaking of small turnouts, why are there only seven people attending Stuart Sumida’s session on animal anatomy? Are the rest of the aspiring animators at the Festival crazy or just lazy? This guy has been an advisor on almost every animal-centric Disney film from The Lion King through Ratatouille and they’re missing out a million dollar opportunity to learn from a master. (Did you know that 70% of a four-legged mammal’s propulsion comes from its hind legs? Now I do.)

Doeri Welch-Greiner lays out what is needed for a killer portfolio.

It’s the same at Doeri Welch-Greiner’s Disney portfolio review: a mere five people gather to hear Doeri’s advice on assembling a killer portfolio. (Make sure to include a range of art styles and characters conveying emotions – and you might be in trouble if you can’t come up with “orthographic” drawings of how a character will look from a variety of angles.)

Deborah Todd lectures on story and character development, and how to make your characters more than stereotypes. (New age guru Deepak Chopra, motivational speaker Anthony Robbins and horoscope books were suggested as sources for ideas on infusing characters with specific personalities.)

Burnt out reading all this? Imagine how I felt spending all day running to one session after another. It was time to rest up at an umbrella-covered table at the Shaw Center’s outdoor café and gossip with some of those folks who needed a break too.

Finally got back to my hotel room to type this up & send it to AWN. An Email – sent out at 7:23 pm – is waiting with some interesting news not in the Red Stick program book:

Disney’s upcoming feature film, The Princess and the Frog, takes place in Louisiana, and audiences in the state’s capital will be among the first in the world to get a sneak preview as part of the Red Stick International Animation Festival on Friday, April 24, at 5:30 p.m. in the Manship Theatre.

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