Animation Nation

Long time AN member Jeff Nevins is Lead Animator at a company called TangerinePop which creates online video games that are a lot of fun to play.

Jeff's particular contributions are in a game called Graveyard Shift and also Dungeon Run. 

Warning - They can be addictive, so if you're looking for a way to spend your entertainment time enjoying the easy to learn online gaming experiences what TangerinePop has to offer, follow the links above. Here's the link to the AN Forum topic.

There's a new animation centric site on the way called ToonGoggles and it promises to be something advantageous to both animation content creators and fans worldwide. The site will be officially launching next month but you can access it now.

ToonGoggles is an online children’s entertainment channel where kids can watch hundreds and even thousands of cartoons for free, as well as soon play hundreds of games as well. They offer rights holders and animators the chance to place their animation (for free) in front of kids, parents, and networks eyes and receive full data metrics based off the viewership their content receives.

For more information head on over to the topic on AN's General Discussion Forum  and catch up on all the things we can expect from ToonGoggles.com.

There's been increasing chatter about the origin of He-Man.

I don't know what was happening at Mattel thirty years ago when the toy line was first created, but I do know what was happening at Filmation Studios when the cartoon was developed because I was there at the very beginning of it all.

Now that we're getting closer to the thirtieth anniversary of the TV show and interest is growing in how the popular series from the 1980s came to be, it's a good time to share my experiences and help set the record straight.

The He-Man series has its roots in an animated commercial produced by Filmation for Mattel in 1981. I looked for this commercial for a long time on YouTube and it was nowhere to be found.

That is, until now.

This past July 25, it was uploaded on YouTube from video that was captured at the San Diego Comic Con.

The audio is bad as the din of the crowd mingles with the sound of the commercial, but it's good enough to get an idea as to what it's about.

Here it is for the first time online. I'll be building up the topic on AN's General Discussion Forum so be sure to check in as I relate what was happening at the tiome and how the He-Man cartoon came to be, at least from my perspective as a member of the original development team.

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There's a couple of fascinating videos I've discovered featuring Walter Lantz, the creator of Woody Woodpeck and many other memorable characters for Universal Studios.

One video is narrated by Mr. Lantz as he walks us through the responsibilities of an animation director, little changed over the time span of about 50 years from the time I'm guessing the footage was shot. The other video goes all the way back to the 1930s, as we see a production crew creating an Oswald the Rabbit cartoon with Walter Lantz at the helm. 

Both are must see videos for the animation enthusiast, and you can find them by following this link to the AN Education Forum. If here's more videos to be found along this subject they'll be added to the topic.

If Walt was a young man in our time trying to break into animation today, how would he fare? I speculate upon the hypothetical situation in this topic on the AN Forums.

Here's something I discovered recently that has given me a renewed appreciation for modern animation technology as well as how things used to be done in the days before digital production, where even the simplest approach to animation was tedious and labor intensive.

If you're a fan of Terry Gilliam's work, I'm sure you'll be interested to see how he used to make his cartoons back in the 1970s when he was creating hilarious shorts for Monty Python's Flying Circus. Take a look at the following footage to see an explanation of the process. The video is also posted in AN's Education Forum which is dedicated to featuring content, news and announcements that help to broaden one's artistic knowledge. 

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I discovered a nicely produced animated short film parody that's worth featuring here on AN's Homepage. Produced by David Stodolny, it's a series of three brief clips of what can happen in the alternative world of Harrey Podder.

Follow the link to the AN Forums to see another video in which David shows us how this cartoon was made.

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AN member Joshua Armstrong is a talented Flash animator from California State University Northridge who's looking to put his independent film "Tanks For Nothing" in the can. He's raising funds through KickStarter.com to complete the film. Here's his topic from the AN Forums. To see his film and where it's at so far follow this link.

Here's Josh with his message to the world. Be a part of his effort to complete the film, and be thanked for something.   

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The movie is opening this Friday, August 5, 2011. Although it is a live action film, all of the apes in this retooling of the original classic are CG animation. Every one of them. It's remarkable that no apes were used in its production, as I understand from interviews I've listened to recently, considering how realistic they appear to be in most of the scenes.

Here's the trailer for Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Follow the link to the AN Forum topic for more.

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Not many people realize this, but the great comic actor Jim Carrey made his first major appearance in entertainment in a 1984 sitcom called "The Duck Factory". It was a short lived series, but historic in its content and made a memorable impact on me when it aired.  

The series took place in an animation studio that was having troubled times. It reflected in many ways the issues that were going on in the animation scene in Los Angeles back then, as major transitions were taking place that would put it on track for what's happening in our current day.

Here's the first part of the pilot episode. To view the rest of it, follow this link to the topic on the AN Forums.

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