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Just announced this weekend - two awesome comics have been picked up by Warner Brothers to be adapted to the big screen.

Amulet - Kazu Kibuishi’s book about two siblings who are forced into a mysterious underworld to save their mother. Attached to star in the film are Willow and Jaden Smith with dad Will Smith producing. The comic has a very cinematic pacing so it’s a natural fit. Kibuishi’s announcement here.

Bone - Jeff Smith’s now-classic fantasy-epic about three cartoony cousins who get lost on the wrong side of a treacherous mountain range. This has been stop-and-go for the big screen for years. From the Hollywood Reporter:

An animated version was in development at Nickelodeon Films but fell through, partly because Smith was displeased that the studio was aiming it for kids and wanted the film to include pop songs.

Here’s crossing our fingers that this one works out.

Also of interest:
Colouring Bone
Flight Explorer

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I like the clean illustration and user-manual design of this credit sequence for upcoming indie rom com Heavy Petting. Illustrations by John McKible.

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I’m not sure what 3:19 is about, but I know the titles are beautifully animated. Submarine Channel is building a collection of exemplary animated titles. Watch more here.

Via GalacticMu.

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A 1982 look behind-the-scenes at making a model city for HBO’s original promo.

“We put a few bums on the street, a few hookers on the corner. Those little things are our calling card. They add to the monotony of three months of building this thing.”

Definitely check out the section about animating the HBO logo with the “stargate effect” by David Bruce at 5:10.

Watch the final promo at 8:55.

via Signal vs Noise

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Here’s the teaser trailer for Henry Selick and Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. This is the trailer that was shown before fellow 3D flicks Beowulf and Hannah Montana, so if your movie-going habits are anything like mine, you haven’t seen this yet!

Neil Gaiman has Quicktime and DivX formats for the Flash-weary.

Previously: Coraline Teaser

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Thunder Chunky offers up an interview with Pixar title designer Susan Bradley. This choice quote, I think, can be applied to the typography of any creative pursuit, whether it be a website, graphic novel, or animated film:

Film titles certainly welcome you and wave goodbye in a very crucial and visceral way, but I don’t think they have much weight as it relates to “success”, unless that’s all the film has going for it. I think the biggest mistake is seeing the title sequence as separate from its film. In my opinion, they can do very much or very little; but really shine when they live within the story and reflect an important quality driven by your Director.

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Ain’t It Cool News has a nice tribute to movie poster artist John Alvin who passed away last week. They’ve posted a small gallery of some of his more recognizable movie posters, and link to this collection as well.

(Thanks, Kenton)

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I just watched Helvetica: The Documentary Film, which is now out on DVD. An entire film about a font. It’s absolutely wonderful.

The film tells three stories at once:

• The history of typography since the 50s
• The history of design since the 50s and
• The history of Western culture since the 50s

And it achieves all this without one image of a dancing hippie or a stock-shot of the Vietnam war.

The film toggles between designers who love the simplicity and clarity of Helvetica and designers who hate the homogeneity and soullessness of the font. Everyone has a compelling argument why Helvetica should be ubiquitous or should be banned.

Here’s a clip of designer Erik Spiekermann telling us why he thinks Helvetica sucks:

In the liner notes to the DVD, filmmaker Gary Hustwit says, “I couldn’t believe that some of these designers had created 50+ years of work that we see every day, but that no one had ever interviewed them on camera about what they do.”

There are simply not enough documentary films about graphic art and design but Helvetica begins to fill this huge void.

It’s an excellent film. I’ve watched it twice already and could watch it a dozen more times.

Also of interest:
Helvetica, The Documentary Film website
Helvetica: The Film (Previously on Drawn)

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Presenting Phil Dubrovsky and Dale Hayward’s hilarious stop-motion tragedy, The Flower, complete with catchy old-timey music. Warning: Graphic botanical violence.

Let’s wish Dale luck as he heads to Vegas this week to present this film at the Dam Short Film Festival.

Dale is another animator I met while working at the National Film Board; I first bumped into him while he was working on the Hothouse Animation project.

Also of interest:
Dale Hayward’s blog
NFB’s Hothouse films online

These “You Suck at Photoshop” tutorials by Donnie Hoyle have been making the rounds on the blogs for the last couple days. They are dark, hilarious, and surprisingly informative.

So watch them, laugh your ass off, and call it “work”.

(Disclaimer: NSFW or kids!).

Volume 1: “The Van” - Distort, Warp, & Layer Effects

Volume 2: “Insert Carpet Stain” - Covering Your Mistakes



Volume 3: “The Disappearing Ring” - Clone Stamp and Manual Cloning

Volume 4: “Selling the Ring on eBay” - Paths and Masks

Director/animator Michel Gondry is curating the featured videos on YouTube’s home page during the Sundance film festival, where his Be Kind Rewind is premiering. The collection of videos feature the types of creative imagery that you’d expect from a Gondry playlist, including a fair share of stop motion and pixilation, as well as this demonstration of some MIT technology that allows computers to understand simple drawing and mechanics.

I’m enjoying Kiskaloo, a weeklyish online comic from animation director Chris Sanders. Sanders’s work includes Lilo and Stitch, and the upcoming American Dog from Disney from which he was fired as director. Amid at Cartoon Brew thinks that the look of Kiskaloo is close enough to that of the original look of American Dog to suggest a slap in the face to Disney, but it seems to have as much in common visually with Lilo and Stitch as well.

Chuck Jones draws Wile E. Coyote in this 1994 Charlie Rose interview - with some tips on drawing “scraggly” vs. “fluffy” tails. Really wonderful to watch. Or, if you have a bit more time, watch the whole 25 minute interview.

(via Signal vs. Noise )

Independent Exposure, a worldwide microcinema screening program for filmmakers of all kinds, is now accepting submissions for their 2008 showcase, which will be curated by indie record label Asthmatic Kitty. For more information, visit Independent Exposure’s website.

The New York Times has a short but insightful look at some behind-the-scenes artwork for the big screen adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. The slideshow is narrated by Satrapi and co-director Vincent Paronnaud. Persepolis was by far one of the best cinematic experiences I’ve had this year. The film draws you into the original story, and in many ways I enjoyed it more than the actual graphic novel. I recommend everyone see it.

(Thanks, Kathleen!)

Related: Perspolis Teaser Trailer

You know how it goes… one two three FOUR FIIIVE six seven EIGHT NIIINE TEN eleven TWELVE… doo doo doo do do doo doo doo do…

Cover-song blog Fong Songs has compiled a surprisingly comprehensive collection of cover versions of the original musical number (no pun intended) composed and produced by Walt Kraemer, and performed by the Pointer Sisters. The post includes remixes, videos, parodies, and even international varieties: Pinball Number Count Revisited

My favourite, though, is this recut version of David Fincher’s Se7en.

This post has been brought to you by the number 12.

Our pal Saxtoon Moore is heading up another Throwback Thursdays contest. Last time he asked entrants to draw their versions of Fat Albert characters, and this time around it’s G.I. Joe. Read about the contest at Saxton’s blog, and check it out at Channel Frederator RAW. Entries must be submitted by January 31st.

This looks like an interesting documentary on Syd Mead, the visual futurist and conceptual designer whose resumé includes Star Trek, Blade Runner, Tron, 2010, Aliens, Turn A Gundam and more.

Visit Syd Mead’s official site for information on this documentary, and of course, for more of his work.

(Thanks, Mike)

What better way to tell the story of Spam than with 220 pieces of burnt toast?

Yep, it’s by advertisers, Colle+ McVoy, the same folks who brought us the Human Flipbook. There’s a “Making of” movie for this one, too.

Also of interest:
Zuse: Toast you can draw on

This animated music video was created by 64 Communications students from Concordia University in Montreal as part of the Open-Source Cinema project. The students “rotoscoped 1-3 seconds of video each, over a period of three weeks. (Most of them had never used Flash before.)” The results are fantastic - with a variety of engaging styles in the final product.

They say: “We were inspired by Bob Sabiston’s digital rotoscoping (as seen in Snack and Drink, Waking Life, A Scanner Darkly), and our readings and class discussions about copyright and creativity. (Course textbook: Christine Harold’s OurSpace: Resisting the Corporate Control of Culture.)”

Also of interest:
Jen Drummond Rotoscopes
Bob Sabiston’s Flat Black Films

You know what my favourite animated film of 2007 was? It was that 3D film about the rat in a foreign city who could cook. You know the one… Ratatoing? It was released by the same groundbreaking animation studio that brought you such original animated fare such as The Little Cars, Gladiformers, and Little Bee. Ladies and Gentleman: Pixar Branscome International.

(via MetaFilter)

I love this semi-animated short film about a man who is tormented by a concrete golem-like creature. The integration of urban design from Montreal and Vancouver is seamless and elegant.

Hugely inspiring; Directed by Trevor Cawood and produced by Robin Hays.

Thanks, Hugh, for the link.

A treat from the Ronald Searle Tribute Blog: Searle’s title designs for the 1970 film Scrooge directed by Ronald Neame.

Rough Work: Frank Frazetta is a new release from Spectrum Fantastic Art collecting 130 pages of concept art, doodles, and sketchbook drawings from the modern master of fantasy illustration. The book is edited by Arnie and Cathy Fenner who have become stewards of the Frazetta legacy - they also edited the amazing Frazetta career retrospective, Icon.

Some fans are concerned that Rough Work is too small - at 9″ x 6″ - but to me the size seems appropriate given that a lot of Frazetta’s work was intended for pocket fiction. The sketches have the candor and spontaneity of something you’d see lying around in a studio, coffee-stains intact. Often working on tight deadlines, Frazetta was notoriously loose with his roughs; saving most of his energy for the mind-blowing finals.

There’s a great anecdote about this in the preface, by Russ Cochran, a studio-mate of Frazetta’s in the 70s:

At first we did roughs on everything and got them approved. Often the roughs were superior to the finished art. The roughs had more charm, more color, more everything. Then, finally, I gave up doing the roughs altogether. Frank would say, ‘The hell with roughing this thing, that’s doing it twice! You know I can do it. They’ll take the final painting and like it - the hell with the rough!’ And it worked.

More images from the book after the jump.

(more…)

Rough Work: Frank Frazetta is a new release from Spectrum Fantastic Art collecting 130 pages of concept art, doodles, and sketchbook drawings from the modern master of fantasy illustration. The book is edited by Arnie and Cathy Fenner who have become stewards of the Frazetta legacy - they also edited the amazing Frazetta career retrospective, Icon.

Some fans are concerned that Rough Work is too small - at 9″ x 6″ - but to me the size seems appropriate given that a lot of Frazetta’s work was intended for pocket fiction. The sketches have the candor and spontaneity of something you’d see lying around in a studio, coffee-stains intact. Often working on tight deadlines, Frazetta was notoriously loose with his roughs; saving most of his energy for the mind-blowing finals.

There’s a great anecdote about this in the preface, by Russ Cochran, a studio-mate of Frazetta’s:

At first we did roughs on everything and got them approved. Often the roughs were superior to the finished art. The roughs had more charm, more color, more everything. Then, finally, I gave up doing the roughs altogether. Frank would say, ‘The hell with roughing this thing, that’s doing it twice! You know I can do it. They’ll take the final painting and like it - the hell with the rough!’ And it worked.

More images from the book after the jump.

(more…)