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Spend an evening with stop motion master Henry Selick, director of "Coraline" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas."

The post Tickets Now Available For ‘An Evening With Henry Selick’ appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

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The director of "Coraline" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas" explains why you should know the name Jan Svankmajer and how to help him make his last feature film.

The post Henry Selick On Why Jan Svankmajer Matters appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

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"Our primary goal is to broaden and redefine the perception of animation in the US."

The post Interview: GLAS Animation Festival Director Jeanette Bonds appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

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The director of "Coraline" and "Nightmare Before Christmas" is plotting a return to feature films with comedians Key & Peele.

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Warner Archive will release John Korty's cult 1983 feature "Twice Upon A Time" onto home video this spring.

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If there had been an art book for Henry Selick's "Coraline," this is some of the art that would have been in it.

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If there had been an art book for Henry Selick's "Coraline," this is some of the art that would have been in it.

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The fifth Montreal Stop Motion Film Festival is set to take place October 18-20 at Concordia University. The event will celebrate the twentieth anniversary of The Nightmare Before Christmas with a screening of the film that will be presented by the director Henry Selick.

Other guests include Joe and Joan Clokey, who run Clokey Productions and Premavision studios which is responsible for Gumby, and stop motion animator Jamie Caliri, who developed the industry standard stop motion software DragonFrame. Animator Anthony Scott, who has worked with Selick, Caliri, and Gumby creator Art Clokey, will also be a guest.

The festival is currently accepting stop motion films for its competition program. The deadline to submit is September 20. In addition to a full competition slate, the festival will include a screening of the documentary Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan, a retrospective of Estonian animation studio Nukufilm, and hands-on stations for attendees to create their own stop motion animation.

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Director Henry Selick (Coraline and The Nightmare Before Christmas) states the obvious about American animated feature industry:

“It’s too homogenous. It’s way too much the same. The films aren’t really that different one from the other. Despicable Me could have been made Pixar, by DreamWorks. It’s not a great time for feature animation if you want to do something even moderately outside the formula.”

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If you were unable to attend the SIGGRAPH Keynote panel on Monday, featuring nine distinguished animation directors, you’re in luck because the 92-minute discussion is posted below.

The panel, entitled “Giants’ First Steps,” focused on the early careers of the following artists: Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc., Up), Eric Goldberg (Pocahontas, Fantasia/2000), Kevin Lima (Tarzan), Mike Mitchell (Shrek Forever After, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked), Chris Sanders (Lilo & Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon), Henry Selick (Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline), David Silverman (The Simpsons Movie), Kirk Wise (Beauty and the Beast, Atlantis: The Lost Empire) and Ron Clements (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin).

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SIGGRAPH attendees, mark your calendars for Monday, July 22. 11:30am. The SIGGRAPH 2013 Keynote Session is titled “Giants’ First Steps” and the ‘giants’ are all animation directors. The panel, which is co-presented with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, will feature eight animation directors—all male, by the way—who will “share their experiences along complex paths to filmmaking success.”

A ninety-minute session hardly seems long enough to contain the stories and thoughts of the distinguished group of filmmakers who will participate: Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc., Up), Eric Goldberg (Pocahontas, Fantasia/2000), Kevin Lima (Tarzan), Mike Mitchell (Shrek Forever After, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked), Chris Sanders (Lilo & Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon), Henry Selick (Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline), David Silverman (The Simpsons Movie), and Kirk Wise (Beauty and the Beast, Atlantis: The Lost Empire).

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Six months after Disney pulled the plug on Henry Selick’s film The Shadow King, Selick wants to revive production on the film. He is shopping the film this week at the European Film Market in Berlin.

In its new incarnation, Selick (director, Coraline and The Nightmare Before Christmas) has teamed up with Beasts of the Southern Wild producer Josh Penn, and has enlisted K5 International to rep the film’s international rights. This is the official synopsis of the story, which Selick wrote himself:

Hap Dagger, a nine-year-old orphan, hides his fantastically weird hands from a cruel world. But when a Living Shadow Girl teaches him to make amazing hand shadows that come alive, his hands become incredible weapons in a shadow war against a ravenous Monster who could destroy Hap’s brother and all of New York.

According to a press release from K5, the film has a committed crew that includes director of photography Peter Sorg (Frankenweenie, Coraline), frequent Selick collaborator Eric Leighton (animation director on Legend Of The Guardians: The Owls Of Ga’hoole), production designer Lou Romano (The Incredibles), editor Wyatt Jones (Immortals, Rango, TRON: Legacy, Zodiac), and composer Bruno Coulais (Coraline). Voice cast includes Jaden Betts (voice of Hap) Pamela Adlon (voice of Richard) Brendon Glesson (voice of Darce) Jeffrey Tambor (voice of Cuzzie Bell) and Catherine O’Hara (voice of Miss Fern)

K5 also released the following montage of art from the film:

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Entertainment industry website Deadline.com published a report this afternoon that Disney has halted production on the new feature directed by Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline). Selick was producing the film at his new San Francisco-based studio Cinderbiter:

The crew on Henry Selick’s untitled stop motion animated film were told this afternoon that Disney is not proceeding with this project. Though the film had no title, it had a October 4, 2013 release date, and about 150 San Francisco-based artists ready to go, so it’s a blow to the animation troops out there. Started shooting last summer, but I’d heard it just wasn’t coming together in a manner that pleased the studio. Selick has been given the chance to take the project to other studios…[I]t’s unclear what this does to his plans to helm Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, a project Disney acquired in April.

Is Deadline’s report accurate? If you have details, share them anonymously in the comments or contact me directly.

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Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Cinderbiter, Henry Selick

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Henry Selick’s new animation studio, which we reported on a couple months ago, has set up shop in San Francisco’s hip Mission District. According to MissionLocal.org, the Disney-backed studio, now called ShadeMaker Productions, is located in a former chocolate factory at 16th and Folsom, and will ultimately house 150 employees.

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Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | 3 comments | Post tags: Cinderbiter, Henry Selick, Real Estate

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Dear Diary

right. When last heard of I was putting on fancy clothes to go to the Newbery Caldecott Alcott Awards Dinner, and receive the Newbery Medal.

I wrote the speech back in April, and recorded it then, so that it could be given out to people at ALA as a CD and printed in The Hornbook. Then I didn't look at it again, figuring that way it would be new and interesting to me when I got to it at ALA.

This did nothing to decrease my nervousness; neither did wearing a suit.

Beth Krommes gave her acceptance speech for the Caldecott Medal for her book The House in the Night, written by Susan Marie Swanson. I gave my speech and somehow wasn't nervous any more when I gave it. Then Ashley Bryan was given the Louisa May Alcott award, and had a thousand librarians singing and reciting poetry together. It was pretty wonderful.

Here's a Scripps report on the evening, my editor Elise Howard writing about the experience of getting The Graveyard Book a chapter at a time over three years; and at http://wowlit.web.arizona.edu/blog there is a multi-part interview with Nick Glass, who was on the Newbery Medal Committee.

So I won the Newbery Medal (or did I? At http://jameskennedy.com/2009/07/13/i-win-the-newbery/ James Kennedy tells a very different story.)

The following morning was a signing that went on for a very long time. As I walked away from it I got two phone calls: the first to tell me that a dear friend, Diana Wynne Jones would be going in for an operation. I called Diana, and I'm not sure whether we reassured each other (although the operation was a success, and by the time you read this she should be back at home). As I put down the phone on her the phone rang again, and I learned that my old friend Charles Brown of LOCUS Magazine had died, peacefully, asleep on the plane on his way back from Readercon, one of his favourite SF conventions.

Charles was irreverent, astonishingly well-read, opinionated, funny, and he knew where pretty much all the bodies were buried in the world of science fiction and fantasy, or fancied he did. I enjoyed his company from the first time I met him, in the UK, in around 1987, enjoyed and was frustrated in equal measure by his interviewing technique from about 1989 on (he would ask opinionated questions and make statements and really have a terrific conversation with you - then, when he wrote up the interview he would leave himself and everything he had said out, as if it was a long monologue). (Here's an extract from one of those with me in 2005.)

He had been expecting to die for a long time - his health was not great - and had put various mechanisms in place to make sure that Locus Magazine continued after his death. Having been dragooned into being part of one of these mechanisms, I wound up seeing Charles every few years at meetings which existed, as far as I could tell, solely so that he could see a bunch of his friends once a year and point out to them, with a delighted chortle, that he was not dead yet and had no need of their help: have a bagel.

(I suspect, by the way, that the Locus Special Offer for readers of this blog still applies, seeing the webpage is still up.)

This is his placeholder Obituary in Locus.

The last time I saw him we had brunch in the Hotel Claremont in Berkeley. He told me delighted stories about the 1968 Worldcon there, of the intersection at that con of the SF old guard and the (then) young hippies, told scandalous stories and named names. I have forgotten all the stories and all the names, except for the information that convention attendees used the laundry chutes as a quick way to get downstairs, which was the least scandalous thing I learned.

Then I did a CBLDF panel, during which I took pleasure in pointing out that the same Nick Bertozzi comic, The Salon that had almost got Gordon Lee imprisoned in Rome, Georgia, last year, was in this year's Lynda Barry edited Best American Comics 2008.

Home from Chicago. Signed hundreds of book jackets with Miss Amanda Palmer for her Who Killed Amanda Palmer book. Then, in company with Miss Maddy and Maddy's friend Claire, we set out on a mad adventure (which we are still on).

In San Francisco we stayed at the Hotel Union Square, which was amazingly convenient and nice. Visited Google, got to be backstage at the Fire Festival, dined with Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman and their marvellous family (I suspect Michael and Ayelet of having acquired their children from some amazing Madeleine L'Engle-like Wrinkle in Time kit)(also they have a drumkit for their kids in the lounge), saw Wicked because the girls wanted to se it, and they loved it utterly (my mini-review? love Gregory Maguire's book, liked the book of the show, was sort of unmoved by the songs which seemed no better than they had to be), lunched with Daniel Handler and Lisa Brown, and generally tried to be on holiday, except for Sunday Morning.

Sunday Morning I did a reading and a signing for Brian Hibbs (and a hundred people) at Comix Experience. It celebrated Brian's Twentieth Comix Experience Year. Brian describes the signing here. (He also describes the problem with Twitter and signings and suchlike in a fascinating essay here.)

On Tuesday evening, as I blogged at the time, we found ourselves in Las Vegas, where an improvisational Tarot comedy troupe had much fun interviewing me and then making comedic theatre, and a great time was had by all... ( my card was the three of cups)

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Good morning! Miss Maddy and I are in Portland. Last night we went to Henry Selick's house and met his family and lots of nice people from Laika and ate lots of amazing food (and I also drank my first cup of the kind of coffee that's made from beans that have travelled through the digestive system of the civet cat [Paradoxurus hermaphroditus]).

Today it's off to Laika to visit the Coraline sets (all 40 of them) and to be interviewed for the DVD extras. Maddy will be doing the interviewing.

I have to get dressed... Here's Maddy:


Well helloooooo everyone I missed you so! Um well today we are going to visit the Coraline sets as I see Dad already mentioned, but I am very excited because everything is going to be super cool! Plus I'm going to interview people so you better watch out because the new Larry King is right here. :) Just kidding! Or am I? Anyways we have some pictures of last night's get together but I do not exactly have the camera with me right now so I guess you will just have to wait until later to see them. It will be the time of your life! Ok, well have a really great day. :)



Me again. People have sent me lots of important emails this morning, many of them letting me know that a bee truck overturned near Sacramento.

Millions of swarming honey bees are on the loose after a truck carrying crates of the buzzing insects flipped over on a highway in Sacramento.

The California Highway Patrol says 8-to-12 million bees escaped from the crates in which they were stored, swarming over an area of Highway 99 and stinging officers, firefighters and tow truck drivers who were trying to clear the accident from the roadway.

CHP Officer Michael Bradley says at about 10 a.m. a tractor trailer owned by Inter City Inc. flipped over while entering the highway on its way to Yakima, Wash. The flatbed was carrying bee crates each filled with up to 30 thousand bees.

Bradley says several beekeepers driving by the accident stopped to assist in the bee wrangling. The beekeepers called their colleagues, who responded and came to help repair damaged bee crates and get them loaded onto two new trucks.

The bees were on their way back to Washington after being used in the San Joaquin Valley to pollinate crops.

(I don't think they were swarming at all. But hurrah for the drive-by beekepers.)


And meanwhile,

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I just got sent a photo of me actually looking at some of the characters and their possessions. These are painted models, not the puppets that will be appearing in the film. Henry is explaining, under the gaze of Georgina Hayns, the Puppet Fabrication Supervisor, how Coraline's father has a different kind of jaw movement to some of the other characters. He thinks I'm listening. Actually I'm just trying to figure out whether I should go "Oh look! A dangerous polar bear!" and then while everyone is looking around trying to see what I am talking about or running away or trying to find a nice plump seal to throw to the polar bear and distract it, I could put one of the models under my leather jacket. And then I am remembering that I forgot to wear my leather jacket.

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After my visit to the Coraline set just before Christmas I said They are also doing technical tests -- it's easy enough for me to say in the book, and for Henry to put into his script, that as Coraline walks away from the Other House, the trees are less like trees and more like the idea of trees, but making an orchard turn into a misty abstraction is easier said than done when you have to build it. So they've built one, and are doing their camera tests to see if it will work.

I've just been sent a few photos from the visit... here's me and Henry Selick looking at the mock-up of the trees as she walks from right to left. (Click on the photo to see the bigger version and it will become easier to see what I was talking about.) Standing between us (and blocking the Coraline model) is Tom Proost, Shop Foreman.

And because those are a bit shadowy, here's a picture of Bo Henry, set construction supervisor, Henry Selick and me, surrounded by half-painted trees and a bit of nightmarish topiary. I have no idea what I was looking at, but I bet it was extremely interesting.



I'll put up a few more photos when I get them -- I hope they'll send over one or two with characters in. I mean, trees are good, but the characters are the thing...

Photos by Serena Davidson.

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