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"Mulan" co-director Tony Bancroft directed the film.

The post Google To Premiere Animated Feature ‘Bunyan & Babe’ For Free appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Nearly 1,000 artists applied to take part in this holiday-themed project.

The post Over 50 Animators Contributed To The 2016 Edition of Yule Log 2.0 appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

French animator Jonathan Djob Nkondo created the series that will premiere live on the internet tonight.

The post Super Deluxe Will Premiere ‘Dark Day’ Microseries Live On The Internet Tonight appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

As of today, filmmakers can post videos to Amazon's video service and earn royalties based on hours streamed.

The post Amazon Offers Animators A New Way to Make Money from Online Video appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

The online streaming service will debut the film on its service later this year.

The post Netflix Picks Up U.S. Rights to Paramount’s ‘Little Prince’ appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

We explore how the Pegbarians have built a career out of balancing commissioned and original work with (or around) YouTube’s monetization system.

The post Can You Make A Career Out of Internet Animation? The Pegbarians Are Definitely Trying appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

The Streamys will be televised for the first time ever next month.

A Vin Diesel-voiced superhero is here to dish out justice. With his fists.

Disney parodies are becoming harder to distinguish from real Disney films.

Los Angeles-based animator Sascha Ciezata reimagines Joseph Conrad’s 'Heart of Darkness' as a partly-animated serialized graphic novel on Instagram.

Los Angeles-based animator Sascha Ciezata reimagines Joseph Conrad’s 'Heart of Darkness' as a mixed-media serialized animated short on Instagram.

During YouTube's splashy Brandcast upfront event on Wednesday, DreamWorks announced the launch of DreamWorksTV, a new streaming children's channel that will offer original animated and live-action programming, as well as vintage animation content.

If Ed Skudder and Zack Keller’s Dick Figures – The Movie is any indication, the animated feature revolution will not only be televised, it will be fan-funded and delivered directly to its audience through an innovative multi-tiered distribution strategy.

On = September 17, the entire film will be available for purchase or rental in a variety of digital platforms, including Google Play. However, the 73-minute movie adaptation of the popular webseries Dick Figures will have a day-and-date episodic release. It will be made available free of charge on YouTube, distributed in twelve weekly ad-supported installments.

“We want to give people the option to download or stream the movie from wherever they’re comfortable, from wherever they have accounts, from wherever it’s easiest for them to get access to the movie,” co-creator Keller told Mashable. “We operate in online space, so we wanted to keep it in an online space. People don’t even have to leave their couches or their desks or wherever they are.”

Since its premiere in 2010, Dick Figures, which follows the comic experiences of two juvenile young adult stick figures, Red and Blue, has racked up 43 short episodes and over 350 million views on YouTube, making it one of the most popular animated webseries to date. Creators Skudder and Keller raised over $300,000 in crowdfunding for the feature project on Kickstarter last year. (Most of the Kickstarter backers will be able to download the film at no cost.)

Tailoring the film’s release primarily with its core audience in mind, distributor Mondo Media and production company Six Point Harness partnered with digital platform manager Cinedigm, (who will also release the film to DVD in December) and Yekra, a VOD provider that enables viewers to stream and download content through blogs and social media sites.

When it was announced that Comedy Central’s Ugly Americans would not be returning for a third season, the show’s creator Devin Clark did not waste any time in launching his new animated series, Instant Life Lessons with Dr. Dewey Pfister. But rather than shooting for another network show, he sidestepped the corporate groupthink and idea-crushing bureaucracy in favor of a smaller “less cooks in the kitchen” independent webseries. “It is pretty fantastic having that much control over something,” Clark told Cartoon Brew. “For me, apparently, it means lots of animated child abuse and poop jokes.”

Produced for the YouTube channel Official Comedy, Instant Life Lessons is an “educational” animated series that provides absurd “one size fits all” guidance from the socially inept Dr. Dewey Pfister and his hapless son. “He genuinely wants to help people,” explains Clark, “but in an effort to make his lessons simple and easily consumed, he has boiled them down into nonsense. Also his world view is a bit insane and he is a terrible person.”

Factoring in that Ugly Americans began as an online collection of shorts called 5ON, Clark has experience with both large and small productions and can safely advise that while talent and a strong idea are important to selling a show, people often forget about how much luck factors into the equation. “If you aren’t pitching the right concept to the right network at the right moment when they are looking for exactly what you are selling, the chances of it getting made are slim to none,” he said. Fortunately, a new group of YouTube channel producers, as well as companies like Netflix and Amazon, are actively seeking animation content, providing a slate of new options to those who are developing their own series.

The first three episodes of Clark’s Instant Life Lessons with Dewey Pfister and an eight-part behind-the-scenes video series are currently available on the Official Comedy YouTube channel.

Animation veteran Gabe Swarr has been pumping out webcomics and short animated webisodes of his nostaglia-hued Life in the Analog Age for the past couple years alongside his studio day job. Earlier this week, he relaunched the property as a weekly animated series online, with the goal of new episodes every week. I chatted with Gabe via email about his decision to shift his online focus from comics to animated shorts, teaming up with Frederator’s new Allied Media label, the pros and cons of pitching, and the best advice for others who want to do their own online series.

Cartoon Brew: You have a full-time job as the supervising producer and director of Nickelodeon’s Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness. Where do you find the time to also write, animate and do the sound for a weekly series all by yourself?

Gabe Swarr: Everyone asks me that! I wake up very early, every morning at 6AM. I exercise, get my morning chores done, and get to my desk for at least two hours of work before going into Nickelodeon. This is the best way I’ve found to make sure I have a sizable block of focussed uninterrupted time to get stuff done. Also working in the morning insures that I’m not exhausted from my day job.

Cartoon Brew: That still doesn’t explain where you get all your energy from. What does a typical Gabe Swarr ‘power breakfast’ consist of?

Gabe Swarr: Ha! Just some cereal and a banana, nothing exciting I’m afraid. I think it’s more the exercise than the breakfast! I actually starting running in the morning over a year ago. It has made a huge difference, and hopefully I’ll be alive a little longer to make even more stuff!

Cartoon Brew: What do you hope to accomplish by turning Life in the Analog Age from a comic and occasional animated webisodes into a regular animated webseries?

Gabe Swarr: I really want to get more people to see the series. I love sharing these stories and memories. There’s always such an amazing response from the comics, and I want to really focus on translating that to the shorts. I also think that the fact that it’s animated is a more unique way to experience the series. There are a lot of “slice of life” and autobiographical comics, but very few animated series like this one.

Cartoon Brew: In Analog Age, you try to express your honest emotions as they were at the time, whereas so much of today’s entertainment culture looks back at the past with snark and irony. How did you decide on your more affable approach to storytelling?

Gabe Swarr: Analog Age started as a complete departure from the things I do in my day job. I wanted to slow down the pace and express moments or feelings that you just don’t see in too many other places. The more I did it, the more I found the real tone of the series and learned more about the way I think our brains work.

I’m pretty sure our memories aren’t just a series of remembered facts of events. When you think back and remember how things were, yes you do recall what happened, but it’s not always accurate. That’s because, yeah, it was a long time ago, but it’s mainly because you’re using how you felt at the time as a frame of reference. Our memories are wrapped up in them. That’s nostalgia to me, true nostalgia, and that’s a lot harder to capture than just making fun of pop culture, fashion, or how poofy hair styles were.

That being said, when I do go back and look and unlock those emotions and feelings, I have to find a narrative or story in them. I have to remove myself and look at that moment from my current state of mind, and sometimes some of the best humor or scenes come from making fun of myself or the poor choices I made then, like this:

Cartoon Brew: Assuming that most of the stories are rooted in truth, have your siblings or parents had any reactions to the stories you’re telling, or expressed surprise at any events you’ve depicted?

Gabe Swarr: Yes, it’s all true. There are some stories that my Mom isn’t too fond of. She is the only family member who has spoken up about how they are being portrayed. When I’m making them, I’m never thinking about that. Some of the stories that didn’t put me in a good light were the ones that got the biggest reaction or started the most online conversations like “Hero”.

Cartoon Brew: Life in the Analog Age is becoming part of something called Frederator Allied Media which is a division of Fred Seibert’s company. How does that work?

Gabe Swarr: Well, I keep everything on my YouTube channel. I have complete creative control over schedule and content, but now I’m part of their ‘network.’ My cartoons can be seen by their 75,000+ subscribers as opposed to my 1000+ subscribers. We do an ad revenue split which motivates them to find sponsored ads.

Cartoon Brew: I think pitching ideas to networks and doing pilots is stupid in this day and age of the Internet. Am I wrong?

Gabe Swarr: I can’t say that you’re wrong or right, it depends really on what you want. If you want your show to be seen on worldwide TV, collaborate with working professionals, and not pay for the actual production, then yes, that’s a great way, and it’s been done for decades.  There are some drawbacks though, first be prepared to sell full ownership of your idea, and the process is a very collaborative one. Your ideas might change a lot by the time it reaches the audience.

If you want full ownership, full creative control, and having a direct line to your audience, then online is the way to go. Be ready to pay and do the entire production yourself (or with generous friends), and work very hard to build your own audience basically from scratch.

So there are pluses and minuses to both approaches. Personally, I’m doing both traditional TV development, and indie online right now.

Cartoon Brew: The way I see it is this: a creator has the same shot of getting a pilot picked up for a network series as they do having a breakout web series. Except that the web creator ends up with much greater leverage,and therefore it’s more profitable for them. The “Annoying Orange” guy, who started out on the Web, is one of the few show creators who managed to launch a show on Cartoon Network without losing his ownership rights. Or take “Simon’s Cat”—360 million views on YouTube, 8 bestselling books, and now he’s beginning to license to other media platforms while still retaining ownership of his creation.

Gabe Swarr: Yeah, I think it’s great for those people, but like I said, they had to build that audience from the ground up themselves. That’s a job in itself and not an easy one. I spend a lot of my time responding to comments, posting, reposting, revising based on feedback on top of just making everything. Some people can’t or don’t want to deal with all of that. That might be one reason they go through a TV network, but the profitability is the trade off.

Cartoon Brew: Pretend I’m an animation executive. Gimme your elevator-pitch for Analog Age.

Gabe Swarr: Life in the Analog Age is an all-ages animated webseries all about growing up in a time before the digital age. It is a collection of vignettes that follow a “Little Bear Kid” in a time of his life where he is discovering himself and the world around him. All based on true events. 

Cartoon Brew: Sold! Now give one piece of advice to someone who wants to start their own online animated webseries.

Gabe Swarr: The big overall thing is when creating anything, make sure it means something to you and that it says something. There are so many things out there that are just meaningless. It’s all like candy, fun to eat, but no nutritional value. You can’t live off of it. You want your creations to have some kind of purpose in the world, something that speaks to the people, and if it doesn’t, why make it in the first place?

Cartoon Brew: If you had to give up all your digital equipment (Cintiq, iPhone, new video game systems, etc.) tomorrow, do you think you could comfortably live again in the Analog Age?  

Gabe Swarr: I totally would, but as long as I magically had no foresight into how things work now. I would go crazy missing the way we can use the Internet to learn, communicate, and distribute. I would also miss how much paper I’m saving by working digitally, but I would not miss the new video game systems at all! I still fire up my old N.E.S. to beat my favorite games.

For regular weekly episodes, visit LifeInTheAnalogAge.com.

Earlier this month, it was announced that DreamWorks Animation had purchased the YouTube channel AwesomenessTV for $33 million in cash. Factoring in earning and performance targets, the sale has a maximum earnings potential of $117 million.

An online aggregrator-network aimed at young male entertainment consumers, AwesomenessTV was founded as collaboration between TV producer Brian Robbins (Smallville), United Talent Agency and law firm Ziffren Brittenham. According to the May 1st press release, it “has already signed up over 55,000 channels, aggregating over 14 million subscribers and 800 million video views”.

“Awesomeness TV is one of the fastest growing content channels on the Internet today and our acquisition of this groundbreaking venture will bring incredible momentum to our digital strategy,” said DreamWorks head Jeffrey Katzenberg. “Brian Robbins has an extraordinary track record in creating family content both for traditional and new platforms and his expertise in the TV arena will be invaluable as we grow our presence in that space.”

Under the new partnership, the network AwesomenessX, that will offer “original sports, gaming, comedy, pranks and lifestyle content” targeted toward males in their teens and 20s. Robbins, who has stayed on to run the company, has also been rewarded with an executive position at DreamWorks to develop a DreamWorks Animation-branded family channel.

AwesomenessX will pick up some AwesomenessTV faves like The City – Basketball, Sk8 Spotterz, That Was Awesome and How To Be Awesome as well as launch a new series around Winter X-Games gold medalist David Wise and videos of choice game moves and swimsuit model photo shoots. Shows like Frank the Dog, Baby Gaga and Fingerlings – which provide pop and web culture commentary from a dog, a baby and finger puppets, respectively – will also be featured.

“[AwesomenessX] will attract some girls as well,” Robbins added.

Last Friday, Amazon released 14 pilots on their online streaming service in the latest bid by an Internet company to unseat network TV and cable. Of the shows, six pilots are geared towards children (five of which are either animated or partially animated), and eight are geared toward adults (two of which are animated).

As part of a gimmicky marketing strategy, Amazon is soliciting feedback from viewers to help them decide which shows should be turned into series. Judging from the pilots though, traditional TV execs have little to worry about—at least for now. I can’t speak for the live-action shows, but the animated series are half-baked concepts that are a few notches below any of the successful shows on children’s cable. (How does something called Creative Galaxy even make it past a pitch stage?)

Roy Price, the executive in charge of Amazon Originals, is a former Disney TV animation exec so there is little excuse for the unpolished, amateur feel of these animation pilots. And just to be clear, amateur is not referring to the fact that the animated projects are presented in animatic format, although one could question the wisdom of unveiling a new studio to the general public in such a clumsy manner. But even fully-animated pilots woudn’t mask the conceptual flaws in most these shows.

One could conjecture about why Amazon botched their pilots so badly, but the LA Times article about their pilot program offers a big clue. In that article, Price touts that they used Amazon rental and viewership data to help them decide what pilots they should produce.

[Roy] Price describes Amazon Studios’ process as a hybrid, that draws from elements of old and new media. It used the service’s rental and viewing history to identify the shows that resonate with its customers, and which new ones might hold the greatest appeal.

The popularity of scripted dramas such as PBS’ period drama Downton Abbey and HBO’s Sex and the City suggested some viewers are attracted to shows with depth, where the characters confront important life choices, Price said.

Viewership of FX’s animated sitcom Archer and the stop-motion animation Cartoon Network series Robot Chicken hint at a clump of interest around another kind of program, Price said. Meanwhile, frequently watched children’s programs, including Nickelodeon’s Dora the Explorer and Blue’s Clues, suggest another opportunity.

Of course, you don’t need access to customers’ rental histories to know that all of the shows Price listed are popular with audiences. More tellingly, however, it indicates that Price and his Amazon colleagues have little vision or strategy for what they’re trying to accomplish with Amazon Studios beyond creating poorly conceived knock-offs of popular TV shows. If this isn’t evident from the methods they’re using to decide what shows to make, the resulting pilots make that fact painfully clear.

These are the official descriptions of their seven animated pilots:

ADULT COMEDY SERIES
Supanatural
Supanatural is an animated comedy series about two outspoken divas who are humanity’s last line of defense against the supernatural — when they’re not working at the mall. The series was written by Lily Sparks, Price Peterson and Ryan Sandoval, and the pilot was produced by Jason Micallef (Butter) and Kristen Schaal (The Daily Show).

Dark Minions
Written by Big Bang Theory co-stars Kevin Sussman and John Ross Bowie, Dark Minions is an animated workplace series about two slackers working on an intergalactic warship and just trying to make a paycheck.

KIDS’ PILOTS
Annebots
Annebots revolves around Anne, a young scientist who creates three robot helpers to assist her scientific experiments in the back of her dad’s junkyard. This science-based series from creator J.J. Johnson (Dino Dan, This is Emily Yeung) aims to introduce kids to science and technology in a fun, new way.

Creative Galaxy
Creative Galaxy is an animated interactive art adventure series designed to inspire kids’ creative thinking through crafts, story, music and dance. The series was created by Angela Santomero, creator of Super Why!, the Emmy-nominated literacy series, Blue’s Clues and Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood.

Positively Ozitively
In this problem-solving series, Dot, Dorothy’s daughter, goes off to Oz every day with the children of the characters from Frank Baum’s classic book, The Wizard of Oz. In each episode, the yellow brick road leads Dot to a new magical location where she solves problems alongside her Oz friends.

Sara Solves It
Sara Solves It was created by Emmy winner Carol Greenwald (Curious George) and Emmy nominee Angela Santomero (Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, Super Why!, Blue’s Clues), who also serve as executive producers of the show. Viewers follow brother and sister duo Sara and Sam on absorbing and relatable mysteries that spring from the questions young children encounter in their daily lives. Each mystery is an interactive, math-based puzzle that viewers can solve with Sara and Sam.

Tumbleaf
Tumbleaf was created by Drew Hodges and Bix Pix Entertainment, an award-winning stop-motion studio. The series, aimed at preschoolers, is set in a whimsical land where a small blue fox named Fig plays each day and discovers adventure, friendship and love around every bend in the path. The narratives aim to foster play through exploration and scientific thinking.

Earlier this month, College Humor took on the toothsome irrepressibility of Disney’s Oscar-winning short film, Paperman, with its original parody, Paperman Threesome.

Picking up where the original short left off, the urbane meet-cute of two young sweethearts brought together by a torrent of sentient paper products continues through their first date, first kiss and into the bedroom where the loose leaf matchmaker reveals ulterior motives. “Originally, the character of Paper was even more aggressive and unlikeable,” College Humor’s President of Original Content, Sam Reich told Cartoon Brew. “Paper isn’t a jerk; he just finds himself in the middle of a misunderstanding, and has to cope with his disappointment.”

Even those who turned their nose up at the cynical addendum could not help but be impressed by the level of accuracy in the aping of the source material’s groundbreaking, much debated faux hand-drawn style. This new short, produced by the Australian animation house, Studio JoHo and directed by Joe Brumm, achieved the original film’s look using Celaction, a versatile and intuitive 2D-rigged animation program that is rising in popularity in the U.K. and Australia. “They’re fans of the original piece,” says Reich “and were excited to create something that looked authentic.”

Among the factors that makes Paperman Threesome such a successful parody, Reich cites CH’s streamlined animation process that allowed them to make its timely deadline, the mutual trust between them and the animation studio, and of course, their choice to focus less on physical action and more on expressive performances. “Nothing really happens in our piece, apart from a conversation,” Reich said.

The Kickstarter campaign to produce an animated series based on the online comic Cyanide and Happiness concluded a few minutes ago with a grand total of $770,309 from 14,242 backers. The amount of money raised obliterates the previous animation crowdfunding record held by David Fincher and Blur Studio’s The Goon animatic, which raised $442,000 last November.

Last month when the Cyanide and Happiness campaign was at its midway point, Cartoon Brew wrote about how well the effort was doing. The four creators of C&H—Kris Wilson, Rob DenBleyker, Matt Melvin, Dave McElfatrick—had set their fundraising goal at $250,000. They exceeded that amount by 300%, and with the money they’ve raised, their team will now produce eleven 10-12 minute episodes, as well as weekly short-form pieces for an entire year.

Animator Kurtis Scott has posted eight episodes of an ongoing series called Subway Thoughts. They focus on the protagonist’s train of thought as he makes his daily commute to work. The animation is minimal, but they make me laugh. Very neurotic stuff; I totally identify. Scott’s posting one or two new ones every week. Here’s a few samples:

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This new independently produced web series by illustrator Mike Geiger starts today. It’s simple stuff, but I love the clean look and fun poses – for more info and future episodes: click here.

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He’s lived in Knoxville, Seattle and Los Angeles, but animator Joel Trussell recently moved to a town you won’t find on any map — Electric City. Electric City is the name of the new animated series spearheaded by actor/director Tom Hanks, and it’s one of the first major animation productions specifically designed for online viewing. Premiering today on Yahoo’s video site Yahoo! Screen with ten five- to seven-minute episodes, Electric City is a co-production by Hanks’ Playtone shingle and Los Angeles animation studio Six Point Harness, who tapped Trussell to direct this unique animated series.

Trussell’s career has seen a steady uphill trajectory since graduating from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville in 1998, doing animated music videos to commercials and even segments of television shows like Yo Gabba Gabba. Cartoon Brew has followed Trussell’s career for years, beginning with 2005’s War Photographer music video . After doing a prodigious amount of work out of his Knoxville home far removed from the traditional animation hubs, Trussell moved to Los Angeles in 2009 to pursue opportunities for larger projects. In no short time, Trussell connected with Six Point Harness to do commercials which segued quickly into the opportunity to helm Electric City.

Chris Arrant: Electric City is the biggest project you’ve ever done – 20 episodes, 5 to 7 minutes each. How’d you get involved and did you have any concerns about such a large scale project?

Joel Trussell: For several years I directed animated many music videos (Jason Forrest’s War Photographer, M. Ward’s The First Time I Ran Away) commercials (Esurance, Nicorette) and TV/film segments (Yo Gabba Gabba, The Animation Show) while living in Knoxville, Tenne

The word of the year for Internet content is CHANNELS. Google’s YouTube announced last fall that they’re partnering with media companies and celebrities to launch one hundred channels of original content in 2012. They’re expected to officially unveil the channels next month. But those who aren’t funded by the deep pockets of Google will be joining the fray too. Among the early animation-related channel contenders will be YooToon, which is created by Butch Hartman, creator of TV series like Fairly OddParents and Danny Phantom.

Butch Hartman follows in the footsteps of Rocko’s Modern Life creator Joe Murray who launched his Kaboing TV channel last year. Cartoon Brew noted last January that Murray’s channel has struggled to gain traction with viewers. It has debuted just one new piece of content in the last seven months. Murray’s experiences highlight the challenge for established show creators wishing to translate their success in producing mainstream animation to programming an Internet channel. It remains to be seen how Hartman will cater to the tastes of Internet animation viewers who, thus far, have favored content that is vastly different in tone than normal TV fare.

Hartman’s YooToon channel has yet to officially debut, but he is promoting the channel on Facebook and Twitter, while soliciting submissions on Tumblr. Filmmakers: be sure to review YooToon’s terms carefully before submitting. The biggest red flag for any creator, amateur or experienced, should be the following language: “If my video is selected, I understand that I grant exclusive and sole ownership of my video to YOOTOON Studios upon submission.”

(Thanks, Jace Diehl)

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | 3 comments | Post tags: Butch Hartman, Joe Murray, YooToon, YouTube