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The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has announced the juried winners for the 65th Emmy Awards. Among the winners are six artists for Outstanding Individual Achievement In Animation. The Creative Arts Emmy Awards will be presented in a ceremony on Sunday, September 15, and the show will be televised on September 21st on FXX (a spinoff-network of FX). Congrats to the winners!

• Adventure Time “Puhoy”
  Cartoon Network/Cartoon Network Studios
  Andy Ristaino, Character Design

The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has announced the juried winners for the 65th Emmy Awards. Among the winners are six artists for Outstanding Individual Achievement In Animation. The Creative Arts Emmy Awards will be presented in a ceremony on Sunday, September 15, and the show will be televised on September 21st on FXX (a spinoff-network of FX). Congrats to the winners!

• Adventure Time “Puhoy”
  Cartoon Network/Cartoon Network Studios
  Andy Ristaino, Character Design

Next month, Giant Robot will host a solo exhibition of work by the Spanish-born artist Alberto Mielgo, best known in the U.S. for his art direction on the Disney TV series TRON: Uprising.

The show will take place at Giant Robot’s GR Works storefront in downtown Los Angeles (114 W. 4th St. Los Angeles, CA 90013). There will be an opening reception on Monday, November 5, from 6-10pm, and the show will run for one week. Titled Albert Mielgo: Solo, it documents the past three years of Mielgo’s output, and will focus on his models and their working process together. “I think it’s fair to talk about them that people know how good they are,” Mielgo said. “How much they mean to me, and why I decided to paint them.”

Mielgo has exhibited his paintings in Spain and the UK. In 2010, Mielgo was a subject of the short film documentary Innocent In A Way (NSFW) by French filmmaker Alexis Wanneroy. Mielgo started his career as an animator on features like Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, El Cid: The Legend and Jester Till. In addition to that, he storyboarded on Corpse Bride, created conceptual art for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, and drew the backgrounds for the intro of the videogame Beatles Rock Band.

Tonight at 9:30pm Eastern/Pacific, Disney’s Tron Uprising airs its pilot on Disney Channel (it’s also available online). I personally think this series is a breakthrough for a US-generated animated action series; a game changer.

For decades the standard look for adventure cartoons was the model started by Doug Wildey on Hanna Barbera’s Jonny Quest (1964). Later, Bruce Timm and the team at Warner Animation advanced the field with Batman: the Animated Series (1992), and there’s no denying Anime certainly brought a new feel to the genre.

Tron Uprising certainly borrows from those traditions and ups it a notch – a BIG notch. To be fair, the pilot airing tonight only shows off half the picture – the beautiful visuals designed by Art Director Alberto Mielgo and Lead Character Designer Robert Valley. The pilot Beck’s Beginning is a bit of a paste-up – as its constructed from the elements of the previously announced mini-sodes which were originally planned to preview the show (Disney execs decided to edit them into one 31 minute episode instead of presenting them as serialized bite-sized pieces, as first intended). Producer/director Charlie Bean (The Ren & Stimpy Show, Dexter’s Laboratory, Samurai Jack, The Amazing World of Gumball) has the perfect sensibility for this show – and from what I understand the storyline for the actual series is far more complex than the set-up presented tonight.

But so far, I love what I see. How about you? What’s your take? You have no excuse not to give it a try. Take a look at some of this gorgeous production material below. Top row: some of Mielgo’s magnificent production paintings; second row: a model sheet for some of the lead characters; third row: a few of Valley’s storyboards and (at my request) a Beck model sheet (click thumbnails to enlarge). Click all images for larger, fuller views.

Disney is previewing the entire pilot episode—”Beck’s Beginning”—of Tron: Uprising on YouTube (sorry, US viewers only). The series, which premieres June 7 on Disney XD, takes place between the original Tron and the more recent Tron: Legacy. It follows the quest of a young program named Beck (not Jerry), who under the mentorship of Tron, leads a revolution to wrest control of The Grid from the sinister clutches of Clu.

If you’re the type of fan that geeks out over new vehicles in the Tron universe, you’ll likely have a different take than mine, but as someone who just wants to see good entertainment, I wasn’t satisfied. There’s some mad artistic talent working under art director Alberto Mielgo, but they can’t overcome the monotonous direction that alternates between flat dialogue scenes and numbingly repetitive (though impressively staged) action scenes. The leaden CG character animation, produced by Japanese studio Polygon Pictures, and ridiculous script (“There you are.” “Here I am.”) don’t help matters.

To be fair, this is just the pilot. As Tron: Uprising director Charlie Bean gets more episodes under his belt, he may yet realize the show’s full potential. On the other hand, it could just be ten more episodes of a guy jumping on a light cycle ad nauseam, which is what this pilot episode felt like at times.

On a sad note, the end credits include the dedication “For Pete.” That refers to a technical director on the show, Peter Kranjcevich, who passed away unexpectedly last month at the age of 36.

If you watch the episode above, please share your thoughts.

(via Super Punch)

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Alberto Mielgo, Charlie Bean, Peter Kranjcevich, Polygon Pictures, Tron: Uprising