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The ever-expanding Brooklyn animation scene offers two unique animation screenings this month.

The post Upcoming Brooklyn Animation Screenings: Dirty Morning Cartoons and The Dumbest Sh!t I Ever Saw appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

A record 73 animated features were submitted to the festival this year.

Looking at the work of Wendy Cong Zhao, Cartoon Brew's Artist of the Day!

My vote for the most provocative animated film review of the year: the CBC's Robert Fontaine and his dual-assessment of Disney's "Big Hero 6" and Signe Baumane's indie feature "Rocks in my Pockets."

The country of Latvia has selected Signe Baumane's "Rocks in My Pockets" as its entry for the best foreign-language category of the Oscars.

Can an animated feature about depression be entertaining too?

Next Wednesday, the animated duo of Jeff Twiller and Randy J. Johnson will host their own animated film screening in Brooklyn. It's a legit line-up of animated shorts, with perceptive cinematic commentary supplied inbetween the films by Twiller and Johnson. Thankfully, they happen to be animation experts.

The annual MoCCA Arts Festival, presented by the Society of Illustrators and Museum of Comic & Cartoon Art, takes place this weekend (April 6 and 7) at the 69th Regiment Armory (68 Lexington Avenue in Manhattan). Tickets are $12 online or $15 at the door. I highly recommend the event; it’s a comic convention as it should be with a relaxed atmosphere and a focus on artists of all kinds (comic artists, illustrators and animators). The list of guests is solid as usual, and includes familiar names from the animation community such as Bill Plympton, Signe Baumane, Peter de Sève, Jules Feiffer, and JJ Sedelmaier. Many of the exhibitors hawking their wares also work in the local animation industry.

Signe Baumane is making an independent animated feature film called Rocks in My Pockets, which has a website here and a production blog here. Signe is creating paper mache miniature sets as the dimensional backgrounds for her drawn character animation which she composites on top. The film itself is a “funny film about depression” according to the website, which continues Signe’s history of creating work that tackles adult subjects with humor.

Signe also has a website here for her work. Design-wise it looks a bit like a relic of Internet history (I’m getting nostalgic over these glowing buttons and pop-up browser windows), but it still does the job. You can read up on Signe’s biography including her origins in Latvia and the fact that in 1999 she achieved permanent residency status here in the U.S. as an impressively titled Alien of Extraordinary Ability.

Brooklyn-based filmmaker Signe Baumane has released a teaser trailer for her first feature-length effort, Rocks In My Pockets. The film is “a personal story about mental illness afflicting women in Signe’s family and her own encounters with suicide and depression.”

Baumane is stretching into new territory with this feature and it will be interesting to see how she handles the difficult subject matter. It’s certainly a big departure from the sexually charged and comedic fare for which she is best known, like Birth, Teat Beat of Sex, and Five Fucking Fables. Rocks In My Pockets combines drawn animation with papier-mâché backgrounds and is scheduled for completion in the first half of 2013.

Tonight at 7:30 pm, the 92Y Tribeca (200 Hudson Street) presents “Peculiar Picture Parade: Animated Films Defying the Norms,” a collection of recent animated shorts by New York animators. The screening, curated by Joy and Noelle Vaccese (aka Twins are Weird), includes recent pieces by Bill Plympton (Guard Dog Global Jam) Pat Smith (Masks), Signe Baumane (excerpts from the feature-in-progress Rocks In My Pocket) and Fran Krause (Nosy Bear), among others.

Tickets are $10 and can be purchased at the door or in advance at the 92Y Tribeca website.

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Bill Plympton, Fran Krause, Joy Vaccese, Noelle Vaccese, Pat Smith, Signe Baumane, Twins are Weird

The first three episodes of Signe Baumane’s outrageous Teat Beat of Sex, a funny and courageous fifteen-part series of lectures from a woman’s point of view. Watching these semi-autobiographical shorts makes one realize how little animation there is that expresses a personal viewpoint about sex. They’re NSFW as are most good things in life.