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Studios around the world are now using TVPaint to craft their latest features.

The post How TVPaint Is Expanding Into Japan and Increasing Its Involvement In Feature Films appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Paul and Sandra Fierlinger’s My Dog Tulip had a terrific debut last week with the third-highest per-theater average at the North American box office. Granted, the film played in one theater—the Film Forum in Manhattan—but its weekend gross of $11,550 from a single location is impressive for an indie animated film. The film continues to screen at the Film Forum this week, with many other cities coming up. Animation fans, it’s up to us to support this film and help encourage more variety and choice for animated features!

Speaking of animator Paul Fierlinger (as we did yesterday), The Animal Shelter Project and the Humane Society has brought Fierlinger together with cartoonist Patrick McDonnell (Mutts) to create six public service spots based on the book Mutts Shelter Stories.

According to producer Peter Barg, “McDonnell felt Paul’s ability to capture true-to-nature body language was the perfect complement to his famous Mutts characters”. Fierlinger’s feature My Dog Tulip, opens in NYC at Film Forum on September 1st and in LA at the Nuart on October 22nd. You can watch all six spots online at Z Animation.

Paul Fierlinger’s animated feature My Dog Tulip opens an exclusive two-week run on September 1st at the Film Forum in New York. It opens later elsewhere in the US (complete list of cities here). Fierlinger is an exceptional and exceptionally devoted animation filmmaker (he made the artwork for his film with only one other person—his wife, Sandra), and I can’t wait to finally see the results. As this article from the Boston Globe makes clear, the film isn’t conventional animated fare; the book on which its based, by J.R. Ackerley, has been called the “[most] preeminently disgusting of all great dog books” and derided as “meaningless filth about dogs.”

This is a revealing quote from Fierlinger from an interview in The Bark magazine, which says a lot about where he’s coming from:

From a very young age, I disliked Disney and loved The Little Prince because the fox explains to the boy [in The Little Prince] what he must do to tame him, the fox. If the fox would know this, wasn’t he already tame? But instinctively—I was seven or eight at the time—I undersatnd that it shows Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s understanding of nature. He wasn’t violating any rules, whereas Disney violated all the rules of nature. That’s what I want our film to be: the opposite of 101 Dalmatians. So that people would not want to buy a dog after they saw Tulip, like too many people do who watch Disney movies.

Following on from Charlotte’s post the other day, I thought I would put together a list of a few of the books my family loves, which focus on that special bond between grandchildren and their grandparents.

I have already talked about the Katie Morag books, in which both her grandmothers are central. I wish we’d known about Nigel Gray’s A Balloon for Grandad when we lived abroad; as it is, we discovered it recently in our local library. Illustrated by one of my favorite illustrators, Jane Ray, it deals in such an uplifting way with the separation which is sometimes inevitable when generations live a long way from each other. Then there are Ana Baca and Anthony Accardo’s Benito books – look out for a review of their latest bilingual title Benito’s Sopaipillas/ Las Sopaipillas de Benito in next week’s update of PaperTigers (I’ll add the link to this post when it’s available).

We also love Raymond Briggs’ typically quirky story The Puddleman. You have to be an indulgent grandfather to allow your grandson to lead you around by a dog-lead attached to your wrist and call you “Collar” - but the hint at the end, where Briggs thanks “Miles” for “the naming of puddles, Collar” etc. would suggest that he had real-life, grandson inspiration for the story! It’s a loving, imaginative tale that also provides a particularly special read-aloud experience. Since it is a cartoon strip, you can’t just read it as a narrative; you have to share the interpretation of the pictures alongside the reading of the dialogue and build it up together.

Sometimes we need books to help us talk about the illness or death of a beloved grandparent. (more…)