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A peek into the latest tests from a hotly anticipated hand-drawn animated feature.

The post Sergio Pablos Previews Exciting New ‘Klaus’ Animation Tests appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Executive producer Brendan Hay talks about how to play imminent demise for laughs in the new Netflix series 'Dawn of the Croods.'

The post ‘Dawn of The Croods’: Brendan Hay Discusses Building A Kinder, Gentler Animated Apocalypse appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

The "Croods" crew returns to Netflix on December 24.

The post Trailer: ‘Dawn of the Croods’ Hand-Drawn Netflix Series appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

"Klaus," a hand-drawn all-ages holiday comedy, is anticipating a 2019 release.

A mouse and pig are members of the constabulary who go on a quest to return a stolen egg to its distraught parents.

A small team of Cape Town-based artists are set to pitch their feature film at Annecy.

The same software used by Disney and Cartoon Network is now available as low as $15 per month.

After a relatively quiet stretch, John Kricfalusi ("Ren & Stimpy") is popping up everywhere nowadays: at the front "Simpsons" episodes, behind Miley Cyrus, and now, in your milkshake machine.

Steve Moore, the director of Disney’s rarely seen Oscar-nominated short Redux Riding Hood as well as The Indescribable Nth, has completed a new short called Chief, Your Butt’s On Fire.

The fifteen-second trailer posted online put a smile on my face. Maybe that’s because Steve used Ward Kimball’s Firehouse Five Plus Two as his soundtrack. He wrote a lengthy blogpost about the production of his film on the FLIP Animation blog that he co-authors. Moore is planning to screen the film on the festival circuit.

Michel Gagné’s

Originally published as a serialized story in volumes 2 through 7 of the comic anthology Flight, it was then repackaged as a trade paperback by Image Comics in 2010. The 4-minute short was funded by raising over $57,000 on Kickstarter last year and is to be the first installment of a classically drawn independent animated feature film that Gagné is planning. “I would like to believe that there are still some people out there who want to see good old 2D classical animation being done,” Gagné told Cartoon Brew. “I know that my big donors love this type of animation and want to see it continue. We can’t rely on the big studios to keep the art of 2D full-animation going, so it’s up to us.”

His 1995 film Prelude to Eden was created using the now defunct 2D animation software Animo, which had remained his “go-to” production software up until 2012 when he began looking for an update. He gave Toon Boom a try and was pleased with the results. “I quickly realized that I’d just upgraded my old Model T Ford for a car of the year.” So, with Toon Boom in hand, along with Photoshop, After Affects and Premiere, Gagné set out to see just how much progress could be made adapting The Saga of Rex for the screen. “I wanted to test my limits and see what I could do single-handedly in a set period of time. What you see here is about six and a half months of work.”

The short, which is subtitled The Animated Film Project Pt. 1 – Abduction is animated in pantomime, which is Gagné’s intention for the entire film. “I’ve toyed with the idea of adding narration to the film, but then again, I realized it would take away some of the mystery,” he said. “In a way, I’m not sure I want people to fully understand what is going on. I want them to ask questions and create their own meaning.”

Animators have more options for hand-drawn software than ever before, a fact that is reflected daily in the projects we feature on the site. For example, the short Junkyard was produced with TVPaint, the TV series Sarah and Duck was made with CelAction2D, and Disney’s new Mickey Mouse shorts are animated in ToonBoom Harmony. Of course, there’s the ubiquitous Adobe Flash which is still the most widely used 2D animation tool, though its influence has been waning in recent years.

Part of the reason that Flash has been losing marketshare in the U.S. and Canada is due to ToonBoom’s Animate line of software, which is considered by many to be an affordable alternative with better workflow and a superior set of tools for vector-based 2D animation. The company recently announced the pre-launch of Animate 3 and Animate Pro 3, which adds some much desired features like the ability to taper pencil vector lines, draw with textures and output in 64-bit high-resolution. Many of these features were previously available only in ToonBoom’s much higher priced Harmony software.

Here are some of the new features announced by ToonBoom:

Toon Boom Animate 3 highlights:

• True Pencil: Animate 3 gives you the ability to draw with True Pencil, a pencil line with variable thickness that supports pressure sensitivity. Draw clean lines with the pencil and have the ability to modify the lines easily. You can apply the style across hundreds of drawings. Incorporate texture on your lines for cool effects.

Toon Boom Animate Pro 3 highlights:

• Bone Deform: Animate Pro 3 now comes with Bone-style Deform! Bring your cut-out characters to the next level by adding deformers to bend drawings around bones and articulations. Apply deform to vector drawings, textures, or imported bitmaps.

Both products are now supercharged on a 64-bit core. This gives you the freedom to use more of the computer’s resources, and output high-resolution files for a professional-quality production. In addition, they both support standard two-finger Touch Gestures for zooming, rotating, and scaling of the canvas, when using a tablet. Finally, they both benefit from interface enhancements designed to simplify workflow and streamline the animation process.

Pricing and Availability: During this time-limited pre-launch period, you can buy Toon Boom Animate 3 for $599 US and Toon Boom Animate Pro 3 for $999 US – a saving of $100 US. Customers will receive a version 2 license which will be replaced by version 3 upon release. Customers owning previous versions of Animate and Animate Pro may upgrade on release day only.

To learn more and pre-order the software, visit ToonBoom’s website.

O Rei Gastão (King Gaston) by Rio de Janeiro-based animator Diogo Viegas picked up the best children’s animation award at this year’s Anima Mundi festival. It’s easy to see why: the animation, design and color are undeniably charming. There’s English captions for non-Portuguese speakers, but the visual storytelling is so clear that I found it just as charming (if not moreso) when I didn’t understand the lyrics.

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