I first posted about the animation collective Late Night Work Club back in November. The group was started by Scott Benson with Charles Huettner, Eimhin McNamara and Eamonn O’Neill, who then we reached out to other people they knew and respected.

They’ve just released the trailer for their first shorts anthology, Ghost Stories, which will be released this coming Spring. In addition to the collective’s founders mention above, the anthology features the work of Sean Buckelew, Dave Prosser, Jake Armstrong, Erin Kilkenny, Alex Grigg, Daniella Orsini, Joe Orton, Conor Finnegan, Louise Bagnall and Christen Bach. Based on the trailer, it looks terrific:

Last May, it was announced that Guillermo del Toro and animation veteran Mark Gustafson (Fantastic Mr. Fox, The PJs) would co-direct a stop motion adaptation of Pinocchio for the Jim Henson Company. The film was based on a version of the story illustrated by Gris Grimly.

According to Bleeding Cool, Grimly posted a couple of tweets yesterday that implied the project is stalled:

Short to the point update on Pinocchio for those inquiring: It appears that this is not the right time for such a superior-adventurous flick
— Gris Grimly (@GrisGrimly) January 30, 2013

and then:

@thinkbaker There are people like us out there. But they look at numbers. Frankenweenie was a box office failure to them.
— Gris Grimly (@GrisGrimly) January 30, 2013

The tweets have since been deleted so perhaps Grimly’s announcement was premature. The production studio ShadowMachine still lists the project on their homepage. With Henry Selick’s stop-motion film also shut down last year, what other feature film stop-mo projects are still in production? If anyone knows more about what’s happening, do tell.

[UPDATED—Feb. 2, 2013]: Gris Grimly gave an update to Bleeding Cool about his earlier comments on Twitter. He says Pinocchio is still alive though it would appear that no studio has committed to the film yet:

I’m writing to clear up the rumor that has gotten started. It all started with misconstrued information that I passed along through my networks. But it has come to my knowledge that Pinocchio is indeed still kicking with interest from the studios. Although I thought it was going to lay quiet for a little while, I never thought it would be canceled. It’s too good.

The 40th Annual Annie Awards are being livestreamed right now!

Live video from your Android device on Ustream

Uruguay, a small South American country of slightly more than 3 million people, managed to complete two animated features last year. Anina, directed by Alfredo Soderguit, is a co-production between Montevideo, Uruguay-based Raindogs Cine and Cali, Colombia-based Antorcha Films. The film was accepted into this year’s Berlin Film Festival, which starts this week.

Selkirk, el verdadero Robinson Crusoe (Selkirk, the Real Robinson Crusoe) is a stop motion feature directed by Walter Tournier. Trailer is below with more information on the official website.

5 Second Day is an annual tradition that gives Titmouse animators on both coasts the chance to bring to life whatever strange, beautiful, disturbing and funny ideas they’ve had all year as a short format cartoon. For the first time ever, the studio will be opening up the screening of these masterpieces to friends, neighbors and fans.

The screening is on Friday February 15th in Hollywood, at the Egyptian Theatre, 7:30pm. The program will also include a screening of the unaired Motorcity pilot and a selection of rarities from the studio’s vaults – with a discussion following with Titmouse founder Chris Prynoski.

Tickets are available through the Egyptian Theater.

The Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, Poland, is presenting a retrospective of Polish animator Julian Antonisz (1941-1987), who is best known for his drawn-on-film animation work. The exhibit, “Antonisz: Technology for Me Is a Form of Art,” is on display through March 17.

I’m fascinated to see the hand-crafted equipment that Antonisz used to make his films. Some of the tools can be seen in this documentary:

The exhibit description offers more details about Antonisz’s unique multidisplinary approach to animation filmmaking:

The exhibition is the first such extensive presentation of all the fields of the work of Julian Antoniszczak (Antonisz) – the co-founder of the legendary Animated Film Studio in Krakow, director of experimental animated films, constructor, musician and inventor.

In addition to a presentation of Antonisz’s rich film oeuvre, known to a wider public only to a limited degree, the exhibition also focuses on the no-less interesting issue of the artist’s methods of working.

The entry point for the exhibition is the artist’s archive that contains diaries and “ideabooks” (collections of notes, sketches, “great ideas”, newspaper cut-outs and projects for machines, amassed and categorized over the course of several decades). The selection of notes and sketches shown in Zachęta gives a rare chance to follow the creative process right the way – from the noting of the first idea for a film or machine on a scrap of paper, through the successive stages of its realization.

The non-camera films in which Antonisz continually returns to such themes as transience, the battle with time, illness and also human stupidity, can equally be treated as an intimate account of the artist’s own fears and obsessions. The artist is clearly fascinated by the mechanism of the body and its workings, not just as a motif in the films, but also through its participation in the process of the creation and viewing of the films. He is interested in experimenting not just with film tape, but also with the sensitivity and resilience of the viewer.

Fascinated by kinetic toys and optical machines, Antonisz strove to uncover the very roots of cinema. The idea of a return to hand-crafted work postulated in his Artistic Non-Camera Manifesto was something that the artist realised all aspects of his work.

An important element of the exhibition are the mechanical devices that Antonisz constructed according to ideas of his own for work in the non-camera technique – in other words, in experiments carried out directly on film tape. These unusual machines, “pantographs”, “animographs” and “sonographs” – enclosed in portable cases enabled the artist to carry out individual creative work independent of institutions and bureaucracy. Everything that he did was guided by one over-riding principle: to work as much as possible, as effectively as possible and as quickly as possible.

The machines and objects of everyday use that he designed and created, as well as elements of a curious “interior architecture”, can also be considered as hand-mades in the artist’s own unique style. Showing these at the exhibition evokes the unique atmosphere of the artist’s studio-laboratory, a place in which, as Antoniszczak himself said, technology became a form of art.

The exhibition is accompanied by the first publication to provide a thorough review of the full range of Julian Antoniszczak’s work.

The winners of the 11th Annual VES Awards were announced yesterday in Los Angeles. The two most honored films were Brave and Life of Pi, each with four awards, while Game of Thrones was the most-honored TV project, also with four awards.

Presented by the Visual Effects Society, the award recognizes outstanding visual effects work across a broad spectrum of the entertainment industry including film, animation, television, commercials and video games. In addition to the awards below, director Ang Lee was honored with the VES Visionary Award (presented by Dennis Muren) and ILM veteran Richard Edlund with the Lifetime Achievement Award (presented by Harrison Ford).

The following is the complete list of winners of The 11th Annual VES Awards:

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects-Driven Feature Motion Picture
Life of Pi
Donald R. Elliott, Susan Macleod, Guillaume Rocheron, Bill Westenhofer

Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Feature Motion Picture
The Impossible
Felix Bergés,Sandra Hermida,Pau Costa Moeller

Outstanding Animation in an Animated Feature Motion Picture
Brave
Mark Andrews, Steve May, Katherine Sarafian, Bill Wise

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Broadcast Program
Game of Thrones: Volar Morghulis
Rainer Gombos, Steve Kullback, Sven Martin, Juri Stanossek

Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Broadcast Program
Boardwalk Empire: Episode 308
John Bair, Parker Chehak, Paul Graff, Lesley Robson-Foster

Outstanding Real-Time Visuals in a Video Game
Call of Duty: Black Ops II
Jason Blundell, Barry Whitney, Colin Whitney

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Commercial
Nike: Biomorph
Rafael Colon, Aladino Debert, David Liu, Nicola Wiseman

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Special Venue Project
Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem
Heather Drummons, Joel Friesch, Brooke Breton, Chris Bailey

Outstanding Animated Character in a Live Action Feature Motion Picture
Life of Pi: Richard Parker
Erik De Boer, Sean Comer, Betsy Asher Hall, Kai-Hua Lan

Outstanding Animated Character in an Animated Feature Motion Picture
Brave: Merida
Travis Hathaway, Olivier Soares, Peter Sumanaseni, Brian Tindall

Outstanding Animated Character in a Commercial or Broadcast Program
Game of Thrones: Training the Dragons
Irfan Celik, Florian Friedmann, Ingo Schachner, Chris Stenner

Outstanding Created Environment in a Live Action Feature Motion Picture
The Avengers: Midtown Manhattan
Richard Bluff, Barry Williams, David Meny, Andy Proctor

Outstanding Created Environment in an Animated Feature Motion Picture
Brave: The Forest
Tim Best, Steve Pilcher, Inigo Quilez, Andrew Whittock

Outstanding Created Environment in a Commercial or Broadcast Program
Game of Thrones: Pyke
Rene Borst, Thilo Ewers, Adam Figielski, Jonas Stuckenbrock

Outstanding Virtual Cinematography in a Live Action Feature Motion Picture
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Matt Aitken, Victor Huang, Christian Rivers, R. Christopher White

Outstanding Virtual Cinematography in a Commercial or Broadcast Program
ZombiU
Dominique Boidin, Léon Bérelle, Rémi Kozyra, Maxime Luère

Outstanding Models in a Feature Motion Picture
The Avengers: Helicarrier
Rene Garcia, Bruce Holcomb, Polly Ing, Aaron Wilson

Outstanding FX and Simulation Animation in a Live Action Feature Motion Picture
Life of Pi: Storm of God
Harry Mukhopadhyay, David Stopford, Mark Williams, Derek Wolfe

Outstanding FX and Simulation Animation in an Animated Feature Motion Picture
Brave
Chris Chapman, Dave Hale, Michael K. O’Brien, Bill Watral

Outstanding FX and Simulation Animation in a Commercial or Broadcast Program
Guinness: Cloud
Tom Bussell, Neil Davies

Outstanding Compositing in a Feature Motion Picture
Life of Pi: Storm of God
Ryan Clarke, Jose Fernandez, Sean Oharas, Hamish Schumacher

Outstanding Compositing in a Broadcast Program
Game of Thrones, Episode 210: White Walker Army
Falk Boje, Esther Engel, Alexey Kuchinsky, Klaus Wuchta

Outstanding Compositing in a Commercial
Chevy 2012 Silverado
Dominik Bauch, Nicholas Kim, Benjamin Walsh

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Student Project
Natalis
Daniel Brkovic, David Kirchner, Jan-Marcel Kuehn, Tom Ferstl

For those in Anaheim tomorrow evening, the Rothick Art Haus (170 S. Harbor Blvd, Anaheim, CA 92805) is hosting the opening reception of an art show called “Steampop! Pop Culture through Steampunk Goggles.” One of the artists who’ll be showing is veteran Disney animator James Lopez, whose work has been featured on Cartoon Brew in the past. It’s a familiar topic for Lopez, who is currently working on a personal steampunk-themed animated short.

(Homer Simpson piece above by Ryan Batcheller)

Last week the Delaware Art Museum debuted an exhibition called “State of the Art: Illustration 100 Years After Howard Pyle.” It will be on view through June 1, 2013. The show is curated by David Apatoff, who takes a cross-disciplinary view of the evolution of American illustration through the lens of eight contemporary artists: Ralph Eggleston, Peter de Sève, Bernie Fuchs, Milton Glaser, Mort Drucker, Phil Hale, Sterling Hundley, and John Cuneo.

I love seeing animation artists included in the company of illustrators and designers like Fuchs and Glaser. The artwork for animated films, at its basic core, serves the same purpose as work created by these other artists in its need to communicate ideas to the audience through visual means.

For people who are unable to travel to Delaware to see the show, the museum has made the exhibition catalog viewable online.

Petro Vlahos, a visual effects pioneer and inventor of camera hardware, died last Sunday at age 96. His invention of the sodium vapor travelling matte system was used extensively in Disney films like Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks as a way of combining live-actors with background footage. That accomplishment alone is impressive, but it barely begins to describe the number of innovations that Vlahos introduced to the film industry. A comprehensive obituary detailing his life’s work can be found in The Hollywood Reporter.

Uli Meyer writes this morning with sad news:

My old friend Harald Siepermann has passed away this morning. He was suffering from cancer. Harald was one of the foremost character designers, an incredible artist and wonderful human being.

Siepermann was 50 years old. Born in Bochum, Germany, he studied art and illustration at the Folkwang School in Essen, where one of his teachers was Hans Bacher. Siepermann began his career working for ad agencies in Düsseldorf, London, and Zürich.

In the mid-1980s, Siepermann became the character designer for Alfred J. Kwak, a character that originally appeared in a Dutch theater show created by entertainer Herman van Veen. The resulting comics and TV series, which he worked on closely with his former teacher Bacher, have appeared in dozens of countries.

Following the series, Siepermann began working in animation regularly. His first feature film credit was story sketch on Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It was his character designs for which he was most sought after, and he contributed visual development to numerous Disney features including Mulan, Tarzan, The Emperor’s New Groove, Brother Bear, Treasure Planet, and Enchanted, as well as to films from other studios such as Jester Till, We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story, and Space Chimps. Visit his BLOG and FLICKR to see a selection of his character design work.

Siepermann, who frequently lectured about character design at animation schools throughout Europe, was also a regular attendee of the Annecy animation festival. While I can’t admit to being close friends with him, I got to know Harald as a festival friend over the past decade, and I shared many pleasant conversations with him at picnics, cafes and parties at Annecy. My memories of him are always as an affable and easygoing artist who was deeply committed to his art. I’m sorry I won’t get any more chances to see him at the festival.

For German speakers, here is the first part of a TV interview with Harald:

Happy birthday to animation legend Borge Ring, who is 92 years young today!

Borge began animating in the 1930s. Here’s a commercial piece he animated in 1950:

And here is his Oscar-nominated 1978 short, Oh My Darling:

Borge was also a professional jazz musician during the 1940s and 1950s. In the video below, he plays bass on a Danish TV show in 1985:

Today marks the centennial of Frank Tashlin (February 19, 1913 – May 5, 1972), one of the most important figures in the history of American animation.

Frank who?

If Tashlin is recognized at all by the general public, it is for being the Looney Tunes animation director who ended up making kooky, subversive live-action comedies starring the likes of Jerry Lewis and Jayne Mansfield.

He was so much more than that though—a restless and ambitious creative powerhouse who didn’t play by anyone’s rules and whose filmic innovations were often decades ahead of their time.

Tashlin’s reputation has been bashed routinely by film critics, both while he was alive (“Tashlin has become sympathetically obsolete without ever becoming fashionable”—Andrew Sarris) and after he died in 1972 (“Tashlin remained the safe, cold-blooded side of bad taste, never came to terms with the full-length form or the live-action image, but never sensed the pungent onslaught in cartoon that, say, Gillray or Ralph Bakshi have achieved.”—David Thomson). Even online, it sometimes feels that he gets no respect; the editors of the Looney Tunes Wiki can’t identify Tashlin well enough to put up an actual photo of him on his biographical entry.

Still, Tashlin’s work persists and the impact of his unconventional, exaggerated style of cinema continues to reverberate throughout contemporary film. To celebrate Tashlin’s 100th birthday, Cartoon Brew presents 15 fun facts about Frank Tashlin. To learn more about him, visit Tish Tash: A Blog Tribute to Frank Tashlin and pick up a copy of Ethan de Seife’s recent book Tashlinesque: The Hollywood Comedies of Frank Tashlin.

1. He named his buffoonish newspaper comic character Van Boring as a dig toward his former boss, Amadee J. Van Beuren, who ran Van Beuren Studios.

More of the Van Boring strips are posted on Facebook.

2. He knew that Porky Pig was a chump and loved to make fun of him.

3. He once claimed that when he worked at Disney, one of his favorite things to do was throw Clarence Nash, the voice of Donald Duck, out of the window.

Tashlin told historian Michael Barrier in 1971:

They didn’t know what to do with a fellow by the name of “Ducky” Nash—Clarence Nash, he was the voice of Donald Duck—because when they weren’t recording Donald Duck, what do you do with the fellow who’s the voice of Donald Duck? Ducky had an office in this building, a little tiny office where he would come over and go to sleep. These were hillside places, and the ground beneath his window was maybe twelve feet. Roy Williams, this big fellow, and I, when Ducky was asleep—and he slept just like a duck, he made funny sounds—in this big wicker chair, we would take this chair, with him in it, and we would hold it out the window, and drop him. This chair would hit, and because it was wicker, it sort of had a recoil, you know, the legs went out like this. He’d start quacking away down there, and he’d come up, dragging this chair with him. This happened many times, and it was a high point of humor—you know, you want to talk about low humor, that’s what we thought was funny.

4. He directed the most elegant, cinematically modern black-&-white cartoons in the history of animation.

5. His eclectic career is full of detours into different areas of film, like when he made the stop motion films The Lady Said No (1946) and The Way of Peace (1947).

Tashlin scholar Ethan de Seife has written extensively about The Lady Said No.

6. He played an important role in kickstarting the ‘cartoon modern’ era.

When Tashlin became the head of Columbia’s Screen Gem studios in 1941, he transformed it into a haven for artists who wanted to create modern-looking animation. Zachary Schwartz, who became a founder of United Productions of America, said of Tashlin, “He was an inspirational man to work for.” Another animation modernist, John Hubley, said of his experience, “Under Tashlin, we tried some very experimental things; none of them quite got off the ground, but there was a lot of ground broken. We were doing crazy things that were anti the classic Disney approach.” The visual experimentation continued for a couple years after Tashlin’s departure from Columbia, such as in this 1943 short Professor Small and Mr. Tall:

7. He created the Fox and Crow.

The Fox and the Grapes, the first cartoon that Tashlin directed with these characters, featured a novel blackout-gag structure that served as a model for many later cartoons, including Chuck Jones’ Coyote and Roadrunner series.

8. He invented his own system of cartooning called SCOT-ART.

Tashlin’s how-to cartoon book proclaimed that anybody could create original cartoons if they could draw S(quares), C(ircles), O(vals) and T(riangles). You can find the entire book HERE.

9. Jean-Luc Godard loves him:

Says Godard:

According to Georges Sadoul, Frank Tashlin is a second-rank director because he has never done a remake of You Can’t Take It With You or The Awful Truth. According to me, my colleague errs in mistaking a closed door for an open one. In fifteen years’ time, people will realize that The Girl Can’t Help It served then—today, that is—as a fountain of youth from which the cinema now—in the future, that is—has drawn fresh inspiration….Tashlin indulges a riot of poetic fancies where charm and comic invention alternate in a constant felicity of expression….Frank Tashlin has not renovated the Hollywood comedy. He has done better. There is not a difference in degree between Hollywood or Bust and It Happened One Night, between The Girl Can’t Help It and Design For Living, but a difference in kind. Tashlin, in other words, has not renewed but created. And henceforth, when you talk about a comedy, don’t say ‘It’s Chaplinesque’; say, loud and clear, ‘It’s Tashlinesque’.

10. John Waters loves him:

11. He allowed Chuck Jones to adapt his illustrated book The Bear That Wasn’t into an animated short, and when Jones ruined the film, he never spoke to him again.

12. He married Mary Costa, who was the voice of Princess Aurora in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty.

13. He created an amazing graphic novel called The World That Isn’t.

This bleak yet perceptive commentary on modern American life is as relevant today as when it was first published over sixty years ago. Tashlin uses the cartoon medium to expose the follies of humankind, including religious intolerance, environmental destruction, political corruption, tabloid trash, celebrity worship, and nationalism. In his cautionary tale, mankind finds peace only after destroying himself through nuclear apocalypse and starting over again.

14. He was a leg man.

This one hardly needs explanation.

15. He pushed live-action further than anyone before him and anticipated the creative possibilities of today’s CG-infused live-action filmmaking.

British animation legend Bob Godfrey has passed away. We received a note from his grandson Tom Lowe this morning with the following sad message: “He passed peacefully in his sleep, on Thursday 21st February 2013, aged 91.”

Godfrey once told an interviewer that he considered his life a long-lasting ambition to make people laugh, and he did exactly that during an animation career that lasted over fifty years, spanning dozens of shorts films and TV series. In the process, he became the first British animator to win an animated short Oscar (for the short Great), and he also helped animation mature by exploring contemporary and adult themes in his work.

Born in Horse Shoe Bend, West Maitland, Australia on May 27, 1921, and raised in London, Godfrey attended the Leyton Art School. He began his visual arts career working in advertising. In the late-1940s, he began working at David Hand’s G. B. Animation, and helped create promotional items related to Animaland shorts. This led to his full-time entry into the animation field in 1950 at the modernist commercial studio W. M. Larkins.

Still from “Polygamous Polonius” (1959)

Godfrey left Larkins in 1955 to set up an independent studio called Biographic Films with partners Keith Learner and Jeff Hale. [UPDATE: Keith Learner has written a fine remembrance of Godfrey on the Guardian website.]

While at Biographic, Godfrey began making personal short films. Early efforts like Polygamous Polonius and Do It Yourself Cartoon Kit (1961), with their sharp satiric humor and quirkily designed cut-out animation style, were considered fresh for the time. The BFI Screenonline website says that these films, “display the range of influences and preoccupations that characterise his work—music hall routines, avant-garde comedy in the spirit of The Goons, political satire, and concerns with British attitudes to sex and social conduct.” Historian Giannalberto Bendazzi also notes that in these early films, “Godfrey comes out as one of the few animators to share some common traits with the Free Cinema of his contemporaries Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson and Karel Reisz.”

Still from “Great” (1975)

Godfrey continued his career as a short filmmaker with a string of successful films including The Rise and Fall of Emily Sprod (1962), Alf, Bill & Fred (1964), Henry 9 ’til 5 (1970), Kama Sutra Rides Again (1972), an erotic-comedic short that Stanley Kubrick personally selected to accompany the UK release of A Clockwork Orange, and culminating with his ambitious Oscar-winning short-epic Great (1975), about the life of British civil engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

In the mid-1960s, Godfrey set up his own studio, Bob Godfrey Movie Emporium, through which he not only produced shorts and commercials, but also began making a variety of children’s TV series, such as Roobarb (about the rivalry between a dog named Roobarb and a cat named Custard), Noah and Nelly in… SkylArk, and Henry’s Cat, all of which became beloved staples of generations of British children.

Godfrey also created the Do-It-Yourself Animation Show in the mid-1970s, a how-to series with weekly guests who included Richard Williams and Terry Gilliam. The show, which made animation accessible to the masses by taking the mystery out of the production process, was vastly influential and inspired an entire generation of kids in England, including Nick Park, who created Wallace & Gromit, Jan Pinkava, who directed the Pixar short Geri’s Game, and Richard Bazley, an animator on Pocahontas, Hercules, and The Iron Giant.

Enjoy this great BBC mini-doc about Godfrey from the early-1970s:

Further recommended reading about Godfrey:
Bob Godfrey interview from 1979
Obituary in The Independent
BFI Screenonline biography of Bob Godfrey

Some of the biggest names in the UK animation scene are expressing their condolences on the occasion of Bob Godfrey’s passing. Here’s what they’re saying on Twitter:

Filmmaker Joanna Quinn (Body Beautiful, Britannia, Famous Fred, Dreams and Desires—Family Ties):

Peter Lord, Aardman co-founder and director of The Pirates! Band of Misfits:

Online animation filmmaker Cyriak:

Matt Jones, Pixar story artist:

Beakus Animation Production Studio:

Curtis Jobling, production designer of Bob the Builder and creator of Frankenstein’s Cat:

Filmmaker Chris Shepherd (Who I Am And What I Want, Dad’s Dead):

Paul Franklin, visual effects supervisor on The Dark Knight Rises, Inception, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince:

Rob McCallum, storyboard/concept artist on Pacific Rim, The Thing, Total Recall:

Filmmaker David OReilly (Please Say Something, The External World), who is technically not UK, but a nice sentiment nonetheless:

Carlos Grangel has had a long career in animation, working on DreamWorks features from The Prince of Egypt through Kung Fu Panda, and also doing design work on films like The Corpse Bride and Hotel Transylvania. A lesser known aspect of his career is that concurrent with his work on Hollywood films, he has operated Barcelona-based Grangel Studio with his brother Jordi for over 20 years.

The Spanish animation website Arte y Animación caught up with the two brothers, Carlos and Jordi, and created this well-produced video podcast in which they discuss their studio’s work.

Take a look at Gina Thorstensen’s work on her blog and website. She creates illustrations, puppets and animation with a variety of media.

She often collaborates with Nacho Rodríguez and others on animated music videos which they produce via their Thorstencoo Productions. This is their video for the track “Bla Bla Bla” for the Mexican band Jumbo:

Surprisingly in the notes on the Vimeo page, Thorstencoo reveals that this was put together in Flash despite its heavy use of raster graphics more typically composited in After Effects or another type of program. Gina and Nacho also surprise with the fluid animation that they coax out of all the mixed scanned/photographed/drawn elements in this production.

Characters that Gina designed for a short film in production called “Astigmatismo” by Nicolai Troshinsky can also be seen bouncing around looking fantastic in the teaser clips available on the film’s website.

Daniela Strijleva is a character art director for Pixar. Her blog is where you can find more of her personal projects like the collaborative Round Robin book that she participates in. Below are some more studies of the sheep characters from her Round Robin project illustrations and a few other humorous images from her personal pursuits.

Jonathan Djob Nkondo is the rare artist who excels as a draftsman, animator and designer of graphics. His sketchbook drawings and animation found on his Tumblr and Flickr are terrifically solid in the sense that each figure has a strong, believable structure supporting Jonathan’s unique cartoon coatings.

The experimentation in his sketchbook work is exciting, yet he is also able to fit seamlessly into collaborative animation projects such as this Good Books ad on which he served as a lead animator.

His wall art is worth checking out, too—a solid example of colors, letterforms, and funny cartoons in pleasing compositions.

Elle Michalka is an artist from Texas who attended CalArts for a couple of years before leaving school to work in animation on productions such as Gravity Falls and more recently Green Lantern: The Animated Series.

The background paintings and personal landscape studies that she shares on her newer and older blogs are dynamic spaces and compositions created with reduced cartoon forms and carefully considered areas of light and dark color.

She creates a mysterious oceanside scene with even the simplest gray shapes and textures here in these personal doodles: