the Deck.

round up of contemporary web bright ideas and ads. here  - Decknetwork.
"The premier network for reaching creative, web and design professionals, The Deck serves up over one-hundred million ad impressions each month and is uniquely configured to connect the right marketers to a targeted, influential audience." and "Sites and apps are added to the network by invitation only and are considered based on many factors including traffic, design, frequency of updates and overall appropriateness to the general target of the network."
exclusivity and target accuracy means that once on, the advertising is likely to be of interest to the reader.

pretty near a complete set.

We pretty much have nearly a complete set from the 2012 class. I recommend that you look at each others post and opinions, and that you keep the currency and keep looking. I would welcome suggestions for you on how we could continue to manage a survey of the European scene> and what is occurring there. for example  - the winners of Stuttgart ITFS were announced the other day.
find them here.
What is the best form for keeping this current and warm?

good evaluative statement

I like this by-product of a films' shooting created by Kirsten Lepore, HERE
"During the shooting of my thesis, a 10 minute stop-motion animated piece titled, "sweet dreams," I took a quick isight video each day that I shot a scene to document what I had shot, the happenings of the day, or just my mood. Each video ranged from 1 to 2.5 minutes, so I arranged them in a chronological array to play simultaneously."

Good Swiss festival site.

this is a good site for animation festival searches.
Swiss Films .

Here is a picture; An 1870 postcard view of the Rhone glacier in Gletsch, Switzerland, contrasted with the shrinking 21st-century version of it. (Dominic Buettner for The New York Times)

Maps - accuracy vs information

you have been charged with the production of a map that illustrates the  
contemporary animation scene in Europe.
Maps do not have to be topographically accurate.
there are new forms of maps, - data mapping, check out this; worldmapper.org
this animation of daily wealth distribution for example, shows the percent of the world living on less than a dollar a day to those living on $200+ per day...
old form of maps, where the information is exaggerated for legibility rather than accuracy.
lots of examples here the worldmaps blogspot...

to consider on your map. towns and locations of Animation festivals. Locations of animation Schools.
Cities and towns that have a good animation reputation/ media industry/ reputation.

FOMO and going dark

research by JWT to study a phenomenon called FOMO, fear of missing out, and how they can capitalise on this with branding and marketing.
the full document can be downloaded called Fear Of Missing Out – Updated March 2012.

my interest in this is the Fear of missing out is diluting full attention to working hard and putting a good shift in.


this seems especially so when working at a CPU that has also internet connection.


I would be keen to know how many of you all 'work' and are connected at the same time? how many of you communicate socially during work sessions? what does this communication entail?

Another expression I heard recently was via a writer, who says he deliberately 'goes dark' to get his work done. it made me laugh when his dark time was only an hour and a half. I forgot to ask how long his connected time was when he was back on...

but the gist of this is the same, Going dark and FOMO is a form of trying to control and discipline emotional and social need over creative work output. It is a new interference to work production where an element of good production is concentration and getting into a zone with the work. it is, in my opinion less easy now to get into that zone of production when there is so much attention seeking from others publishing tittle tattle all the time, and the threat of missing out tempts one out of the dark, to connect, and to see, and to comment and to join in.

this is just a beginning  - I have noticed that students are not fully immersed as was once possible. I feel we all have to learn to moderate this connectedness and temper broadcasting and receiving this noise from everyone else, especially whilst trying to attain a sublime working state where the work-flow is strong and uninterrupted.

Tuesday 13 March

Tuesday 13 March

I have to be away. The Morning session I want you to continue to investigate the country you chose last week. see class session report for more details.

The afternoon session - starting at 2.00, Chris will be giving a talk on Creativity and Employ-ability, that I think you will find of value.

vesica-piscis. what a powerful form.

and

On Monday and Tuesday evenings, the planets Venus and Jupiter will appear just 3 degrees apart in the western sky. The gap has been narrowing since last month.
The two planets are visible every night at twilight. Venus is brighter because of its relative closeness, compared with super-far-away Jupiter.

UWE and RTS student awards

this is pretty impressive. the awards take place on the 14th March
LINK
The judges nominations

Factual
The Avenue to Freedom
Aodh Breathnach, Rosie Adkins - UWE

The Fountains of Caracas
Camille Britto Reale  - UWE

Three Peaks: How Hard Can It Be?
Ben Appleby  - UWE

Fiction
Jesse
Thom Phelan Isaac,  McCardle,  George Lewis - UWE

Runland
Dan Gittens, Jack O’Dowd -   UWE

Will and the Worry Dolls
Max Clendaniel, Dan Gardner, Caitlin Elliot - UWE

Animation
Fell
David Dymond – Bristol School of animation UWE

You May now
Dane Winn / Daniel Keeble
Bristol School of Animation  - UWE

Kami
Sharifah Nadia  Syed Ahmad 
Bristol School of Animation - UWE

Vibourg Denmark

Vibourg animation channel on Youtube

one in particular: Space stallions - is flying in popularity. ...

The Lorax, Seuss, Chris Meledandri, Freleng, DeVito and France

 

THE LORAX ~HAS HAD A BIG WEEKEND

1972 animated version (25 mins)
by DFE films, Friz Freleng and David H. DePatie. (Freleng and Chuck Jones would dominate the Warner Bros. studio in the years after world War II, and Freleng would later hook up with DePatie and produce the Pink Panther show, amongst others 1963 - 85).

* the biggest opening for a nonsequel since the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland ($116.1 million), exactly two years ago;
* the biggest opening for an animated feature since Toy Story 3 ($110.3 million) in June 2010;
* the biggest opening for a movie based on a Seuss book, beating Jim Carrey’s live-action How the Grinch Stole Christmas ($55.1 million in 2000), Mike Myers’ live-action The Cat in the Hat ($38.3 million in 2003) and the animated Horton Hears a Who!, also voiced by Carrey ($45 million in 2008) — though, factoring for inflation, The Grinch would top The Lorax in real dollars; and
* the biggest opening for a nonsequel animated feature since The Simpsons Movie ($74 million) in July 2007. If you disqualify that transfer of a behemoth TV franchise as an “original,” then The Lorax‘s loot could top the first-weekend grosses of the Pixar CGI movies The Incredibles ($70.1 million), Finding Nemo ($70.3 million) and Up ($68.1 million) — though, again, not in real dollars. We’ll have a clearer view of The Lorax‘s weekend accomplishments when final figures are issued Monday afternoon. ...

figures from the TAG blog (TAG = the animators guild)

review and trailer - (sheknows)

from the NYTimes July 2010 ... "For the French company, called Mac Guff Ligne, “The Lorax” is a chance to build on the success of “Despicable Me,” a three-dimensional animated film that has been the surprise hit of the summer at the U.S. box office, generating more than $130 million in sales in little more than two weeks. Mac Guff did the animation work for “Despicable Me,” which was produced by a Universal affiliate, Illumination Entertainment". 

article about and with Chris Meledandri  
"Chris Meledandri is the founder and CEO of Illumination Entertainment, the studio producing The Lorax, best known for the 2010 hit Despicable Me. Before forming Illumination in 2007, Meledandri led Blue Sky Studios, which had notable box office success under his tenure with Ice Age, Ice Age: The Meltdown, The Simpsons Movie, and Horton Hears a Who!. He is indisputably one of the biggest names in computer-animated film-making."

 

nationsonline.org

A good starting point for search into near Europe
animation scene. Pick a country. search for their commercial, educational, and artistic centres. try for capital cities, and also secondary cities. Look for 'boutique' animation studios. Boutique was an expression originated to describe independent studios producing variety projects, they are smaller scale SME (small to medium Enterprises) than the larger studios (Dreamworks, Pixar, Disney Etc). A small enterprise is up to 50 employees, micro enterprise is up to 10. you may wish to investigate micro business funding and support available.

rather nice open brief from 2009 ~

reasons to be cheerful

A lot of what you need to know is known already.
you just have to find it, and apply it to your practice.
The only mystery is where is the information?
What am I looking for?

This picture (Above)is by Alexander Cozens, called trees and rocks. He was Russian, and Taught at Eton. a lot of studies aiming at an imposing distribution of masses and large effects of light and shade, very monochrome.
In 1778 Cozens published Principles of Beauty relative to the Human Head.
link (video infinite jest).
William Hogarth 1753 analysis of beauty (I like the sequence middle bottom to right corner...). It is not a new quest. We will be looking into the business of looking and reporting back the findings.