Nimble Collective, a cloud-based collaborative production platform founded by Jason Schleifer and Rex Grignon, has opened up new opportunities for film-makers to create and prosper, without the overhead and equipment restrictions of traditional studio production. Nimble Collective leverages cloud technologies, social media community-building, distribution and monetization to help creators “be their own studio.”
The platform runs through a web browser, so there is no need to download special software or clients, and Nimble Collective is built to facilitate both 2D and 3D projects. In addition to bringing together teams to take care of the artistic and technical tasks of production, the platform will also provide budgeting and scheduling tools and revenue sharing infrastructure; all of which is optional.
Co-founder Jason Schleifer put together a sneak-peek video and production details to demonstrate how the platform can work, which you can check out here.
Shotgun Software announced the winners of the third annual Pipeline Awards at SIGGRAPH in Anaheim on Tuesday. The Pipeline Awards recognize tools and individuals exhibiting excellence in pipeline tool development and pushing the industry forward by making laborious processes better and faster for studios of all sizes.
Janice Collier, pipeline technical director at Mammal Studios, was honored with this year’s Hero Award for her outstanding contribution not only to Mammal — where she has helped create a pipeline for the 15-person company on par with international facilities 10 times their size — but also for her contribution to the ongoing development of Shotgun’s Toolkit by providing valuable feedback over the years.
Shotty Awards were also given to the top pipeline tools of the year, and were awarded to: Allan Johns for the development of Rez, an open source environment and package management solution; Blur Studio for Blur Dev Tools, open source software providing tools for pipeline development, including Python integration for Autodesk 3ds Max, which is used by studios around the world; Burrows Dropper Ganger Tool developed by Burrows CGI Studio which enables artists to drag assets from within Shotgun in the browser and open them within other applications including Autodesk Maya, 3ds Max and Rhino; and to Brown Bag Films for their Shotgun Task Triggering Workflow, which helps the studio track the steps required to move tasks along in their asset build pipeline, from artist to artist or project to project.
“We’re in year three of the Pipeline Awards and we continue to be blown away by the ingenuity of the pipeline community,” said Don Parker, co-founder of Shotgun and Autodesk senior director. “At events like SIGGRAPH, we often focus on the visual effects and animation seen on screen–so we love having the opportunity to shine a light on the technologists and tool builders behind the scenes, laying the foundation that allows creative teams to work collaboratively to make these incredible visuals.”
U.K.-based real-time inverse kinematics leader IKinema presented a technology demo at SIGGRAPH on Tuesday, showing virtual characters responding in real time to voice commands. The company is known in the film and games industries for high quality motion-capture solving tech and realistic procedural animation, and now sees mass-market potential for this new technology in VR and AR environments.
“Imagine a world where we can interact with virtual characters by talking to them – just like in the real world,” said chief executive Alexandre Pechev. “Real and virtual worlds are going to merge. Virtual characters will be part of everyday life. But to be credible, the virtual world needs to behave like the real world. At IKinema we are firm believers that animation needs to be procedurally generated in a very realistic way so that it is indistinguishable from the real world. Going 100% procedural is a difficult task, but a natural solution is to combine real motion with procedural adaptation, all driven by voice commands. This is project INTiMATE.”
In VR applications, INTiMATE allows the user to interact with a virtual character through vocal communication, which can be used for games or training, virtual production or storyboarding, or a VR entertainment experience. For AR, the technology can enhance interactions with virtual characters superimposed on the real world, allowing users to communicate with and demand actions from virtual pets, game heroes, personal trainers, virtual friends, etc.
Project INTiMATE’s concept was first shown a year ago, and has since been developed with backing by the U.K. government’s Innovate UK program. IKinema is seeking partners to apply the tech in a variety of sectors, and plans to make an SDK available to any animation package.
Organizers of the 12th Annual HollyShorts Film Festival, sponsored by BITPIX, have announced the official selections for the 2016 event. HollyShorts will present 400 films from around the world from August 11-20 at the TCL Chinese 6 Theatres and other locations around Hollywood.
On August 12, HollyShorts’ Adult Animation Program will present acclaimed animated films from celebrated international filmmakers, including 2016 Oscar winner Bear Story, Cannes official selections ManOMan, and Palm d’Or winner Waves 98. For the first time, this year’s films will be available for online viewing for a one-week window during the festival through official streaming partner BITPIX.
The HollyShorts animation lineup is:
Worm by Becky James, Needle Town by Kaspar Synnevag and Henrik Hylland Uhlving, Waves 98 by Ely Dagher, Bear Story by Gabriel Osorio, Toilets by Laura Luchetti, Battery Life by Justin Nixon, Where Have the Flowers Gone? by Sin-hong Chan, Islander’s Rest by Sunit Parekh, ManOMan by Simon Cartwright, Cage by Pengpeng Du, Little Shimajiro by Isamu Hirabayashi, The Peculiar Adventures of Willow B. Star by Mark Simon, The Wishgranter by Echo Wu, Kal Athannassov, and John McDonald; Claire & The Keys by John Ludwick, Pancakes by Ezra J. Stanley, James by Kyle McCauley, Napoleon: The Ticket by Matthew Berenty, and Knob by Hans Tsai.
Full program and ticketing information available at hollyshorts.com.
Walt Disney Animation Studios has revealed the characters who will be joining its newest feature film heroine Moana and her demigod companion Maui — and the voice cast members who will be bringing them to life. Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin) and starring Auli’i Cravalho and Dwayne Johnson, Moana sails into theaters on November 23.
“Our assembled voice cast for this film is beyond our wildest dreams,” said Musker.
“We are so fortunate to have this group of talented actors, many from Oceania, breathing life into their characters.” Added Clements, “We are so thankful to have found such extraordinary people who not only capture the voices of these characters, they elevate them in every way.”
Newly announce Moana cast members are:
Jemaine Clement (The BFG, Despicable Me, Rio, Rio 2, What We Do in the Shadows, Flight of the Conchords) as Tamatoa, a self-absorbed, 50-foot crab who lives in Lalotai, the realm of monsters. The conceited crustacean wants to be more than a “bottom feeder” and overcompensates for this perceived shortcoming by covering himself in all things shiny.
Rachel House (Whale Rider, Hunt for the Wilderpeople) as Gramma Tala, Moana’s confidante and best friend, who shares her granddaughter’s special connection to the ocean. Although her son Tui, the chief of Motunui, is a no-nonsense leader, Gramma Tala most definitely dances to the beat of her own drum.
Temuera Morrison (Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, Once Were Warriors, Six Days, Seven Nights) as Moana’s father, Chief Tui, the gregarious and well-respected leader of the people of Motunui Island. Chief Tui wants Moana to follow in his footsteps as leader of their people, but fears his daughter’s draw to the ocean and the world that lies beyond their reef.
Nicole Scherzinger (Grammy-nominated singer, West End’s “Cats”) as Moana’s mother, Sina, who always has her daughter’s back. Playful, sharp and strong-willed, Sina appreciates Moana’s longing to be on the water, but also wants to protect her daughter from the fabled dangers beyond the reef.
Alan Tudyk (Zootopia, Wreck-It Ralph, Big Hero 6), as Heihei, who is one dumb rooster—the village idiot, in fact. When the clueless chicken accidentally stows away on Moana’s canoe, he lands a front-row seat for her epic journey.
The roster of characters also includes the “Kakamora,” an intense team of crazy, coconut-armored pirates who will stop at nothing to get what they want, and Pua, Moana’s loyal pet pig with puppy energy and an innocent puppy brain.
Synopsis:
Three thousand years ago, the greatest sailors in the world voyaged across the vast Pacific, discovering the many islands of Oceania. But then, for a millennium, their voyages stopped – and no one knows why. Moana is a sweeping, CG-animated feature film about an adventurous teenager who sails out on a daring mission to save her people. During her journey, Moana (voice of Auliʻi Cravalho) meets the mighty demigod Maui (voice of Dwayne Johnson), who guides her in her quest to become a master wayfinder. Together, they sail across the open ocean on an action-packed voyage, encountering enormous monsters and impossible odds, and along the way, Moana fulfills the ancient quest of her ancestors and discovers the one thing she’s always sought: her own identity.
Autodesk is on hand at SIGGRAPH to present the latest design animation solutions for Maya 2017 and an update to 3ds Max. Maya 2017 features integrated rendering with Arnold, new motion graphics tools and numerous features and enhancements to help artists work faster and more easily than ever. Autodesk also announces that Solid Angle’s Arnold renderer will support 3ds Max with the new MAXtoA plugin.
Available now, Maya 2017 includes a full set of 3D tools for creating motion graphics. The MASH procedural toolset, first introduced in Maya 2016 extension 2, has been improved with new nodes and new capabilities that allow designers to quickly create unique animations and motion effects. Maya 2017 also features a more intuitive UI and improvements to 3D text tools that enable artists work faster as they create complex motion graphics, animations and effects.
The latest Maya also includes Arnold as its default renderer. This unique integration of Arnold into Maya 2017 builds on the popular MAXtoA Arnold plugin and brings advanced rendering capabilities within Maya. For Maya artists, Arnold brings efficiency, power and ease of use, enabling great looking results in a short time. You can check out the rest of Maya 2017’s fresh features at www.autodesk.com/maya.
Autodesk is also announcing a new MAXtoA plugin allowing 3ds Max users to take advantage of Arnold’s powerful, production proven rendering capabilities. The plugin will be available from Solid Angle’s website, where 3ds Max users can also find details on capabilities of the new plugin.
Autodesk can be found around SIGGRAPH at the Shotgun booth (#337) and a Vision Series (#207 D).
AMD introduced SIGGRAPH 2016 attendees to several new technologies at its “Capsaicin” press conference Monday night. The new Radeon Pro WX Series made its debut, and AMD formally launched ProRender — marking its move to GPUOpen — and showed how Radeon Solid State Graphics Technology is primed to transform workstation PC architecture.
The Radeon Pro WX Series of professional graphics cards are a powerful solution for modern content creation and engineering, harnessing the award-winning Polaris architecture and delivering exceptional capabilities for the immersive computing era. The cards take a fundamentally different approach for professionals, being optimized for open source software and designed for creative professionals and those pushing the boundaries of technology.
The WX Series cards are designed to address specific content creation demands: WX 7100 GPU can handle demanding engineering, media and entertainment workflows and is AMD’s most affordable workstation solution for professional VR creation. WX 5100 GPU is ideal for product development driven by game-engine visualization. And WX 4100 GPU provides great performance in a half-height design, offering mid-range application performance apt for CAD professionals to small form factor workstations.
AMD’s Radeon ProRender (formerly FireRender), a powerful physically-based rendering engine, is going open source through the company’s GPUOpen initiative, allowing creators to bring their ideas to life through high-performance applications and workflows enhanced by photorealistic rendering. Uniquely, ProRender can simultaneously use and balance multiple GPUs and CPUs on the same system for state-of-the-art GPU acceleration, producing rapid, accurate results.
Plugins are available now for Autodesk 3ds Max, SOLIDWORKS (Dassault Systemes/Rhino) and coming soon to Maya. ProRender works across Windows, OS X and Linux, and supports AMD GPUs, CPUs and APUs as well as those from other vendors.
Last but not least, AMD announced it is developing a new Radeon Pro solution for large dataset applications, which will launch initially as a developer kit. Starting a full terabyte of Radeon Solid State Graphics, the new tech will provide more than an order of magnitude greater memory capacity compared to existing GPU memory implementations. This means vastly higher performance, ideal for the increasing demands of use-case scenarios like real-time post-production in 8K, high-res rendering, VR content, and so much more. During the first-ever demo of Radeon Pro SSG, 8K raw video timeline scrubbing was accelerated from 17 frames per second to a whopping 90-plus fps.
Applications for dev kits are being accepted now, with full availability planned for 2017. Apply online through the Radeon website.
Tuesday at SIGGRAPH, Massive released its eponymous 3D crowd simulation solution for Autodesk’s 3ds Max. Max users can now utilize the Academy Award-winning software to create film-quality 3D scenes with thousands of characters, using simple, easy-to-learn controls. Massive for Max incorporates all the key features put to use in TV and film projects like Alice Through the Looking Glass, Game of Thrones season 6 and Spectre.
Key features in Massive for Max include: Seamless integration – direct access to Massive through the 3ds Max user interface. Massive Ready to Run Agents – automatically appear in preview renders as well as batch renders, alongside any other objects in the scene. And batch rendering – use with all supported renderers doesn’t require a license, so renders can easily be executed on render farms.
Massive is the only crowd sim software featuring AI-driven characters, which are able to react to changes in their environment, eliminating the limitations of movement found in particle motion-driven programs. And the Ready to Run Agents help artists populate common scenarios — stadiums, streets, battlefields, etc. — quickly, coming with skeletons, shaders, an action library and other time-saving elements locked in. The highly editable Agents can then be rendered with most major renderers, including 3-Delight, V-Ray and mental ray.
The Agents ship with a variety of geometry and texture maps to help customize their looks, as well as Massive’s industry-leading “fuzzy logic brain,” which grants Agents the ability to react naturally to their environment. Massive for Max subscribers will also receive an Ambient Ready to Run Agent as part of their subscription. Each of these Agents comes with hundreds of motion captured actions preloaded.
Check out video tutorials online to see more. Massive for Max is available now on all 3ds Max platforms through a subscription model, quarterly at $595 or annually for $1,995.
In celebration of one of the world’s most popular primates — who turns 75 this year — filmmaker Ema Ryan Yamazaki announces the first ever mixed-media documentary about Curious George. Monkey Business: The Curious Adventures of George’s Creators delves into the extraordinary lives of Hans and Margret Rey, the authors behind the beloved children’s books.
The Reys were of German-Jewish descent, and narrowly escaped the Nazis on makeshift bicycles they rode across Europe — carrying the yet-to-be-published Curious George manuscript with them. To tell their story, Yamazaki obtained exclusive rights from the Rey’s estate, curated by Margret’s longtime caregiver, Ley Lee Ong, getting access to 300 boxes of personal archives.
Monkey Business blends uniquely crafted animation inspired by the Reys’ style as well as archival photographs to tell the story of the couple’s lives, the birth of George and how the little monkey almost didn’t come to fruition. The documentary marks Yamazaki’s directorial debut, with Marc Levin onboard as executive producer.
To help fund post-production costs, Yamazaki is running a Kickstarter campaign; for Monkey Business, releasing original Curious George prints and digital archive downloads as rewards.
Monkey Business: The Curious Adventures of George’s Creators
The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) has announced the foundation members of ACMI X — the first co-workers to join Australia’s first collaborative working space for the creative industries established by a major cultural institution. The first round selectees is a range of cross-disciplinary professionals includes representatives from the animation, VR, digital arts and related businesses.
ACMI X Foundation Members are: Alan Dickson, Yukfoo Animation (yukfoo.net); Andre Lima, Inkubator (inkubator.com.au); Andrea Heffernan, The Funding Network (thefundingnetwork.com.au); Andrew Maccoli, LDB (www.ldb.agency); Aphids and Field Theory (aphids.net, fieldtheory.com.au); Ben Laden, Little Big Shots (littlebigshots.com.au); Cameron Macmillan, Freeform Creative (freeformcreative.com.au); Dan Koerner, Sandpit (wearesandpit.com.au); Duncan Imberger, Deeper Richer (deeperricher.com); Greg Turner, Interaction Consortium (interaction.net.au); Katy Morrison and Oscar Raby, VRTOV (vrtov.com); Piers Mussared, Jumpgate VR (jumpgatevr.com); Simon Burgin, Responsive (responsive.com); Valleyarm Digital (valleyarm.com).
Headquartered alongside ACMI’s operational teams in Melbourne at the National Film and Sound Archive, the 60-seat ACMI X co-working studio is a 200sqm state-of-the-art space, designed by award-winning architects Six Degrees and located in Melbourne’s vibrant Southbank arts district. The initiative was conceived by ACMI Director and CEO Katrina Sedgwick with the aim of fostering collaboration and experimentation, and providing professional development among co-workers and industry through its events program.
The 2016 KLIK! Amsterdam Animation Festival is set to run October 25-30 at the city’s EYE Filmmuseum, with six days of programming celebrating the full variety of animation, from the hilarious to the artistic, from the bizarre to the heartfelt.
The lineup for the 9th edition of KLIK!; is promised to include feature films, international shorts compilations, premieres, sneak previews, talks, installations, workshops, masterclasses, and most importantly: an electrifying closing party. There will also be an amateurs’ contest, and a day of children’s programming on Sunday.
Highlights of the festival announced so far include a special focus program themed “Landscape and Habitat,” which spotlights animation with a focus on landscapes and the way people relate to them — for good or ill. In addition to films and presentations, the three extends to a special exhibition of paintings, an interactive 3D landscape which visitors can make “evolve” — with the process recorded in a time-lapse video — and a special cycling tour will take visitors to three locations around town to watch films that match the surroundings.
KLIK! Will also host the world premiere of Sync, a new documentary by filmmakers Joop van den Beucken and Bob van der Houven that explores the world of Dutch animated film dubbing, in collaboration with the creators of the nostalgic online series Stemmen van Toen (“Voices from the Past”). The screening will be followed by a Q&A. Also on tap are new episodes of The Powerpuff Girls followed by Q&A, presented with Cartoon Network, and an exhibition of work created by 2016 Artist in Residence Dan Meth.
Steven Universe Made Me Gay
Louisa Smith delves into the conflicting emotions that a lack of diverse animated heroes can raise in young LGBTQ+ kids, and how shows like Rebecca Sugar’s hit musical comedy are changing things for them.
Bam! Pow! Native Artists to Hold First Indigenous Comic Con
Only five years old, the November event set for Albuquerque, New Mexico is nearly sold out as Native Americans and other communities of color seek to take charge of their own narratives in comic-books and beyond.
MIPCOM has announced the keynote speakers for its 2016 event, taking place October 17-20 in Cannes. The opening keynote speech will be delivered by Kazuo Hirai, President and CEO of Sony Corporation, which is this year celebrating its 70th anniversary. Japan is the MIPCOM 2016 Country of Honor, making Hirai’s speaking slot even more apt for the event.
Additional “Media Mastermind” keynote speakers announced late last week are: Ben Sherwood, Co-Chair of Disney Media Networks and President of Disney-ABC Television; David Line, CEO of Participant Media; and Sophie Watts, President of STX Entertainment.
DHX Media has licensed season one of its new animated comedy series Looped exclusively to Amazon for its Prime members in the U.S. to stream or download via the multi-platform Amazon Video app. The original kids’ series debuts today (July 25) on Prime Video in the U.S.
Additionally, DHX Media will add five seasons of kids’ classic The Busy World of Richard Scarry, the first season of the beloved Madeline series and feature-length special Madeline Sing Along with Her Friends to the U.S. Prime Video catalog.
Aimed at kids ages 6-11, Looped is a 2D animated comedy centered on buddies Luc and Theo, who are stuck in a time-loop where every day is the same Monday. But this access to a constant “reset” leads to hilarity as the boys use their knowledge of the future to win the day. Looped is created by award-winning animation veterans Todd Kauffman (co-creator Sidekick) and Mark Thornton of Neptoon Studios, who created and directed Grojband.
Looped is produced at DHX Studios and commissioned by TELETOON in Canada.
Monday at the SIGGRAPH 2016 conference in Anaheim, California, NVIDIA announces new Pascal enhancements for its Quadro platform, created with artists, designers and animators in mind. The company is launching the most powerful workstation GPU, and software capabilities that will provide artists and designers with unprecedented ability to work faster and more creatively.
New developments from NVIDIA at the show are:
+ The Quadro P6000, able to power the most advanced workstations ever built. With its 3,840 cores and an amazing 12 TFlops of compute power, designers will be able to manipulate complex designs up to twice as fast as before.
+ VRWorks’ 360 Video SDK, to let VR developers create applications to ingest, stitch and stream 4K video feeds from multi-camera rigs, enabling 360o real-time surround video experiences.
+ NVIDIA Optix 4, the latest version of our GPU ray tracing engine, on our NVIDIA DGX-1 supercomputer, which now allows artists to achieve the fastest interactive rendering possible for film-size scenes up to 64GB.
“Often our artists are working with 50GB or higher datasets,” said Pixar CTO Steve May. “The ability to visualize scenes of this size interactively gives our artists the ability to make creative decisions more quickly. We’re looking forward to testing the limits of Pascal and expect the benefits to our workflows to be huge.”
Also of benefit to content creators are new Iray VR capabilities. Iray uses light field technology to bring the accuracy of physically-based rendering to interactive VR, delivering photoreal VR experiences and allowing designers to interact with their creations from different perspectives.
Visit NVIDIA at SIGGRAPH booth #509 to see these technologies. At the booth you can also demo the world’s first real-time 3D oil painting simulator from Adobe Research, take in a live demo of 4K videos being stitched in real-time, see Pixar content running on the DGX-1 — ray-traced with OptiX at interactive speeds– and see a demo of the new GPU-accelerated mental ray and the latest Iray plugins.
VIZ Media made two breaking announcements following its participation at San Diego Comic-Con this weekend. The leading manga and anime distributor in North America has inked a deal with free streaming platform Tubi TV for some of its most popular titles, and the VIZ also announces it is the newest corporate member of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, kicking off the fellowship by releasing the Manga Book Club Handbook.
VIZ’s partnership with Tubi TV will bring popular VIZ anime titles to audiences across North America, including legions of viewers in Canada. All this content will be presented in the original Japanese with English subtitles, and includes Death Note (37 episodes), the full original Naruto series (220 episodes) — available now in the U.S. and Canada — plus the entire classic Sailor Moon series (20 episodes) and seasons 1 and 2 of Sailor Moon Crystal (26 episodes) in Canada. New series and episodes will be added regularly.
Based in San Francisco, Tubi TV is the largest North American ad-supported provider of free streamed movies and TV shows. Viewers can access it through tubitv.com and the app, available on Apple TV, Xbox One & 360, Amazon Fire TV, Roku and Samsung TVs, plus iOS and Android mobile devices.
VIZ has become the newest corporate member of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting readers, creators, librarians, retailers, publishers and educators from threats of censorship. VIZ has already taken its first step toward helping the cause by co-releasing this week the Manga Book Club Handbook, a resource for libraries and retailers on how to unite their communities over manga. A digital version is available online.
CBLDF is a partner in Banned Books Week, the Kids’ Right to Read Project, Free Comic Book Day and other national institutions supporting intellectual freedom and literacy.
This year marks the golden anniversary of beloved Peanuts television special Charlie Brown’s All Stars, which was nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards after it premiered on CBS in 1966. To mark the occasion, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment will release a newly remastered, high definition Charlie Brown’s All Stars 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition DVD on October 4 (SRP $19.98).
The heartwarming animated special — directed by Bill Melendez and written by Charles Schulz himself — sees Charlie Brown once again tasked with managing the local baseball team, which has always suffered crushing defeat at every game, and the players blame Charlie Brown for their rotten record. When a sponsor offers real uniforms and the chance to join an actual league, Charlie Brown believes his team’s motivation problems can be fixed. But when he finds out that accepting the offer means obeying the league’s rules banning girls (and dogs), Charlie Brown faces a difficult moral dilemma.
Charlie Brown’s All Stars 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
Mysterious wig-wearing music star Sia has signed on to the voice case of Hasbro and Lionsgate’s My Little Pony: The Movie, playing a pony pop star named Songbird Serenade in the animated feature. The announcement was made during the official My Little Pony panel at San Diego Comic-Con.
Previously announced voice cast members include Uzo Aduba, Emily Blunt, Kristin Chenoweth, Taye Diggs, Michael Pena and Liev Schreiber. Set for release on October 6, 2017, My Little Pony: The Movie is being directed by go-to pony pic helmer Jayson Thiessen from a screenplay by Friendship Is Magic writer and producer Meghan McCarthy.
Stephen Davis and Brian Goldner are producing for Hasbro’s Allspark Pictures. Lionsgate is handling distribution in all territories excluding China.
Synopsis:
When a dark force threatens Ponyville, the Mane 6 — Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and Rarity — embark on an unforgettable journey beyond Equestria where they meet new friends and exciting challenges on a quest to use the magic of friendship and save their home.
The 2016 Fredrisktad Animation Festival, taking place November 10-13 outside of Oslo, has announced this year’s guest of honor to be multiple-discipline artist, author and animation instructor Gunnar Wille for his lifelong career and artistic contributions to Nordic-Baltic animation.
Hailing from Denmark, Wille is best known as the creator of the children’s book series Magical Mads and Skrumpen — the latter inspiring the 1980s Danish animated series Skrumpen from Outer Space — as well as his ongoing service as head of the animation program at the National Film School of Denmark in Copenhagen.
At the festival, Wille will give a retrospective lecture on his career, screen selected short films and present an exhibition of selected works at Litteraturhuset literary culture center in Fredrikstad. The guest of honor was selected by the Festival Board.
“Gunnar Wille stands out among the Nordic animators as both creator of animation films and series, not to forget as the head of the animation program at the National Film School of Denmark. An educational institution which has contributed with many films and directors throughout the years, and is one of the most important educations within animation in our part of the world,” says Chairwoman of the Board Trine Vallevik Håbjørg.
The Fredrikstad Animation Festival is the oldest and largest event of its kind in the Nordic region, originating in 1994 as the Animerte Dager festival in Oslo. The festival includes a Nordic-Baltic animated short film competition, awarding the “Golden Gunnar” prize, and is one of the nine animated film festivals that nominate films for the pan-European Cartoon d’Or award presented each year at Cartoon Forum.
Submissions for animated films by directors of Nordic or Baltic origin are open now through September 1.
WB Plans Suicide Squad VR Experiences
Warner Bros. and Samsung partner to create exclusive virtual reality content and activations through to the film’s August 5 release.
