My Animateducated tour of the UK

It has only been two weeks since we landed in Dublin, Ireland to begin our trip to the UK. I dragged my laptop and small video/still camera and a lot of cords, plugs and a hand held mini tripod to see if I could make this a working vacation.

I had contacted 3 people throughout our visit, starting with Cartoon Saloon in Kilkenny. I was planning to meet Tomm Moore, however as the trip drew near, he had to cancel the meeting, but I could talk to Fabian Erlinghauser, a director who created "Dorg Van Dango" for Nickelodeon.

After Ireland, we would fly up to Edinbough, Scotland to experience the Fringe as well as meet with Iain Gardner, the creator of a new 2d film called," A Bear named Wojtek. To my surprise, I was able to make two more future episodes featuring some Fringe work which I will share later.

Then we would fly to London to meet Comic book artist Alison Sampson, who has some of her work at the Heroes exhibit at the Cartoon Museum in London. I was hopping to be able to interview her in person and see the museum's archives. It turned out, I was shown a small storage room full of boxes, but they didn't show me what was inside them.

While in London, I found a few more things to make future Animateducated episodes, including this one featuring the BFI's Stop Motion series. A month long celebration on Stop Motion films and filmmakers. I have just finished this posting of a Q&A of the directors of ParaNorman, Chris Butler and Sam Fell. Enjoy...

If you enjoyed this blog and the above episode, please share it with a friend or leave a comment or like on the Animateducated YouTube channel. As I said, I have one more week of traveling England to see if I can find some more interesting people or places to share with you.

Dino versus Leuk

A good friend of mine was diagnosed with Leukemia last year and had to stay in the hospital for treatment. Dino Crisanti teaches Stop Motion at Columbia College in Chicago and was teaching 3 animation classes during the beginning of his treatment. He had two students who helped the on campus students in class while Dino was in the hospital.

During his first treatment, Dino knew he would not be a very good patient unless he was making something. And so, he came up with a short stop motion idea to keep him busy called "Me versus Leuk. Here's an episode which I hope you will enjoy called "Dino versus Leuk".

If you would like to see more of Dino's work, visit his YouTube channel. Here are links to "Me versus Leuk" and Dino's Go Fund me page.

If you liked this post or the interview, please leave a comment below.

Happy Holidays and Thanks for Watching!

 

The Inventor is here

How hard is it to make an animated feature film? A short film about Leonardo DaVinci that you have expanded into a feature. You have a successful Kickstarter campaign and a cast of well known actors, Stephen Fry, Daisy Ridley, Marion Cotillard, Gauthlier Barttoue and Matt Berry to do the voices.

Now add making an animated feature film during Covid, outside the US and when you finish the film, your voice actors can't promote it due to the current Actor/Writer strike that is going on.

Below is an interview with Jim Capobianco just before the Kickstarter campaign began.

A trailer came out in August promoting the release date as August 23, which was actually pushed back to September 15th. Unfortunately, new release date trailers were not available to send out to movie theatres nationwide.

Here's a trailer which was created to show investors what the animation would look like.

Een Man from Aerial Contrivance Workshop on Vimeo.

I recently contacted Capobianco to find out what happened during the making of the film and where we can see the film and when. BTW Bluefox Entertainment has this link to let you know where the film is playing near you. https://www.bluefoxentertainment.com/films/the-inventor

Here is the latest interview with Jim Capocianco promoting "The Inventor" and hoping audience support this independent animated feature film...which premieres Friday, September 15th!

SOCIAL MEDIA PAGES:

Website: https://www.TheInventorFilm.com 

Twitter: @TheInventorfilm @BlueFox_Ent 
Facebook: @TheInventorFilm @BlueFoxEnt
Instagram: @theinventorfilm @blue_fox_entertainment
YouTube: Blue Fox Entertainment

Well here's another fine interview I hope you enjoyed and get to see the actual film on the big screen! if you enjoyed this in any way, please show your support by subscribing to the Animateducated YouTube. 

Hasani Walker: Stop Motion Artist

 Here is an interview with Hasani Walker, a very talented artist, designer, stop motion artist who's work can be seen in the upcoming Guillermo Del Toro's "Pinocchio" on Netflix. 

Orginally from Phoenix, Arizona, Hasani moved to Portland to work at Liaka on "Missing Link" where he made contacts and was eventually hired onto "Pinocchio". 

Please enjoy his Animateducated interview below and subscribe if you like what you see.

Thanks for watching!!!

Bob Gardiner 20 Nights in Clay

Bob Gardiner and Will Vinton won their first Oscar for "Closed Mondays" in 1974 and worked on a few more projects before going their separate ways. I found these two rare interviews from an April 1978 issue of American Cinematographer about clay artist and animator Bob Gardiner. 

20 Nights in Clay is an article about Gardiner producing a clay animated intro to the 10th anniversary of Rolling Stone Magazine TV special back in 1977. 

This second article from the same magazine is more of an interview with Bob Gardiner about his work in plasticine and creative process. Its a pretty interesting look into his process of animating and creating characters in clay.

If you are interested in more about Claymation or Will Vinton, check out this blog post; Marq Evans ClayDream.

Marq Evans ClayDream

Will Vinton coined the name Claymation and was a pioneer in combining clay animated characters with stop motion.

CLAYDREAM is a new documentary about Will Vinton and his studio who produced such classics as the California Raisins, several feature films and TV shows, reinventing the M&Ms characters and The Noid, which is returning to the advertising world.

Below is my Animateducated interview with Marq Evans and his new documentary about Will Vinton. The film premieres online Sunday, June 13th @ 4pm pst.

Here is the link for the Tribeca premiere screening: https://tribecafilm.com/films/claydream-2021

If you enjoyed this or any other blog posts, please click on the ads and give us a little tip in the Blog's digital tip jar! Thanks!

Check out this post about Daniel Lopez Munoz

Meet Dino Crisanti, Toy designer!

I first met Dino Crisanti when I was a freshmen at Columbia College Chicago and couldn't get into any film production classes which were all filled up. Instead, I took a drawing for animation class with Gordon Sheehan, who used to work at the Max Fleischer studio in New York and later Miami.

Dino and I eventually became TAs in the animation department and during my final year at Columbia, I made an animated film called "Cat & Rat". 

The animated characters began as pencil drawings that become inked outlines which are then painted in color and eventually leap out of the 2d world into 3d world as stop motion characters who meet a very surprised animator/maker.

Here's a link to the film to see what it looks like in action. It won several awards back in the day including First place in animation in the Student Film awards as well as the Nissan FOCUS awards, where I won a brand new Nissan Sentra at a time in life when I really didn't need a car.  Luckily Dino did and he eventually became the owner of a brand new car. Problem solved!

Dino helped build the stop motion puppets and animated the characters when I was in the same scene with them. 

This was the early Jurassic Animation period where any colorful animated characters had to be painted with cel paint on clear acetate sheets called "cels" and shot on a large iron camera and stand called an Oxberry under very hot movie lights on 16mm film frame by frame.

A chase through color.

Dino fueling the Oxberry.

Jim rigging the Cat puppet.

Dino has gone on to become a toy designer for Big Monster toys in Chicago and is busy animating, teaching stop motion and sculpting too. I'm proud to present this Animateducated interview with stop motion animator, toy designer, educator, sculptor and my friend, Dino Crisanti

Learn more about Big Monster Toys.

You liked the interview? Subscribe to the YouTube channel to see future stuff!

Check out this interview,

Animateducated final interview for 2020!

I began this YouTube channel called Animateduated, (pronounced animated educated) a few years ago with the idea of interviewing Animators, Directors, Artists, Authors and other creative folks. Recently it hit 400 subscribers and is gaining more. Here is a promo explaining what interviews I did in 2020... 

To gain any actual income from a YouTube channel, you must obtain over 4000 public watched hours and have over 1,000 subscribers before you can have ads placed on your channel. At this posting, we are up to 527 and have 417 subscribers. 

At this current rate, we should reach our goal in about 9 years, unless I can post a video of my cats doing something really hilarious, which could go viral and that goal could be reached in a week or so. I've discussed this idea with our cats, but unfortunately, they have decided to cease being cute or silly whenever I try to record them.

Below is the final interview for 2020, featuring Stop Motion Animator, Teresa Drilling. Teresa animated Leon the Snowman in "Elf" and is featured in a Netflix documentary called "The Holiday Movies that Made Us". 

If you enjoy these interviews, please let a comment below or subscribe to the YouTube channel to show your support. 

Happy Holidays from Animateducated!

Kat Alioshin, Stop Motion Producer

 

Kat Alioshin likes playing with dolls, very expensive dolls. The ones that can come to life and perform in films like Nightmare before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, Corpse Bride and Monkeybone; just to name a few.

But before she was a stop motion producer, she helped two interesting guys named Spike and Mike run their Festival of Animation screenings. She often sold tickets to the shows and then would watch the films that were being shown and also met a lot of beginning animators like, Wallace and Gromit creator, Nick Park!

She has recently created a new documentary about Spike and Mike's adventures called "Animation Outlaws". Full of clips for many of today's Animators and Directors who got their student films into the festival and started their careers in animation.

A lot of students of animation back in the late 80's got to see other animation films from all over the world whenever Spike and Mike's show would come to their towns. Many times, featured Animators were introduced to the audience and suddenly were treated like Rockstars after the audiences had enjoyed their work shown on a big theatre movie screen. Some even got to sign their printed flyers or T-shirts featuring a character from their latest animation film.

I got to meet Marv "Bambi meets Godzilla" Newland, got him to sign one of his T-Shirts which I still have, but cannot fit into. I also supported the Festival by purchasing their official Festival of Animation shirt when I visited LA one year.

This was before YouTube, back when it was a real event to see a variety of independent animated films on the big screen at your local independent movie theater or college campus.

So please enjoy the interview below about Kat Alioshin's film "Animated Outlaws" as well as learning more about her involvement with The We Know Jack podcast. A podcast filled with stories and interviews with the artists who worked on the Nightmare before Christmas.

If you enjoyed this interview, please let me know and show your support by clicking on the blog ads, leaving a comment below, share it with an animated friend, subscribe to Animateducated YouTube channel or follow this blog. Ok now, click on it and enjoy. Thanks, Jim...

The Inventor begins

Creating a film is no easy task and Jim Capobianco should know this after working on his first 2d animation short, Leonardo. The film follows a cartoon version of Leonard Da Vinci and uses music from the era which Da Vinci may have heard during his life.

A Kickstarter campaign has begun to help fund a new feature film called "The Inventor" about Leonardo traveling to and living out the rest of his life in France. If you are interested about learning more about this project, please watch this recent interview which Jim Capobianco.

If you enjoyed this and would like to help fund "The Inventor", please visited this link to the Kickstarter Campaign; https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/77077682/the-inventor 

And if this post was of interest, please show your support and subscribe to the Animateducated YouTube channel!

Nightmare Before Christmas

Here's a great article about The Nightmare Before Christmas from Cinefantastique, Dec 1993. Enjoy...

If you want to learn even more about the making of this classic Stop Motion film, check out the podcast called "The We Know Jack Show". Here's a link to it!

Thank You!

Lou Bunin, Puppet Master

Before the internet was around, I started collecting articles about animation and animators, everything I could learn more about the art form. Recently I am going through the many boxes I have packed over the years and converting them to digital files and chucking the originals. 

Here's a very interesting article by John Canemaker about stop motion pioneer, puppeteer and artist, Lou Bunin.

Enjoy!

 

Hope that was worth saving all these years for you to discover. If it was, leave a comment below to let me know if I should post more rare findings like this one.

Here's another thing I found in that same box you might enjoy.

Thanks,

Jim

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