FEATURES Plympton’s Toon School Reopens in January
Multiple award-winning and two-time Oscar nominated animator Bill Plympton will reopen the Plympton School of Animation for a twomonth intensive course both on site at the Plymptoons studio in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood, and online.
Starting Jan. 9, the hand-drawn animation maestro behind Cheatin’ and Guard Dog (among many others) will give Monday night lectures in his studio covering every phase of making an animated short. The last session will feature a screening of all the resulting animation from the course, with the goal of creating festival-worthy films.
Each graduating student will receive a formal degree from Bill Plympton’s Animation University. Tuition is $2,000. Plympton will also offer the lectures as a weekly, private online course for a $1,000 fee, which includes two private review sessions via Skype. Email inquiries to studio@plymptoons.com.
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4Toast 2016’s animated achievements with the 44th Annie Awards! [annieawards.org]
wanted us to look for the human inside each character,” writes Guillion through a translator in an email to Animation Magazine. “To tell you the truth, this is not an animal movie. It is, first of all, a human adventure. That explains why there is a certain stylization of the characters, in order to keep it essential, to prevent the eye from stopping on a too-complicated detail. We wanted the expression, the acting, to prevail.”
Guillon, who helped Jennings bring a huge ensemble cast into the movie, had to work on an array of animals and find a way to make each one relatable and sympathetic.
“There is no character that is easy to approach; some are even more difficult than others,” writes
Makoto Shinkai’s global breakout anime feature Your Name. wins hearts honestly via body swapping, natural disasters and dreams that transcend time, and vies for awards gold. By Tom McLean.
ment of time during the day where you could sort of transcend different lives and dimensions, if you will.”
A Stellar Shakeup The earthquake and tsunami that ravaged Japan in 2011 was said to be an event that occurred every thousand years, Shinkai says, prompting him to think about a recurring natural disaster as a plot device, leading directly to him using the comet crash as the flashpoint for the story’s events.
Developing these ideas into a screenplay
know, everyone says it’s for kids and I’ve always sort of battled that a little bit.”
After funding on another project fell through, Mort returned to do “one more Chuck Steel film in my basement on my own” and sent a 30-second teaser to friend and producer Joseph D’Morais. D’Morais managed to raise funding for a 15-minute short called Chuck Steel: Raging Balls of Steel Justice, which premiered at the U.K. film festival FrightFest in 2013, where, he recalls, it “went down a storm” and got the duo the green light to develop a full-length, R-rated feature. Dirty Work Trampires now has around 20 animators working across 25 sets and producing roughly a minute’s worth of footage a week. For