Don’t Let Us Down, ’22!
We always want to be open to countless possibilities at the beginning of a new year. We all look at the list of 2022’s movies and TV projects and hope that they all live up to or exceed our expectations. As a friend once pointed out, you only hope for a turkey on Thanksgiving and that’s if you’re not vegan. That’s why we start the year with this same spirit of optimism, hoping that all our animation expectations will be met and surpassed!
We are very pleased to kick off the new year with a beautiful cover story: The new Nexus/Netflix anthology The House is a rare arthouse-type stop-motion project that has major distribution at homes all around the world. So everyone can enjoy the eccentric, moody storylines and the exquisitely crafted animation, courtesy of its four festival circuit darling directors Emma De Swaef, Marc James Roels, Paloma Baeza and Niki Lindroth von Bahr. Our longtime contributor Ellen Wolff has done an excellent job of interviewing the anthology’s creative artists and offering a great behind-the-scenes look at this fascinating work.
January also brings the premiere of Cartoon Network’s new spinoff show, the charming We Baby Bears. Exec produced by Daniel Chong and Manny Hernandez, this welcome addition to the CN lineup has the makings of another pleasant, crowd-pleasing hit. We were fortunate enough to chat with the show’s artistic director Christina Chang and writer Mikey Heller, who gave us the inside scoop on the cub trio and their worldwide adventures.
Another eagerly anticipated show making its premiere this month is Prime Video’s The Legend of Vox Machina. Our frequent correspondent Tom McLean had the chance to interview some of the talented creatives behind the fantasy show. The result is a wonderful snapshot of how Sam Riegel, Travis Willingham and the rest of the team at Critical Role and Titmouse turned a popular fantasy game into a beautifully mounted 2D-animated series. We can’t wait for die-hard genre fans to discover this early 2022 gem.
As we were closing the issue, we got word of the Annie Award nominees and the Oscar Shortlist selections in the animated shorts, VFX and music categories. We’ll be keeping a close eye on the awards race on our daily website, so make sure you get our e-newsletter to keep up with the wild twists and turns of the kudos season. No matter who ends up with the golden statuettes on the big night, we consider everyone a winner. Right? It has been a fantastic year in terms of high-quality animated projects all over the world. We’re just lucky to live at a time when the industry is thriving and everyone is doing so much good work. Now, if we could only do something about those darn COVID variants…!