Oscar for Best Animated Feature 2011

[estefan]

Family Guy and its creators at FOX animation form a big team of animators and potential voters for him.

I doubt most of the Family Guy team is in the Academy, seeing as you have to work on features to get in. Most of the people who work on Family Guy work exclusively on television, including Seth McFarlane.

He slaps 'producer' on so many projects it's easy to single out the ones that are great like The Animaniacs and take credit for it, ignoring the mountains of crap.

Personally, if I was a movie/television producer, I would also single out the good projects. Plus, he saying he's producing it, which is accurate. He's not taking credit away from the incredible writers and directors who worked on the shows.

Has he produced some less-than-satisfying animated projects? Yes, but I choose to remember the good ones.

At first the Academy accepted mo-cap films as animated; then they formed new additional rules to clarify mo-cap as distinct from animation to satisfy James Cameron who pushed for this. Now that another big Hollywood honcho like Spielberg tells them it's animation they're going along with it again.

What's particularly crazy is that the Avatar team worked on Tintin as well. So, on Avatar, it wasn't animation, but on Tintin, it is? Pretty sure they used the exact same technique. And I side with Cameron on this subject.

[Sotiris]

Motion Capture, Rotoscope, and the Oscars
http://animationguildblog.blogspot.com/ ... ation.html

[ajmrowland]

i think goldberg's is the most sensible statement.

[Sotiris]

Spanish Animation Goes After the Oscars
http://www.awn.com/news/awards/spanish- ... page/1%2C1

[disneyboy20022]

i think goldberg's is the most sensible statement.

This Goldberg




or this one



Although I bet you meant Spielberg and not goldberg....I just figured I'd never have the opportunity to post 2 Goldbergs online before in one post


I liked We're Back....although hearing it bombed at the box office makes since to me now, I remember seeing it with my dad, and me and him were the only people in the showing of it.....I still Liked it. They also made a Sega Genesis game of it and Merchandise....I still have one of Woog (the blue triceratops) and also a stuffed animal of Rex (voiced by John Goodman)

Although he probably should have mentioned instead of Balto, reference Land Before Time, though I think the 12 sequels have almost tarnished that image that it had in some people's mind. Although I did enjoy Balto, and I have it and its two sequels on DVD (I'm a completest). I want the 2 sequels involving Chompers, and the 3rd one and the 4th one....

[Sotiris]

Although I bet you meant Spielberg and not Goldberg.

No, he really did mean Goldberg; Eric Goldberg. He was commenting on an article I had posted on the previous page:

[...]As Disney's hand-drawn vet Eric Goldberg ("Winnie the Pooh") observes, "MoCap is a tool in the same way that rotoscope was a tool. It's how you use it. It's as little or as much as the filmmakers want. Hell, the Fleischers invented rotoscope, and you can't tell me that Koco the Clown or the dance in Snow White isn't animation. Of course it's animation!"

Source: http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononho ... -for-oscar

[disneyboy20022]

Although I bet you meant Spielberg and not Goldberg.

No, he really did mean Goldberg; Eric Goldberg. He was commenting on an article I had posted on the previous page:

[...]As Disney's hand-drawn vet Eric Goldberg ("Winnie the Pooh") observes, "MoCap is a tool in the same way that rotoscope was a tool. It's how you use it. It's as little or as much as the filmmakers want. Hell, the Fleischers invented rotoscope, and you can't tell me that Koco the Clown or the dance in Snow White isn't animation. Of course it's animation!"

Source: http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononho ... -for-oscar

That's what I get for rushing a post....I got my Bergs confused.

[Sotiris]

Robert Lopez & Kristen Anderson-Lopez Talk Tunes for 'Winnie the Pooh'
http://www.goldderby.com/films/news/216 ... ideo]#html


<iframe src="http://blip.tv/play/AYLghWkC.html" width="480" height="300" frameborder="0"></iframe>

[Sotiris]

'A Cat In Paris' Prowls in Los Angeles
http://www.animationmagazine.net/featur ... s-angeles/

This weekend, filmgoers in Los Angeles will be able to catch the French animated movie A Cat in Paris during its Oscar-qualifying run (Dec 2-7) at the AMC Burbank Town Center 8.

The film made its international premiere at the 2011 Berlinale and has been nominated for a European Film Award in the Best Animated Feature category. It has garnered raves on the US and international festival circuit including appearances at San Francisco Int’l Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival, London International Film Festival, and Annecy International Animated Film Festival.

Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli’s A Cat in Paris follows the adventures of Dino, a cat who leads a double life as a thief. Produced by French studio Milliamges and distributed in the U.S. by GKids, this traditionally animated movie is a humorous love letter to classic noir films and the stylized wit of the Pink Panther cartoons, with jazz soundtrack featuring Billie Holiday. More info at www.gkids.tv/cat

Opening Sequene (with English subtitles)

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/oehlllOyNr4" frameborder="0"></iframe>

Clip (with English subtitles)

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/mtGrUU3k8Ss" frameborder="0"></iframe>

Interview with the Directors

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/JfjbnkOzjcw" frameborder="0"></iframe>

[Sotiris]

European Film Awards

Best Animated Feature Film

Chico & Rita (winner)

A Cat in Paris

The Rabbi's Cat

Source: http://europeanfilmawards.eu/en_EN/nominations/films

[Sotiris]

Andy Serkis Says 'Tintin' Should Be Considered Live-Action
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/20 ... -apes.html

THR: In 2011, you have two motion-capture roles -- as the hero's hard-drinking buddy Captain Haddock in The Adventures of Tintin and as the ape Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (and you played Santa's lead elf in the CG-animated Arthur Christmas). Tintin seems a likely animation contender. Should it be in the animation category?

Andy Serkis: The category of animation should be under review because Tintin is entirely derived from actors' performances created in a conventional live-action way and manifested onscreen in a painterly, animated fashion. There has to be a review of all these storytelling methods. It's not necessary to exclude one from a category. A lot of people are being quite defensive about it. I think people should not be so Luddite. Don't say, "No, traditional animation is this." They've got to think out of the box and start to embrace all these different methods and mediums. This year will be a very interesting watershed point in our understanding.

THR: What's the difference between your work in Apes and Tintin?

Serkis: There is no difference. Acting is acting. Performance capture is a technology, not a genre; it's just another way of recording an actor's performance. It's very interesting being in two movies this year that are manifested completely differently but use the same process. The same visual effects company, Weta Digital, produced apes that look entirely real and a palette and a style that honors the source material of Tintin. What Steven was trying to do was to have the best of both worlds, where you can create the look and the feel and the sensibility of Herge [Tintin's cartoonist creator] but have emotionally truthful performances. The technology allows the actors to enter into those worlds.

THR: Could you shape your Tintin performance as much as your ape performance?

Serkis: Yeah. The way Captain Haddock moves, his facial expressions, his temperament, all the things that go into making that character -- when I see that up onscreen, I see my acting choices. The slight difference with Tintin is that Steven wants to blend the Herge world with the live performances he got on the day. Steven might want to try to dial up something in the core performance, like dial the lips to curl around a little bit more. He had the facility to broaden without bending the performance out of shape. The danger is, you lose the intensity and reality and the initial instinct of the core performance.

THR: Should there be an Oscar category for motion-capture acting?

Serkis: It should be in the [regular] acting category because the acting part of the process is entirely the same. I've been bombarded by hate mail from animators saying, "How dare you talk about 'your' character when all these people work on it after the fact? We're actors as well." They are actors in the sense that they create key frames and the computer will join up the dots, carefully choreograph a moment or an expression and accent it with an emotion. But that's not what an actor does. An actor finds things in the moment with a director and other actors that you don't have time to hand-draw or animate with a computer.

THR: Can you compare Tintin and Arthur Christmas?

Serkis: They're entirely different. [Arthur Christmas] is a purely animated movie where you're standing in a booth maybe a couple of hours, delivering the lines. In Tintin, it's like a live-action role. You're living and breathing and making decisions for that character from page 1 to page 120, the whole emotional arc. In an animated movie, it's a committee decision. There are 50 people creating that character. You're responsible for a small part.

THR: Tintin's motion capture gives actors more room to move, literally.

Serkis: People say, "You provided the movements, the emotional background for the role." No! I played the role. If you give a bad performance, you can never make it great, no matter how much you layer and texture it after the fact. It will never be anything more than the original performance.

[Sotiris]

Why 'Tintin' and 'Rango' Stand Out Among This Year's Animated Awards Contenders
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/o ... um=twitter

Animated Films May Emerge as Visual Effects Oscar Contenders
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/a ... ars-269176

'Winnie the Pooh': How the Disney Classic Became New Again
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/w ... all-269357

Open Field: The 2011 Animated Oscar Race
http://www.awn.com/articles/open-field- ... page/1%2C1

[Sotiris]

WAFCA Awards

Best Animated Feature

Rango (winner)

The Adventures of Tintin

Arthur Christmas

Puss in Boots

Winnie the Pooh

Source: http://www.wafca.com/awards/


Annie Awards

Best Animated Feature

Rango (winner)

A Cat in Paris

Wrinkles

Arthur Christmas

Cars 2

Chico & Rita

Kung Fu Panda 2

Puss in Boots

Rio

The Adventures of Tintin

Source: http://annieawards.org/consideration.html

[Sotiris]

'Wrinkles' Gets Los Angeles Screening
http://www.animationmagazine.net/featur ... screening/

Interview with the Director of 'Wrinkles'
http://www.animationmagazine.net/featur ... anish-gem/


Clip (with English subtitles)

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Pk_5FoYmSXQ" frameborder="0"></iframe>

Behind-the-Scenes

<iframe frameborder="0" width="480" height="270" src="http://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/ ... ame><br><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xmgp0z ... shortfilms" target="_blank">

[Sotiris]

Animation Techniques Create Oscar Quandry
http://theenvelope.latimes.com/awards/o ... 8892.story

The tools Spielberg used to make Tintin are in many cases identical to ones James Cameron relied on for "Avatar," a movie treated by critics and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as live-action. "We used the same technology for both. The difference is the director's intention," said Jamie Beard, animation supervisor at Weta Digital, Jackson's visual effects house, which worked on "Tintin" and "Avatar." "Jim [Cameron] wanted a real world for Pandora. He wanted it to feel real. With 'Tintin,' we wanted to bring the world of Hergé, we wanted it to be unto itself. You wouldn't walk into Hergé's world. It was a mind shift."

In both cases, animators and visual effects artists did pivotal work placing those human performances in fantastical worlds, a factor crucial for the academy to consider a film animated. Academy rules added in 2010 stipulate that "motion capture by itself is not an animation technique. In addition, a significant number of the major characters must be animated, and animation must figure in no less than 75% of the picture's running time."

In many ways, motion capture is the latest iteration of the constantly evolving art form of animation, according to "Happy Feet Two" director Miller. "Happy Feet," which Miller also directed, used motion-capture footage of dancers, such as Savion Glover, to help create the film's key effect: its dancing penguins. That film won the animated feature Oscar for 2006. "In the old days, every raindrop was animated in 'Bambi,' every bit of water that ripples across a pool was animated," Miller said. "But now that's done as a simulation based on some algorithm. Motion capture … is yet another tool. As the filmmaking advances, the tools are used in better and better ways." In motion capture, once an actor's movement is recorded, animators and visual effects artists begin their digital artistry on the image — turning a human dancer into a penguin, or an actor like Bell into a stylized character like Tintin. "Happy Feet Two" is 94% animated, Miller said, with the rest of the film relying on motion capture and live-action filmmaking.

As with the first film, the motion capture was used selectively, just for the scenes of penguins dancing. "To be a great dancer, to be a Savion Glover, you're born with an innate gift, and you're dancing from the moment you're on your feet," Miller said, explaining why he used the technique. "An animator sitting at a desk drawing is a lifetime skill as well. To have those two skills combined [in one person] is unlikely. And to have that in many people — which you need for scenes with lots of characters — is even more unlikely."

The rapidly changing technology creates a dilemma come award season, however. Is that kind of on-screen magic the work of an actor or an animator? Is it a visual effect, which should be honored by the visual effects branch? What about the sweeping cinematography in this year's animated films — should it be considered by the cinematographer's branch? Consider the opening sequence in "Cars 2," a James Bond-esque action sequence that takes place on the open sea. The technique used to create the digital waves helped earn a visual effects nomination for the 2000 live-action film "The Perfect Storm."

"Because of motion capture and CG animation, there's a whole lot of new stuff in terms of how we make these films," said Jim Morris, general manager and executive vice president of production at Pixar. "Some of it gets down to how you want to define it and how you want to recognize it. But it brings up a lot of questions. The beautiful camera work that Steven Spielberg does in 'Tintin' or Gore Verbinski does in 'Rango,' that stuff hasn't been traditionally recognized by the cinematography branch. None of it's been recognized much by the production design branch. There is as much artistry in the cinematography and the production design of those movies as there is in any live-action film. We're confronted with changing times and changing technologies, and it always takes time for people to recognize that and honor it."

[Sotiris]

Regarding the amount of rotoscoping used in Chico & Rita and Alois Nebel:

Chico & Rita

For Trueba, directing an animated film was totally new. With Mariscal, the production was split into 2 main parts. The entire movie was first filmed with live-action actors. The sets included dummy objects and tracker marks for camera tracking. The live action shots were edited in Final Cut Pro and became the live action version of the animatic. Approximately 2 frames of every second of live action were traced in TV-Paint and used as the drawn version of the animatic. The traced frames were printed on paper, pegged and sent through a classical 2D hand drawn production pipeline with rough animation, key animation, clean up, ink & paint and compositing. The live action shots were used to create backgrounds in either 2D, 2½D or 3D [where 2½D refers to 2D elements positioned in a 3D universe]. All 2D animation and colouring were realised in Toon Boom Harmony.

Source: http://www.toonboom.com/pdf/caseStudy/h ... d_rita.pdf


Alois Nebel

According to the producers, Czech actors actually played the characters in costume and on set, and their footage was traced over by animators, in the vein of Richard Linklater’s 2006 rotoscoped movie A Scanner Darkly.The film’s producer Pavel Strnad tell us that he and his team began prep work on the movie in 2006, made a short rotoscope test toward the end of 2007 and went into production in the spring of 2009. "The shooting took about 40 days of work, and after we edited the footage, we started the animation, which took almost two years to complete." Strnad and Lunak wanted to stay as close as possible to the visual style of the graphic novel, but they were keen on using the actors' performances. "Tomas came up with the idea of using rotoscoping technology, and after we made our one-minute test, we knew it was the right approach."

Source: http://www.animationmagazine.net/featur ... -the-past/

Almost fifty animators (rotoscopers) and graphic artists and 25 actors and numerous supervisors worked for five years to make the film. The film was first shot on location with live actors and then animated in the Tobogang studio. Under the supervision of the studio owner, animator Noro Držiak, animators traced the film scenes into an animated form, the background separately from the actors. There were special animators for the background and the characters, each animator worked on one, maximum two characters.

Source: http://www.bridge-online.cz/studenti/ex ... lois-nebel

[Producer Pavel Strnad] First, we shot the whole film with the actors. We were shooting on RED and we tried to shoot as many scenes on locations as possible. The first test showed that combining the real background with drawn animation gives a magical impression. We filmed the exteriors of the train station in the Jeseniky Mountains, we shot in Prague’s Main Station with period trains, etc. Most of the interior scenes were shot in the Barrandov Studio where we built the sets of Alois' apartment, the psychiatric hospital, the pub and others. Only the scenes for which locations weren’t available anymore, such as the Prague Main Station Hall as it looked in 1989, were filmed on a green screen. Actors had to wear white makeup with black wrinkles so that animators could more easily redraw their expressions and some of them looked really horrific. The shooting took about 35 filming days while the animation took almost two years. In November 2007 we started with the test shooting and the film was finished only a few weeks before the world premiere in Venice in August 2011.

Source: http://filmcenter.cz/en/news/detail/956 ... vel-strnad

[Sotiris]

Controversial Animated Films Defend Oscar Eligibility:

The Adventures of Tintin

While there have been some discussions about whether it’s right to categorize motion-capture movies as animation, Spielberg firmly believes that The Adventures of Tintin is a bonafide animated project—regardless of the technologies used. "There is not a single live-action element in the whole movie," he says. "The only thing on the hard drive is the facial animation of the actors. However every inch, every frame of the movie is animated. For me, motion capture is just a new kind of positive evolution of the process, but it’s certainly co-existent with the kind of animation that DreamWorks and Pixar do. It’s just a different form of animation."

The animation team at Weta worked on the process of refining, sculpting and detailing each of the film’s 1,240 shots for a year and a half after the actors' work was done. Then came the rendering process, during which the filmmakers fine tuned visual themes, cinematic moods and added complex lighting effects. Joe Letteri, VFX supervisor, points out that having talented actors like Serkis, Bell and Daniel Craig (who voices the film’s villain Sakharine) in the mix allows the animation to come to life in a way that would have been almost impossible by other methods. "An actor’s performance underlying all the animation really gives you continuity throughout the film," he says. "In traditional animation, that is called 'keeping the character on model.' Here, we have the actors who are the ones essentially keeping the character on model. That's why we like to work with the best actors possible when we’re creating a process like this as it gives us the freedom to expand on those performances and to add a heightened sense of realism, drama, comedy or any other ideas that come up along the way."

Jamie Beard, animation supervisor, explains that he and his team had to look at the actors' performances and ask, "How does that performance fit into the character design?" "We basically start with a rough skeleton over a low-res geometry form of what that character is and from there we go in and refine the motion," he says. "It all boils down to getting the characters right. When you're animating a project as extensive as this one, you are always referencing the comic books, and you’re always asking 'Does it look and feel like Tintin?'"

Beard also agrees that there shouldn't be any real distinction between animated films that use motion capture and those that don’t. "We are taking the same approach and using the same work ethic as all animated movies," he points out. "We're just using motion capture as a tool to produce this world dreamed up by Hergé and the actors. We are lucky to use a pipeline that can utilize the work of the actors as a reference point. There are large number of animators that are behind every scene, and of course, Snowy is completely keyframed. It’s just really the evolution of the art form."

Source: http://www.animationmagazine.net/featur ... adventure/


Happy Feet Two

The sheer scope of the film created challenges for the crews—which maxed out at about 75 animators and 50 vfx artists as the height of the three-year production. Tons of water, ice and snow effects that Coleman says would not have been possible in the first film, including an iceberg collapse and avalanche sequence, kept the vfx team busy. Meanwhile the animators relied on proprietary tools supervised by Dr. D’s Carsten Kolve to shepherd massive herds of penguins, seals and other creatures. According to crowd director Greg van Borssum, more than 16 million characters were animated by the crowd teams in over 600 shots—making each crowd animator responsible for about 950,000 characters, or twice the population of Tasmania.

Source: http://www.animationmagazine.net/featur ... -feathers/


Alvin & the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked

Directed by Mike Mitchell, the film has over 900 CG shots—about 200 more than the 2007 sequel—or as animation director Kevin Johnson likes to say, "it has wall-to-wall chipmunks."

Since the chipmunks are the main characters in the movie, there are only a few sequences that were pure live-action. That’s why Johnson and the artists at Rhythm & Hues — who worked from the El Segundo, Calif. studio as well as the Mumbai and Hyderabad locations — had a lot of work on their hands. Although the studio had animated the characters for the two other previous movies as well, Johnson and his team had to go over the models and update them in terms of rigging and sophistication.

Source: http://www.animationmagazine.net/featur ... chipmunks/

[Sotiris]

Although Gore Verbinski’s CG-animated movie Rango was one of the early releases of 2011, it’s beginning to pick up a lot of steam in the year-end award season derby. This past weekend, the Los Angeles Critics, the San Francisco Critics group and the Boston Society of Film Critics all selected Rango as the Best Animated Movie of the year. The L.A. Critics also selected Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin as the runner-up in the animation category.

To date, the Paramount release has also won the Best Animated Picture award from the Washington D.C. Area Critics Association, Teen Choice Awards (best voice actor honor for Johnny Depp), National Board of Review and the Hollywood Film Festival.

Source: http://www.animationmagazine.net/featur ... ic-honors/

[estefan]

The Critics Choice nominations for Best Animated Feature are:

The Adventures of Tintin
Arthur Christmas
Kung Fu Panda 2
Puss in Boots
Rango

http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononho ... ith-eleven

[Sotiris]

Toronto Film Critics Association Awards

Best Animated Feature:

The Adventures of Tintin (winner)

Runner-Up:

Puss in Boots

Rango

Source: http://torontofilmcritics.com/blog/2011 ... e-of-2011/


San Diego Film Critics Society

Best Animated Film:

Arthur Christmas (winner)

Happy Feet Two

Kung Fu Panda 2

Rango

Winnie the Pooh

Source: http://sdfcs.org/


Indiana Film Critics

Best Animated Film:

Rango (winner)

Runner-Up: Winnie the Pooh

Source: http://www.awardsdaily.com/2011/12/indi ... he-artist/


Saint Louis Fim Critics

Best Animated Film

The Adventures of Tintin (winner)

Rango (runner-up)

Kung Fu Panda 2

Puss in Boots

Rio

Rango was also nominated in the Best Comedy category.

Source: http://www.awardsdaily.com/2011/12/st-l ... m-critics/


Houston Film Critics Society

Best Animated Film:

Rango (winner)

The Adventures of Tintin

Happy Feet Two

Kung Fu Panda 2

Puss in Boots

Winnie the Pooh

The Adventures of Tintin was also nominated for Best Score. The Smurfs was nominated for Worst Film of the Year.

Source: http://www.awardsdaily.com/2011/12/hous ... -nominees/


Phoenix Film Critics

Best Animated Film

Rango (winner)

The Adventures of Tintin

Winnie the Pooh

Source: http://www.awardsdaily.com/2011/12/phoe ... m-critics/


Las Vegas Film Critics Society

Best Animated Film

Rango (winner)

Source: http://www.awardsdaily.com/2011/12/las- ... -awards-2/