Random questions

Post by **James** » July 14th, 2006, 12:22 am

MacDaddy's IP address shows up as coming from Pixar so this seems legit if anyone was not convinced.

Big Mac geek here, by the way, but a couple of thousand miles to the right on the map from Emeryville! Good luck with your search. I'm surprised people aren't jumping through hoops for the chance to work at Pixar.

Post by **MacDaddy** » July 14th, 2006, 12:44 am

Thanks for the nod, James.

Hey, if we find the right person for the job, we're not afraid to relocate you. If you're seriously interested, drop me your resume.

Post by **Ben** » July 14th, 2006, 11:59 am

Oh, the irony. Right James?

Post by **James** » July 14th, 2006, 2:30 pm

Ha, ha!

I haven't mentioned this publicly yet, but might as well so you guys won't think I've forgotten the website in the weeks ahead when I show up less and less. My wife has been offered a new job in Tennessee. So we are currently in the process of relocating for her job. Hopefully we'll be settled in by the end of August.

And on a related note, since my daughter will start kindergarten in August I should have more time to devote to the site! Which is a good thing since we've got some big plans and and are just looking for the time and people to implement them!

Post by **PixarVixen** » July 14th, 2006, 2:40 pm

Congrats to your wife! Good luck on the move.

~~=oP

Post by **lizzimba** » August 26th, 2006, 7:43 pm

Hey all, I'm a long term lurker, first time poster here on the AN forums.

A couple of months back, our team finished production on a comedy animated short 'DuPain', which you can watch on the link below. Acting as Production Manager (this being our Graduation piece), it took eight months to make, and had its London premiere in the National Film Theatre in July.

We are hopeful of getting into a few festivals starting soon (we hope!)

Any feedback would be wonderful, but I won't ruin it, I'll let the film speak for itself...

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hFL03jLYrc

Post by **Ben** » August 26th, 2006, 8:02 pm

Welcome to the boards!

Post by **eddievalient** » August 30th, 2006, 1:08 pm

Hi all! I need your opinion on something. I'm giving serious thought to the idea of trying to start a magazine that would A) celebrate the art of animation and B)keep people informed of what movies, tv shows and dvds are coming out. The way I figure it, each issue would have reviews of recent animated films and dvds, news about the industry and retrospective articles focusing on a particular series or movie (i.e. one issue might have an article about "An American Tail" and the next might cover "Codename Kids Next Door"). Whenever possible, the articles would include interviews with the cast and crew. As the mag goes on, I might experiment with writing book length stuff and serializing it over the course of several issues (like a biography of Don Bluth or a series looking at the history of Disney TV animation). And I wouldn't just cover American animation either. Notable international productions would get coverage too.

So bearing all of that in mind, what do you guys think? Would a magazine like that ever be able to find an audience? Is it even a good idea in the first place? I'm still in college so if I was going to do this it would be awhile before I got started. I just want to begin preliminary planning is all. Any responses would be appreciated.

Post by **Christian** » August 30th, 2006, 1:45 pm

There already is such a thing as Animation Magazine. There's also Animation Blast.

Post by **Ben** » August 30th, 2006, 3:26 pm

Is Skwigly Magazine still going in the UK?

The problem with movie magazines is that the hot news is always out of date by the time publishing occurs. Total Film, Empire and the like here in the UK all have found that the answer is heavy online presence, which often means that reviews do not appear in the magazine but online.

I can't see that a new animation magazine would make much of a dent, what with it being a niche market already covered by the big titles that Christian mentioned above.

However, we will be looking for new staff again very soon, so if you've a burning desire to help get animation news out there, or to write article features, do keep an eye out for our announcement.

Best of luck with your current college projects!

Post by **droosan** » August 30th, 2006, 4:33 pm

Other print magazines which did exactly this, and yet still 'struggled/folded/moved online' were FPS and Wild Toon Kingdom.

There even was an animation magazine titled Toon Magazine during the 1990's ..

Post by **Christian** » August 30th, 2006, 4:39 pm

However, we will be looking for new staff again very soon, so if you've a burning desire to help get animation news out there, or to write article features, do keep an eye out for our announcement.

Good point.

Post by **ShyViolet** » August 30th, 2006, 8:00 pm

Hey, remember Comics Scene ?

They covered everything from comics to sci-fi fantasy film, but focused mostly on animation.

There's this really cool cover from 1988 with EV's namesake, Eddie Valiant, driving Benny the Cab with Roger!

But with the explosion of media mags like Entertainment Weekly, Starlog, and Total Film/Empire as Ben mentioned (not to mention Premiere, and of course the Web) Comics Scene pretty much phased out.....

I had this really cool issue from '92 on Batman Returns, plus it had an interview with John K about Ren and Stimpy--who were just hitting it big at the time.

(There was also a one-panel cartoon with two Batman fans, one of whom is wearing the "Batsymbol" shirt. "Um....Frank Miller? He played that reporter-guy, right?"

)

I think for a while Comics Scene THE info source that fanboys flocked to....

GeorgeC · Post by **GeorgeC** » August 30th, 2006, 10:41 pm

The Internet and websites like this one pretty much make the niche magazine for animation obsolete.

I'm sorry, but unless you can offer something different that none of us CAN'T get in about a million different places on the web for the cost of monthly Internet access, your proposed magazine is destined to fail.

As far as I'm concerned, all the good animation magazines that really had anything to offer beyond one egomaniac's obsessions (see A. Blast) and the usual advertising for suits and big production companies (see A. Magazine) are long gone. I DON'T want to read about one guy's obsession with 50's animation and Hanna-Barbera and muckraking on long-dead people (A. Blast) nor do I want to read about computer hardware and producers (A. Magazine).

The guy who was publishing Animato gave it up after several years of a good go at it because he was losing money on the magazine. Same goes for the other magazines like Toon Magazine, fps, and so on. These were the magazines that gave the most bang for the buck -- they were packed with decent (but not always great) reviews of about everything under the sun, model sheets, and highlighted more than one era of animation. It's sad that they went the way of the dodo, but the Internet HAS picked up the slack and you can find all that stuff if you take the time to look and ask the right questions in the right spots at the right time.

With all the blogs out there and scads of informational sites a magazine is pretty much a dumb idea at this point in time IMHO. It's just uneconomical unless you are loaded to the hilt with cash reserves and have very good distribution.

Also, what's not being said about A. Blast and A. Magazine is that they have relatively low print-runs. There just aren't enough hard-core animation fans out there to justify high print-runs. A. Blast is strictly subscription-only (2500 copies last issue NATION-wide) and hasn't shown up in stores FOR YEARS because the big store chains won't carry it. In fact, the only place that I ever saw carry A. Blast was Tower Records which is on its way to oblivion as we speak.

(It also doesn't help that A. Blast is done so infrequently and has a haphazard schedule.)

A. Magazine used to be carried everywhere but seems to only show up (hidden behind other magazines) at Borders now.

I don't care for either of the two magazines I cited above because they seem to be about everything other than animation really. A. Blast reads like a political diatribe (and you can get the same junk from Cartoon Brew btw) and A. Magazine is about anything other than the people and actual craft of making animation! I refuse to call either magazine by the name "Animation."

Post by **ShyViolet** » August 30th, 2006, 10:59 pm

3D artist (which I saw in my college bookstore) is pretty good; this month they had a whole feature on Cars which gets quite technical and is very interesting.

There's also stuff on Monster House and animation in general; even forecasts of how studios like DW might fare in the near future.

To eddievalient: Why not start a blog? You can post topics everyday and ask people for their opinions.

A. Blast reads like a political diatribe (and you can get the same junk from Cartoon Brew btw)

99.9 % of the time I have absolutely no idea what Cartoon Brew is talking about....I don't go to that site much anymore as it makes my head hurt.

Random questions

'DuPain' - A bakery born adventure of EPIC proportions!

Toon magazine-please respond