JapanJourney are arranging Manga Tours in Tokyo. The 7 day trip includes a visit to the Ghibli Museum, a tour of a working anime studio, a stop off at a Manga Café as well as more traditional Japanese attractions such as temples and gardens. Plenty of time has been allocated for those wanting to shop at all of the wonderful locations such as Nakano Broadway and Akihabar.
The next tour is 18-25 March 2010.
The official opening of the 2009 London International Film Festival is on Monday 31 August 6pm at the Renoir Cinema.
However tonight is party night for the festival goers at the Roxy, The Brothers McLeod join with animation and film night organisers Paperbag with DJs and musicians.
The Monday night even will be no-less special with a special preview of Mary and Max by Adam Elliot and the results of the POOP Golden Poo Awards.
http://www.liaf.org.uk/
Press Release
For anyone around Dublin, Ireland on the 8th of August
Pegbar is holding another one of its amazing events! But this time round we’ve got a whole day of talks from industry professionals.
There will be talks about the animation industry, the games industry, moving image, running small studios and making features. And we’ll finish the night off with our networking event.
So Pegbar will take place on the 8th of August, in Filmbase, 11am to 5pm.
There will be a workshop on making comic books for young artists in Filmbase 11am – 1pm
And then in the evening our ‘it’s a pegbar affair’, will be taking place in Murrays Bar, on O’Connell St, 8pm til late! Where there will be loads of cool animations playing and an enjoyable place for everyone to network.
There will be a colouring competition, to which the winners take home loads of Pegbar goodies!
Tickets are as follows:
A whole day pass, including the talks, the evening event and some pegbar goodies are €20, there are only 70 places available and you can prebook the tickets through info@pegbar.ie (discounts available for artists who submitted work for the show)
The comic book workshop, is free for young artists aged 12 - 17 and can be prebooked at info@pegbar.iethere are only 12places available.
The evening networking event is five euro on the door and can be paid for on the day.(Artists who submitted work have free entry)
http://pegbar.ie/
It seems like everyone is talking about the new stop motion animation from Wes Anderson, "The Fantastic Mr Fox", it's based on Roald Dahl's story and will be showing at London Film Festival later in the year.
Total Film's report
Movie Blaze
The Playlist has some excellent pictures of the film.
The production process has been complicated by the closure of Revoltion Studios so Fox Animation have taken over the gauntlet. Mark Gustafson has taken on the role of Animation Director after Henry Selick left to work on Coraline.
Cartoonist John Ryan, who created the popular Captain Pugwash British television series, has died aged 88 this week. He is famous for the comical pirate series and author of a multitude of books. As well as writing many of the early scripts he also produced the artwork and directed the filming. John was also responsible for Sir Prancalot which was a similar style to Pugwash and set in a castle. He used his great artistic ability on the Ark Stories in 1981 using a rostrum camera to create simple animated animal stories, Percy Edwards provided the voices.
The Captain Pugwash Television Series
Before the Captain and his band were on television they were a successful series in the Eagle and then the Radio Times. The very TV first episode aired on BBC1 on 22nd October 1957. That initial pugwash series was filmed in black and white and ran for 58 episodes, in the 1970s a second colour series was commissioned by the BBC and 30 more episodes were made.
Later in 1998 John Cary created a third CGI Captain Pugwash using the 2D software Animo to produce a crisper result. Some people have criticised the CGI seascapes but most would agree that the style is very similar.
The Characters
Captain Horatio Pugwash was joined by Master Mate, Pirate Willy, Pirate Barnabas and the voice of reason "Tom the Cabin Boy". The pirates sailed the Black Pig and their arch enemy was "Cut-Throat Jake"
The Captain was renown for making stupid plans and his exclamations such as
"Plundering Porpoises!", "Jumping jellyfish!" or "Harrowing hurricanes!"
The Music and voices
The series music is possible even more well know than the series itself. The Trumpet Hornpipe is a lively sea shanty played on the accordion.
All the characters were voiced by Peter Hawkins
Technique
Watching the series it's easy to assume that the technique is simply cutout animation on a painted backdrop. However it was actually a cardboard puppet play filmed in real time with articulated puppets made from card and metal. Some panning and zooming was also used with larger sets. This technique enabled Ryan and his team to shoot and impressive 400ft of film a day which meant that each Pugwash episode took only about three weeks to complete. John Ryan's setups were called "Captions" and he used same technique on the later series Sir Prancalot and also on Mary, Mungo and Midge. The illustration was crisp and high quality and the colours bold.
Links
Toonhouse Pugwash Early Series
Toonhound Pugwash Modern Series
Wirligig TV's Look at Captain Pugwash
BBC Entertainment News
Telegraph Obitury
