YAHOOTOONZ

Eventually! Our someone, the reputable spiritedness historian/filmmaker/teacher Gospel Canemaker has started a systematic monthly diary column for Create depot. He says that the diary faculty stand “a wide-ranging examine at umteen and varied artistic influences on spiritedness, including laughable art and CGI, games, assemblage illustration, alright art, creation films, literature, and execution art,” and give explore everything “from Architect to Johnny Gruelle, Elaine Stritch to Author Hot, with the similar personalized appearance I transmit to my commandment, lectures, and books.”

In his prototypical situation, Canemaker expresses his appreciation for the risible Remove and chats with Jeff Vocalizer roughly his forthcoming enlivened adjustment of Whiteness. My exclusive proposition is that Exposure offers a blunt unite to his diary that always course to the latest article and Canemaker’s archives, otherwise it’ll be stubborn to connectedness to his diary or cook up with his posts.

ASIFA-Hollywood has just announced that actor/director William Shatner will host the 37th Annual Annie Awards on Saturday, February 6, 2010, at UCLA’s Royce Hall in Los Angeles, CA. Very Cool!

Tickets have gone on sale for the event at the Annie Award website. The evening begins with a pre-reception at 5 p.m. followed by the Annie Awards ceremony at 7 p.m. and post award party at 10 p.m. All events will be held at Royce Hall. The Annie Awards ceremony will also be webcast on annieawards.org beginning Tuesday, February 9, 2010.

We don’t cover video game animation as much as we should, but this story erupting among animators in the gaming industry cannot be ignored. Apparently, Rockstar San Diego (a branch of the makers of the Grand Theft Auto videogame series in San Diego) has been working their crew six days a week, 12 hour days since last March. Conditions are said to be bad, and getting worse.

“Determined Devoted Wives of Rockstar San Diego” sent Gamasutra.com this letter, which describes the poor working conditions, which include “mandatory to work close to twelve hours a day including Saturdays” and that “for four consecutive years, salary raises have not adjusted properly to cover inflation.”

Rockstar has issued an internal email rebuttal, as mentioned in this article, on kotaku.com. All I know is Grand Theft Auto has made billions of dollars. There’s no excuse for any company to treat its employees like this. We’d love to hear from anyone with first hand knowledge of this situation.

Character designer and story artist David Colman (who is also the author of The Art of Animal Character Design) will be holding a weekend animal drawing workshop on January 30-31st. The LA-area classes take place at the Page Museum and Los Angeles Zoo between 10am-4pm each day. The class description:

Learn anatomy, gesture, and construction. Gain the tools needed to become proficient at the art of animal drawing, especially how to study from life. The class will consist of numerous handouts, accompanied with demonstrations and 1-on-1 instruction. First day is a six-hour course spent studying bones and skeletal structure @ the La Brea Tarpits in which you will learn the basic inner structure of quadrupeds. David will be doing a one hour demo study of one of the skeletons. The second day will be six hours spent @ the LA Zoo in which you will be studying about five different animals throughout the day.

Kayla Stewart in front of her burned-out home. The caption from the Spokesman-Review says that Stewart is wearing her mother’s thirty-year-old coat.

Veteran feature animator Chad Stewart (Cats Don’t Dance, The Pagemaster, Surf’s Up, Open Season, The Polar Express, Fantasia/2000, Tarzan, The Emperor’s New Groove) lost his home in an electrical fire last Sunday while his family was attending church. The Spokesman-Review has the sad details. What makes the situation particularly tragic is that Chad and his wife, Kayla, have eight kids—four birth daughters and four adopted biological brothers from Liberia. A friend of Chad tells me that, “After sixteen years working the studios down in LA, Chad wanted to spend more time with his family and made the move to Washington, where he began freelancing full-time.” The family is currently looking for a nearby home to rent and acquire replacement clothing and furnishings while they rebuild their burned-out home.

A charitable fund has been established and donations can be sent to either of these two places to help the Stewarts get back on their feet:

Northview Bible Church
13521 N. Mill Road
Spokane, WA 99208

and

Chase Bank
12120 N. Division St.
Spokane, WA 99218