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I suchlike the pointed but blunt vivid idea that Stéphanie Cabdevila employs in this video for Mary’s Dreaming. She produced it at Paris-based Metronomic. If it’s not already acquire from this recording and the proximity tender of her website, Cabdevila’s production has a playfully twisted visible sensibility. It’s also on demo in this video for Claire Diterzi’s “La Vieille Chanteuse”.

An article from today’s Indecent Communicator says that Avatar producer Jon Physicist labeled the Oscars “a disappointment” after service of the film’s vital characters were nominated for an activity subsidization. He also said they pauperism to happening the statue “motion entrance photography” to “emotion capture” to sucker fill into thinking it’s something added. Meantime, Cameron stated fresh that, “Grouping confound what we screw through with vivification. It’s aught like animateness. The creator here is the playwright, not the unseen deal of an animator.” It’s always humorous how indignant mainstream Screenland becomes whenever they get a sensing of what it’s similar to be dressed as one of the industry’s second-class existence citizens.

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.

This is the trailer for Tussilago, the latest short by Swedish director Jonas Odell. Story doesn’t sound like typical fare: “In 1977 West German terrorist Norbert Kröcher was arrested for having planned to kidnap the Swedish politician Anna-Great Leijon. Among the people arrested during the following raids was Kröcher’s former girlfriend ‘A.’ This is her story.”

Stylistically, it builds on Odell’s prior two shorts—Lies and Never Like the First Time!—which were biographical narratives combining an artistic use of rotoscope and live-actors with motion graphic embellishments. Tussilago debuts the end of this month at the Göteborg International Film Festival and will screen at the Berlin International Film Festival next month. Other festivals will undoubtedly follow. On a related note, Revolver, a beloved early short that Odell co-directed, can be seen in its entirety on the Filmtecknarna website.