YAHOOTOONZ

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.

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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.

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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.

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“It’s not even a contest,” was the response an unnamed Disney exec gave the NY Times when asked to comment on Fantastic Mr. Fox’s Oscar chances against Up. Despite the swagger that some Disney folks apparently have, the Times warns that Disney and Pixar shouldn’t break out the bubbly just yet:

In a mid-December surprise, both the New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association named “Fantastic Mr. Fox” the best animated movie of 2009. Similar awards from five other critics’ groups followed.

Fantastic Mr. Fox and Up are both nominated for this weekend’s Golden Globe Award, along with Coraline, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and The Princess and the Frog. Since initiating a Best Animated Feature Film category in 2007, the Golden Globes have given the award to Pixar every year (Cars, Ratatouille, WALL•E). We’ll find out in a few days whether Pixar can make it four-in-a-row at the Globes.

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Nick Rodwell, the British lawyer who married the widow of Tintin creator Hergé and now controls the Tintin estate, has embarked on a malicious crusade to sue people who use the character—even historians of the comic whose use of the character would qualify under “fair use” doctrines in the United States.

Rodwell’s latest target is Bob Garcia, “a detective novelist, jazz musician and Tintin aficionado,” who has been ordered by British courts to hand over £35,000 or face the possibility of having his house and belongings seized. His crime: writing five essays about the character. According to the UK’s Telegraph paper, “One pamphlet drew links between his twin passions – Tintin and Sherlock Holmes. Another looked at the cinematographic references in Hergé’s works. Two of the five, printed on average 500 times, used ‘graphical citations’ of Tintin drawings.”

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