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The
Nicktoons Film Festival
Announces
Screening:
2– A Halloween Scare
The
Nicktoons Film Festival continues this Sunday, Halloween
night, with Screening: 2, a selection of ghoulishly
funny shorts. A co-production of Frederator Studios and Animation
Magazine for Nicktoons, The Nicktoons Film Festival
airs on the Nicktoons cable channel Sunday nights 10 p.m (EST)
and 7 p.m. (PST), with a repeat at 1:00 p.m. (EST) and 10
p.m. (PST). The films featured in Screening Number: 2–A
Halloween Scare are: Day Off The Dead by Lee Lanier
a senior animator on Shrek and Jeffrey Dates a vfx
artist on major films like Spy Kids 2; April
by CalArts student Jiwook Kim; The Thing With No Head
from UCLA grad Mark Fearing and featuring the voice talent
of Brian Doyle-Murray; Rotting Hills–Clark’s
New Home from Nelvana filmmaker Glen Wyand; Jack &
Jill from School of Visual Arts grad Andrea Shear; Attack
of the Note Sheep from Texas A&M Visualization Laboratory
alum Jessica Scott; and At Wit’s Vend from award-winning
UCLA grad Alan Estridge.
The
Nicktoons Film Festival:
Screening
Number: 2 – A Halloween Scare
Airdate
& Time: Oct. 31, 2004, 10 p.m. (EST); 7 p.m. (PST), Nicktoons
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Film
#1: Day Off The Dead (Length: 5:40; CG)–In
case you were wondering, we can now tell you "what the
dead do on their day off," courtesy of filmmakers Lee Lanier
and Jeffrey Dates. Lanier, a former senior animator on Shrek
and Dates, a vfx animator on films like Spy Kids 2, strut
their creative and creepy stuff in this extremely well-animated
and grandly goofy short. Says Lanier, "Day Off The Dead
was created with Animation Master and Adobe AfterEffects. A
crew of a dozen volunteers from all over North America worked
on it in their spare time over a period of two years. My co-director,
Jeffrey Dates, lives in Dallas, while I live just outside of
Las Vegas. It was Jeff's idea to put Day of the Dead style characters
into one of my surreal 3D environments. The collaboration was
carried out over the Internet." (For more information on
Lee Lanier, visit www.beezlebugbit.com.
To find out what Jeffrey Dates is up to go to wwwkungfukoi.com.
And, for a full list of awards and other behind-the-scenes info
on Day Off The Dead, visit www.dayoffthedead.com.)
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Film
#2: April (Length: 3:00; Traditional 2D)–Third-year
Cal Arts student Jiwook Kim’s short is a testament to the
power of simple, pencil-drawn animation. The offbeat toon centers
on a "different-looking" girl, whose face launches
a million ill stomachs, until she finally meets her true match
one day. Kim says the toon began as a character design study.
She notes, "I liked to draw antique dolls and then wanted
to move them. I also like all kinds of horror stories."
Using "sharp pencils" to create the black-and-white
project, Kim finished the piece in less than two months. She
says she believes pencils are the perfect tools for "beginners,
because you’ve already used them a lot and got used to
them already!" The short won the Cal Arts Peer’s Pick
Award and was one of Animation Magazine’s Student
Short Film Winner’s Circle picks earlier this year. (If
you would like see more of Kim’s artwork, you can visit
www.calarts.edu/~kim.)
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Film
#3: The Thing With No Head (Length: 3:50; Traditional
2D)–Every kid wants a pet, but as filmmaker Mark Fearing
proves in his totally outthere and wonderful short, The Thing
With No Head, some little ones should just give up the dream.
Says Fearing, "The Thing with No Head is my first
traditionally animated film. It was created in four months at
UCLA's Animation Workshop. I hand-painted 1,110 cells, 22 backgrounds
were painted in Photoshop and the entire thing was shot in about
36 hours on an ACME 16mm animation camera. The idea came from
a sketch of a little headless thing that I had been drawing
as far back as 1994. I had drawn it running around, accomplishing
some funny and odd things. I wanted to create a complete story,
a mini-film that wasn't just about laughs." The Thing
With No Head features a voice over by character actor Brian
Doyle-Murray (The Flying Dutchman on SpongeBob SquarePants).
(To learn more about the animation of Mark Fearing, visit www.markfearing.com.)
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Film
#4: Rotting Hills–Clark’s New Home (Length:
5:00; Animated in Flash)–Zombies continue to haunt our
collective imagination, but Glen Wyand’s wacky short series,
Rotting Hills, takes this premise to the extreme. In
this episode called Clark’s New Home, Clark McWeeble's
dad is so thrilled with his family’s new life in the country
that only Clark seems to notice Rotting Hills is a town crawling
with zombies. Dad just thinks that rotting smell is swamp gas.
Although it doesn’t explain his penchant for oogieness,
it should be noted that Wyand is a graduate of Canada’s
Sheridan College and its classical animation program. He came
to Nelvana as a junior animator on John Callahan’s Quads
in 2002. By 2003 he was working as a animation supervisor on
the hit Canuck series, Jacob Two-Two. That same year
Wyand pitched the idea for Rotting Hills to the company
and it was accepted as part of Nelvana’s short program
called the Funpak. (For more info on Glen Wyand and Rotting
Hills, e-mail funpak@corusent.com.)
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Film
#5: Jack & Jill (Length: 1:33, CG, animated
in Alias’ Maya software)–A 2004 graduate of the School
of Visual Arts in New York, filmmaker Andrea Shear has already
interned at the famous Will Vinton Studios in Portland, Oregon.
We’re sure that’s because the unexpected storyline
of her thesis project, Jack & Jill, caught the company’s
attention. Shear says that the idea for the short actually popped
into her very active head during a graphic design class at SVA.
Says Shear, "We had to reinterpret the nursery rhyme Jack
and Jill, which is really a story without a story. Everyone
has different images in their heads for Jack and Jill.
Some people think they are brother and sister, some people think
they are boyfriend and girlfriend. But, I think it’s just
innately morbid." (For more info on Andrea Shear and her
work, check out her site at www.andreashear.com.)
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Film
#6: Attack of the Note Sheep (Length: 1:20; Traditional
2D composited with live action footage)– Although filmmaker
Jessica Scott is obviously a brainiac–she’s a grad
of Texas A&M Visualization Laboratory–she also has
a devilish sense of humor. We won’t give away the punch
line to this short-short, but let’s just say it’s
pretty brutal if you happen to be a hand-drawn sheep! Says Scott,
"The idea for the animation came from a couple of college
friends who would always draw sheep when they were bored in
class. I picked up the habit, and took it with me to grad school,
where I created this short." (For more information on Jessica
Scott, visit her site at www.njord.org.)
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Film
#7: At Wit’s Vend (Length: 3:49; CG animation
completed in Alias’ Maya software) Filmmaker Alan Estridge,
a graduate of the UCLA Animation Workshop and winner of the
2004 Chuck Jones Award in Animation, has definitely lost a lot
of pocket change to vending machines. He turns it all around,
however, in his big-gag short called At Wit’s Vend,
a premise that cruelly pits man against chocolate in a painfully
funny struggle for survival. Estridge is working on his next
all CG film called Gridlock. (To check out Alan Estridge’s
other shorts and storyboard art go to www.chompy.com.)
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