Aidan Martin, a brilliant animation supervisor who has been with Wētā FX for 18 years, may be the perfect SIGGRAPH issue subject! Specializing in creating facial performances, his many impressive credits include The Umbrella Academy, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, War for the Planet of the Apes and Avengers: Endgame. Here he shares some snapshots for a typical date with us:
6 a.m., every day! I’m either here or at the gym. I’ve found that the longer I do this, the more important it is to find a physical activity you enjoy and can stick to.
One WFH perk is that I can have a fully loaded breakfast while I check emails and teams chats, doing the general check in with artists before the calendar fills up.
The 9 a.m. leads stand up meeting requires lots of tea.
Sketching on an iPad. It’s important to keep drawing as much as possible.
10:55 a.m.: Fresh pot of tea. And yes, before you ask, I do put the milk in the teapot… I’m that kind of monster!
It’s Friday, so I’m meeting the brains trust for lunch. I had the chicken caesar.
In the afternoon I have some time to set some keys, QC a puppet and catch up with animators.
Work is done, time to pester my family while they still tolerate my intrusion on whatever obscure anime I seemed to have interrupted.
One of Aidan’s many friends/creations, Pogo from The Umbrella Academy.
The furred, hooved and shelled heroes of DC League of Super-Petsproved their mettle in spite of the summer box-office slowdown, as the Warner Bros. animated featured pulled in a respectable $23 million No. 1 domestic opening domestically, closing out the first month for cinema releases to surpass $1 billion since December 2019 (at $1.13B). The star-studded family pic led by Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart and directed by LEGO franchise writer Jared Stern snagged $18.4M internationally for a starting leap of $41.4M total across 64 markets (76% of its international footprint).
Super-Pets leapt into theatrical action with mostly positive reviews from critics, and has since held at 72% Tomatometer from Rotten Tomatoes with a slight dip on MetaCritic to a 58 Metascore (26 critic reviews) but a 6.7 audience rating. Audiences attending the film’s 4,314 theatrical engagements have responded positively as well, ranking the pic an A- on CinemaScore.
The WB release comes in not far behind Universal/DreamWorks’ spring release The Bad Guys, which opened at $23.95M in March and has racked up $96.7M domestically ($245.7M worldwide).
Super-Pets took the lead ahead of Jordan Peele’s latest pic Nope in its second weekend ($18.5M) and Thor: Love and Thunder in its fourth ($13.1M). Another Universal offering, the COVID-delayed Minions: The Rise of Gruis holding on strong at No. 4 after five weekends, taking $10.8M stateside and sitting on a domestic cume of $320M ($710M worldwide), which puts it on track to surpass the first Minions outing (2015, $336M), but it has a bit of nefarious work ahead to catch up to the franchise’s top grosser, Despicable Me 2 (2013), which hit $326M after its fifth weekend and went on to gross $251.6M domestically ($543.2M worldwide).
Vancouver Institute of Media Arts (VanArts) has announced a deadline extension for its expanded scholarship offering for Ukrainian refugee students. The program will cover 50% of tuition for full-time, 12-month diploma programs for animation, video games, VFX and more starting September 6, 2022. The school has already released a new video promoting the opportunity and introducing some of the first students to arrive at teh Canadian campus, which you can watch below.
Applications for scholarship placements will now be accepted until August 26, 2022.
As previously announced, the scholarship is available to Ukrainian refugees applying to admission in the 2D Character Animation, 3D Character Animation, Game Art & Design, Visual Effects for Film & Television, Acting for Film & Television, Professional Photography, or Web Development & Digital Design programs at VanArts.
These scholars will be joining the first group of students to begin in VanArts’ brand-new purpose-built campus space on the 7th floor of 333 Terminal Avenue in Vancouver. Other advantages include financial assistance from the Canadian government, granting of work permits under the CUEAT program, and a booming demand for jobs in the industries VanArts trains for.
More details on the VanArts scholarship program for Ukrainian refugees are available here.
Established in 1995, Vancouver Institute of Media Arts (VanArts) is ranked at #2 worldwide by Animation Career Review, Rookies-certified and located in Vancouver, the #1 Hub for film, digital entertainment and tech industries. The school’s mission is to unlock the creative and career potential within each student. With the help of specialized instruction, small class sizes, industry- experienced faculty and connections to the creative industries in Vancouver, VanArts graduates have gone on to work for major studios, see their names in the credits of major feature films, and start their own companies.
Ghost VFX, Streamland Media’s visual effects division, has announced it will open a new 32,000 square-feet studio in Pune, Maharashtra, India, early next year to meet the growing needs of filmmakers worldwide. Ghost India will offer clients a full range of high-end visual effects through cloud-based technology and an industry-leading talent roster that will function as a hybrid of work-from-home and in-studio.
“We are very excited to establish Ghost VFX in India, which is a critical part of expanding our worldwide services,” says Ghost VFX President Patrick Davenport. “Our leadership team has been working in India for over a decade, and we’re thrilled to be collaborating again with some of the very best artists in the business. Our experience has shown what works — and what doesn’t! We are building a creative environment and culture which will support the teams in all our studios, enabling us to work seamlessly together across the globe.”
Patrick Davenport
The new state-of-the-art studio will be led by Ghost VFX India Vice President and Head of Studio Prashant Shitole, who brings more than 20 years of top-tier VFX and animation experience to his new role. His credits include producing VFX for features, streaming, animation and games, while working as head of production at MPC, The Mill, Double Negative and most recently at Method Studios.
“I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to lead the Ghost VFX expansion into India,” says Shitole. “I’m most excited about the creative team we are bringing together here. Ghost VFX is already a well-established creative resource for filmmakers around the world. The talented team here in India is joining a global studio of artists and technical experts who support filmmakers doing amazing work.”
In addition to Pune, Ghost VFX has locations worldwide in Los Angeles, Copenhagen, London, Manchester, Toronto and Vancouver. Recent credits include Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, The Book of Boba Fett and The Walking Dead.
Animation artist and illustrator Paul Coker Jr., best known for his character and produciton designs for the classic Rankin/Bass stop-motion specials as well as his long stint illustrating for MAD Magazine, died at home in Santa Fe, New Mexico on July 23 at age 93, after a brief illness. Coker’s stepdaughter, Lee Smithson Burd, confirmed his passing to Deadline and shared that the artist was “lucid and had his remarkable sense of humor until the end.”
Born March 5, 1929 in Lawrence, Kansas, Coker studied drawing and painting at the University of Kansas, and began his career designing greeting cards for Hallmark in the 1950s in Kansas City, Missouri. He became the Art Director for the company’s humorous “Contemporary Card” line.
MAD’s “Usual Gang of Idiots”; Paul Coker Jr. appears second row from the top, fourth in from the right.
His first work for MAD appeared in 1961, and he became established as one of the publication’s so-called “Usual Gang of Idiots.” He went on to illustrate over 375 articles for the humor rag, as well as a series of paperbacks starting in 1968.
Horrifying Clichés, original art by Paul Coker Jr.
Coker was known for his “Horrifying Clichés” panels and film/TV parody spoofs. He also collaborated with MAD writer Don Edwing on the Lancelot and Horace & Buggy comic strips. Coker freelanced for other publications, including Esquire, Good Housekeeping and Playboy.
To generations of fans, however, Coker will be remembered as the artful hand that created beloved Rankin/Bass characters like Frosty the Snowman (from the 1969 2D special); Kris Kringle, Winter Warlock and Burgermeister Meisterburger (Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town, 1970); and the wonderfully vaudevillian villains Snow Miser and Heat Miser (The Year without a Santa Claus).
For Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr.’s iconic studio, Coker also provided character designs for stop-motion specials Here Comes Peter Cottontail (1971), Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July (1979) and The Enchanted World of Danny Kaye: The Emperor’s New Clothes (1972) as well as 2D specials and series like Festival of Family Classics and The Wacky World of Mother Goose.
The Year without a Santa Claus
Coker lent his talents to to many of these titles as well, in addition to The First Easter Robbit, Frosty’s Winter Wonderland, Rudolph’s Shiny New Year, Jack Frost, The Stingiest Man in Town and Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey, to name a few. Coker continued working the the studio into the early 2000s, on the 2D TV movie Santa, Baby! He also provided character models for Cartoon Network’s Whatever Happaned to Robot Jones? (2002).
Coker is survived by his wife of 33 years, Rosemary Smithson, and stepdaughters Lee Smithson Burd and Carol Smithson.
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has announced the selections in the Gala and Special Presentations programs for the 47th edition, taking place September 8-18.
“We’re excited to welcome some of the most celebrated figures in movies back to Toronto to present their Gala and Special Presentation films,” said Cameron Bailey, TIFF CEO. “With stories that span six continents and feature performances you just have to see, this lineup delivers the rich experiences we wait all year for. Cinema is alive. Red carpets are back. And the best audience in the world awaits them in Toronto.”
Notably, Henry Selick’s highly anticipated return Wendell & Wild will make its World Premiere in the Special Presentations section, the long animated feature in the lineup alongside films by the likes of Steven Spielberg (The Fablemans), Darren Aronofsky (The Whale), Lena Dunham (Catherina Called Birdy), Rian Johnson (Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery) and Park Chan-wook (Decision to Leave). Selick is Oscar-nominated director of stop-motion classics Coraline, The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach.
Synopsis:Wendell & Wild, an animated tale about scheming demon brothers Wendell and Wild, who enlist the aid of 13-year-old Kat Elliot — a tough teen with a load of guilt — to summon them to the Land of the Living. But what Kat demands in return leads to a brilliantly bizarre and comedic adventure like no other, an animated fantasy that defies the law of life and death.
Due to launch on Netflix in October, the stop-motion flick features an all-star cast led by Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key as Wendell and Wild, including Angela Bassett, Ving Rhames, James Hong and Lyric Ross as the human protagonist, Kat. The pic is produced with The Gotham Group and Peele’s Monkeypaw shingle, and will feature original musisc by Oscar-nominated composer Bruno Coulais.
The full list of films from the 2022 TIFF Official Selection features 18 Galas and 45 Special Presentations. Check out the programs here.
If you ever believed that our world is ruled by little forces of good and bad fortune, then Skydance Animation’s first feature Luck is the perfect pic for you. The clever and imaginative movie centers on a young girl named Sam Greenfield, who considers herself the unluckiest person in the world. When she accidentally stumbles into the never-before-seen Land of Luck, she sets out on a quest to bring some good luck home for her best friend. Of course, she has to team up with the magical creatures of this world to make her wishes come true.
Peggy Holmes
The film is directed by Peggy Holmes, a Disney veteran who also helmed two Tinker Bell spinoff movies (The Pirate Fairy, Secret of the Wings) as well as The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Beginning. “I was very excited to work on a completely original property at a brand-new studio,” she tells Animation Magazine during a recent Zoom interview. “I’ve been working on this movie for about two and a half years,” she noted. “I was developing a TV series at Skydance when they asked me to come and lead the movie.”
She adds, “There were two things that were part of the project that really appealed to me: this idea of Sam having grown up in the foster care system and that a leprechaun was involved. I come from a really big family and belonging to the family is the most meaningful thing in my life, and I could see that creating a story around Sam who has this emotional journey of finding her own family. And the leprechaun! I’m partly Irish and thought I could really blow it up and develop this leprechaun character into a full magical world called the Land of Luck. So, I told them if I could create this deep, heartfelt journey in a super magical world, I’m in. And they said, ‘Let’s go!’”
Simon Pegg voices Bob the cat, Sam’s (Eva Noblezada) begruging guide to the Land of Luck.
A Brand New Beginning
Holmes says she looks back fondly at her time at Disney. “I loved my time at Disney. I was an actress, dancer, choreographer and director,” she recalls “Over at Skydance, we are a brand-new studio. We get to help build the studio from the ground up. Every day, we are learning something new and everyday it’s super challenging. It was exciting to be working with producers John Lasseter, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, David Eisenmann and [Skydance Animation president] Holly Edwards and be part of building something from the beginning.”
The film has had a complicated development history. It was first set up with DreamWorks veteran Alessandro Carloni (Kung Fu Panda 3), with a script by Jonathan Aibel & Glenn Berger. Then, when John Lasseter joined the studio as CCO after leaving Disney-Pixar, he tapped Holmes to take over the project, and writer Kiel Murray (Cars 3, Raya and the Last Dragon) was also brought on board. Actress Emma Thompson was also attached to the project, but she quit the movie in early 2019 to protest Lasseter’s new position at the studio.
Whoopi Goldberg as The Captain in ‘Luck’
Having worked with Lasseter on the Tinker Bell movies, Holmes was pleased to be working with the former Pixar and Disney CCO once again. “John is a great mentor, ultra-creative artist and he’s a master storyteller,” she says. “He always has these great ideas and is there when you need him. He’s a partner in the best way: He’ll say come to me with your story problems and I’ll help solve them for you. He’s been very supportive.”
The director mentioned that one of the big challenges of mounting the movie was coming up with a storyline that wasn’t forced and didn’t hit the audiences with its positive message of building your own luck. “Our writer Kiel Murray and I did a lot of research for the project and we met with these incredible young adults who had also grown up in foster care and had the same experiences at Sam,” recalls Holmes.
“When we spoke to these people, no matter how much bad luck they had had in their lives, they were so positive and kept going,” she adds. “They were so generous at heart and Kiel and I were so moved by their stories. They told us that they didn’t wish bad luck on anyone else and they wouldn’t want to live it again, but looking back, it made them who we were. That’s what Sam needed to learn. We want her to look back at her life and say, ‘What I thought was the worst luck ever, turned out to be the best luck because I finally found my family!’”
‘Luck’s stellar voice cast also includes Lil Rel Howery as Marv.
Holmes worked with the Skydance artists located in three different locations: Los Angeles, Madrid and Connecticut. “We have CG animators, layout and VFX artists and lighters in Connecticut. We were lucky enough to grab the artists that were available after Blue Sky’s closure in the region.”
The director says the overall look of Luck owes a lot to the film’s talented production designer Fred Warter, whose many credits include A Goofy Movie, 9 and Secret of the Wings. “The first artwork he did for the movie depicted two worlds on either side of a coin — good luck on top and bad on the bottom,” she recalls. “It was a wonderful globe-like creation and I said, ‘OK, now we have to build the world based on that — a world where everything is timed perfectly, and our artists were fed with these cool concepts.”
Yuriko Senoo
“Creating these two fantastical worlds provided us with many challenges,” says animation director Yuriko Senoo, who was also animation supervisor on Skydance’s acclaimed 2021 short Blush, and worked on features such as The Star, The Pirate Fairy, Tangled and Bolt. “In the ‘Good Luck’ world, everything happens perfectly and the transportation comes to you. You step on a disc and it carries you to your destination, so the timing has to be absolutely perfect and easygoing. In the ‘Bad Luck’ world, everything goes wrong. The buildings are in constant need of repair, etc. But it was important that all the Bad Luck characters were not portrayed as scary monsters. They love their jobs, too. We wanted to show that you need both bad luck and good fortune to keep the world in balance.”
Senoo says she and her team were inspired by the great classic comedians of TV and movies’ golden age. “We looked at the work of stars such as Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Donald O’Connor because they were such great physical comedians and could make us laugh without saying a word — simply by using their bodies and faces,” she explains. “We were really drawn to those simple poses and expressions. We wanted to keep Sam in a more real and natural animated world, where less would be more. I also looked at my own daughter for inspiration, since she was transitioning from high school to college, just like our movie’s heroine was going through some big changes.”
Fans will recognize Flula Borg (Jeff the Unicorn) as one of the film’s distinctive voice stars.
Eclectic Voices
The animation team was also fortunate to have an amazing roster of actors lending their voices to the films’ characters: Eva Noblezada as Sam, Jane Fonda as The Dragon, Whoopi Goldberg as The Captain, Simon Pegg as Bob, Flula Borg as Jeff the Unicorn and Lil Rel Howery as Marv, to name a few. As Senoo points out, having stars like Fonda, Goldberg and Pegg helped them get a solid grasp of the character’s traits. “The live-action footage helped us enormously,” recalls Senoo. “We also looked at some classic dragon animation references. Our Dragon has six legs and no wings, and she’s a powerful but caring boss, so she can relate to the leprechauns, the pigs and the bunnies. There was a challenge to keep in mind the size differences between her and all the other characters, too.”
When asked to pick her favorite sequence in the movie, Senoo says it’s very difficult to point to one scene because she’s very proud of all the work the team has been able to deliver. “Every scene brings up different kinds of memories and it’s been a great collaboration between our teams in Madrid, Connecticut and Los Angeles,” she says.
The Skydannce Animation team designed ‘Luck’s lands of good and ill fortune like the two sides of a coin, inspired by a concept by production designer Fred Warter.
“I do love the sequence where Sam chases after Bob to get a lucky penny, because we can see Sam’s physical comedy with bad luck vs. Bob’s physical comedy with good luck,” Senoo adds. “The contrast is fun to see. We can also see good luck and bad luck contrast with Sam in her apartment and work the day before without a lucky penny, and then the next day with a lucky penny. It’s so entertaining to see them. I can watch them over and over and enjoy every time. I also love the ending sequence — but that’s for everyone to find out what happens!”
Both Senoo and Holmes say they hope audiences will ultimately have a great time watching the movie and take to heart its subtle messages. “We worked really hard to relate the message that luck is a complex idea, and that both good and bad luck are made,” says Holmes. “We created the logic and rules of this world in a way that would be entertaining and organic. And in the end, we wanted Sam to look back at her life and realize that she thought she had the worst luck ever. But it turned out to be the best luck, because she finally found her family. Judging from the early screenings we had, the payoff has been great, because people are relating to her in a very positive way.”
Skydance Animation’s Luck premieres on Apple TV+ on August 5.
The Oscar-qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival is, once again, proving animation is the future when it comes to entertainment. The 18th edition, happening from August 11-20 at TCL Chinese 6 Theatres in Hollywood, Calif., unveiled its diverse selection of animated short films, including Emmy nominee Colman Domingo’s New Moon.
New Moon, written by and starring Domingo, follows an imaginative surrealist journey of a young boy and his mother chasing their inner city dreams. Adapted from his one-man play, A Boy and His Soul, this short also gives insight into Domingo’s upbringing, serving as a “love letter to West Philly and Black mothers and sons.”
New Moon
Other stellar standouts include Aaron Hughes’s Five Cents, starring Emmy Award-winner Brian Cox (Succession); the world premiere of Ninety-five Senses, directed by Jerusha Hess (Austenland, Napoleon Dynamite, Don Verdean) and Jared Hess (Minecraft, Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre), written by Chris Bowman and Hubbel Palmer (Minecraft, Masterminds, Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life), featuring Tim Blake Nelson (Nightmare Alley, Watchmen, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs); Joseph Pierce’s Scale (Cannes Selection 2022); The Castro Sisters, Domenica and Constanza Castro’s We Are Here (Sundance Selection 2022); as well as Lukas von Berg’s Saint Android (Cannes Cinéfondation 2021), among others.
Scale
The full list and schedule of animated shorts include:
Friday, August 12 , 12 p.m. PST – Adult Animation
A Guitar in the Bucket – Boyoung Kim
Angulos de la Hora – Kyle Jason Novak
Chilly and Milly – William David Caballero
FALL OF THE IBIS KING – Mikai Geronimo, Josh O’Caoimh
Freedom Swimmer – Olivia Martin-McGuire
Holy Holocaust – Osi Wald, Noa Berman-Herzberg
Invisible Eyes – Jung Seung-hee
Love, Dad – Diana Cam Van Nguyen
More Than IRemember – Amy Bench
New Moon – Jeff Le Bars, Jérémie Balais
Night – Ahmad Saleh
Ninety-five Senses – Jerusha Hess, Jared Hess
Other Half – Lina Kalcheva
Saint Android – Lukas von Berg
Saint Android
SCALE – Joseph Pierce
She Dreams at Sunrise – Camrus Johnson
Slouch – Michael Bohnenstingl
Sprite Fright – Matthew Luhn
Tehura – Wei Li
The Awakening of the Insects – Stephanie Lansaque, Francois Leroy
The Chemical Factory Drew Leung
THE CLEARING – Daniel Hope
The Fall – Desirae Witte
The Island of Us – Yu Yu
The Law of the Jungle Gym – Yoon Hei Cho
The Originals – Cristina Maria Costantini, Alfie Kim Koetter
The Record – Jonathan Laskar
The Seine’s Tears – Yanis Belaid, Eliott Benard, Nicolas Mayeur, Etienne Moulin, Hadrien Pinot, Lisa Vicente, Philippine Singer, Alice Letailleur
What I Had to Leave Behind -Sean David Christensen
Zoon – Jonatan Schwenk
Cool For You
Sunday, August 14, 5 p.m. PST – Kids Animation/Family Films
A Cartoon of a Cat Sleeping – Randall Christopher
Cool For You – Sherene Strausberg
Depths Of Night – Step C.
Nounours – Lou Rigoudy
The most boring Granny in the whole world – Damaris Zielke
The Ocean Duck -Huda Razzak
The Social Chameleon – Alex Ross
The annual Academy Awards-qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival (HSFF) brings together top creators, industry leaders and companies and has launched many filmmakers into the next stages of their careers. HollyShorts, regular on MovieMaker Magazine’s “Top 50 Festivals Worth the Entry Fee list”, also engages its community and spotlights short films year-round through monthly screenings, panels, and networking events.
Apple TV+ today revealed the trailer for Lucy’s School, a new original special celebrating educators and based on the classic Peanuts comic strip by Charles M. Schulz, premiering Friday, August 12.
The Peanuts gang are anxious about starting at a new school in the fall, inspiring Lucy to start her own school instead, but teaching isn’t as easy as it sounds. Lucy’s School is a love letter to teachers, and an appreciation of the impact a teacher can have on a child. It explores the fear of change, and shows how Lucy, supported by her friends, faces and overcomes her own fears.
Produced for Apple TV+ by Peanuts and WildBrain, the special is directed by Raymond S. Persi (It’s the Small Things, Charlie Brown) and written by Craig Schulz, Bryan Schulz and Cornelius Uliano, who also executive produce alongside Paige Braddock, Josh Scherba, Stephanie Betts, Amir Nasrabadi and Anne Loi, and is produced by James Brown and Timothy Jason Smith.
Also coming to Apple TV+ on Friday, August 12 through its partnership with WildBrain are new episodes of the beloved Apple Original, The Snoopy Show Season 2.
The expanding and award-winning lineup of original animation for kids and families on Apple TV+ also includes the critically-acclaimed and Humanitas Prize nominated El Deafo,Lovely Little Farm, Pinecone and the Pony, Harriet the Spy (The Jim Henson Company), Wolfboy and the Everything Factory (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, HITRECORD, Bento Box Ent.), Get Rolling with Otis, Academy Award-nominated film Wolfwalkers, Peabody Award-winning series Stillwater. new series and specials from Peanuts and WildBrain ( Snoopy in Space S2, It’s the Small Things, Charlie Brown, For Auld Lang Syne) and Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth, the Daytime Emmy-winning television event based on the New York Times bestselling book and TIME Best Book of the Year by Oliver Jeffers.
Twentieth century stage and screen actor Jered Barclay, who provided voices for popular animated series of the 1980s, died July 23 in North Hollywood at age 91 from MDS leukemia. News of his passing was shared by Barclay’s longtime friend, Myra Turley.
Jered “Jerry” Barclay in ‘War of the Satellites’
Barclay got a very early start in his entertainment career. Born November 22, 1930 in Seattle, he sstarted on the vaudeville stage at just three years old, performing with stars like Shirley Temple, Judy Garland and Sammy Davis Jr. By age six he was working in radio, and by age 12 he was travelling with the circus.
Often billed as “Jerry Barclay,” he started his screen career in the 1950s, with an uncredited role in The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) and guest spots on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Cheyenne. He appeared in Roger Corman’s War of the Satellites and a number of 1960s Western TV series before relocating to New York for stage work. He went on to direct and choreograph Sextet (1974) for Broadway, Rosebloom and Scandalous Memories.
Barclay voiced the villain Dr. Gregory Swofford in ‘The Transformers’
In the 1980s, after four decades in showbiz, Barclay began a new phase as a voice actor for animation. He delivered performances for cartoons like Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo, Trollkins, The Little Rascals, Richie Rich, Foofur, The Dukes and Paddington Bear, and tackled multiple roles for the hit series The Smurfs and The Transformers — including Cerebros, Dr. Swofford and Sinnertwin.
During the ’80s, Barclay also began working as an acting coach, working with many stars he met in the theater, including Liza Minelli, Rue McClanahan, Lily Tomlin, Patrick Swayze, Josh Brolin and Johnny Depp. While he continued to take some film and TV roles into the early 1990s, by the middle of the decade he decided to swtich up his career again, this time becoming an international photojournalist. Travelling to 108 countries across all seven continents, Barclay was notably the only Western journalist invited to cover the royal wedding of Bhutan’s King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuk and Queen Jetsun Pema in 2011.
Netflix today announced a three-year renewal of its content deal with Brutus Pink, the acclaimed animation production company from Nick Kroll, Andrew Goldberg, Mark Levin and Jennifer Flackett, the creative team behind the award-winning adult animated series Big Mouth and Human Resources.
The pact, which now runs through 2026, will include Brutus Pink developing and producing new animated projects for Netflix.
“Brutus Pink is thrilled to be continuing at Netflix, which has been our creative home for seven years,” says Levin. “We’re hopeful this means we get to keep the Con Air DVD that’s been sitting on Nick’s coffee table in a red envelope since 2006.”
Big Mouth is a critically-acclaimed and Emmy-nominated adult animated comedy hit about the glorious nightmare that is puberty. Inspired by Kroll and Goldberg’s childhood, it follows a group of friends and their hormone monsters as they navigate adolescence, human sexuality, and coming of age.
Big Mouth returns for Season 6 this Fall — Season 5 reached Netflix’s Top 10 in 25 countries. Human Resources, a spinoff of Big Mouth, launches its second season next year. Season 1 reached Netflix’s Top 10 in 15 countries.
“Since signing our first deal with Brutus Pink, Big Mouth has grown from a fan favorite to one of the most beloved animated franchises across the globe,” said John Derderian, Vice President of Animated Series, Netflix. “We know we’re in excellent hands with the team at Brutus Pink and can’t wait to see them create the next generation of hit animated series.”
In addition to Big Mouth, Brutus Pink will create a variety of animated projects in both film and television that are “adult, funny and emotional.”
Cloudco Entertainment in the United States, in conjunction with co-production partners, Watchnext Media in France and Kavaleer Productions in Ireland, announced the greenlight and production commencement of Season 3 of their animated hit comedy series Boy Girl Dog Cat Mouse Cheese.
Season 3’s additional 52 x 11’ episodes have been commisioned by the French television network Gulli while simultaneously ordered by the BBC in the U.K., KidsME (the children’s content division of De Agostini Group) in Italy and Ireland’s RTE. This latest order will bring the total number of 11’ animated episodes to 156.
Based on an original IP from Cloudco Entertainment, Boy Girl Dog Cat Mouse Cheese is described as “The Brady Bunch meets Modern Family” in an animated comedic take on a blended family sitcom, with Dad’s “sons” (a boy, a dog and a mouse) and Mom’s “daughters” (a girl, a cat and a piece of anthropomorphic cheese) learning to live together under one roof.
“Boy Girl Dog Cat Mouse Cheese – the show itself, but especially its title characters – have all become fun, hilarious, and indelible members of our own collective families at Watchnext Media, Kavaleer Productions and Cloudco Entertainment. Suprising, quirky, competitive, and entertaining, we’re all excited by the opportunity to bring more of their stories to life in Season 3, and in doing so, sharing more of what makes them the funniest, most loveable, animated blended family known to kids today.” said Philippe Alessandri, President of Watchnext Media; Andrew Kavanagh, President of Kavaleer Productions; and Sean Gorman, President of Cloudco Entertainment in a joint statement.
Launching late last year to consistently high ratings on both the BBC and DeAKids, Season 1 debuted in late May 2020 on Gulli as the #1 rated show in France for both children (ages 4-10) and teens (ages 11-14). Season 2 production recently wrapped and episodes have already debuted in many territories globally, including Germany (SuperRTL), the U.K. (CBBC), Gulli (France), Canada (Family Channel), SIC Impresa (Portugal) and DeAKids (Italy), with launches coming soon in Benelux and CEE (Disney), Spain (EITB), the Baltics (Duo Media Networks/Kidzone), Ireland (RTE) and the Middle East (MBC).
“We are very proud of the success of this original French series that was launched over 2 years ago now on Gulli. In 2021 it has been part of the Top 3 animated series (all channels combined) most watched by children. More than 70% of them followed the show this year! A huge success for this hilarious and resolutely modern sitcom established as a must,” noted Philippe Bony, President of Gulli. “Kids will be delighted to discover, on their favorite channel, the new adventures this family like no other and yet so endearing!”
Boy Girl Dog Cat Mouse Cheese production is supported in part by France’s Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée (CNC), Irish Film Relief (Section 481 Film Tax Credit), and Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland. Its executive producers are Alessandri and Sylvain Huchet (Watchnext Media); Kavanagh and Gary Timpson (Kavaleer Productions), and Sean Gorman, Ryan Weisbrock, Daniel Barnes and Ian Lambur (Cloudco Entertainment), as well as Season 3 story editor Tom Krajewski and directors Ophélie Mahé and Mireille Tram.
The summer movie season isn’t complete without a heroic talking animal tale for all ages, and the latest is ready to save the day in theaters this weekend with the superstrength of generally positive reviews behind it. Marking the feature directorial debut of LEGO movieverse writer/consultant Jared Stern, who also penned the pic with John Wittington, DC League of Super-Pets(Warner Bros. Pictures) opens in North America on Friday, July 29, and introduces family audiences to a new pack of underdog (or underpig, or underturtle) heroes.
In DC League of Super-Pets, Krypto the Super-Dog (Dwayne Johnson) and Superman (John Krasinski) are inseperable best friends, sharing the same superpowers and fighting crime in Metropolis side by side. When Superman and the rest of the Justice League are kidnapped, Krypto must convince a rag-tag shelter pack — Ace the hound {Kevin Hart}, PB the potbelled pig (Vanessa Bayer), Merton the turtle (Natasha Lyonne) and Chip the squirrel (Diego Luna) — to master their own newfound powers and help him rescue the Super Heroes.
The all-star cast also includes Kate McKinnon as the evil hairless hamster Lulu, Marc Maron (Lex Luthor), Olivia Wilde (Lois Lane) Keanu Reeves (Batman), Jameela Jamil (Wonder Woman ), Jemaine Clement (Aquaman), John Early (The Flash), Dascha Polanco (Green Lantern) and Daveed Diggs (Cyborg).
With a 72% Fresh Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes (from 53 reviews) and a MetaScore of 60 on MetaCritic (19 reviews), DC League of Super-Pets is being praised as a funny family pic with plenty of action. The movie is expected to take in anywhere from $25 million to $30 million when it opens in 4,300 North American theaters today, which will probably knock Jordan Peele’s “Nope” from the top spot at the box office this weekend.
While an animated superhero movie can’t help but draw comparisons to beloved titles like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and LEGO Batman, Krypto and the crew deliver a CG feature adventure worthy of the big screen experience. Here’s a quick sampling of what critics are saying:
Many reviewers have high praise for Kate McKinnon’s hilarious performance as Lulu in ‘DC League of Super-Pets’
“The cast’s vibrancy carries the film through the requisite action sequences and unremarkable animation that doubles down on the cute (the villain is, again, a squeaky guinea pig with a kitten sidekick who coughs up hairball grenades). Stern and Whittington’s vision of Metropolis isn’t quite as deliriously irreverent as in the LEGO world, but the film has enough bite for older viewers. The slapstick humor and elastic physics — lots of explosions and destruction but no harm — are for children, the swipes at Musk-esque billionaires for adults (a news headline after Luthor’s arrest: ‘Wealthy Person Actually Goes to Jail’).”
— Adrian Horton, The Guardian
“Of the multiple Earths in the [DC Universe’s] narrative space, this is the one where Metropolis is a combination of mid-century skyscrapers and futuristic towers, where Luthor wears a bright green suit of science armor while shooting big purple beams into the sky. It’s an aesthetic that carries through the entire film, and it matches the breezy tone of the jokes and the vocal performances. (Also occupying the space between the epic and the ridiculous is the score by Steve Jablonsky, Red Notice.)”
— Alonso Duralde, The Wrap
“Too often, the film gives off the feeling that it was designed for the inevitable line of toys for the upcoming holiday season, with plenty of cuddly animals of disparate types soon to line the shelves of a store near you. And like so many animated films, the proceedings devolve into a numbing series of action sequences in which the humor is largely sidelined in favor of frenetic spectacle. Still, DC League of Super-Pets manages to combine superheroes with adorable animals, which are two of kids’ favorite things, so its popularity seems assured. And adult chaperones will enjoy the many references to the DC Universe, with baby boomers’ hearts likely to soar upon hearing the callbacks to the classic John Williams score for the 1978 Superman movie that arguably started the cinematic superhero craze in the first place.”
— Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter
“The plot is…a plot. Busy and frantic and diagrammed. But there are just enough wild-card moments along the way, like those involving a baby-voiced kitten who coughs up hairball grenades. “DC League of Super-Pets” ends with a giant-monster showdown that’s very standard, though it must be said that the animators give good beast. And Batman gets the sendoff he deserves, which is to get doggy-licked right out of his funk. That’s enough to leave him smiling, and the audience, too.”
— Owen Gleiberman, Variety
“Stern and Levine fill the screen with impressive, colorful, and detailed imagery, sly visual inside jokes and Easter eggs, and convincing explosions — a LOT of them. And, it’s not just a random direct-to-DVD title writ large; DC League Of Super-Pets deserves to be seen in a movie theater on the biggest screen possible.”
— Ian Spelling, The AV Club
“Unfortunately, while DC League of Super-Pets does a decent job entertaining kids, the film is too simplistic and not fun enough to keep the whole family’s attention. The voice cast does a wonderful job, the synergy between Dwayne Johnson’s Krypto and Kevin Hart’s Ace helps to elevate the movie, and writers Jared Stern and John Wittington do their best to fill the 100 minutes runtime with the biggest number of self-referential jokes they can think of. Even so, while all of that allows DC League of Super-Pets to become casual, family-friendly fun, the movie lacks originality and can not shake off the feeling we’ve seen this before somewhere else.”
In a delirium of police lights and hallucinations, the Brit- and Grammy-winning virtual band Gorillaz ring in a new dawn: 2D, Murdoc, Noodle and Russel teamed up with Nexus Studios (nexusstudios.com) to create the psychedelic video for their new track “Cracker Island” ft. Thundercat. Directed by artist and Gorillaz co-creator Jamie Hewlett and Emmy-nominated director Fx Goby, the vid takes viewers on a late night jaunt to the City of Angels.
Gorillaz – “Cracker Island”
“Think of it as the final scene in the movie, the bit after the grand finale when the hero (me) is about to stride into the sunset, credits rolling. That’s right, we’re starting at the end. Why? COS I WORK IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS,” shared bassist Murdoc (voiced by actor-comedian Phil Cornwell).
Originally based at Kong Studios in West London, the group of musical misfits have relocated to Silverlake, California as they recruit new members to join ‘The Last Cult’, in search of the one truth to fix the world. With this new direction comes a new look, as the band now appear in super stylized 3D, courtesy of a close creative collaboration between Hewlett and Goby.
Gorillaz – “Cracker Island”
With a 20-year track record of innovation, this latest move by Gorillaz into 3D paves the way for multi-platform activations and the opportunity for fans to step further than ever before into the weird and wonderful world of Murdoc, Noodle, Russel and 2D. Hewlett and Goby’s fusion of animation and live action blends with clever lighting techniques and hallucinatory appearances by virtuosic bassist, mercurial talent and two-time Grammy winner, Thundercat.
Gorillaz – “Cracker Island”
On “Cracker Island,” Hewlett’s ever-evolving creative approach to Gorillaz offered director Goby an opportunity to bring his multidisciplinary expertise to the collaboration drawing on his extensive experience with 2D and 3D animation, live action, and everything in between. Goby’s directing credits include the Emmy-nominated immersive film Back to the Moon and multi-award-winning animated Jack London short To Build a Fire.
Gorillaz – “Cracker Island”
“Gorillaz’s iconic and groundbreaking legacy hugely inspired my early animation career. I was thrilled to partner with them to create this blend of live action and animation, and knew we would need the perfect balance between stylised and realistic,” said Goby. I couldn’t be happier with the sculpt and textures both faithful to the design but very much their own version. It was a privilege to work with 2D, Murdoc, Noodle and Russel not only in 3D but in this wild new era.”
Cracker Island” is a Nexus Studios and Gorillaz production with on-location support from Tuna Icon (Belgrade) and AzuL (Barcelona), and Grade from Black Kite Studios.
Formed in 1998 by Hewlett and musician Damon Albarn (Blur) in 1998, Gorillaz are an English virtual band blending alt rock, art pop, electronic, hip hop and many other usical influences. The group’s self-titled 2001 debut album, featuring the single “Clint Eastwood,” went triple platinum in the U.K., and the follow-up Demon Days (featuring “Feel Good Inc.”) went six-times platinum in the U.K. and double platinum in the U.S. In 2020, they launched the music video web series Song Machine, co-directed by Tim McCourt and Max Taylor (The Line) and featuring the voices of Phil Cornwell, Kevin Bishop, Haruka Abe and Remi Kabaka Jr.
Gorillaz have won a Grammy Award, two MTV Music Video Awards, three MTV Europe Music Video Awards and won the 2018 Brit Award for Best British Group, with 11 nominations for the Brits. The same year, Guinness World Records named them the “Most Successful Virtual Band” with over 26 million records sold worldwide.
Comedy Central today announced that renowned franchise South Park will celebrate a quarter century this summer with “South Park: The 25th Anniversary Experience” an immersive, traveling exhibit showcasing props, memorabilia, art work, collectables and never-before-seen scripts, storyboards concept art & more.
Inspired by the real South Park Studios storage unit where many of the items displayed have been held for the past 25 years, the exhibit is housed within a custom fabricated shipping container: giving fans the authentic experience of ‘stepping into the South Park vault for the very first time.’ The shipping container — which features a custom, Cartman-inspired paint job — will also serve as an interactive photo opp: giving fans the opportunity to pose alongside their favorite characters against three different iconic South Park landscapes.
Additionally, fans will be able to purchase South Park merchandise (including limited edition 25th anniversary items specific to each location) as part of the 25th Anniversary Experience ‘tag sale.’
Heading to Chicago this weekend after kicking off in New York’s Union Square on July 23, the 25th Anniversary Experience is free to attend and will be popping up in highly trafficked areas across the United States. Following its New York launch, the experience, produced in collaboration with entertainment and brand experience company Superfly, will be in the following locations [all local time from 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.]:
New York City: Saturday, July 23 at Union Square
Chicago: Saturday, July 30 at Navy Pier
Red Rocks: Tuesday, August 9 & Wednesday August 10 at Red Rocks Trading Post
Denver: Friday, August 12 & Saturday August 13 at McGregor Square
Los Angeles: Saturday, August 20 at Hollywood & Vine
Additionally, a tailgate experience will be an added attraction to the previously announced two-day concert at Red Rocks on August 9 & August 10. The tailgate, which will take place at Red Rocks Trading Post and will be open to the public, will offer a communal celebration of all things South Park featuring activations, games, cosplay contests and more.
Featuring iconic songs from the historic series, “South Park: The 25th Anniversary Concert” will be filmed live at Red Rocks and will premiere on Comedy Central on Saturday, August 13 at 10 p.m. ET/PT, streaming the next day (Sunday, August 14) on Paramount+. The event will feature series creators & executive producers Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Primus and Ween.
Co-creators Parker and Stone are executive producers of South Park, along with Anne Garefino and Frank C. Agnone II. Eric Stough, Adrien Beard, Bruce Howell and Vernon Chatman are producers. Christopher Brion is the creative director of South Park Digital Studios. South Park‘s website is SouthPark.CC.com.
MTV Entertainment Studios’ expansive deal with Parker and Stone includes extending South Park on Comedy Central through 2027 and taking cable’s longest-running scripted series, which originally premiered August 13, 1997, the franchise’s 25th anniversary – through an unprecedented 30th season. In addition to the series extension, the new deal includes 14 South Park original made-for-streaming movies exclusively for Paramount+, including last year’s South Park: Post COVID and South Park: Post COVID: The Return of COVID as well as this year’s South Park The Streaming Wars and South Park The Streaming Wars Part 2. The series has earned five Emmy Awards, to date, and a George Foster Peabody Award.
Horror fans will get a unique treat this month as Gravitas Ventures releases the hybrid rotoscope animated feature Canvas on demand on August 9. The distributor has just released a new official trailer for the supernatural crime drama.
In this midnight thriller, a demon known as ‘The Painter’ comes to Earth with a gruesome mission – to create new spawn from chaos and murder. FBI agent George Rohan finds himself tasked with covering up The Painter’s multiplying murders, meanwhile a dogged investigative journalist, Reila Martin works to unveil George’s growing web of lies.
An official selection at Annecy and Strasbourg, Canvas was awarded Best Experiemental Feature by the Toronto Film and Script Awards. The film has also been selected to screen at The Art of Brooklyn, Dumbo, Hollywood Horrorfest, HorrorHound, Lighthouse and Macabre Faire festivals.
Starring Marama Corlett, Steve Key, Isabel Ellison, Sam Encarnación, Mia Hutchinson-Shaw, Juan Francisco Villa, Mandy Bishop, Mini Kim, with Diana Guiterman as Mary Lang and Ell Peck as The Painter.
Canvas
Canvas is written and directed by Ryan Guiterman, who also edited the pic and served as producer alongside Isabel Ellison and Betsy Shuller; and executive producer with Steven Stoller, Victoria Hill, David Kennedy and Simon Taufique, who composed the music.
Gravitas Ventures presents a Precariat Production in association with Guiterman Solutions.
After achieving box office and comedic success with Thor: Ragnarok, Kiwi filmmaker Taika
Waititi returns with Thor: Love and Thunder, which ups the ante of action mayhem. In an effort to prevent the systematic murder of deities by a former worshipper, the Norse God of Thunder reteams with an ex-girlfriend. The cast of Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, Tessa Thompson, Russell Crowe, Jamie Alexander, Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan and Waititi himself was supported by Marvel Studios’ VFX supervisor Jake Morrison, who has been involved with MCU franchise ever since the original solo outing.
Overall, 25 vendors situated in Italy, U.K., Canada, United States, Australia and New Zealand were responsible for producing 2200 visual effects shots. “You could say that the sun never sets on the Thor: Love and Thunder empire,” says Morrison. “You couldn’t go and see everybody [because of the pandemic], but it felt like a far more personal experience to do the whole thing through Zoom. For example, when saying our goodbyes and thank yous to Method Studios, it was heart-wrenching as we had over 300 people on Zoom. My take on the whole thing is I try to make sure the experience is as personal as possible so the notes go all the way down. If you want to be able to convince people that it’s worth the work to actually stay [for a couple of extra hours] and make the shots better, the personal side of it becomes more important.”
Retaining Logic Within the Madness
Morrison points out that even the film’s outrageous scenes, like giant goats pulling a flying Asgardian boat, had to be grounded with a sense of logic. “I’m a big fan of superhero mechanics,” admits Morrison. “What I don’t want is a movie where the rules don’t make any sense. I thought, ‘What if we put Stormbreaker, which we know can summon Bifrost, front and center?’ We established that the boats can fly earlier when we see the Asgard tourist scenes. We hook up the goats in the front because we need a powerful force of compulsion. We get this mad spectacle of this beam of Bifrost creating a physical surface for the goats to run on and you have sprays of Bifrost crystal kicking off of their impacts. Why don’t we have Bifrost Bridge left behind everywhere all of the time? I’ll tell you why: The keel of the boat is lower than the Bifrost bridge and carves through it.”
Along with having to deal with the reappearance of Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), Thor has to come to terms with his ex-girlfriend forging an intimate relationship with his former hammer, Mjølnir. “The great thing about Taika’s comedy is that it’s relatable,” notes Morrison. “Korg obviously serves as a foil for all of that when he says, ‘Bro, it must be hard to see your ex-girlfriend with your ex-hammer getting on so well.’ It’s the thing your friend would say that would just destroy you!”
The most amount of time went into animating the arrival of Thor’s jealous axe Stormbreaker during the New Asgard town meeting. “I’ve animated a lot of things over the years and this is probably the least expression that I’ve been given to work with, because what does an axe do? It floats and turns menacing, which means you’ve got two things to play with: speed and turning ratio. Occasionally we put lightning in, such as when Thor has Zeus’s Thunderbolt and goes, ‘This is the army! It’s sleek and beautiful.’ Then you look outside and Stormbreaker is causing the whole boat to pitch up and down.”
In Thor: Ragnarok, Hela shattered the Mjølnir which has a dramatic payoff in Thor: Love and Thunder when Jane Foster transforms into The Mighty Thor as she can assemble and disassemble the hammer at will.
Jake Morrison
“There are a lot of hammer-related gags that you can do, and at a certain point there aren’t,” observes Morrison. “This was a new lease on life for me in terms of visual storytelling. During the New Asgard battle, Thor fires the hammer and the audience is expecting to see a full Mjölnir hammer strike like we have seen in all of the other pictures — but then there is a frontal shot where the whole thing breaks apart and each of the individual pieces turn into hunter and seeker missiles and go through and — Pop! Pop! Pop! — kill all of the shadow creatures that the Asgardians are fighting.”
“The trouble is you can’t stop there,” he adds. “Every single battle you have to do different gags. You get cool beats like on the Moon of Shame when Thor fires out all of the hammer pieces and that last one is a spikey bit that you could use as a dagger that she shoves into the shadow creature’s head, all of the pieces come back and explode its brain. That’s fun!”
A disillusioned worshipper known as Gorr the God Butcher serves as the antagonist and gradually physically deteriorates due to his relationship with the Necrosword. “At the beginning we were going to have him be fully CG at a certain point,” reveals Morrison. “We did LightStage scans with Christian Bale and had a lot of different development work where whole chunks of his face were missing and you could see the necrosis taking place.”
However, with Gorr being so much in the picture, the CG approach was decided to be too risky when it came to retaining the performance of Bale. “We gradually steered back towards a 100 percent prosthetic solution with the teeth and scars,” says the supervisor.
One of the film’s dramatic scenes involves the sidekick rock creature Korg getting killed by Zeus’s Thunderbolt. “Korg is like a technical animation exercise. It’s hard to make him look like a bunch of rocks that are moving as a coherent person but never squashing and stretching.”
As for groundbreaking visual effects, Morrison singles out the Moon of Shame sequence where color gives way to a black and white lunar environment. “I wanted to make a bump up on the technology used for the Valkyrie flashback in Thor: Ragnarok and try to put it in something that wasn’t slow motion,” explains Morrison. “Imagine the ability to shoot one actor doing one thing with multiple lighting passes and splitting them all out after the fact. Taika wanted us to have infinite control. We talked about magnesium flares in the air and that whole travel arc with long shadows. I ended up trying to reverse engineer a way to be able to control that because he likes to shoot continuously as well.”
Six different lighting stations were set up around the circular moon base. “Each of the individual pieces was shot with a static light,” recalls the VFX supe. “Because lighting is additive if you do it in the right color space you can literally add any light that you want as you need it. You don’t have to build a CG version of the actor and do a fake version where the skin and cloth response won’t be as good. You actually have that light. It’s a level up way of shooting an action sequence and making it feel, even for something as crazy as this, more honest. It was a huge challenge to pull all of the required ingredients together between all of the different departments, lighting, camera, editorial and of course our VFX vendors that made it all sing. To break the mold with something as innovative as this is terrifying but also exhilarating when you finally see the results.”
Marvel’s Thor: Love and Thunder is currently playing in theaters worldwide through Walt Disney Pictures.
PBS KIDS and Fred Rogers Productions announced today that Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, the #1 animated series for preschoolers on PBS KIDS and first series inspired by the groundbreaking Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, will kick off its 10th anniversary year on September 3 with a marathon of “Top Ten Tiger Tales” on PBS KIDS.
The special programming event was voted on by fans and will lead into the highly anticipated sixth season, featuring a week of all-new episodes, streaming free on PBS KIDS beginning September 5.
“Since its launch a decade ago,Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, with its iconic strategy songs and gentle life lessons, has become an integral part of life for preschoolers, parents and caregivers,” said Sara DeWitt, Senior Vice President and General Manager, PBS KIDS. “We’re delighted to help children continue to learn and grow alongside their favorite tiger with a whole new season, digital games and more.”
“For the last 10 years, we’ve been honored to hear from families everywhere about the impact that Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood has had on them personally,” said Paul Siefken, President and CEO, Fred Rogers Productions. “We are thrilled to continue to support preschoolers as they learn along with Daniel and to further the enduring legacy of Fred Rogers for another generation of children.”
Families are invited to “hop aboard” Trolley for a weekend of special anniversary programming featuring favorite movies like Daniel Tiger Visits a New Neighborhood and Won’t You Be Our Neighbor? “Top Ten Tiger Tales,” a five-hour marathon, will showcase 10 fan-chosen episodes from over the years – including the very first story, “Daniel’s Birthday”; classics such as “The Baby is Here” and “Daniel Visits the Doctor”; and newer favorites like “Daniel’s New Friend Max.”
The 10th anniversary celebration continues with the launch of Season 6 on PBS KIDS with four exciting new episodes that will showcase more preschool “firsts” such as having a new babysitter, going to a sleepover and trying a new activity. The episodes will feature fresh strategy songs to help families navigate these relatable situations and more. The full season will include 18 new 30-minute episodes. Full programming details are included below.
Series-inspired activities and resources that extend the fun and learning for “little tigers” and their families nationwide will also roll out on pbskids.org/daniel and the free PBS KIDS Games app, including Daniel Tiger’s Nature Walk, an all-new digital game that will debut in September. Kids and families can continue to play and learn with Daniel as they discover all the interesting things there are to see outside.
In addition, several new and exciting Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood products will be released to celebrate the anniversary at the end of August. Jakks Pacific will be launching the “Cuddle Up Daniel Tiger” plush, while Simon & Schuster will release the new board book, I Will Always Be Your Friend!, written by series creator Angela C. Santomero. Pact Organic will also be launching Daniel’s Red Sweater to mark the anniversary—the first time Daniel’s iconic red sweater will be offered at retail.
When it debuted on PBS KIDS in 2012, Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, the first original show from Fred Rogers Productions since Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, brought the children’s television pioneer’s legacy to life for a whole new generation of young viewers. Every episode of the well-loved series showcases two distinct stories starring four-year-old Daniel Tiger and his friends, who invite viewers to join them as they explore the colorful Neighborhood of Make-Believe. Irresistible musical strategies reinforce the unique theme of each show; preschoolers and parents can sing along and incorporate them into their daily lives.
Executive producers are Angela C. Santomero, Chief Creative Officer at 9 Story Media Group; Ellen Doherty, Chief Creative Officer of Fred Rogers Productions; and Vince Commisso, President & CEO, 9 Story Media Group.
The series has garnered a host of prestigious awards, including a 2019 Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Preschool Children’s Animated Series, 2020 Parents’ Choice Gold Award for Television, 2018 Common Sense Media Seal of Approval and the Outstanding Achievement in Youth Programming by the Television Critics Association in 2016.
Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood 10th Anniversary:
September 2 PBS KIDS Family Night (7:00-9:00 p.m. ET)
Daniel Tiger Visits a New Neighborhood
Won’t You Be Our Neighbor?
September 3 Top 10 Tiger Tales Marathon (2:00-7:00 p.m. ET)
The Baby Is Here
Daniel’s New Friend Max
Daniel Goes to the Hospital
Nighttime in the Neighborhood
The Neighborhood Snowstorm
Daniel Visits the Doctor
It’s Not Okay to Hurt Someone
Neighborhood Thank You Day
There’s Time for Daniel and Baby Too
Daniel’s Birthday
PBS KIDS Family Night (7:00-9:00 p.m. ET)
Daniel Tiger Visits a New Neighborhood
Won’t You Be Our Neighbor?
September 4 Top 10 Tiger Tales Marathon (8:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. ET)
PBS KIDS Family Night (7:00-9:00 p.m. ET)
Daniel Tiger Visits a New Neighborhood
Won’t You Be Our Neighbor?
September 5-8 Season 6 premiere
Daniel’s New Babysitter/Daniel Sleeps at the Treehouse
Daniel Feels Worried About Mom/Jodi Loses Benji
Jodi Tries Ballet/Daniel Tries Something New with Grandpere
Daniel Goes to Day Camp/Daniel’s Rainy Day at Camp
Enjoy the lazy days of summer with friends, family and fun new toons this month by tuning into The Summer Break Collection, just launched by Netflix Kids & Family. With 50 summer-themed shows and movies and new content debuting weekly, the hub will feature August premieres including Super Giant Robot Brothers, Team Zenko Go Season 2 and The Cuphead Show!Part 2.
The Summer Break Collection – August Animation Premieres
Big Tree City (Preschool Series) — A team of animal heroes with special skills and speedy vehicles work together to keep Big Tree City safe and solve the town’s trickiest problems. (Watch.)
Super Giant Robot Brothers (Kids Series) — Once the squabbling stops, the battling begins! Robot siblings Shiny and Thunder and their whiz inventor must defend Earth when space monsters attack. (Watch.)
Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie(Film) — The teen turtles and their mystic ninja powers are put to the ultimate test when ruthless creatures from another universe look to unleash extreme chaos. (Watch.)
Team Zenko Go: Season 2 (Preschool) — Runaway robo-dogs, sleepwalking uncles and troublesome tots! These kid heroes in hiding are finding more ways to help around the town of Harmony Harbor. (Watch.)
Deepa & Anoop (Preschool) — Joined by her color-changing pet elephant, a joyful little girl creates music, merriment and mischief at her Indian family’s Mango Manor hotel. (Watch.)
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: Season 3 (Kids Series) — With Skeletor intent on controlling the universe, He-Man and his heroic squad must fulfill their destinies. The epic battle for ultimate power is on! (Watch.)
The Cuphead Show!: Part 2 (Kids Series) — Follow the misadventures of the impulsive Cuphead and his easily swayed brother Mugman in this animated series based on the hit video game. (Watch.)
Lost Ollie (Limited Series) — A toy searches the countryside for the young boy who lost him in this family series inspired by the book Ollie’s Odyssey. (Watch.)
Angry Birds: Summer Madness: Season 3 (Kids Series) — Teen birds Red, Chuck, Bomb and Stella are crashing through Camp Splinterwood with their fellow feathered campers for a summer of high-flying hijinks! (Watch.)
Mighty Express: Season 7 (Preschool) — Nate, Flicker and the rest of the trains raise the rails for more thrilling deliveries, special missions and lighthearted lessons on the track. (Watch.)
See more of The Summer Break Collection on Netflix here.
***This article originally appeared in the 35th Anniversary Issue of Animation Magazine (June/July ’22, No. 321)***
It’s been 38 years since director Joe Dante introduced us to the wonderful, wicked and unforgettable creatures known as Gremlins. We all knew that these colorful monsters, which go wild if they’re fed after midnight, would make great animated characters. In 2023, we can finally enjoy a new animated show about them, one that centers on a naïve 10-year-old Sam Wing (voiced by Izaac Wang) who meets the young Mogwai known as Gizmo.
Just announced at Comic-Con, the show’s stellar voice cast (which includes Ming-Na Wen, B.D. Wong, James Hong, Matthew Rhys, A.J. LoCascio as Gizmo and Izaac Wang as Sam) will be joined in the 10-episode first season by exciting guest stars: Sandra Oh, Randall Park, George Takei, Bowen Yang and Zach Galligan, who starred as Billy in the original Gremlins movies and will be voicing “a cool character” yet to be revealed.
Dan Krall
Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai, which is slated to premiere on HBO Max and Cartoon Network’s Sunday ACME Night block in 2023, is written and executive produced by Tze Chun (Gotham, Once Upon a Time). Darryl Frank, Justin Falvey, Sam Register and Brendan Hay also serve as exec producers. We had a chance to chat with the Amblin Television / Warner Bros. Animation show’s talented supervising producer Dan Krall and art director Tara Rueping ahead of the show’s special premiere at Annecy in June.
“I was a child of the ‘80s, and Gremlins and other similar Amblin movies left a big impact on me,” says Krall, an Emmy-winning animation veteran who has worked on a wide range of projects include Samurai Jack, SpongeBob SquarePants, The Powerpuff Girls and Coraline. “I was also a big Chinese mythology and historical drama fan. So, I loved the fact that we could revisit China in a historic period and encounter other mythological creatures. It was a triple grand slam for me!”
Sam (voiced by Izaac Wang) and Gizmo (A.J. LoCascio) in ‘Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai
Mischief and Mayhem
Rueping, a well-respected veteran of animated games such as The Walking Dead: A New Frontier and Tales from the Borderlands, who was also a design artist on Star Wars: The Clone Wars, joined the project about two and a half years ago. “When a co-worker mentioned the show to me, I got super excited about it because I love all those old ’80s fantasies. So, I actually applied for the art director role through a test,” she tells us. “I think my test showed my enthusiasm, because I got the job.”
According to Krall, the series takes place in the early 1920s. “We did a little bit of math, since our character was 70 in 1984,” he points out. “Moving backwards, we figured out where he would have been. We landed in a time when electricity was just introduced after the industrial revolution. Gremlins love electricity, and we wanted to have neon lights around. We kind of picked this sweet spot and left it a little vague for those reasons.”
Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai
Krall and Rueping both also share a love for visual development artwork. “When we see these ‘art of’ books, you have all these beautiful painterly, graphic and stylized images, but when the movie comes out, the CG animation makes everything look very photorealistic,” says Krall. “One of our goals here was to retain those painterly qualities in the show. Both of us are big fans of Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker game. We both mentioned it at the same time! It became kind of a touchstone for us.
“We also realized that the stories that we were going to tell were going to require a lot of subtle lighting,” he adds. “So, we wanted to incorporate a lot of live-action lighting, splits-like camera moves and drifts on dialog.”
The bulk of the animation was handled by Blue Spirit studio (What If…?, Ernest & Celestine) in France and a couple of episodes were produced by 88 Pictures in India.
Tara Rueping
According to Rueping, the production utilized many of the popular CG animation packages used in the business. “We use Maya, ZBrush and Photoshop, of course,” she notes.
“The overseas studios also have their own proprietary tools that they work with. Since we are a hybrid show, we really wanted to flatten the CG as much as possible and marry it with 2D elements and play with things like depth of field to create the unique look that we were looking for.”
Krall remembers the first time they saw the turntable CG model work together with the lighting and texturing against the painted background they had envisioned. “We had a lot of matte paintings as background as well as CG sets, so the idea to have these CG-animated characters walking around what was sometimes a painting and sometimes a CG set was quite a challenge,” he explains. “We were really excited when they all worked very well together.”
Rueping adds, “We needed to pay close attention to the characters’ forms since we were going with simple shapes. We had to make sure we got those big details right. I remember working with Dan on Gizmo and he was very meticulous about getting his mouth shape right. We had to make sure we got his underbite just right. We weren’t going to redesign the characters like some other shows do. We wanted to take the Gremlin characters that everyone loves and depict them in a simpler style.”
The series creators worked hard to faithfully translate the iconic Gizmo character from the movies into a painterly CG update.
Mixing Laughs with Drama
The creative team was also eager to duplicate the original tones and light touch of the movies. “We have more minutes of content — there are 10 episodes in the first season, so we can tell a bigger, serialized story about things that existed in the Gremlins universe,” says Krall. “We looked for opportunities to tell this intense, emotional, dramatic story where the characters are moving across the country and heavy stuff is happening, but at the same time, we found time for silly, ridiculous things to happen and have Gremlins jokes to break up the harder moments.”
Krall and Rueping both praise the contributions of Tze Chun and Brendan Hay to the project. “They each brought a lot of different skills and experiences to the show,” says Krall. “Tze shared a lot of his own knowledge of Chinese mythology as well as his personal experiences of traveling to places like the Chinese amusement park Tiger Balm Garden (which was created to promote Tiger Balm products). Brendan is also a big fan of the Gremlins movies and was always on point in keeping it silly and true to the original tone of Joe Dante’s film.”
The duo also hopes their show offers the same enjoyment and feeling that the movies provided audiences a few decades ago. “I hope they feel like we expanded on something that they already love,” says Krall. Adds Rueping., “Everyone on the team put so much love, energy and excitement into the project. Many people told me that the show has become a passion project for them. I hope viewers will not only enjoy our take on the Gremlins universe, but also feel the love that we’ve all put on this project.”
Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai will premiere on HBO Max and Cartoon Network in 2023.
Set in China in the 1920s, ‘Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai’ opened up a new world of story and design potential for the creative team.
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.Ok
