Tuesday, March 31, 2009

TAIS Chickenjam!



Lil' late in coming, I know, but we're finally off and running with this year's anijam event, the CHICKENJAM! Yep, it's all about the poultry this year as we take submissions for 10 seconds each of feathery animated goodness. Standard rules from last year apply...make it a 10 second animated film, make it about or around the theme, and submit a .QT format vid file to TAIS by May 30th.

Special thanks to Bryce for the audio werks, and the nicely cheesy v.o. And thanks to Michael Fukushima over at the NFB. He's gotten us some DVD's featuring chicken-related shorts from the NFB's animation archives. We'll be getting more goodies as the date draws nearer. In the meantime, get cracking on those films!

Monday, March 30, 2009

TAIS Nooze!



O.k., some bits of news to start yer week. TAIS is working with The Images Festival to present a bizarre of the bizarre, so to speak. Included in the programme is Jim Trainor's new short, 'The Presentation Theme'. Details below!

On Screen 1: "A Human Drawing Blood From a Bound Prisoner, an Anthropomorphic Cat Doing the Same"
Sunday, April 5 6pm at the Joseph Workman Theatre (1001 Queen Street West)
Admission: Pay What You Can

TAIS is pleased to co-present "A Human Drawing Blood From a Bound Prisoner, an Anthropomorphic Cat Doing the Same", a programme of short films in conjunction with The Images Festival. Features new work from Jim Trainor!
For more info visit www.imagesfestival.com
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Next, a workshop with puppet animator Mike Weiss! He'll be holding court, giving the downlow on techniques he used to bring his film 'Inheritance' to life. Here's the scoop:

Stop Motion Animation Workshop with Mike Weiss

Puppet building, puppet animation fundamentals, and a "How To" intro to independent Stop Motion.
Sunday, April 26th, 2009. 10 am - 5 pm
At the TAIS Studio, 60 Atlantic Avenue
$35 members, $50 non-members (Pre-registration required)
To register, contact the TAIS office at tais@bellnet.ca or by calling 416-533-7889

By the way, STASH, the monthly DVD magazine, feature Mike in issue 29...copies still availables.
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Finally, our erstwhile and indefatigable admin, Tara, has sat down for an interview with education networking and community blog Learning in the City. Tara's interview nicely capsulizes TAIS as and organization and what we do in the animation and arts community...definitely a worthy read.

Well, that's all the nooze what's fit fer print today. Big announcement (with fresh animation!) tomorrow, punkaroos...stay tooned.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Selections de Felix

Gisele Kerozene dir. Jan Kounen







A few choice films personally chosen by TAIS board member and all-'round tasteful dude Felix. 'Gisele Kerozene', directed by Jan Kounen, is some Norm McLaren inspired nuttiness that includes one of the weirdest chase scenes ever filmed. 'Isle of Flowers', pts. 1 and 2, directed by Jorge Furtado, is, according to Felix "one of my favourite shorts/animations today (after missing it for 10 years!). It's from Brazil, political and pretty fast paced." Enjoy! Oh, and the slow season ends next week...we've had our General Meeting and there's tons of events, workshops and one special announcement comin' just around the bend...stay tooned.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

KAFI: They likes me!


O.k., If it seems like I'm goin' a bit overboard in my excitement, this is the first full-fledged honest-to-gosh animation fest I've been accepted into, and the fact that it's KAFI, one of the biggest n' best, just knocks my socks off even further. You might remember that this lil' toon was created for Jeromy 'Doc' Adams (the voice) for his 'Extra Life' gaming charity, which incidentally raised over 100, 000 semolians for pediatric cancer research. Hopefully, I had a lil' to do in spreading the word about the event with my 'toon. Here's the YouTube:



I'd like to thank Doc for his awesome sound and v.o. work, and Eric Zermeno for his tips on colors and characters. Doc's gonna be doing the event again this year in October, so be sure to sign up, play them games and heal them kids!

And yep, I've already got plans to do another promo; I'll keep ya posted. Here's a letter from Doc explaining his motivation behind the event, and hence, mine. More later!

KAFI 2009 official selections announced!


O.k., slow to the post here...the .pdf of official selections for the 2009 Kalamazoo Animation Festival International were posted about a week and a half back, but I've been busy with stuffs, some of which you'll see in the next post. From the website:

"These films were selected from over 555 films from around the world for competition screening-judging in the Commissioned, Independent, Student and Web categories. This year's films have a variety of styles, story lines and techniques from the young artists (12 and under) to the seasoned professionals and independents. All films selected as a Finalist will be shown on the big screen during KAFI at the historic State Theatre in downtown Kalamazoo."

Congrats to one and all who got the nod! Gotta see if'n I can't make it to this one...if not, I know Madi at least will be in attendance. And now, for a related announcement.