Best of Ottawa screening next week!

Quick post to let y'all know that if you missed Ottawa '09, you can still catch some hilights and enjoy air-conditioned comfyness at our Best of Ottawa screening next Thursday! Here's the skinny:

1.2 Best of Ottawa International Animation Festival Screening

Enjoy highlights from the 2009 edition of the OIAF, co-presented by the Toronto Animated Image Society and the NFB Mediatheque. The Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) is the largest of its kind in North America, attracting film buffs, art lovers, filmmakers, and cartoon fans from around the world to the nation's capital. The 2010 Festival takes place October 20th-24th.

Best of Ottawa International Animation Festival Screening
Thursday, July 15, 2010, 7 PM
NFB Cinema, 150 John Street
$6, $4 for TAIS members, students, seniors, Front Row passholders

Films screening include:
Love on the Line, Postalolio, Please Say Something, The Bellow’s March, Chick, The Black Dog’s Progress, Magic Cube and Ping-Pong, The Art of Drowning, History of the Meat Packing District, MGMT Kids, The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9! And Inherent Obligations

Come on downs, bring friends, and decompress with some cool toons. Later!

TAIS Summer Showcase 2010

Whee, what a summer! Games galore, but work galore too! Don't worry, we've got toons galore comin' up next week for our Summer Showcase! Being on the board I was privy to the selection of the films, and we've got a hell of a lineup for ya. Here's them details:

You are cordially invited to join TAIS for an evening celebrating the best new animations from Toronto and beyond! Short animated films of all styles and genres will be screened, along with entries from our animated jam session, the Aqua Jam. We’ll also screen the cameraless animations created over the year at our monthly Incubator sessions. Awards and reception will follow screening. An event not to be missed! Come out and support your local animation scene.

TAIS ANIMATION SHOWCASE
THURSDAY, JUNE 24, 2010
7:30 PM; doors open at 7:00 PM
At the TRANZAC CLUB (292 Brunswick Avenue – off Bloor St. near Bathurst St.)
$8 general admission; $6 for TAIS members

Program includes:
"The Orange" by Nick Fox-Gieg
"Everybody" by Steve Reinke & Jessie Mott
“Weenie Wagon Woe” by Willy Ashworth
"I Need an Escape Plan" by Julie Doucet & Anne-Françoise Jacques
"Beneath the Eye of Time" by Madi Piller
"Recipe" by Martha Griffith
"Birth" by Signe Baumane
"Amoeba" by Patrick Jenkins
"The Animator" by Marc Beurteaux
"The Arctic Circle" by Kevin Parry
"Heavenly Bodies" by Mike Weiss
"Nukie Goes Bonkers" by Jonathan Amitay
"William's Creatures" by Pasquale La Montagna
... And so much more!

With installations:
"Thalé" by Barry Doupé
"A Typical Morning for Green and Blue" by Andrew James Paterson


**Please note: Admittance to the screening is restricted to those 18 years of age or older. Under the Ontario Theatres Act, we are required to adopt a blanket adult rating in order to hold public screenings without having to submit all works to a review board for classification.

**Like with all TAIS Programming and events, the Showcase is generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts (Media Arts Section), the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council.


See you next week!


--------------------------------------------
Toronto Animated Image Society
60 Atlantic Avenue, Suite 102
Toronto, ON M6K 1X9
Canada
416-533-7889
tais@bellnet.ca
www.tais.ca

Fred loves the chicken! (not literally, you pervs...)

Just a quick post with Episode #176 (!) of Channel Frederator, now featuring more chicken! Yep, the powers that be at the big red Fred were nice enough to program the ChickenJam trailer into this week's episode...look for it at around the five minute mark. And stick around for the rest of the show, o' course! From the site:

"First up, we have a sweet music video for Broken Social Scene's "Pitter Patter Goes by Heart" called "Note To Self." Second is the Manila Folder Classifieds and the adventures therein. Certainly, there are no adventures quite like the ones in the Manila Folder Classifieds, as you will see. and finally, we have something cool with "I've Got Nothing," a look at the creative process and the response to the blank page."

Sounds cool. Check it. And start makin' your chicken-a-mations, right after you mark May 29th and June 25th on your calendars. Get it to us by the first date, so we can throw it up on the big screen at the NFB Cinema come the second. I'm out...more later!

TAIS Showcase and Jam info!

Seems to be a bit o' confoosion on dates n' stuff, so here' s a followup to letcha know when everything surrounding the TAIS Summer Showcase is happenin'. Remember, if you got any questions about anything TAIS, the contact info is under the pic of the cute lil' foxy guy with the big green sword off to the right, in me profile.

TAIS Summer Showcase

Deadline: May 29, 2009 - 5:00 pm

Have you made an animated short film in the last two years? Want it to screen to a packed house as part of the fantastic TAIS Animation Showcase at the NFB this June? Then submit!

All Genres, mediums, themes! Films must be under 15 minutes in length.

Screeners should be in either MiniDV or Quick Time Movie films on DVD/CD. (NOTE: we'll accept FTP submissions as well, just e-mail us to let us know that's your plan first!)

Send your submission to:
Toronto Animated Image Society
TAIS Showcase 2009
60 Atlantic Avenue
Toronto, ON
M6K 1X9

Please include the submission form, a brief description, an artist bio and contact information, as well as two film stills (tiff or jpg @ 300 dpi - 2 x 3) . Description, bio, contact info and film stills may be emailed to tais@bellnet.ca or included in submission package.

TAIS ChickenJam

Deadline: May 29, 2009

TAIS is at it again with its annual Animated Jam session, or Anijam!

This year’s theme is... Chickens! Yes, you heard right. Chickens of the World, chickens of the sea, chickens of the forest, chicken scratch. Poulet of all sorts.

Create a 10 second long animated film that somehow encompasses our chicken theme! Use any animation technique you want... just make it delicious! Submit it to TAIS and we’ll edit the submissions into a chicken AniJam film which will screen at the TAIS Summer Showcase at the National Film Board this June!

Plus, we’ve got tons of giveaways!

Submit your films on CD/DVD-Rom or via email/file hosting link with the submission form, a brief bio and 2 stills (jpeg) from your film. Format of all Chicken Jam submissions should be a 720 x 480 Quicktime.

Send submissions with the submission form, a brief bio and two stills (jpeg) from your film to:

Toronto Animated Image Society
Chicken Jam
60 Atlantic Avenue, Suite 102
Toronto, Ontario
M6K 1X9
CANADA

Want to send it digitally? OK! Email us a zipped file, email us an ftp link to download from, email us a file hosting link to:

tais@bellnet.ca

There you is! We had an anonymous person o' interest leave commentary that they didn't know the dates...hope this gives you the info you needs. Now submit them films! And give a hand to our erstwhile admin Tara for putting all the website stuffs together. More later!

EDIT: Our anonymous friend is back, makin' this ol' pooch feel like an idiot...justifiably so, tho'. He/she points out that I forgot to post the event date and locale! The TAIS Summer Showcase and ChickenJam will be screened at the National Film Board of Canda Cinema, here in Toronto, on June 25th. Here's a link to the map: I'll do a follow-up post with screen times and ticket prices (should be about five bucks...bargoon) closer to the event. Thanks for the reminder, Anonymous...love yer poetry!

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!

Aardman event!

Sorry for the long absence, blog-buddies, it's been that kind of a summer. Fortunately, it's come to an end with a nice aperitif in the form of a free event, sponsored by TAIS and held at the NFB! Programmed by Helen Brunsdon and hosted by Michael Fukushima, it's a night of Aardman faves, and it's free! Check out the poster, or head on over to the TAIS or NFB sites for more info. Laters!

MONSTERJAM: Part the First

Witness the fruits of monstrous labors. No more words.



Part the Last comes in one week. Prepare yourselves!

Xmas toon production blog: Walk Cycle

I've been dyin' to do my own Christmassy-type cartoon show, so I decided to kill several birds with one animated stone and do a Xmas toon featuring a character I designed for the fellas over at the Gamer Cast network! Here's the model sheet with the clean up line layed down.



Here's the filled and shaded version, showin' the parts exploded. Keepin' it pretty basic here; the point being to have some silly fun and keep the production time to a fair minimum while still getting some good, silly animation down.



Here, som preliminary nested animation frames, for the arms and the legs. Gonna try to push the broad actions with Emilio on this one. My animations tend not to be wild enough, so I'm just gonna go nuts with this one.



A quick walk cycle to test out the character's look on the move. The Black n' White stroke line on the outside is very cool, but very time consuming...gotta see if there's some way to keep it while speeding up the post process required to add it to each frame. More later!

Bellini hosts Wildsound's Feedback Fest!

Sorry, dood, couldn't hep meself. When Marc Beurteaux let me know of this swingin' monthly Toronto film fest, held at the NFB and moderated by Kids in the Hall's own Paul Bellini, I had to go and grab this image.

To be fair, Bellini's a lot more dressed and a lot more svelte of late. Plus, he lost the 'stache. When he's not holding court at the Feedback fest, he writes for FAB, a fixture mag in Toronto's gay community.



More feedback on Feedback...it's a monthly fest for live action, animated and experimental film works. Submission fees are 20 bucks a film, cheep! Plus, there's an after-fest gab session to discuss your film with other film makers and all present.

Click on the Bellini of days past for info on the July 24th event, featuring 'Puppet' by Patrick Smith and 'Inheritance' by Mike Weiss! And click on the Bellini of today to get info on how to submit your stuff. Meanwhile, I'll patiently await Marc's email berating me for playing up the Bellini aspect so damn much. What can I say, I is a hack. Go by a ticket, dammit!