Getting More Immersed with Indiewire
Immersed in Blu-ray: Hitchcock and Bogart
Immersed in Books: Farber on Film
Bill Joyce’s Oscar-winning Moonbot Studios in Shreveport has created a delightful arcade-style game and animated short, The Scarecrow, as part of Chipotle’s campaign to “cultivate a better world,” in partnership with CAA Marketing, a division of Creative Artists Agency. The game is available for free download in the Apple App Store and the short can be viewed at scarecrowgame.com. But you can watch it below. Read more
The Future of StoryTelling (FoST) will host its second annual summit in New York City on Oct. 3, exploring how technology is making storytelling more interactive, and one its participants, Tom Perlmutter, chairperson, National Film Board of Canada and Government Film Commissioner, has created a video presentation on the “Evolution of Cinema and the Birth of a New Art Form,” which you can view below. Read more
Claymation vet Will Vinton, who was honored last weekend with a Life Achievement Award by the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles, will make his first CG-animated feature, The Quest, with a new company, Gnosis Moving Pictures. Read more
Here’s a sneak peek of the SIGGRAPH 2013 Computer Animation Festival lineup chaired by Jason RM Smith. Read more
There’s going to be an industry implosion, according to George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, appearing Wednesday at the grand opening of the Interactive Media Building at the USC School of Cinematic Arts (SCA). And after the dust settles, a new paradigm shift will occur. Tentpoles will become even more massive if less frequent and VOD will be the thriving platform for quirky, personal movies, and interactive games will increasingly become more empathetic. Read more
Good news: Despite failing to reach the funding goal of $750,000 from its Kickstarter campaign, Bill Joyce’s Golem videogame will be completed at his Moonbot Studios in Shreveport, Louisiana, thanks to alternate financing and the support of Guillermo Del Toro, who will produce an animated Golem feature spinoff directed by Joyce. Read more
Star Trek: The Video Game, offering co-op play in the roles of Kirk and Spock to battle the rapacious Gorn, is now available from Paramount Pictures and Namco Bandai Games America. Read more
Animation historian Jerry Beck (formerly co-owner of Cartoon Brew) has launched Animation Scoop, which will be part of the Indiewire blog network, where I will serve as contributing editor, writing about animated features with interviews and behind the scenes pieces. Read more
After buying Lucasfilm 154 days ago, Disney has closed LucasArts, laying off 150 employees. This is on the heels of cancelling The Clone Wars animated TV series on Cartoon Network and laying off animators at Lucasfilm. This means we will not be seeing the darker and edgier next-gen shooter game, Star Wars 1313, featuring higher quality performance-captured animation from Lucasfilm Animation and VFX from Industrial Light & Magic. Read more
In conjunction with Autodesk’s Unfold conference this week, they’ve launched the Entertainment Creation Suite 2014 with the latest versions of Maya, 3ds Max, MotionBuilder, Mudbox, Softimage, and Sketchbook Designer. They offer new workflow enhancements to handle complicated data sets more quickly and efficiently. Read more
