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I had two emails sat in my inbox this morning that were so far apart in ideology that I thought they wanted bringing to light. The first was from some supposedly credible news site that concluded with the claim that, "Combined with the mainstreaming of homosexuality in the media, its advocacy in public schools, and the general sexualization of children, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that some animated movies are part of a long-term Illuminati program to prepare children for sodomy." This was penned by Henry 'closet' Makow, just so's you know.

Vassever. The second one was an invite to, "Iris - International Animation Festival of Sexual Diversity. The festival is dedicated to the promotion of the art of animation in Brazil and to the discovery and revealing of new films and new directors, within the universe of animation about sexual diversity, campaign against homophobia and safe sex. The Iris is the first Brazilian festival dedicated exclusively to animation about sexual diversity (LGBT)." http://www.mostrairis.com.br/

Who knew animation was such a battleground or that some nutbag went frame by frame through big budget films looking for signs of animal gayness.

I was watching ITV or something the other night and saw two Aardman ads in one break. For all that these ad swines will use our blood for ink if it'll only sell someone something, I must admit that these aardman sorts know how to make a nice ad.

I was recently bored and disappointed by Clash of the Titans. Everyone said, “oh yeah, well it is what it is”, but what it is is a tedious framework on which to hang CGI monster mash ups. It was like watching a showreel. They had the nerve to trot out Harryhausen’s brass owl and dismiss it with the line, “oh, leave that behind”. As if any of them actually thought they’d made a better film. I wonder what great student of animation reverentially cooked that up.
My brother worked on some obscure technical aspect of the CGI, so I sat through the whole credits; four armourers and a bunch of personal prosthetic artists later and I was left wondering about the sense of hundreds of professionals spending a year to create this mess...

Really liking the exuberance of this parkour animation. There's a lot to be said for animating something using a technique appropriate to the subject and style, as well as for making something look like an amazing board-game/motion comic.

In the latest issue of Imagine magazine we look at visualisation, one aspect of which is this new phenomenon of news agencies animating supposed events, the thinking being that it's more interesting than some reporter standing on a street corner and saying, "this is the spot where it happened...". They famously did it about Tiger Woods and now some Taiwanese news agency has knocked up this piece about Gordon Brown's alleged bullying activities in #10. It doesn't seem like a terribly legal thing to do, but here it is.

The good people at www.meettheboss.tv recently interviewed Dan Satterthwaite, Head of Human Resources at Dreamworks. In this video he talks about how a culture of creativity and innovation don’t mean a thing without a strong technical, sales and marketing backbone to deliver solid – and sustainable – business results.