Late last year, I was invited to host a series of launch parties for Toon Boom’s new Animate software. Well, the partying hasn’t stopped, and tonight in Mexico City you can learn more about the software at a party hosted by Eddie Mort and Lili Chin, the creators of ¡Mucha Lucha!. Details are below and visit the official world tour website to get info about upcoming parties in Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo and Rome.

MEXICO CITY
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
6 pm – 9 pm
Museo Mexicano del Diseño (MUMEDI)
Francisco I. Madero 74, Colonia Centro Historico
Mexico D.F.

Also, check out Eddie’s walk-through of some multi-plane animation:

You may have spotted a post over at Lineboil.com about a promising 6-year old animator. I recently come across a few other lads who got an early jump on their animation careers. First up is Louis McLeod, son of Greg McLeod (Fuggy Fuggy, M Man). 5-year old Louis did all of the drawings on paper, which were then scanned into Photoshop and animated in Flash. Beyond the charming voice-over, Louis also handled all of the sound effects in this short, which he titled Yellow No Monkey:

Tony Grillo’s 6-year old son harnessed the power of a Cintiq digital drawing tablet to create this short, which he titled The Bullet Car:

New, SuperSized episodes of SuperNews! have been hurtling into cable TV and the web, and you can watch the entire 23-minute, Flash-animated 2nd episode right now. Here’s Return of the Jabba, which skewers Rush, Arnie and Coulter and all other pretenders to the Conservative crown.

You may have already spotted this over at CartoonBrew.com, but it’s worth another look. Australian David Blumenstein, the artist behind The Precinct, created this Flash-animated promo for Australia’s answer to Comic-con. Why Cartoonists Don’t Go Out In Public Much pokes a little fun at the most annoying comic fans out there – all while promoting the 2nd annual Comic Book Funny, which takes place every Saturday during the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, starting April 4th.

Ari Folman’s animated documentary Vals Im Bashir (Waltz With Bashir) is a pioneer in many ways. The film was one of the first (along with $9.99) feature films emanating from Israel to be released in theaters. Beyond that, Bashir, a 2D animated film, was produced primarily with Adobe Flash, a medium that is typically reserved for television and internet projects. Of late, many Flash features have been emerging, but none (save perhaps Sita Sings the Blues) have been praised to this degree.

Four years in the making, Waltz With Bashir went on to grab more award nominations than the crew had artists, but no achievement was bigger than the film’s nomination for the Palm d’Or (Best Film) at the 61st Annual Cannes Film Festival. It set the tone for the coming awards season, which saw the film pick up the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film and an Academy Award nomination in the same category. Animated films are often left out of the “Best Picture” category, relegated instead to the animation corner of the ballroom, but at the 43rd National Society of Film Critics Awards, Bashir took the top prize – Best Film.

Yoni Goodman, the film’s animation director, took some time between award shows to answer a few questions.

AARON SIMPSON: What has been the best part of the international praise the film has received?

YONI GOODMAN: I think throughout the production our only thought was to finish the film. That was our goal and we thought of nothing past that. Initially it was supposed to be a small art house movie, with very limited distribution, and of course we had our fantasies of how people would react, but we never suspected the movie would go so far and attract that much of attention. The first real shock was the premiere at Cannes. We had heard stories about the event, but nothing could have prepared us for the real thing. At the end of the screening, we had a 20 minute standing ovation from 2,300 people, which was quite a shock (until that moment, I didn’t notice that the theatre had balconies). Later on that week, we were the talk of the festival, and that just didn’t stop. In a way, it hasn’t really stopped since, so we’re still in a 12-month rollercoaster ride.

AARON: Tell us about the whole rotoscoping confusion…
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