New Brave Clip and Stills

Pixar have released a glut of new promotional material as of late, for their next feature film, Brave, and over the last couple of days, we've got a few more great bits! Firstly, above is the newest clip from the movie, titled "The Suitors". It sees the three Lords, and their respective sons (who were introduced to us in "The Prize"), who are vying for the hand of Princess Merida, trying to one up each other by touting the wares of the three clans.

Personally, I love Lord Macintosh! And I'm rather fond of the MacGuffins too... come to mention it, Dingwall was rather funny as well... yeah, I'm rather taken with the Lords and the mini-Lords. Leave it to Pixar to, once again, populate a film with such fantastic characters!

Secondly, we're also treated to a dozen new gorgeous images from the film, courtesy of Disney Brazil (view all 12 over at Cine Marcado).

Brave looks absolutely stunning, one of Pixar's most visually fantastic films to date, and it certainly looks like it has the story and characters to make this one of Pixar's best films to date! Roll on 22nd June - or, begrudgingly, 13th August here in the UK.

Look out for a review of Chronicle Books's The Art of Brave in the next few days!

Interview: Tyler Carter, Visual Development Artist at Blue Sky Studios

Tyler at the Student Emmys, collecting an award for his short film DreamGiver, with the team who helped create it. Watch a video of Tyler and the team talking about DreamGiver here.

Today, I am happy to share with you the latest in a series of A113Animation interviews, an interview with Tyler Carter from Blue Sky Studios! Tyler is a visual development artist at Blue Sky Studios, the studio that brought you Ice Age and Rio, meaning he produces gorgeous artwork like what you see in the 'Art of' books that accompany animated releases (my review of The Art of Madagascar 3 here), and is currently working on their recently renamed 2013 release, Epic.

Over the past few weeks, I've had the chance to interview La Luna director Enrico Casarosa and Pixar co-founder Alvy Ray Smith, and I want to thank Tyler for helping to diversify our interviews somewhat - this isn't just a Pixar blog after all. It's also been great to get the chance to speak to someone from Blue Sky Studios, I've had very little chance to talk to anyone from animation studios other than Pixar up until now, and I'm very grateful to Tyler for agreeing to do this and speaking to me.

You can check out Tyler's artwork (some of which is featured here) on his website, and read our interview after the jump break:

Blue Sky Studios' Leafmen Gets a Title Change

20th Century Fox recently announced their upcoming slate of feature films, including sequels to Rise of the Planet of the Apes (titled Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) and X-Men: First Class, and - more topically given the theme of this blog - a title change to Blue Sky Studios' upcoming animated film, Leafmen.

Blue Sky's next animated release is the fourth instalment in their Ice Age series, Ice Age: Continental Drift, and following that, the newly renamed, Epic. It's hardly the most inspired title change in the world - it's a little blasé and vague; certainly a lot less magical sounding - and seems to be trying to piggyback on the simplicity of Pixar's Brave. But then again, a title means very little, and Blue Sky have a great track record, so let's hope the film turns out great nonetheless.

Epic is based on the book The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs by William Joyce (co-director The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, author of the Guardians of Childhood series on which DreamWorks' Rise of the Guardians is based) and is directed by Blue Sky veteran, Chris Wedge (Ice Age, Robots).

The voice cast was also unveiled by Fox, a voice cast that includes Beyoncé, Colin Farrell and Josh Hutcherson.

Epic is due out on 24th May, 2013, and it's a safe assumption that we'll see a teaser trailer with Ice Age 4 next month.

Via Kyle's Animated World.

The Art of Luke Chueh

The focus of this blog is animation. Animation is an artform. So, tangential to animation is art - particularly when reading 'Art of' books. I've had a keen interest in art (although admittedly not on the scale of my sheer adoration of animation) for many years, and recently the artwork of one particular artist - and indeed one particular type of art - has been brought to my attention: Luke Chueh, pop surrealist artist.

Pop surrealism, also known as "lowbrow" art, definitely doesn't sound like something that would normally appeal to me - I never have, and likely never will, understand or like modern art - but it turns out that I love it. It mashes up, creatively and brilliantly, items from pop culture with everyday; and I love it.

Luke Chueh is one such artist. His work juxtaposes the cute and the cuddly, with some fairly macabre and bizarre images. Some of his work can be seen scattered about here, but for more be sure to visit his website, which features more or less all of them. Another place where you can see Luke's work is in his upcoming book, The Art of Luke Chueh: Bearing the Unbearable.

Much to my surprise as well, although you can definitely see it when you look at it, Chueh also designed the very well known Fall Out Boy album, Folie à Deux (above).

The book is released tomorrow by Titan Books, and look out for a review of it and an interview with Luke here in the coming weeks!

Classic Cartoons #7 - Red's Dream

Since establishing this feature in early January, we've so far explored some old (in some cases very old) cartoons and short films that have helped define the careers of some of the prolific figures that have been the focus of our Bitesized Biographies, but also that have helped shape the history of animation. However, today's Classic Cartoon is the first from a more modern era in animation; the first from the era of computer animation. Today's Classic Cartoon is Red's Dream.

Red's Dream, directed, written and animated all by John Lasseter, is one of Pixar's earliest short films (their third, and their second whilst as Pixar Animation Studios) and remains one of its least known efforts. The animation is incredibly primitive looking by today's standards (in fact Pixar pre-production engineer, Michael B. Johnson, Tweeted recently that an iPhone 4 is 1000 times more powerful than the machine used to render Red's Dream), and its story is still one of Pixar's darkest ones, but Red's Dream is incredibly artistic, well designed, well executed and, as is the norm for Pixar, a testament to great storytelling!