Pixar is also a stellar example of how companies should treat employees – with respect and appreciation – and providing opportunities to grow rather than shrivel up as mindless drones turning out product after product. Almost everybody has the ability to achieve great things, unfortunately, so many of us are in environments non-condusive to doing so. I imagine that a place like Pixar allows one to ask where the limits are and soar right past them – and probably receive valuable criticism if one flies a bit too high. These glimpses into the studio demonstrate that we all need to constantly ask ourselves: “Am I being the best I can be here?” or “Is this the finest work that I could produce under these situations?”

The behind-the-scenes stories, art books, documentaries, and interviews are also a reminder that we need to discover points of fun throughout the day; whether it’s the simplest task of choosing which colorful shirt to wear or to work or giving somebody an appreciative hug, it’s the smallest gesture that people often remember. The folks at many animated film studios create stories and characters that millions around the world will enjoy and the talent in Emeryville, Burbank, Vancouver, and elsewhere are among the absolute best at doing so. I’ve said it plenty of times, but a heartfelt THANK YOU to every soul at Disney•Pixar for your time, energy, and endearing creations.

“What got me interested in Hawaiian shirts is that they’re kind of like a toy you could wear.” – John Lasseter

Clearly, the projections have been recreated using effects for the purposes of the video (you can tell by the lack of reaction from nearby pedestrians), however, it’s still pretty fascinating to see what could be achieved if an army of ultra-bright projectors could cover the whole facade of a building.

To see what the idea looks like in a real-time environment, the live version can be found at this link.

Thanks to Pixar’s @orenjacob for tweeting the link yesterday.

You can download MP3′s of his tunes at: Last.fm and also check out his MySpace page.

I understand that there may be some copyright usage issues being discussed between him and Disney, because the “Expialidocious” tune is currently offline on the Last.fm page and the “Alice” video is also not up on his YouTube channel or MySpace page anymore. So, you’ll have to be resourceful and dig around the web to find those tracks. However, it’s great to see that Disney•Pixar are supporting his “Upular” track!

Thanks to Pixar’s @leeunkrich (and pretty much the rest of the globe) for sharing the link!
–

The Iron Giant Trailer:

You could also also pair up October Sky with Apollo 13 or even Field of Dreams, both very inspiring films, but somehow The Iron Giant, with it’s space-related themes (including homage to Sputnik 1), small-town stories, and hope for something bigger and better seems to make it the perfect compliment to October Sky.

Another reason these two films fit so well together is their incredible musical scores. Mark Isham’s score for October Sky is heartfelt and inspiring, while Michael Kamen’s soundtrack for The Iron Giant echoes the fears and hopes of the U.S./Soviet Space Race and the imagination and simplicity of being a kid in much simpler times.

AUDIO GOODIES:

Characters © Mike Mignola. Art © 2006 Starz Media, LLC and Revolution Studios.

An audio interview with Hellboy and The Amazing Screw-On Head creator, Mike Mignola, can be found over at Word Balloon. Mike discusses the upcoming Hellboy Animated films, working with Tad Stones, more Abe Sapien and BPRD adventures, and the big red character’s beginnings. *Contains potentially offensive language near the end. (via Hellboy Animated.)

The Nocturnals © Dan Brereton.

What’s Halloween without Dan Brereton’s The Nocturnals? The Gunwitch, Doc Horror, Halloween Girl, Polychrome. Great names. Great characters. Great stories. Great art. Check out another great Word Balloon audio interview…this time with the creator of the fascinating Halloween-style characters himself.

Note to movie and TV producers: Where’s the Nocturnals movie or animated series we’re all waiting for? These easily-translatable characters, if handled properly, could potentially be a box office tentpole film or series!

Tunes for Ghostbusting: Ghostbusters Project:Remix. Use the free Switch application to convert the WMA files to MP3 or other format. Flip4Mac (also free) is also required for conversion.

VIDEO LOOT:

The Skeleton Dance © Disney.

Tune in to Disney’s classic Silly Symphony animated short, The Skeleton Dance (1929), on YouTube.

Lonesome Ghosts © Disney.

One of my all-time favorite Disney animated shorts, Lonesome Ghosts featuring Mickey, Donald, and Goofy, can also be found over on YouTube.

“Bustin’ makes me feel good!” – Ghostbusters by Ray Parker, Jr.

SWEET GRAPHICS:

Art © Bruce Timm.

Arglebargle has a blog post on Bruce Timm’s monster art as well as influential poster artist Reynold Brown. Some really fun images! (via The Ward-O-Matic.)

Art © Merrill Rainey.

Merrill Rainey has posted some fun icons, desktop wallpaper, and PDF coloring book at this link. (via Drawn.)

Scarloff. Art © Matt Putnam-Pouliot.

Matt Putnam-Pouliot has posted some fun wallpaper at this link. (via Drawn.) Be sure to check out his fantastic art gallery filled with fun ghouls and beasties!

Art © Mars, Incorporated.

Guess the titles of 50 Dark Movies hidden in imagery in this Hieronymus Bosch-like painting at the M&M’S Dark Chocolate website.

Art © Vera Brosgol.

“Everyone Loves Mummies” is a fun wallpaper for your desktop by Vera Brosgol. (via Boing Boing.)

TASTY TREATS:

Photo © theprojectmaker.

Hosting a Halloween gathering? Check out this fun set of instructions for creepy but consumable foods for supper! (via Boing Boing.)

Photo © Bakerama.

Mmm-mummy cupcakes.

GHOULISH CRAFTS:

Photo © Spooky Blue.

Carve your own decorative tombstones. Create fear with the wicked scarecrow!

Art © www.origami-club.com.

Use the leftover candy bags to make your own Halloween origami! (via Monsterama and Paper Forest.)

FREAKY LINKS:

The League of Robots and Monsters
BlueSky Studios Challenges – Halloween!
BlueSky Studios Challenges – Classic Movie Monsters
Smooky Ghost Story. (via Cold, Hard Flash.)
Flickr photos: Jack O’ Lanterns, Halloween, Pumpkin, Pumpkins, Ghosts, Monsters, Monster, Spooky, Costume
Monstrous.com – “The largest site about monsters.”

Photo: Copenhagen, Denmark. © Warren Leonhardt.

Warren Leonhardt’s ”abra macabre!” Flickr photoset. Be sure to view his fun blog with other spooky postings!

Happy Halloween Boils & Ghouls!!

Catch a glimpse of how the wizards at Industrial Light and Magic and Disney transformed Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas into a 3-D film format in this video.

Photo: Robert Hanashiro / USA TODAY.

Tim Burton discusses the impact of the film at this USATODAY.com article:

“It makes the movie weirdly better; you just see it the way it was meant to be — completely dimensional,” says Burton, 48, on a visit to his native Southern California from his adopted home in London. “It takes the story and actually deepens it. I see details in the sets that I don’t remember seeing.”

Burton has resisted tampering with the 1993 film that has become a cult classic. With so many current movies generating sequels or even forcing out a trilogy, Burton’s Nightmare stands alone. There will not be another installment, he says. But that’s not for lack of trying on the part of Disney, the studio that released Nightmare.

Burton — whose most recent films are The Corpse Bride and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and who is in pre-production on the screen adaptation of another macabre story, Sweeney Todd — fends off sequel offers from “each new regime that comes in” at Disney. “I just say no. So, there won’t be a Jack Visits Thanksgiving World.”

Part of his desire to keep the movie a solo offering has to do with the connection the stop-motion animated film has forged with die-hard fans.

“You can’t screw around with that,” says Burton. “It’s not a mass-market kind of thing. It’s kind of specialized.”

Visit the official movie site at this link where you can watch Jack’s head follow your cursor, check out the remasterd soundtrack (with tracks from Marilyn Manson, Fiona Apple, and of course, Danny Elfman), and enter a contest to create a character and win a greeting from Tim Burton for your MySpace page.

IESB has video clips and photos from the coverage of the film’s premiere at the El Capitan theater in Hollywood at this link.

Thanks to Cartoon Brew for the first video link!

Enjoy!

–

Mark, thanks again for taking time out of your busy schedule to answer some questions. We discussed your early career in Part 1 (at this link) and moved on to past/current projects, so let’s continue there.

Q: Are there any projects that you’d change if you could or do you consider past experiences as learning and move on?

Schultz: I look at everything I’ve done as a learning experience. There are some projects I’ve done that I’m not particularly proud of, but I learned, and I think improved, from all of them.

Q: Because we can’t be working all the time, what do you do to unwind when you’re not creating heroes and monsters?

Schultz: Hike—for exercise as well as to refocus my mind and eyes. Read. Watch movies—preferably B&W classics that are generally ignored today.

Howard Hawks’ 1951 sci-fi masterpiece. A fave of both Mark and myself. © Turner Home Entertainment.

Q: Is there something you do to refresh your creative spirit and get back into drawing or writing mode again?

Schultz: Hike. Travel. Visit the ocean.

Q: You recently took a trip to Spain where some of your work was exhibited. How was your trip and did you find European’s reactions to your work to be different from North Americans?

Schultz: Generally speaking, Europeans don’t seem to draw as definitive a line between the fine arts and the commercial arts as we do in North America. They are much more open to the notion that comics can be a legitimate form of expression. The Spanish people, at least, seemed to me to be much more knowledgeable about art in general—they consider an appreciation of the arts to be part of their every day existence.

Let’s move on to future projects.

Q: Do you plan on returning to Xenozoic Tales? Are there any plans for another animated series or feature film? How about a DVD box set of the animated series?

Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. © 1993 Mark Schultz and Nelvana Limited. Images from here.

Schultz: There is nothing I want more then to get back to producing new issues of Xenozoic Tales. It is just a matter of finding a way of financing the process of getting it started again. My glacial slowness makes things difficult. I’m hoping to build a savings reservoir that could give me the time to devote to getting the series up and running again. Specifically, I have a four issue arc in mind that would complete the storyline I left hanging, but would also stand on its own, and would be collected as a trade paperback. At this time there are no current plans for XT projects in other media.

Q: In addition to Xenozoic Tales, what property that you’ve been involved with in the past, would you like to return to and in what capacity?

Cover art for SubHuman Issue #1 © Mark Schultz.

Schultz: I’d love to see SubHuman up and running. We really didn’t get a chance to get our sea legs under us with the initial Dark Horse mini-series. Both Michael and I have lots of stories Krill Stromer Family stories we’d like to tell, and hopefully someday we’ll have the chance. Beyond that, I have tons of other projects percolating away that are just waiting for the right opportunity to come to a boil.

Q: Who would you most like to work with that you haven’t yet had a chance to and who would you like to work with again?

Schultz: I’m pretty happy working mostly by myself, or with my already established cohorts.

Mark Schultz’s studio. Note the otherworldly visitors! Photos courtesy of Dr. Michael Ryan.

Q: What properties would you like to work on that you haven’t yet?

Schultz: I’d love a chance to illustrate Edgar Rice Burroughs, and more Robert E. Howard. Right now, a couple of years after I stopped writing Superman, I’m finally getting a chance to illustrate a Superman cover! I’m psyched!

Action Comics #836. Artwork by Mark Schultz. © DC Comics.

Q: What are you working on now and what projects have you got in the pipeline?

Schultz: I continue to write the Sunday comic strip Prince Valiant, which is beautifully illustrated by Gary Gianni. I’m working on Vol. 2 of my Various Drawings art book series, doing lots of commissions in connection with generating work for that, and picking up comic cover and illustration work here and there. It all continues to go well, I will be generating a series of books for Flesk Publications, the publisher of Various Drawings.

Mark Schultz: Various Drawings Volumes 1 and 2. © Mark Schultz and Flesk Publications.

Q: Since Xenozoic Tales features dinosaurs, I can’t forget to ask if you have a favorite one?

Schultz: Of course, Tyrannosaurus rex is an icon that would probably be my all-time number one, but the coelacanth, with its great survivor’s story, is a sentimental favorite. I love drawing both of them.

Thanks again Mark for your time and letting all of us take a peak inside your creative mind. Please keep us up to date on your new projects and we wish you the best of luck with all of them!

Schultz: My pleasure. And thanks to all the readers for the support!

Stay tuned for a possible update from Mark on even more recent projects and topics we might have forgot in our first 2 parts!

Comic Book Legal Defense Fund art for sky*dog comics. © Mark Schultz and the CBLDF.

Image: Copyright 2006 Walt Disney Pictures.

Trailer available at this link.

Image: Copyright 2006 Joel Fletcher

For a taste of what the film might look like, be sure to grab your red and blue anaglyph 3-D glasses and check out Joel Fletcher’s The Nightmare Before Christmas 3-D photo gallery. Joel was an animator at Skellington Productions and worked on the film.

Sources: Aint It Cool News and Cartoon Brew.

Stop-motion animation legend Ray Harryhausen will be helping to develop a series of new features, TV movies, video games, and merchandising under the Ray Harryhausen Presents banner for Mindfire Entertainment according to Reuters and the Hollywood Reporter via Yahoo! News. From the article:

Producer Mindfire Entertainment, which joined forces on the projects with the 85-year-old director, said several scripts are in development — one set in Greek mythology and another with an alien invasion theme. Production on the first film is set to begin in the fall.

The plan is to release one movie in the $15 million range and three TV projects in the $4 million range every year, Mindfire CEO Mark Altman said. Harryhausen will oversee all visual effects, which will be done in CGI (computer-generated imagery) but will be in the spirit of his stop-motion effects, Altman said.

Harryhausen said “utilizing the incredible advances in visual effects technology” would enable him to reach an entire new generation of audiences. “These stories are universal, and I could not be more thrilled than to revisit some of my favorite worlds — past, present and future — in these new films,” he said.

As a great admirer of Harryhausen’s work, I’m thrilled to hear that he’s bringing out some fresh ideas from old worlds for all of us to enjoy. Take a look at many reecent feature films (Jurassic Park, Starship Troopers, Peter Jackson’s King Kong) or video games (Killer Instinct, Age of Mythology, God of War) and I guarantee you’ll see the Harryhausen influence.

Even if Ray does nothing more than provide the initial concepts and inspiration, you can bet the projects will be both epic and fantastic.