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Jeroen Does it Again!
The masses have spoken! It was a close race, but Raspberry Animation’s Jeroen Zijlstra pulled ahead to be named this week’s winner in our Get with the Times! HD Animation Contest.
His captivating stop motion animation, Awareness, features a robot who realizes he is actually the observed rather than the observer after the television he is fixated on breaks down. This cutting edge animation picked up 3,055 MyToons community votes, giving Jeroen his SECOND weekly win in the contest.
Don’t miss your chance to be the next Get with the Times! weekly winner! You can upload as many original HD animations as your heart desires, so be sure to enter to win! For more details check out the Get with the Times! contest page, and don’t forget to vote for your favorites.
Are You Ready to Get with the Times?
The times, they are a-changin’ – and MyToons is changing right along with ‘em! As a part of our cutting-edge HD campaign, we’ve teamed with Adobe to bring you Get with the Times! – our latest HD animation contest that takes your animation to the center of the Big Apple!
Submit your best HD work from June 9 – September 4, 2008, and you could win a trip to NYC to see your creation grace Clear Channel’s state-of-the-art video billboard in Times Square – and, as a bonus, take home every creator’s dream toolkit: Adobe’s Creative Suite 3: Master Collection!
Winners are chosen every week, and just like NYC, MyToons voting never sleeps – so be sure to cast your votes on your favorite animations! Weekly winners will not only receive an iPod Nano loaded with awesome animations, but will also be finalists in the running for the Grand Prize: an exciting weekend for two in NYC! Plus, two runners-up will also receive a copy of Adobe’s CS3!
To upload your animation and cast your vote to win, visit the Get with the Times! contest page at MyToons.com/contests/TimesSquare.
Weekly Winner: Cats on a Plane!
Big round of applause for this week’s winner carloguillot! The MyToons community really showed their support by an increase in comments, views, and contest voting – Carlo’s animation Gatin a Bordo (Kitty on Board) received a whopping 1423 votes!
“Animated in the classical Golden Age style,” the animation tells the tale of “a funny cat in a plane.” Throughout the production of Gatin a Bordo, Carlo kept an animation log according to the advice of Kit Laybourne from The Animation Book; “Keep track of your advances, your doubts, and even catalyze your anger, discouragements, etc.” Want to hear more? Check out carloguillot’s profile here!
Want to help pick next week’s winner? Vote for your favorite animation – you can vote every hour, so show your support fo! For more information on how you can Get with the Times, head over to the Get with the Times! Contest page.
Carlo shares his animation background and thoughts on HD:
I think my addiction to Saturday morning cartoons when I was a little kid was the first symptom that I’d love to make cartoons; but it took a while until I realized that I wanted to make cartoons for living. I dropped out of college early since I wasn’t learning what I wanted, so I’m an autodidact cartoonist. First, I started by making illustrations for kids, thanks to a course I took with Rodez, one of the best illustrators right now. Then I learned Flash and started to read a lot about animation, and one day I realized that I was making a living out of animation. Now I’m a teacher, which I think its the best way to learn, for me. I have also been lucky to have found friends and partners like Camilo and Pablo at Monitor CD, where we develop animation, web applications, and teach how to make them. Right now I’ve just made a short film for the Monster Jam (Night Mare) and have plans to make a series of cartoons, in different techniques.
I’ve been animating in Flash for so many years (and I still love it), but I wanted to make an animation like the old days. There’s something about hand drawing that really shows what the animator is made of – where no computer can do your job. Also, it gives a more organic quality to your work. I love computers, but there’s NOTHING like pencil and paper. It was a relief from all my years in front of a computer, and I really learned a lot.
I wanted to make it simple: one minute, one main character, one instrument (piano), and one set (a plane). I had in mind the Golden Age style – the cartoons from the 40’s with all the gags – like the ones from Tex Avery, Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones. Also, I had one of the best teachers in the medium right now: John Kricfalusi. On his blog he gives pure gold lessons from the Golden Age of animation. I put in practice his teachings and also this short film is dedicated to him.
It took 8 months to make this short film, a lot of effort, learning, and at times I felt I was going to give up. Thanks to the HUGE SUPPORT of my girlfriend Diana, and to the advice from my friends Ángelo, María and No (my brother) I got on track again and finished it. I can’t stress enough the importance of the music made by Alejandro Guarín – it really took my animation to another level.
The coloring of the characters was made with the help of my girlfriend and Carlos Moncada, and we used Photohop. I made the backgrounds in Art Rage and After Effects for composition, but the main tool was pencil.
For me HD is the best way to show the little nuances that hand-drawn animation has. It really makes the colors look better, and people can see all the tiny details that we animators give so much effort to in every single frame. I’m happy to be able to show my animation in this format at MyToons.
Get with the Times! Weekly Winner
Congratulations to this week’s winner Jeroen Zijlstra – better known as raspberryanimation around MyToons – for his animation The Miraculous Pear Tree that garnered 313 of your votes!
The Miraculous Pear Tree is a stop-motion animation, shot entirely in high-definition. It tells the fairytale of a Tibetan monk who encounters a less than dignified salesman. After finding out about the salesman and his intentions, he teaches him a lesson. It is screened in New York on the New York Independent International Film and Video Festival (Feb 28 - March 6, 2008).
Enjoy your iPod Nano loaded with awesome animations – you’re now in the running for the Grand Prize trip to see The Miraculous Pear Tree in NYC’s Times Square and more!
Remember, your vote counts! Tell your friends to help your animation get to the top – everyone can vote once every hour. Want to Get with the Times? To upload your HD animations and find more info, check out the Get with the Times! contest page.
Jeroen Zijlstra, founder of Holland based Raspberry Animation, has always been intrigued by Ray Harryhausen’s film creatures in movies such as The 7th voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts. He began drawing, filming and animating at an early age, and went on to attend Minerva Academy of Visual Arts and Design in Groningen NL (2005) in 2001, studying Animation and Media Design. Stop motion is his great passion, as he prefers to physically build the animation frame by frame with the use of cameras, lights and grips.
For this animation, The Miraculous Pear Tree he pioneered (in Holland) the usage of digital SLR cameras in combination with real time video preview – shot entirely in 2K RAW and later scaled back to full HD. Every part of the sets, props and characters is made by hand with exceptional attention to detail.
The inspirations for The Miraculous Pear Tree are Shamanism, Tibetan Buddhism and Mongolia culture. Jeroen became interested in these subjects due to his former Academy teacher and friend Robin Noorda – a prize winning Dutch filmmaker who travelled to Mongolia several times to make a movie about the changes of the country after the leaving of the Soviets.
How does Jeroen feel about creating in HD?
“Finally HD has arrived. It is now possible to put in so much more detail and color!” Jeroen said. “The detail and usage of warmer and better colors makes it a great joy to work on this kind of material. Some things such as chroma keying (blue and/or free screening) and compositing get a lot easier because of the bigger resolution. Everything gets crisper this way! Absolutely fabulous!”
Are You Ready to Get with the Times?
The times, they are a-changin’ – and MyToons is changing right along with ‘em! As a part of our cutting-edge HD campaign, we’ve teamed with Adobe to bring you Get with the Times! – our latest HD animation contest that takes your animation to the center of the Big Apple!
Submit your best HD work from June 9 – September 4, 2008, and you could win a trip to NYC to see your creation grace Clear Channel’s state-of-the-art video billboard in Times Square – and, as a bonus, take home every creator’s dream toolkit: Adobe’s Creative Suite 3: Master Collection!
Winners are chosen every week, and just like NYC, MyToons voting never sleeps – so be sure to cast your votes on your favorite animations! Weekly winners will not only receive an iPod Nano loaded with awesome animations, but will also be finalists in the running for the Grand Prize: an exciting weekend for two in NYC! Plus, two runners-up will also receive a copy of Adobe’s CS3!
To upload your animation and cast your vote to win, visit the Get with the Times! contest page at MyToons.com/contests/TimesSquare.
What Would You Do for a Scooby Snack?
Talk about the ultimate Scooby Snack–how’d you like to win the RICHIE RICH/SCOOBY-DOO HOUR: VOLUME ONE DVD which goes on sale on May 20th?
Two of the most enduring Hanna-Barbera characters, Richie Rich and Scooby-Doo were the stars of The Richie Rich, Scooby-Doo Show, which originally aired on ABC. The one-hour program combined several shorts, each featuring either one of these entertaining characters on a wild adventure.
What would you do for a Scooby Snack? Tell us what Scooby Doo or Richie Rich mean to you in the Comment Section BELOW, and you could be one of our lucky winners taking home the new RICHIE RICH/SCOOBY-DOO HOUR: VOLUME ONE DVD! It’s that easy!
Clue: Contest ends on June 1st.
This two-disc collector’s set features seven entertaining episodes. Originally created by Harvey Comics, Richie Rich, the child of incredibly wealthy parents, is the world’s richest kid. Scooby-Doo is the beloved, animated mystery-solving canine. "Richie Rich and Scooby-Doo are two endearing characters loved by kids and adults around the world," commented Amit Desai, WHV vice president of Family, Animation & Sports Marketing. The one-hour program retails for $26.99. So fire up the Mystery Machine and head for Scoobyville!
Go here to catch a few clips from the movies! Enjoy!
