Comic-Con, Scanner, and independent shorts

Comic-Con San Diego has started. For a humorous look at the kinds of people you might see walking the show floor, check out the excellent series of “recent sketches on the Story Boredom blog”:storyboredom.blogspot.com/2006_07_0… I’ve never been to the convention, but have some friends who go most every year. Some of those people also worked on “A Scanner Darkly”:www.scannerdarklymovie.com/, which opened last weekend in wider release, banking an impressive $5000 per theater with a #9 opening at the box office. I saw the film last weekend and enjoyed it, especially the last half which seemed less burdened by unnecessary Linklater-ish dialog. In general I’m not a big rotoscoping fan, but the style held my attention and was well-executed.

In other animation news, the National Film Board of Canada has “put many of their classic films online”:www.nfb.ca/animation… (via “Peter Merholz”:www.peterme.com/archives/…). Also see “this beautiful little film”:www.skyvu.net/film/tree… by CalArts student “Ian Worrel”:ianworrel.blogspot.com/. Despite what the big studios do, I love that traditional animation is thriving at schools and with independent animators.

Manton Reece @manton