After 26 Seasons Actor Harry Shearer Says Bye-Diddly-Bye To The Simpsons

No-diddly-no! Via CNN:

Harry Shearer, the voice of iconic "Simpsons" characters like Mr. Burns, is walking away from a $14 million offer and is saying farewell to the show. "As the Simpsons continues its 27th and 28th seasons, Harry Shearer will not be within the show," showrunner Al Jean said in an email message to CNNMoney. Besides the evil Mr. Burns, Shearer also voices Ned Flanders, Principal Skinner, the Rev. Lovejoy and Kent Brockman. "We do not plan to 'kill off' his characters," Jean added, "but replace them with the most talented members of the voice over community." Jean's comments came a few hours after Shearer's private contract negotiations with the producers spilled into public view. Shearer, who tweeted about the dispute, said that it centered around his ability to continue doing outside work. He says he's had that freedom for decades.

Taiwanese Animators Take On "Fabulous Flannel" Day Of Silence Protesters

TRAILER: Frozen Fever

Sleater-Kinney - A New Wave

Via Rolling Stone:

If there's a riot grrrl poster child for the 21st century, it's Tina Belcher, the 13-year-old, butt-loving, self-proclaimed "smart, strong sensual woman" at the heart of Fox's animated show, Bob's Burgers. And if she needed an anthem, she got one in the form of Sleater-Kinney's "A New Wave." Sleater-Kinney teamed up with the Bob's Burgers crew for the video for "A New Wave" off their latest LP, No Cities to Love. The clip finds the Washington trio animated and kicking out the jams for Tina in her room, and soon enough they're joined by the other Belcher kids, Louise and Gene. The party rages as the animation grows wilder, and the headbanging only stops for a moment when the Belcher parents, Bob and Linda, notice plaster falling from the ceiling.

Animator Vs Animation

An animator's stick-figure character takes over his Facebook page and wreaks other havoc on his computer. Long clip but it flies.

(Tipped by JMG reader Ray)

No More Saturday Morning Cartoons

Engadget reports that the last network to air Saturday morning cartoons has dropped that programming.

The CW has aired its last batch of Vortexx programming, leaving American kids without any animated broadcast TV to start their weekends for the first time in decades. From here on out, young ones glued to the tube will mostly be watching educational shows. As for why this longstanding television staple has vanished? It's a combination of regulation and technological progress. A 1996 FCC rule required that stations offer at least three hours of educational programming every week; to avoid interrupting affiliate programming, the networks scheduled most of that content on Saturday morning. Meanwhile, kids' viewing options have increased dramatically. On top of dedicated cable and satellite channels like the Cartoon Network, they can now watch plenty of animation on Hulu, Netflix and other streaming services.

Which was your favorite?

Taiwanese Animators On The NFL Draft

Frozen Breaks Box Office Record

Ticket sales for Disney's Frozen broke the billion dollar mark this weekend, making it the highest-grossing animated film of all time and moving the title to tenth on the list for all movies. Variety reports:

The competition to beat was another Disney/Pixar title, “Toy Story 3,” which grossed $1.063 billion in 2010. “Frozen” earned $398.4 million domestically and $674 million internationally to take the title. In its run overseas, “Frozen” has become the top animated film in 27 territories. It has grossed $50.5 million in Japan thus far, and also broke into the top ten films of all time at the box office this weekend. It was released more than four months ago in the U.S., where it had a late November opening. Since then, it has enjoyed both critical and major financial success, becoming the first billion-dollar film from Disney Animation Studios. It won two Academy Awards as well, one for best animated film and the other for original song.

Frozen's top ranking is not adjusted for inflation. Of the 25 highest-grossing animated films, only 1994's The Lion King was not released in this century. The soundtrack for Frozen has been #1 on Billboard's album chart for the last eight weeks.

Taiwanese Animators On Jason Collins

TONIGHT: FX Debuts Animated Series About Rapping Gay Bear Rapist

The Washington Post has a review:

Behind bars, Chozen discovers that he’s gay — or, at the very least, he discovers that he’s a thuggish hybrid of a hip-hopper and bear. In his songs, he raps about the big-house pleasures of rough, anonymous encounters with unwilling partners. The first several episodes of “Chozen” would have a viewer believe there is nothing funnier than jokes about prison rape. “Chozen” is far from alone in this. Prison rape is an unfortunately acceptable, and hackneyed, punch line across the landscape of American comedy; worse still, it’s a reprehensible feature of criminal justice in our culture, which revels in dropped-soap jeers directed at the newly incarcerated. I’d be willing to let “Chozen” have its laughs there if it would more quickly move onto its better traits and smarter jokes. The show has a clever satirical premise at its center, in which Chozen must reconcile his warped ideas about gender and success with the warped ideas of gender and success in the rap-music industry at large.

Sigh. Here's the trailer.

TRAILER: Legend Of Oz: Dorothy's Return

Quite the cast: Patrick Stewart, Megan Hilty, Bernadette Peters, Kelsey Grammer, Martin Short, Dan Akroyd, Jim Belushi, and Glee's Lea Michele as Dorothy.

Taiwanese Animators Skewer Cindy Jacobs

Simon's Cat - Scary Legs

I'm addicted to Simon's Cat.

Taiwan Animators On Kuwait's "Gay Test"

How that test might work hasn't actually been revealed.

(Tipped by JMG reader Gary)

Aging Simulation

Via Huffington Post:

Watching it never grows old. Anthony Cerniello's aging simulation video (above) is blowing minds across the Web not only for its haunting effect -- but for his painstaking process to achieve it. Cerniello used his friend Danielle as a model and turned her into a composite by combining photos of her relatives, young and old, who have the greatest facial resemblance, thisiscolossal.com reported. Then animators and a 3D specialist helped bring the subtle transitions to life.

New Animated Movie Shows Gay Family

The coming animated feature from Laika Studios mentions a two-dad family. Via The Hollywood Reporter:

In the new trailer for The Boxtrolls, the latest 3D animated feature from Portland-based Laika Studios, a sweet-faced toddler stands alone on a street as various combinations of parents in Victorian garb appear and disappear beside him. "Sometimes there's a mother," the narrator intones. "Sometimes there's a father. Sometimes there's a father and a father. Sometimes both fathers are mothers." Eventually, the little boy is spirited down a sewer by a friendly crew of crated monsters. "Families come in all shapes and sizes," says the narrator. "Even rectangles."

The movie isn't about a gay family, but the mere mention of one in an animated film is sure to set you-know-who on yet another tiresome rampage. The studio's straight CEO (above) says, "We’re not in any way trying to be activists. We’re just trying to be who we are." Laika's last animated feature, ParaNorman, included a character who casually outed himself.

Universal has spent the last day scrubbing copies of the film's trailer from YouTube, but Hollywood Gossip has a mirrored copy. The Boxtrolls is due for release in the fall of 2014. (Tipped by JMG reader Jim)

The Simpsons Takes On Breaking Bad

Ellen Announces Finding Nemo Sequel

Today In Creepy Realistic Animation

From a company called Activision:

This animated character is being rendered in real-time on current video card hardware, using standard bone animation. The rendering techniques, as well as the animation pipeline are being presented at GDC 2013, "Next Generation Character Rendering" on March 27. The original high resolution data was acquired from Light Stage Facial Scanning and Performance Capture by USC Institute for Creative Technologies, then converted to a 70 bones rig, while preserving the high frequency detail in diffuse, normal and displacement composite maps. It is being rendered in a DirectX11 environment, using advanced techniques to faithfully represent the character's skin and eyes.

The porn applications will doubtlessly come immediately.

RELATED: NPR reminds us of the Uncanny Valley.

Does this next-generation animation cross the so-called "uncanny valley?" The term was coined in 1970 by the Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori. He said humans can relate to robots — think R2-D2 — but once they get too humanlike, but not close enough — think the animated Angelina Jolie in Beowulf — they feel disgust. That disgust — that "uncanny valley" — subsides at the other side: when the robot is indistinguishable from reality.  So, have we crossed that valley with this animation?

Ellen Signs On For Finding Nemo 2

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming. Ellen DeGeneres has agreed to reprise her popular role in a sequel to the 2003 smash, Finding Nemo.

According to the LA Times, DeGeneres has agreed play everyone’s favorite blue tang fish with short-term memory loss again. Rumors regarding the sequel to the Pixar/Disney film have been swimming around for years but were finally confirmed in June last year. DeGeneres has expressed a great love for the film, and has said numerous times on her daytime talk show how she would love to play Dory again.

Albert Brooks will also return as the overprotective daddy clownfish, Marlin.  The original movie has one of the highest ratings of any film at Rotten Tomatoes, where it is listed as "99% fresh."  Finding Nemo has grossed over $900M worldwide and is the third-highest earning animated film of all time, behind Toy Story 3 and The Lion King.