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Get ready for a new digital platform for the art of visual storytelling. Aimed at animation professionals and fans, “Craft” is an online subscription-based platform that allows a user to access the art and conceptual materials of high-quality animated films, series, and games–the sketches, scripts, concept art, character designs, storyboards, animatics, work-in-progress animation and much…

The Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF), North America’s leading animation film festival, is now accepting entries for competition in 2017. With over 8 categories of competition, animators and other creators of all levels have a great and auspicious festival to show off their work.  Entries are due May 26, and there is no entry fee….

Zootopia took home six awards at last nights ASIFA-Hollywood’s 44th annual Annie Awards, which were presented at Royce Hall on campus of University of California, Los Angeles. In addition to Best Feature Film, the Disney film also won Best Director, Outstanding Achievement in Character Design, Storyboarding, Voice Acting (Jason Bateman) and Writing in an animated feature. This pushed Disney to eleven wins out of the 31 awards at the show.

Illumination Entertainment’s The Secret Life of Pets jumped through movie theaters this weekend, topping the record for the biggest opening weekend ever for an original animated film. With a weekend take of $103.17 million for its first three days, Pets surpassed the $90.4 million record made by Pixar’s Inside Out last year. Pets also had the widest opening ever for an animated film, opening in 4,370 theaters this weekend.

In a stunning shake-up of animation studios, NBCUniversal has picked up DreamWorks Animation for 3.8 billion dollars, in a deal announced April 28th. Comcast- the parent company of NBCUniversal- says that Dreamworks “will become part of the Universal Filmed Entertainment Group.

ToonBox Entertainment’s The Nut Job 2– originally to be released January 15th- is now looking at a release next month on May 19. The sequel to 2014’s The Nut Job features the return of Will Arnett as Surly Squirrel.

The idea that cartoons are created only for children is a pretty common one. However you may find that this preconception is a lot farther away from reality than you would think. Disney became the king of cartoon- land, and in doing so turn animation into an integral part of the film industry, with his philosophy dominating the market until the end of the century. But animation- not even in Walt Disney original intentions- was never intended only for kids.

In the wake of the massive snow storm on the Eastern seaboard, I found myself waiting in line to see Carpe Diem’s winter children’s animated snowfest La Guerre des Tuques, which is called Snowtime! for US audiences. This Sundance showing was the premiere of the English-language version of the film, and was shown as part of the Sundance Kids segment of the film festival. The kids at the show were all met by Chloe at the door, and most left with their very own Snowball of fun.

Ready for a first look at Laika Entertainments fourth stop-motion animated feature Kubo and the Two Strings? The studio has just released a sneak-peak advance teaser video for the film. Much more stylized than any of their previous films, Kubo and the Two Strings is also the first film from animator-turned-director (and Laika CEO) Travis Knight.

The premiere of Marvel / Disney’s Guardians of the Galaxy is imminent on Disney XD… and sneak peaks are already airing. A series of animated short peaks that preview the series have already started airing on Disney XD. There will be a full advance preview on September 5, with the full one-hour premiere following on September 26.