Toy Story 3 Nominated for 5 Academy Awards!

Nominations for the 83rd Annual Academy Awards were announced this morning.
Toy Story 3's nominations include Best Animated Feature, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Song and Best Sound Editing. And for only the third time in history, an animated film - Toy Story 3 - was nominated for Best Picture.


Animated Feature Film
• “How to Train Your Dragon” Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois
• “The Illusionist” Sylvain Chomet
• “Toy Story 3” Lee Unkrich


Music (Original Song)
• “Coming Home” from “Country Strong” Music and Lyric by Tom Douglas
• “I See the Light” from “Tangled” Music by Alan Menken Lyric by Glenn Slater
• “If I Rise” from “127 Hours” Music by A.R. Rahman Lyric by Dido and Rollo Armstrong
• “We Belong Together” from “Toy Story 3" Music and Lyric by Randy Newman

Best Picture

• “Black Swan” Mike Medavoy, Brian Oliver and Scott Franklin, Producers

• “The Fighter” David Hoberman, Todd Lieberman and Mark Wahlberg, Producers

• “Inception” Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan, Producers

• “The Kids Are All Right” Gary Gilbert, Jeffrey Levy-Hinte and Celine Rattray, Producers

• “The King's Speech” Iain Canning, Emile Sherman and Gareth Unwin, Producers

• “127 Hours” Christian Colson, Danny Boyle and John Smithson, Producers

• “The Social Network” Scott Rudin, Dana Brunetti, and Ceán Chaffin, Producers

• “Toy Story 3” Darla K. Anderson, Producer

• “True Grit” Scott Rudin, Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, Producers

• “Winter's Bone" Anne Rosellini and Alix Madigan-Yorkin, Producers

Sound Editing

• “Inception” Richard King

• “Toy Story 3” Tom Myers and Michael Silvers

• “Tron: Legacy” Gwendolyn Yates Whittle and Addison Teague

• “True Grit” Skip Lievsay and Craig Berkey

• “Unstoppable” Mark P. Stoeckinger

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

• “127 Hours” Screenplay by Danny Boyle & Simon Beaufoy

• “The Social Network” Screenplay by Aaron Sorkin

• “Toy Story 3” Screenplay by Michael Arndt; Story by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich

• “True Grit” Written for the screen by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen

• “Winter's Bone” Adapted for the screen by Debra Granik & Anne Rosellini

Day & Night also got a nom:

Short Film (Animated)

• “Day & Night” Teddy Newton

• “The Gruffalo” Jakob Schuh and Max Lang

• “Let's Pollute” Geefwee Boedoe

• “The Lost Thing” Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann

• “Madagascar, carnet de voyage (Madagascar, a Journey Diary)” Bastien Dubois

A complete list of nominees can be found here.  Congratulations once again to our great crew!

Update

I know there haven't been a lot of quality original posts on the blog in a while; I've been wanting to do more tutorials and articles, but I haven't been able to find the time.  I'm currently a Directing Animator on Cars 2, and we're in pretty heavy crunch mode until April, so it's not likely you'll see a lot of updates here until then.  See you on the other side!

A couple of cool animation reference sites

One of my readers, Peter Nagy, turned me on to these two sites with a wealth of reference material.  The first is the Walk Cycle Depot, which is a pretty neat idea, in the spirit of the Pencil Test Depot.

The second and larger site is the Living Lines Library, which features loads of model sheets, pencil tests and other art from 2D animated features and shows.

Enjoy!

Free eBook: Animation Insiders

This book has just been made available as a free digital download.  It includes interviews with many animators about their workflows, including myself and Jason Schfleifer.  Check it out!

The Deep

I love this new stop-motion short from PES: