@BurnetRhodes I totally agree. Ive always been a fan of traditional animation and having it shot on film. Cant beat the look. Digital tools help cut the production line but also oddly lose the soul of the drawings. It truly is an extension from heart to drawing hand. Having a go at it myself at making a animated short film just made me realize how much of a craft it can be. I gave in when my daughter was born..just didn't have the time.

BTW I recently saw Miyazakis latest...even his films have left me cold of late..last film I liked of his was Spirited away.

@maxr Mindgame is truly awesome and not seen enough by many...its strange how unrelated images can evoke some sort of feeling inside...they nailed it with Mindgame.

Heres a few more faves of mine...some random stuff here...mostly western stuff.

Richard Williams flawed but amazing looking hand drawn film...shame the story isn't so good

Rene Laloux

Yuri Norstein

Legend of the sacred stone...batshit crazy wuxia puppet movie

Brothers Quay

Secret of Nimh

The Plague Dogs

wings of honneamise

When the wind blows (Typical british humour!)

Great links btw guys...loving it!

@Mimirsan

its strange how unrelated images can evoke some sort of feeling inside

I deeply believe there's a part in... the (don't like the word, but) creative process which cannot really be explained.

Some films on your list never heard before, same with @jleo 's Thank you very much to both

 
BTW to @all , please guys embed 1, maximum 2 videos in each post, for page lightness' sake, thank you =)

 
@BurnetRhoades my experience with animation is pretty close to zero, but was lucky enough to accidentally participate in my friend Joana's hand draw based short "M" and can honestly say it's an awful lot of work. Now, when I saw it projected onto a 80 feet canvas, wow, all those little unperfected chaotic textures were like a sea of organicness :P  •  found the trailer

it's an awful lot of work.

It is. But any really good animation is, no matter the technique. I got into CalArts based on the strength of my self-taught CG animation but I'd been a lover of cel animation my whole life and really embraced the work while I was there. It taught me that I couldn't draw as well as I always thought I could, so I resigned myself back to CG after a brief period of thinking, "fuck it, I'm switching to cel animation." I still have my animator's lighttable disk with Cartoon Color pegs from school.

There's something magic about seeing the work projected big. M looks really good!

Yes, photographing the backlit cels ads a lot of tonality and texture to otherwise flat tones. But Nimh, like most of Don Bluth's features, was an amazing film for layout and cinematography (in addition to animation and design). The use of color tones and colored lighting that draws your eye is just gorgeous and, I believe, this was the first animated film to create shadows through multiple exposures and masks rather than painted into the cels. A few years later Nelvana would incorporate the same technique, along with very liberal use of backlit, bi-pack effects passes for Rock & Rule.

My storyboarding professor hated Bluth and some of his storytelling techniques but I always just chalked that up to him having some kind of beef from earlier in his career maybe, but he loved to talk about how all Bluth films had to have a "disco ball" in the scene, commenting on the use of backlit effects and so much effort put into the cinematography and layout of the films, particularly Nimh.

I love it though. Especially because while Jeffrey Katzenberg was turning Disney Feature Animation into a balloon animal factory Bluth stuck to the character design principles from the height of Milt Kahl and Frank and Ollie's contributions to the Disney FA look, like from the Jungle Book and Robin Hood era, with heavy use of straight against curve and very graphic, solid drawing, with loads of interest. It just doesn't get any better than Milt Kahl at Disney.

It's interesting the reference to Richard Williams film up there. Back then this was an extremely controversial production that drew a line through the industry. I think everyone agreed that Williams was insane but there were reportedly concerted efforts to undermine his film and some rather big names today at places like Pixar took part in, reportedly, actual sabotage working as, essentially, spies for the "establishment", meaning Disney Feature Animation (which had become rather evil, with respect to anything threatening their supremacy in the States). Nobody could live up to William's standards for line quality and everything, I mean everything, being "on 1's". Supposedly, under outside orders, assistants under Williams were going in and not only throwing out inbetweens from portions of the film already completed but altering the drawings so that William's work would be more consistent with the more lax efforts employed in the completion of the film, after he reached out for help and lost control.

Most likely not since the "Red Scare" have there been lists of animators considered persona non grata in the industry based on where they fell in the drama surrounding this film. I can assure you, what you see in the finished film isn't the real film. I was fortunate enough to see a pencil test version from before all the meddling and controversy, with a majority of work done by Williams himself, and it's some of the most stunning animation I've ever seen with sequences of moving perspective that I still cannot believe were done without the aid of computers. And it was all "on 1's".

Robin Wright gets animated in The Congress by Ari Folman ( Waltz with Bashir) :

Variety REVIEW: http://variety.com/2013/film/reviews/cannes-film-review-the-congress-1200482236/

Yes, true about Dreamworks. They cranked out so many flops, their unofficial motto was “Stop Dreaming, Start Working!” Their live action movies haven’t fared too well either, nearly bankrupting the company twice. So now they’ve turned to India and China for cash, which may produce a new variety of europudding or almond/mango pudding, if we consider the movies made after the Hong Kong film industry crashed in the 90's. What movies?!! The only HK movies I remember are mostly from the 80's.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2012/02/dreamworks-animation-china-studio-oriental-dreamworks.html

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/05/18/one-thing-could-save-dreamworks-

—— and ... Pixar knows story

Pixar Rules of Storytelling

http://www.pixartouchbook.com/blog/2011/5/15/pixar-story-rules-one-version.html

Wow guys, very interesting reading all those insides, it really is.
I know nothing about those houses though, so hope you don't mind me contributing with

It's about spending time together (2011) by Ainslie Henderson

A bored afternoon in Illustrator and AE back in 2003,

@maxr I believe this is towards the middle. It's the most understated of the shorts and so different than everything else. Most of the animation that makes its way out of Japan tends to be very commercial so it was interesting seeing something so experimental, especially back in the mid '80s when Robot Carnival happened, I think the first of several anthology releases that Katsuhiro Otomo oversaw (Robot Carnival, Mani Mani (aka Neo Tokyo), Memories).

"Canon Fodder" might be the closest to experimental in Memories but it's been so long since I saw Mani Mani I don't remember if it had a really wacky experimental piece too.

edit: Ah, I see he has a new anthology, released last year as Short Piece.

 
The Man with the Beautiful Eyes • 1999
 

Credits

Director: Jonathan Hodgson
Producer: Jonathan Bairstow
Designer: Jonny Hannah
Poem: Charles Bukowski
Funded by: Channel 4 TV
Voice over: Peter Blegvad, Louis Schendler
Sound design: Jonathan Hodgson
Drum break: Stuart Hilton
Sound Recordist: Liam Watson
Animators: Jonathan Hodgson, Kitty Taylor, Lucy Hudson
Assistant Animators: Bunny Schendler, Martin Oliver
Artworkers: Mark Shepherd, Jonny Hannah
Rostrum camera: Peter Tupy
Producton Company: Sherbet
(c) Channel Four TV

 
PS
@BurnetRhoades lots of great info/tips/knowledge there bro =) Watch list gonna have a banquet... I've watch some of those films, but I'm starting to think that my mind was too busy, that was too much to ingest or that has merged already with my dreams, je je. Salu2

@maxr @BurnetRhoades @jleo - wow. A seemingly endless stream of great work. Thanks for posting.