Big Buck Bunny

Big Buck Bunny

A Blender open source film.




Big Buck Bunny - Official Trailer



More:
http://peach.blender.org

- TAE

The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh- Episode 1 & 2

The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh- Episode 1

Part 1 of Pooh Oughta Be In Films.

Christopher Robin decides to put on a spooky play. :)



The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh- Episode 1 Part 2

The second part of Pooh Oughta Be in Films.



The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh- Episode 2 Part 1

Part1,episode 2- Donkey For a Day.

More cuteness :)




The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh- Episode 2 Part 2

A Friend, In Deed.

Part 2 of Episode 2 in The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.




Enjoy!

- TAE

YouTube Marketing Tips 13: More tips on how to become a Partner

We keep getting questions on how to become a partner, so here you go...

How to become a YouTube Partner

Qualifications

You need at least a few hundred subscribers and all your vids having "thousands of views." You also need to convince them that you're all about the YouTube community somehow. That was super easy for us, because all our vids are interactive in the comments (or with response videos), we've been featured on YouTube's front page twice, and we've entered (and won) YouTube contests. You also need to show them that you upload vids regularly (at least twice a month).

In addition, you have to own all your vids 100%. This is crucial. After looking at most channels, I don't think most people own all of their videos. So if you want a channel to get partnered, make sure it's all original content like vlogs, your own interviews, your own skits, your own animations, etc.

To sign up, go to http://youtube.com/partners


Copyright material

You may want to have two channels. The Kung Fu video doesn't look like it's yours. If it's yours, you should make that clear in the description by talking about how you filmed it and listed the credits of who was in it.

I'd take the "how to download" video down if this is the channel you want to do well with YouTube. Obiously, they don't want people to download YouTube videos. It makes piracy more painful for them to control.

What to do? Study the successful channels. There are three aspects of YouTube success and getting subscribers: (1) Social. (2) Entertainment. (3) Frequency.

So, be social (do a lot of commenting, friending, subscribing, etc. You need to entertain people (animations, music videos, and sketches of popular movies/people/etc. do well). You can also entertain people with crazy vlogs (just talking to the camera). And, finally, post these often. So all that is a ton of work, and, in some ways, the people on top definitely earned it and put themselves there.



Only people from certain countries can become partners

They only accept people from countries like USA, Canada, UK, and Japan.

Why?

Legal reasons and money reasons. =^(

Even hough it's not the most desirable Partnership feature to the users, the whole point of the partner channel to YouTube is the revenue sharing aspect. They are offering the partner channels tousers who get a lot of views in order to put ads on them and make more money. Well, the problem there is that there are no legal and legistic issues that need to be sorted out with each country's laws. So they're slowly doing that and sorting it out with the country's laws, starting with the countries that have the most YouTube users and going down the list.

- TAE

Did Jan Pinkava get kicked off of Ratatouille?

Yes. Yes he did.

The original story for Ratatouille was written by Jan Pinkava. When Lasseter saw the story headed downhill, he brought on Brad Bird, who just hit a home run with Incredibles...

Jan had the original story, created the set, and the key characters. Brad wrote the final story, all the details, and basically what made the movie "alive" and "emotional." He also directed all the animation. It is accurate that Jan was the co-director and the writer of the original story. That's all.

It's true that Lasseter pulled Jan off the project (at least he was taken off as the head director). To say that it was done to put a name as the director (since Brad Bird had a stronger name at the time) is completely untrue. Pixar doesn't care about names, and it always takes chances on promising directors. Bird wasn't a name when he did Incredibles (all Bird did was the flop, Iron Giant). Jan was more of a name than Bird was, because Jan got an Academy Award for Geri's Game.

None of that matters to Lasseter and Steve Jobs. The story's king, and Jan wasn't tugging the heart strings with his story. So they pulled him. If Lasseter ever pulls you off of something, you should humble yourself, say, "okay," and then see how you can help. Jan couldn't do that. He left the project, tried helping with other projects at Pixar, and then he had to leave; he couldn't stand see someone else take over his story (can you blame him?).

Lasseter does this a lot. He recently went to the Lilo & Stitch director (Chris Sanders) who was doing Bolt. He laid down a lot of changes (I believe about 80% of the story had to be cut), and the director bolted... to DreamWorks.

UPDATE: Chris' next project was far better than Lilo & Stitch or Bolt... How to Train a Dragon (my favorite DreamWorks film since Shrek 1 and Shrek 2). It certainly seems that Chris learned a ton when starting over at DreamWorks. We'll see how that translates to his next film, The Croods (about cavemen).
Story is king in Pixar's world (and now in Disney's world since Iger, Lasseter, and Jobs took over). If directors can't see that, then they will be replaced with directors who can get with the story (as evidence). That said, Chris turned out to be an amazing director (with Dragons), so you never know what each director is capable of.

Brad Bird's fourth movie is going to be called "1906." UPDATE: 1906 languished, so Brad directed and released MI4 first.

- TAE

Empire Logo Banner - By WillemWorks

The Animation Empire has a new banner up on our YouTube channel! This is our first banner, because we recently became partners.



Bigger:
http://i.ytimg.com/u/Bckv9C0qpaIHpgncqLTnmQ/profile_header.jpg

Anybody else want to make us a banner?
The video banner is 360 x 55 pixels.
The channel banner is 850 x 75 pixels.

Thanks to WillemWorks for the channel banner!

http://youtube.com/WillemWorks


- TAE

Eisner and Lasseter

Eisner was a man of action and business. He did great at ABC and Paramount. He came to Disney and did amazing things.

I agree that the man deserves credit for being a man of action and business. He motivated people and brought everything together.

However, he was not a man of relationships and entertainment. He did not value creativity and show the value to the creative individuals. Eisner drove away the head of animation, Katzenberg (who left after Lion King, not a coincidence that Lion King was the peak of the Disney animations), he drove away a few other key directors, he drove away Roy Disney (not a last name you want to mess with), and he almost succeeded in driving away Pixar. Eisner did a few great things, but he concentrated more on the business rather than the relationships and the creativity/entertainment. He was great when surrounded by creative geniuses. Without them, well, read about Roy’s Save Disney campaign to see how everything went downhill.

A great CEO doesn’t have to be creative; he just has to value and reward creativity. That’s what happened with Robert Iger. Iger was Lasseter’s second in command (so many people were worried), but he quickly showed that he knew what he was doing. Not only was he great at relationships (he remained friends with Roy Disney and Michael Eisner at the same time), but he quickly showed that he knew how to reward talent: he immediately bought Pixar, brought on Steve Jobs, made Lasseter CCO and head of Imagineering, brought Roy back onto the board, and, to top it off, he fulfilled his promise to Diane by bringing Oswald back home:

From Wikipedia...

Walt Disney’s daughter, Diane Disney Miller, issued the following statement after the deal was announced:
“When Bob [Iger] was named CEO, he told me he wanted to bring Oswald back to Disney, and I appreciate that he is a man of his word. Having Oswald around again is going to be a lot of fun.”


Because Iger made Lasseter the CCO of Disney (animation and parks), this is what has happened:

• Introducing all the Pixar characters into the parks
• Plans to revitalize Disney California Adventure
• Reworking current Disney animations in production (Meet the Robinsons and Bolt)
• Bringing back the directors of Aladdin to do another 2D animated film (Princess and the Frog)
• Redoing the planned Tinker Bell series to be in 3D and to be faithful to the original film (the current film was not)
• Revitalizing Disney film shorts, starting with a Goofy short





So overall, yes, Eisner deserves credit. But because he wasn’t good with relationships and rewarding creativity, the elixir that saved Disney became its poison after 10 years of value (such is life; not every Disney savior can be flawless).




After taking off to start Dreamworks animation, Katzenberg has had 10 animated films make over $200 million, worldwide:

- The Prince of Egypt

- Chicken Run

- Shrek

- Shrek 2

- Shark Tale

- Madagascar

- Over the Hedge

- Flushed Away

- Shrek the Third

- Bee Movie


After he left, Katzenberg has had 5 animated films make less than $200 million, worldwide:

- Antz

- The Road to El Dorado

- Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

- Sinbad: Legend of the 7 Seas

- Wallace & Grommit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit (winner of the Academy Award for best Animated Film)




After Katzenberg left, Eisner had 9 (non-Pixar) movies make over $200 million worldwide:

- Pocahontas

- Hunchback of Notre Dame

- Hercules

- Mulan

- Tarzan

- Dinosaur

- Lilo & Stitch

- Brother Bear

- Chicken Little


After Katzenberg left, Eisner had 9 non-Pixar movies make less than $200 million worldwide:

- James & the Giant Peach

- Fantasia 2000

- The Emperor’s New Groove

- Atlantis: The Lost Empire

- Treasure Planet

- Home on the Range

- Valiant

- The Wild

- Meet the Robinsons

(Plus 9 ToonDisney films which weren’t hoping to make much money)



Bottom line: If Eisner had kept his relationships with Katzenberg and Pixar and let the creative people make the creative decisions, Disney would be a powerhouse with no strong competitors (maybe the Ice Age team would be a tiny threat).

- TAE

Innoventions and ASIMO

Highlights of the ASIMO show and a cutting-edge video game.

- TAE

Question: What do you do about light and background noise?

Question for the Emperor: What do you do about light and background noise?



Here's an example of a video made where the lighting didn't match...


InnerU



There are some editing programs that will up lighting for you. Or just crank it up always just to make sure; for example we carry around a hand-light and extension chord used by mechanics.

We had to use an editing program to crank up the lighting in Following Directions 2:




As far as background noise goes, usually better to go silent and then just tape some excess background noise and loop it onto both ends. Or play the same music under both to disguise it.

We had a unique problem in Mike Tyson Will Eat Your Children where we were using Mike Tyson's actual audio with background noise and had to come up with new background noise to blend it a little:





- The Emperor