2012 Recommended Anthropomorphics Reading List: September update

The Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Association, which administers the annual Ursa Major Awards, has updated the 2012 Anthropomorphic Reading List to include the titles recommended by furry fans through the end of August. This list is often used by fans to nominate in the next year’s Awards.

All fans are invited to recommend worthwhile anthropomorphic works in eleven categories (motion pictures, dramatic short films or broadcasts, novels, short fiction, other literary works, graphic stories, comic strips, magazines, published illustrations, websites, and games) first published during 2012, if they are not already on the list.

Send in your recommendations and read the List to see what other fans have recommended. Have you read all twenty-one comic strips, for example? What have you been missing?

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‘Wastelander Panda’ announces casting call

Earlier this year, Epic Films released a trailer of Wastelander Panda, the story of an anthropomorphic panda named Arcayus, who wanders a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

After a successful bid to raise funds to turn the trailer into a three-episode series, Wastelander Panda went into pre-production and, on August 27, a casting call was made.

Filming of the series will take place over November 5-23, and will mostly occur in Adelaide, South Australia, with some additional filming in the Flinders Ranges. The parts to be cast include Rose (a human girl), gang members, and a family unit. In addition to these human parts, auditions will also be held for two actors to play “hybrid animal characters” in fursuits.

The deadline for applications is September 2. Extras casting will take place later, in October.

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Feature film: ‘Toys in the Attic’

Pixar is not the only studio that can make movies about anthropomorphic toys. The Cartoon Brew website announces that on September 7, indy distributor Hannover House will release an English-language dub of Czech director Jiří Barta’s 2009 feature Na půdě (In the Attic) in America, as Toys in the Attic. This is a mixed feature combining stop-motion puppetry, 2D cartoon animation, and live action.

It’s an analogy based on the cultural and political contrasts of the Cold War era; the world of the attic is divided into the land of happy toys in the West and the Land of Evil in the East.

Bunnymund is Back! (Trailer: ‘Rise of the Guardians’)

Bunnymund is back, in this second trailer for DreamWorks’ CGI Rise of the Guardians. Also Jack Frost, who was conspicuously missing from the first trailer. Bunnymund is still the only one who makes this an anthro movie, but, oh, does he look good! Due in theaters on November 21st. [Thanks again, Cartoon Brew.] read more

‘Ame and Yuki, the Wolf Children’ opens in Japan as the #2 grosser

Japanese animated feature Ame and Yuki, The Wolf Children (Ookami kodomo no Ame to Yuki), produced by Madhouse and directed by Mamoru Hosoda, was released in Japan on July 21, the same weekend as the Japanese release of Pixar’s Brave. Box office results show that The Wolf Children ranked second, earning $4,592,490 (¥360,372,690), while Brave was in fifth place with $1,858,971 (¥145,873,454). 1st and 4th places were held by live-action features, while #3 went to this year’s annual Pokémon feature, Pocket Monsters: Best Wishes 2012. From an ANN summary derived from the movie’s website:

The theme of the film is the love between parents and children. The story covers 13 years and begins with a 19-year-old college student named Hana who encounters and falls in “fairy tale-like” love with a “wolf man.” After marrying the wolf man [named Ookami, Wolf], Hana gives birth and raises two wolf children — an older sister named Yuki [Snow] who was born on a snowy day, and a younger brother named Ame [Rain] who was born on a rainy day. The four quietly lived in a corner of a city to conceal the existence of the “wolf children,” but when the wolf man suddenly dies, Hana decides to move to a rural town far removed from the city.

Furry Movie Award Watch: July

This month, nothing new is going on in the circuit, so I have devised a thought experiment to try and guess what movies might have been nominated and won Best Animated Feature if it had always existed as an Oscar category.

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Trailer: Blue Sky’s May 2013 ‘Epic’

The Cartoon Brew has the first teaser/trailer for 20th-Century Fox’s & Blue Sky’s CGI-animated Epic, which features talking mice, birds, slugs and bugs. The Brew’s readers make a lot of comparisons to FernGully. Opens May 2013. read more

‘Courageous Cat’ to get film treatment

Evergreen Media Group has acquired the rights to Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse, a cartoon series from the 1960s. Courageous Cat, created by comic book artist Bob Kane, was a parody of Kane’s better-known creation: Batman.

Courageous Cat and his sidekick were a crime-fighting duo who lived in the Cat Cave, and, when summoned by the Cat Signal, would race to the scene of the crime in their red Cat Mobile. Courageous Cat would then fight the bad guys with his all-purpose Cat Gun.

As with the recently announced Paddington Bear film, Evergreen will be rebooting the Courageous Cat franchise with a blend of live-action and CGI.
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‘Guskô Budori no Denki’ shows Japanese sure love their cats!

Enough to include them in anime OH SO VERY OFTEN, and make a considerable number of movies starring them.

This one is an interesting example [site fails sporadically; alternate trailers] – directed by the same person responsible for Night on the Galactic Railroad (IMDB) and based, again, on a work by Kenji Miyazawa. And once again, the director used cats to tell the story. (Most of the character designs were lifted from Galactic Railroad as well.)

The romanized version of the movie’s title is Guskô Budori no Denki, or “The Life of Guskô Budori”. Set in 1920, Guskô is forced to leave his home in the forests of the Tōhoku region of Japan after a series of natural disasters, joining scientists in the Ihatov Volcano Bureau who are studying them. Meanwhile, Guskô pursues the wintery tomcat who stole away his sister. Released July 7 in Japan.

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Review: ‘Ted’ was bearable, if you are into that sort of thing

Ted is the first movie directed by Seth MacFarlane, most known for his role in creating the hit animated sitcom, Family Guy. I am not a fan.

The sad fact is that a lot of people are in fact fans, and yes, I believe that that is a sad fact. To be clear, I am not down on gross-out humor, and can enjoy it as well as anyone else. Heck, I have done standup comedy, and such gags were a standard part of my sets. Gross-out humor is not my problem with this movie.

The problem is it is pretty much exactly what I expected. It is probably exactly what you expected, too. So, if you expect to like this movie, go on and get your ticket. If not, you can pretend to be a snob with me and the other cool kids, okay?

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Trailer: ‘Saving Sally’

The Cartoon Brew presents a trailer for Saving Sally, a Filipino feature-in-progress by Avid Liongoren. The two-years-in-progress feature combines live-action footage, cartoon animation, matte paintings, and motion graphics.

As far as the plot can be made out from this one-minute trailer (three Vimeo trailers, in fact), Sally is a live-action college student whose boyfriend is a nerdy amateur comic-book artist. The comic-book drawings come to life, and the anthropomorphic monster falls in love with Sally and won’t stop following her around. As the feature progresses, Sally herself starts switching back and forth between live-action and very surrealistic animation in which she identifies more and more with the monsters.

It’s a very original take on anthropomorphism. Saving Sally may or may not get finished, and it may or may not get to the U.S., so don’t miss this trailer. The Cartoon Brew is chock-full of animation, which is all fascinating even when it is not about anthropomorphic animation.
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Trailer: ‘Hotel Transylvania’

A werebat. A werewolf. Anthropomorphic monsters galore. Sony Animation’s Hotel Transvlvania, due out in the U.S. on September 28 (a considerably different trailer was released in Russia in March), seems like a feature that Flayrah’s readers should enjoy.

‘Monsters, Inc. 2’ becomes ‘Monsters University’

The Cartoon Brew has the first teaser-trailer for Pixar’s 2013 Monsters University, a prequel showing Sulley and Mike as college students before they met Boo. No humans; it’s all anthropomorphic “things”.

Don’t fail to read the Cartoon Brew commentary focusing on the lighting, and on how Pixar’s advance trailers are usually much more crudely CGI-rendered than the finished movies.
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‘Ernest et Célestine’ animated feature debuts December 12

Here is another anthro animated feature for 2012. The 80 minute Ernest et Célestine, based on the French childrens’ book by Gabrielle Vincent, is due for a December 12 release in France.

There does not seem to be a trailer yet, but here is a short making-of clip, and Cartoon Brew has a few previews.
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Paddington Bear film announced

Paddington Bear, the ursine star of numerous children’s books, is set to make the transition to the big screen.

A film of Paddington has been on the drawing board since 2007. Originally, Warner Bros. was to be involved, but, on May 10, it was European production company StudioCanal who announced that they were teaming with Harry Potter producer David Heyman and director Paul King to make the movie. Like The Smurfs, Yogi Bear, and Garfield, the Paddington film will incorporate live-action footage and CGI.

Paddington was created by British author Michael Bond in 1958. The marmalade-eating, dufflecoat-wearing bear was found at Paddington station by the Browns, who took him into their family. Bond’s stories chronicled Paddington’s subsequent misadventures, and were adapted into a television series by the BBC in 1975.

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