Well. You might be wondering what I’ve been up to since shutting down AnimWatch. The answer is that I’m putting all that time and energy to use developing my own Sci-Fi animated adventure series Moon Town. For more details, including a weekly podcast and a production blog, click HERE. Tell your friends.

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For the past four and a half years, I have tried to provide a place that took independent animation seriously, but found myself speaking to a mostly empty room. In the past year, I partnered with AWN.com and pretty much exhausted myself trying to build this site and its readership. I produced giveaway contests that were poorly attended. I created the AnimWatch Podcast which had very few listeners. And I created my answer to the 10 Second Club, The AnimClips Challenge, which suffered from very poor attendance, and extremely low participation. It was ultimately destroyed by another challenge site. “Steamrolled”, to use Keith Lango’s term.

I have been discouraged many times, and come near to killing the site several times in the past four and a half years. I’ve kept AnimWatch going despite its personal cost to me in terms of time, energy and money, because I felt a site like this was important even though it cost me far more than it gave back. Yet, the whole site continues to suffer from chronic low readership. After all my work to change that, I guess I can look myself squarely in the mirror and admit I tried everything and nothing worked. If there were an easier way to run a site like AnimWatch, someone else would be doing it. The fact that no one else is doing it should tell me something.

So, this is the ragged end of low readership. I built it, and few came. Considering its lack of readers, AnimWatch is not worth the work it takes to run. OK. I get it, already. Uncle.

But the biggest reason I’m making this decision is that I’ve come to the conclusion that where films are concerned, there are only two kinds of people: those who make films, and those who only talk about it. And after four and a half years of talking and writing about other people’s films, I need to take that energy and put it into telling my own stories. So, that’s what I’m going to do.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be removing many segments of the site, only leaving up the feature articles and spotlights, because I consider those valuable resources. Not sure how long I’ll leave them up, but probably until mid-2008 anyway. But virtually everything else will be coming down, including the forum, in the interest of removing distractions from my life.

I’m sure many of you will find this disappointing. I’m sorry to disappoint you, and am genuinely grateful to so many of you who have cared, who have been loyal AnimWatch visitors from the start. It’s a shame there weren’t more of us. But, oh well. I know there’s nothing quite like AnimWatch out there, but there are still plenty of other forums, and places to talk about your films.

I’ll see you Out There.

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We’ve added a film profile and a feature article to AnimWatch.com.

The profile talks a little bit about how the film was made, and the feature article is an in-depth interview with Lucas Martell, the director of the film, in which he talks about how the film came to be in the first place.

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Keith Lango’s “Secret Joys of Myopia” was one of the first films we profiled here at AnimWatch. Not long afterward, Keith suffered a perfect storm of bad luck, lost the film’s data and backups all at the same time, and was forced to stop working on it.

It’s been years, but I’m pleased to announce that Keith has once again started up production on the film. He’s taking the stylization in his film to a sketchy extreme. He’s got a post at his BLOG, and a little test animation.

I wish luck to Keith, and perhaps it’ll be time to get a profile for the film back up at AnimWatch.

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I took a break from my Crunch schedule at work to put out Podcast #7, by popular demand. So many people had been asking whether I was ever going to do another one, that I figured I’d better get on with it.

FEATURE: Interview with Lucas Martell about his upcoming film, Pigeon Impossible.

FEATURE: Interview with Josh Burton about his film The Potter.

Music by:
Kyle and Mark - (www.kyleandmark.com)
David Beard - (www.davidbeardmusic.com)
Tim Larkin (www.timlarkin.net).

Subscribe through iTUNES HERE.
Subscribe through XML/RSS HERE.
Download direct HERE.

More information at the AnimWatch Podcast page.

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Could you use a solid, longer clip of character animation in your portfolio? Of course you could. As fun as these little 10-second talking head animations are, they don’t prove much of your ability to handle a scene. If you want to show what you’re made of, you need a longer scene.

But maybe you’re having trouble coming up with an idea. Or maybe you don’t have any sound.

Fear not. We’re happy to introduce the AnimClips Portfolio Masters Series. We are releasing longer clips of sound you can use for your portfolio.

Like the rest of the AnimClips audio, they were created here in the studios at AnimWatch, and are free for you to use in your portfolio and online. Edit them as you need, and use them freely. All we ask is proper credit.

More info HERE (#1) and HERE (#2).

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There are currently five AnimWatch profile films up at the AnimWatch Theatre video portal. There will be more films next week, but for now, you can watch:

- Doll Face by Andy Huang
- After You by Christopher Cordingley
- A Barbaric Tale by Richard Vaucher”
- Day Off the Dead by Lee Lanier and Jeffrey Dates
- The Bear Hunt by Vance Reeser

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE FILMS…

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Lucas Martell’s Pigeon Impossible is exactly the kind of film that made me start AnimWatch. Here is a beautiful film under construction, and it is so fun to watch it develop. Every screen capture, every test animation, every glimpse behind the curtain is one more jolt of excitement.

Lucas has been keeping us all up on his progress in the AnimWatch Forum. As he rounds the corner on the last bits of production, we felt the time was right to put up this profile. So, for those of you looking for just a bit more info on Lucas and his film, HERE it is.

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The AnimWatch Theatre video player is in beta. Go to the MAIN SITE and click on THEATRE in the menu bar. Right now, it’s running a bunch of stuff from the AnimClips Challenge.

I’d be interested to hear your comments here as we finalize the player.

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You know how it is. You’re watching a film develop. Maybe it’s been a couple of years. Or 5. Sooner or later, you just quit stopping by the development site. And if the film ever crosses your mind, you just think, “Yeah, that thing’s dead. What could he be doing all this time?”

Well… Michael Sormann has given us an answer, at least as regards his film “Theme Planet”. At the Theme Planet website, he’s just released a short film, “Bunny Situation“, which he did for SIGGRAPH. Michael wants to be sure you know the short is NOT Theme Planet, but just a short set in the same universe. It’s a pretty charming short, gorgeous visuals, nice pacing. Excellent music and sound. The best news? Bunny Situation shows Michael really knows how to string a film together. And now we can go back to waiting for the rest of Theme Planet, I guess…

More info HERE.
Discuss in the AnimWatch Forum HERE.

This site is a member of Animation blogspot, part of the Animation World Network