North of Blue and Window Horses

I found out through Animation World Network that Joanna Priestly is creating North of Blue, an abstract animated feature. Read about it there for your self. The trailer has yet to be released.

http://www.awn.com/news/joanna-priestley-retrospectives-screenings-set-stuttgart-bfi

Window Horses is an animated film about a shy poet who goes to a poetry festival in Iran. It's showing in festivals right now. I hope to either catch it at a festival or see it in a later commercial release. There's no saying how long this film will stay obscure.

I'm currently working on a page with information on film availability. One change I may make in the future is promoting films that are simply old and not just obscure ones. After all, many animated films are becoming less and less obscure. I'm also entertaining the idea of making an animation web forum for overshadowed movies outside of the mainstream of US and Japan. See you all again when I make the next update.

Defunct Animation Blogs

Over time there's been a lot of animation blogs that produced good content but eventually shut down for one reason or another. It's a bit frustrating to see some of the best animation blogs and even communities disappear and to make it worse, half the time you're not sure why the blog closed.

Frames Per Second Magazine link
Animatsiya in English link
Ha Neul Seom link
Michael Sporn's Splog link
Too Long for Twitlonger link
Animondays link
Keith Lango Animation link

I have been around the animation community for a long time and seen a lot of blogs close. Frames Per Second closed because of the death of Emru Townsend who couldn't find a kidney for transplant. Animatsiya in English closed because of the blog runner Niffiwan's frustration with video takedowns and probably from moving on in life. I still don't know why Ha Neul Seom closed down and it's a shame and I don't know why Your Daily Cartoon has stopped. Michal Sporn's Splog, as anyone who's visited it knows, ended when Michael Sporn died. Too Long for Twitlonger had some really interesting commentary but wasn't around for very long. Animondays was a good blog though I remember surprisingly little of its content aside from the Craig Bartlett interview. Keith Lango had perspective and animation tips but got caught up in work.

Some blogs are as far as I can tell, still around but haven't been updated in a while.

Animation Backgrounds
The Animation Activist
AniPages Daily

Many of the great sites of the animation blogosphere are gone or on hold. The English Animatsiya(Russian animation) community is dead and tensions between the US and Russia are very high(Syria, elections, etc...). IMDb has closed down all its forums. The only movie stores left in my area are big box stores and video game stores. In brighter news Netflix is investing in original content some of it good, but distributors getting into the animation game isn't how I wanted the progression of animation to happen.

I'll be updating this blog and making improvements. My links section is badly out of date. There is more to do and I need to get to it.

Edit-4/9/2017 Removed Your Daily Cartoon from the defunct blog list as I see that it has recently been updated.