Portal:Animation

The French Democracy is a short 2005 French political film made by Alex Chan (pictured) using computer animation from Lionhead Studios' 2005 business simulation game The Movies. The plot centers on three Moroccan men who turn to rioting after facing different forms of discrimination. Chan, a French native of Chinese descent, created the film to convey his view that racism caused the riots of the 2005 civil unrest in France. Although Chan was restricted by shortcomings and technical limitations in The Movies, he finished the film after four days of production. The film was uploaded to The Movies Online, Lionhead's website for user-created videos, on 22 November 2005 and was soon covered by American and French press. Although real-time-rendered, three-dimensional computer animation (machinima) had been used in earlier political films, The French Democracy attained an unprecedented level of mainstream attention for political machinima. While acknowledging the film's flaws, such as the grammatically poor English subtitles, commentators praised its clear political message and compared it to films such as La Haine and Do the Right Thing. The French Democracy inspired other politically conscious machinima works and fueled discussion about the art form's potential for political expression. Some raised concerns that video game companies would use their copyrights to control the content of derivative machinima films.

• ... that the live-action comedy series Community had a stop motion animated Christmas special?
• ... that Paul Dini was a writer for both the animated television series Batman: The Animated Series and the video game series Batman: Arkham?
• ... that Raoul Servais invented a new technique for combining animation and live action for his short film Harpya?
• ... that the first lady of the Ivory Coast created an animated kids' show in 1989?
• ... that the stylized animation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem was inspired by rough sketches in school notebooks?
• ... that Bruce Timm created most of the character designs for Batman: The Animated Series?

Isaac Lee Hayes, Jr. (1942-2008) was an American Grammy Award and Academy Award winning soul and funk singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, arranger, and actor. Hayes was one of the main creative forces behind Southern soul music label Stax Records, for which he served as both an in-house songwriter/producer and later as its premier recording artist. In addition to his work in popular music, Hayes has also written scores for several motion pictures as well. His best known film score, for the 1971 blaxploitation film Shaft, earned Hayes an Academy Award for Best Original Song (the first Academy Award received by an African-American in a non-acting category) and two Grammy Awards. Hayes received a third Grammy for his 1971 album Black Moses. In 1992, Hayes was crowned an honorary king of Ghana's Ada district thanks to his humanitarian deeds. From 1997 to 2006, he provided the voice for "Chef", a singing ladies' man and elementary school cook, on the animated sitcom South Park. There are conflicting statements from Hayes' publicists and others as to why he left the show, and this controversy is satirized in the South Park episode, "The Return of Chef".

The Simpsons' first season originally aired between December 17, 1989 and May 13, 1990, beginning with the Christmas special "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire". The showrunners for the first production season were Matt Groening (pictured), James L. Brooks, and Sam Simon. The series was originally set to debut in late 1989 with the episode "Some Enchanted Evening", which was meant to introduce the main characters; during the first screening of the episode, the producers discovered that the animation was so appalling that 70% of the episode needed to be redone. The producers considered aborting the series if the next episode turned out as bad, but it only suffered from easily fixable problems. The producers convinced Fox to move the debut to December 17, and aired "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" as the first episode of the series. The first season won one Emmy Award, and received four additional nominations. The DVD boxset was released on September 25, 2001 in Region 1 and September 24, 2001 in both Region 2 and Region 4.

• ...that comedy writer Al Jean (pictured), who has been awarded with four Emmy Awards for his work on The Simpsons, graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in mathematics?
• ...that The Old Lady and the Pigeons lost the Oscar but won the Genie?
• ...that to watch an early screening of "The Gathering", attendees of the Star Wars Celebration VI had to bring their kids with them?

Films released

• 1933 – Bosko the Musketeer (United States)
• 1939 – Hare-um Scare-um (United States)
• 1949 – Tar with a Star (United States)
• 1950 – Hillbilly Hare (United States)
• 1988 – Felix the Cat: The Movie (United States)

Television series and specials

• 1995 – The Mask: The Animated Series, an American animated television series based on The Mask begins airing on CBS