Animation

To be clear, Wes Anderson did not set out to direct his new movie via e-mail. Even if that's precisely how the writer-director's stop-motion animation version of Roald Dahl's beloved children's book "Fantastic Mr. Fox" -- a jaunty visual joy ride that features voice characterizations by George Clooney, Meryl Streep and Jason Schwartzman -- ultimately came to be, Anderson never intended to become an in-box auteur. That choice was made all but inevitable, however, by the Oscar nominee's unorthodox decision to hole up in Paris for most of the shoot's one-year duration while principal photography commenced across the English Channel at London's venerable Three Mills Studios.

Inside most animated movie studios, the workplace background noise is little more than gentle mouse clicks and the dull drone of computers. The sounds within Laika, the maker of the new stop-motion animated film "Coraline," are often distinctly different: the buzz of electric drills, the whir from sewing machines and the occasional wallop of a hammer. Animation has grown into not only a billion-dollar business but also a high-tech hotbed of visual effects.

Most artists never know what their next gig will be, but color designer Michiyo Yasuda has worked with the same two people for 40 years. Born in Tokyo in 1939, Yasuda joined the ink-and-paint section of the company Toei Doga -- now Toei Animation -- before she was 20. After honing her craft working on commercials and television series, she met animation legends Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki and joined them on the production of 1968's "Little Norse...

Eighty years after the 7 1/2 -minute cartoon "Steamboat Willie" helped launch the career of a certain iconic mouse, Walt Disney Co. has returned to its short-form roots with the debut of a digital studio that will develop original content for the Internet. Stage 9 Digital Media, quietly in the works for two years, will be unveiled today with the premiere of "Squeegees," a comedy series about window-washer slackers, on ABC.com and YouTube.

WHEN "Sleeping Beauty" was released in 1959, the lavish Walt Disney animated fairy tale failed to attract audiences or impress the critics -- even though it featured music from the Tchaikovsky ballet and was shot in a widescreen format called Technirama. But over the last five decades, its reputation has grown considerably.

Oy vey! The Schwartz is with us once again. "Spaceballs," Mel Brooks' 1987 "Star Wars" parody, has made the jump from the big to the small screen and is landing on G4 Sunday with four back-to-back episodes of a new animated series based on the movie. Brooks, an executive producer on the series who co-wrote the pilot with Thomas Meehan, found adapting a feature-length film into a 22-minute cartoon no easy task. (Brooks and Meehan supervised the writing of the 12 remaining scripts as well.

The dreamy-eyed dogs in "Roadside Romeo" are classic Disney animation, but the song-and-dance numbers in Walt Disney's first co-production in India are pure Bollywood. The film, co-produced with Yash Raj Films, one of India's top movie studios, represents Disney's largest step yet in its bid to enter the Indian market. First-time director Jugal Hansraj was told to make a movie rooted in Indian nuances. "They wanted a film that could be a Bollywood film if it were not an animation film," he said.

The upcoming Disney animated film "Bolt" features a feisty canine that gets lost and makes his long journey home with the help of two world-wise pals. It's the kind of classic Disney parable that could just as well be told of the studio's once-revered animation division.

Stephen Kearin grew up wanting to be a vet, but he now works with animals in an entirely different capacity. For "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa," Kearin read lines opposite members of the all-star cast, which includes Ben Stiller, Chris Rock and David Schwimmer, most of whom would record their dialogue alone in a sound booth. During those sessions, Kearin was there, working off-microphone, to give the performers a real-world counterpart with whom to engage.

"Bolt," "Kung Fu Panda," "Wall-E," "Waltz With Bashir" and "9.99" were nominated Monday by the International Animated Film Society for best animated feature for the 36th annual Annie Awards. The awards honor the year's best animated features, TV productions, commercials, video games and short subjects. DreamWorks Animation's' "Kung Fu Panda" received 17 nominations, more than any other film.