Inside The Mouse Castle 10-10-2014 - 'Tomorrowland' and 'Big Hero 6' at New York Comic Con

The Tomorrowland panel (l. to. r.): George Clooney, Brad Bird
Damon Lindelof, Britt Robertson, Raffey Cassidy
and Hugh Laurie

I can't think of a movie we're more excited about right now than Brad Bird's Tomorrowland. At New York Comic Con on Thursday, attendees got a taste of this cryptic and futuristic adventure with a first look at the teaser trailer and a scene from the film. In this special, extended episode of Inside The Mouse Castle, Anthony and I--with a big assist from our good friend Ron in New York--break down what the enthusiastic audience got to see, what we think it all means and why you should be just as excited as we are.

Big Hero 6 was also in the spotlight, showing off a two minute sizzle reel that gave us a better look at our hero Hiro's mad robotic skills, as well as the talents of his cohorts Honey Lemon, GoGo, Wasabi and Fred. We also saw a hint more of the evil capabilities of the mysterious man in the kabuki mask. Of course, the inflatable Baymax is as cute, cuddly and helpful as ever.

Here's what else we have going on in today's show:

• Robert Downey, Jr. is just messing with us now, telling Ellen DeGeneres Iron Man 4 is a go, then telling David Letterman its not. It's all getting a bit tiresome, all these rumors, cryptic comments and denials, but damned if we aren't fascinated by the whole game.
• A couple of things we do know: the Marvel Experience, a traveling roadshow of superheroes and super villains, starts a four-city tour in Phoenix on December 12th. We're also looking forward to Marvel 75 Years: From Pulp to Pop!, a one-hour documentary debuting on ABC November 4th. Aside from some pretty cool history, we're also hoping for sneak peeks at Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ant-Man.
• Star Wars Rebels: Spark of Rebellion is making the jump to ABC on October 26th, in case you missed it on Disney Channel and Disney XD. As an added bonus, James Earl Jones will voice Darth Vader in a cameo not previously shown on the cable channels.
• Download the free Blippar app for iOS and Android, then use it to scan the Star Wars Rebels logo below. Just do it. Seriously. It's super cool.

• Fan-made and Lucasfilm approved, The Empire Strikes Back Uncut is the ultimate fan love letter to the very best of the Star Wars films. Culled from over 1,500 15-second film segments submitted by amateur filmmakers and animators, it's a shot-by-shot re-creation of when things got really bad for the rebellion. We also love it because it heralds the return of the Star Wars Fan Film Awards. Details on that popular contest, which disappeared in 2012, will be revealed later this month.

• A free demo download of Disney's new video game Fantasia: Music Evolved is now available on Xbox One and Xbox 360. So far, I think it's a pretty good interactive music game that evokes the best elements of Guitar Hero and Just Dance with a potentially better Disney-centric story line. It definitely makes me want to get my hands on the full version of the game when it launches on October 21st.

Disney Fantasia: Music Evolved

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Going 'Between Frames' at the Walt Disney Family Museum

The Pumpkin King exposed.
Jack Skellington from
The Nightmare Before Christmas.

That Between Frames, the Walt Disney Family Museum's new exhibit on stop motion animation, left me wanting more is not necessarily a bad thing. With my appetite merely whetted by the museum's modest but fascinating collection of models, armatures, storyboards and concept art, it made me go back to the finished products, the classic films that brought these fanciful creations to life.

And that's when the fun really started.

I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon pouring over YouTube in search of George Pal's Puppetoons from the 1930s and 40s. I pulled out my Disney Rarities DVD set to take another look at Walt's rare forays into stop motion animation, Noah's Ark (1959) and A Symposium On Popular Songs (1962). I made the distressing discovery that I have neither the original King Kong nor Ray Harryhausen's sublime mythic fantasy Jason and the Argonauts on Blu-ray (Amazon was able to rectify that). I set aside The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach for viewing this weekend.

King Kong armature replica

If you're going to truly appreciate an art form, you might as well go all in.

Stop motion animation is a painstaking process of manipulating characters and props, usually no more than a foot or two high, to create something very life-size and real on the big screen. It lends itself to conventional hand drawn animation insofar as it requires 24 individual images or frames to make a single second of footage. Between frames is when the magic happens. That's when the model is moved ever so slightly to ultimately become a skeleton wielding a sword or a giant ape climbing the Empire State Building.

AT-AT Imperial Walker model

Starting today, the Walt Disney Family Museum gives you a taste of the kind of work and precision that, for more than a hundred years, has gone into the craft of stop motion animation. On display in the Museum's Theater Gallery are armature replicas from the original versions of King Kong and Mighty Joe Young. There is an exact reproduction model of an AT-AT Imperial Walker from The Empire Strikes Back. This particular model is noteworthy for belonging to director and visual effects supervisor Phil Tippett, who did the stop motion animation for the original AT-ATs in Empire as well as the beastly tauntauns that helped patrol the ice planet of Hoth.

Jurassic Park velociraptor

Another item Tippett had a hand in designing is a Digital Input Device (DID) for Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park. It's an articulated model of a velociraptor that, instead of being used as a stop motion figure, provided input to a computer that animated the dinosaur in CG. It's one of exhibit curator Anel Muller's favorite items in the collection. She says, "It marks the transition from stop motion animation to computers in special effects. It's an important piece of history." It was also the device that caused the stop motion master Tippett to exclaim, "I think I'm extinct!" That line was later cheekily added to Jurassic Park.

Tippett's art was far from extinct, however, as character models on display from later films like The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline emphatically prove. Stop motion animation is a time-tested art form that, even in the age of CG everything, still has audience appeal and is still done in the same exacting manner as it always has: a skilled animator carefully manipulates a detailed model, one frame at a time. Tim Burton's Frankenweenie opens next week, and you can draw a straight line from it to a group of toy teddy bears that "danced" before a camera in 1907.

There is much history to celebrate in Between Frames and the exhibit pays justifiable tribute to film pioneers like Georges Melies and Willis O'Brien, not to mention the grand master of stop motion animation, Ray Harryhausen. Art Clokey's classic character Gumby gets a place in the spotlight as well (something I gushed about last month). The inspired work of all these gifted artists reminds us that, like Walt Disney himself pointed out, there's nothing you can't create with a bit of imagination. It's a sentiment Muller hopes visitors to her exhibit will take with them. "(I hope) they feel a surge of inspiration, that they will find creativity in their own lives and be reassured that believing in your dreams is not an antiquated idea, but the key to success."

Of course, like me, you may just be inspired to revisit some great feature-length movies and short films. Or write a story about them. You never know.

Between Frames: The Magic Behind Stop Motion Animation runs through April 28, 2013. For more information, visit www.waltdisney.org.

More Between Frames photos are on our Facebook page.

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Want to know more about stop motion animation? Here are a couple of great places to start:
Ray Harryhausen, The Official Website
'Nightmare' and 'Coraline' Director Selick Talks About Animation and Pixar's 'Up'