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20 stories

Cartoon BrewVFXOn The Use Of AI In Sylvain Chomet’s Dior Ad: A Correction And An Apology Suspicious imagery (check the hands, always the hands) suggests AI use in Sylvain Chomet’s Dior ad, raising questions about its hand-drawn claims.

Cartoon BrewVFXJonathan Garson To Succeed Jim Morris As Pixar President; Jonas Rivera Takes Expanded Creative Role Jonas Rivera will take expanded creative oversight alongside Pete Docter as Pixar’s leadership changes take effect in January 2027.

Cartoon BrewVFX2027 Oscars Short Film Contenders: ‘Busy Bodies’ Director Kate Renshaw-Lewis Tiny factory workers expose the absurdity of everyday production in a short combining printed animation, vintage synthesizers, and household sounds.

Cartoon BrewVFXTop 5 ‘Dragon Ball Z’ Tracks Composed By Texas’s New AG Nathan Johnson Before winning statewide office, Johnson scored Goku’s power-ups and interplanetary battles. We revisit his anime career with five favorite tracks.

Cartoon BrewVFX‘The Cat In The Hat’ Directors On Bringing Seuss’s Printed Pages To CG Life Erica Rivinoja and Alessandro Carloni discuss building three distinct worlds, designing a scary monster, and giving the Things a percussive language.

Cartoon BrewVFXWho Is Animation For, And Who Will Pay For It? 5 Takeaways From Rome’s MIA Market 2026 International co-productions, new financing models, and a shortage of European animation for teens shaped discussions at this year’s market.

Cartoon BrewVFX2027 Oscars Short Film Contenders: ‘The Flesh Dress’ Director Joachim Hérissé Fabric, flesh, and skin blur in a stop-motion horror short exploring the fear of aging, patterns of domination, and the anxieties of artistic creation.

Cartoon BrewVFXDior Recruits ‘Triplets Of Belleville’ Director Sylvain Chomet For Holiday Short The four-time Oscar nominated director brings 1949 Paris to life in a holiday short inspired by Christian Dior’s friendship with Marlene Dietrich.

Cartoon BrewVFXTIFF Daily 3: Anime’s $28 Billion Market; New Awards; Fathom’s Animation Ambitions Japanese studios discuss overseas growth, industry leaders make the case for new anime honors, and Jason Brenek explores animation’s theatrical potential.

Cartoon BrewVFX‘Back To Tomioka’ Turns Fukushima’s Forbidden Zone Into A Hand-Drawn Coming-Of-Age Adventure Director François-Marc Baillet discusses adapting the graphic novel, his personal connection to the story, and depicting a community with respect.

Cartoon BrewVFX2027 Oscars Short Film Contenders: ‘Pigeons’ Director Amos Sussigan Sussigan discusses turning fears about AI and obsolescence into an animated pigeon documentary, made by 45 artists on almost no budget.

Cartoon BrewVFXYou’re Invited To A Free ‘In Waves’ Screening, Q&A, And Reception In Los Angeles Join us on November 7 for Phuong Mai Nguyen’s animated adaptation of AJ Dungo’s graphic memoir about love, loss, and surfing.

Cartoon BrewVFX‘Wildwood’ Holds Strong; Fathom CEO Interview; Disney Cuts Continue To kick off this week, we spoke with Fathom Entertainment CEO Jason Brenek about the distributor’s growing ambitions.

Cartoon BrewVFXFathom CEO Jason Brenek On Bringing ‘Wildwood’ To 3,000 Theaters, ‘The Amazing Digital Circus’ Surprise, And Finding Animation’s Next Big Audience Brenek discusses Laika’s creative control, lessons from a surprise box office hit, and plans to bring more anime to U.S. theaters.

Cartoon BrewVFXAssociation of Japanese Animations Sets First-Ever Nippon Anime Awards For November 2027 The AJA-backed initiative aims to celebrate anime’s artists and productions while supporting emerging talent and new business opportunities.

Cartoon BrewVFXDisney’s Year Of Cuts Continues With Thousands More Layoffs Expected According to reports, managers have been asked to cut annual costs by 20%, with the savings coming from a mix of redundancies and other expense reductions.

Cartoon BrewVFX‘Blue Eye Samurai’ Season Two Arrives In January, Netflix Drops New Teaser Mizu takes her revenge quest to London, while back in Japan, Akemi and Taigen face a dangerous new shogun and Ringo searches for purpose.

Cartoon BrewVFX2027 Oscars Short Film Contenders: ‘Apart’ Director Pola Maneli A forbidden friendship in apartheid South Africa is the focus of today's short, inspired by resistance woodcuts, harsh sunlight, and Nguni geometric patterns.

Cartoon BrewVFXStrong Word Of Mouth Helps ‘Wildwood’ Beat Projections With $9 Million Weekend, Second Sunday Up 2% Over First Week Laika’s stop-motion feature fell just 27% in its second weekend, reaching $27.4 million domestically as audience polling pointed to strong word of mouth.

Cartoon BrewVFXAnime Is A $28 Billion Business: Here’s How Japanese Studios Are Capitalizing On Its Global Growth Nippon Animation’s Hitomi Hiratsuka and Production I.G’s Yoko Ueda discuss overseas partnerships, family audiences, and lasting fan connections.

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About

The small bracket on top of every camera, from a phone rig to an ARRI.

The hot shoe is where the flash goes, and the microphone, and the monitor, and whatever the next decade bolts on. Every camera has one and nobody photographs it. This magazine is named after it because that is where the whole business meets: the body, the glass, the light, the sound, and the person holding it.

I shot news in Gothenburg for nine years and documentary for hire after that, then stopped taking assignments to write about the tools. Since 2021 I live in Tokyo, ten minutes from the used-camera shops of Shinjuku, which is not an accident: Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, Panasonic, Ricoh and Sigma make almost everything worth pointing at a subject, and their own press writes about it first, in Japanese. So this magazine reads it there, and in German, French, Italian and Spanish, and in English from the reviewers who actually put a card in the slot — around eighty sources and thirty channels, counted and plotted so you can see what is moving.

Bodies and lenses, cinema cameras and drones, film and the darkroom, firmware and the software that finishes the picture, the rumours before the launch and the reviews after it, and the photographers and shows the rest of it is for. I test what I write about on a job before a word goes down. I shoot film on Sundays and do not think that makes me interesting.

A story here is a headline, a short excerpt, one picture and the link to whoever reported it. We never reprint the article, and the picture belongs to the photographer or the maker. A story written in Japanese appears in Japanese, as its author set it down; the link goes to the original.

— Mara Lindqvist, Tokyo