It's Official. Tekkon Kinkreet Finds a North American Home With Sony.

that's fantastic news - not only has it a USA home, but it's a very good one that's above just being swamped and generically handled by your everyday anime licensee, and i hope they keep their eye on other 4C stuff now (perhaps even a belated, more-than-worthwhile-even-though-its-subbed-on-DVD-in-japan release for 'mind game'?!)...

get used to seeing this film referred to as 'black and white' as that's how the title translates.

The title doesnt translate as 'black and white' - these are the names of the two characters. The title actually is a pun on the Japanese for 'reinforced concrete' (ferro-concrete) replacing the 'kon' of 'konkreet' with a 'kin' meaning 'muscle'.
Love the look of this film though - very interesting use of CG. Cant wait to see it on a big screen.

About 6 years ago, I saw a short film on a motion graphics CD-ROM, which had a similar title (I think) and a very similar style. I instantly loved it, and watched it several times before the disc completely disappeared. Does this ring a bell for anyone, or am I completely off my rocker?

I wrote an article for the publication 3D World a few months ago - this might explain it:

The project was initiated some years ago by Michael Arias, an American fluent in Japanese who had spent the previous seven years working at Softimage where he developed XSI’s Toon Shader plug-in, originally for use in Studio Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke (1997) and Dreamworks’ Prince of Egypt (1998). A short pilot was prepared which screened at Annecy International Animated Film Festival and at SIGGRAPH in 1999, and Koji Morimoto was initially scheduled to direct. But as Arias recounted “The project fell through for the usual reasons and it took a few years of working on Animatrix to really get things started again. Animatrix gave me and my screenwriter Anthony Weintraub time to write a wonderful script, and also convinced people that I was ready to drive a project as ambitious as Tekkon.”

While the original pilot was all 3D, the new feature version is a “hybrid” of traditional and digital animation, with around 40% of the shots utilizing the latter. Arias explained his backing away from the newer technology thus: “First, I wanted to concentrate on directing, not CG animation or software. Second, I found a group of artists who I believe are the most talented character animators on the planet and wanted them to work with tools most familiar to them, i.e. pencil and paper. Third, I really think hand-drawn character artwork is more expressive than 3D animation.”

There it is - thanks for the info. Hopefully the pilot will appear on a DVD release. It would be great to see something better than the low-res quicktime I saw. I remember spending a few hours on the web trying to find more info about it, and I can't wait to see the finished effort!

Tekkon Kinkurito will be released in french theaters by Rezo Films on April 25th 2007.

Source : http://www.catsuka.com/news_detail.php?id=1170758353

wampachow > The original Tekkon Kinkurito pilot is available since 5 years on my website

http://www.catsuka.com/focuson_anim.php?id=morimoto_koji&page=2


With a lot of informations (in french) on my other website

http://www.kojimorimoto.net/fr/tekkonkinkurito.htm

;)

Just want to point out that the teaser url is wrong has one 'img' had one i too many!!:

http://www.tekkon.net/iimg/tekkon_toku_320.mov

Whoops, my response is a bit wrong too! ;D

Is Sony going to dub it for the theatrical release?