We came across a brand-new comic from Boom! Studios called Animal Pound. It goes like this: “When animals grow tired of being caged, killed, and sold off-it’s only a matter of time before they’ve had enough… When an uprising puts a pound in control of the animals, they quickly find themselves as comrades, united against everything that walks on two legs. But with this newfound power comes a sudden challenge: how best to lay the groundwork for this new democracy as they write their first constitution!” Written by Tom King (Love Everlasting) and illustrated by award-winning artist Peter Gross (The Books of Magic), Animal Pound comes to comic shops later this week.

image c. 2023 Boom! Studios

Andy Serkis is a well-known actor, both in front of the camera and… behind the animation, as one of the world’s most famous motion-capture models. You’ve seen the results of his work as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and also in movies like King Kong and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Now Cartoon Brew has passed along the word the Mr. Serkis is looking to direct his own feature film — and wouldn’t you know it, he plans to do it using mo-cap! George Orwell’s famous allegorical fantasy Animal Farm has been filmed before of course, via traditional animation and also puppetry.  Now Mr. Serkis has bought the rights to the story and has it currently in development, hoping to direct the film himself. No word yet on a projected release date, but Mr. Serkis is currently working on a “proof of concept” short film to help him secure financing.

image c. 2012 Cartoon Brew

The Cartoon Brew website says that Parler le Fracas, a 4:26-minute French music video created by Wasaru for Le Peuple de l’Herbe, is sort of an update of Orwell’s Animal Farm.

Put the emphasis on “sort of”; fat pig capitalists oppressing other-animal workers have been a common image of communistic (as distinct from Communist) propaganda since long before Orwell. Be that as it may, this is superficially anthropomorphic, although it feels more like humans in cheap animal-head masks.