Thursday night I’m once again showing several musical shorts (and cartoons) at the Steve Allen Theatre in Los Feliz. This is my monthly 16mm film program, as opening act, for the fabulous Janet Klein and her Parlour Boys who perform the first Thursday of each month at this location, at 8pm. Janet sings and plays 1920s jazz - she’s hot stuff, and the band ain’t bad either. This month I’ll be showing DIZZY DISHES (1930), a Screen Song, and several other surprises! Join us!

I have only one New Year’s resolution and that is to finish ANIMATION BLAST #9. I’ve been immensely frustrated with my inability to deliver this issue to the printer and I could never have imagined that it would fall so far behind schedule. One would think that with eight issues under my belt, it wouldn’t be such a monumentally difficult task finishing a ninth. Alas, it has been, and for an incredible variety of reasons which I won’t even begin to list here. However I’m determined to get this issue done soon and a new date has been posted on the BLAST website. I want to sincerely thank all readers of the magazine for their patience; hopefully the issue will be worth the wait. Also in the works for ‘05 is a complete relaunch of the ANIMATION BLAST website. More on that in a bit.

This is my final post as a guest blogger here. I had a blast over the past two months, and would like to thank Jerry and Amid for the opportunity–as well as the many Brew readers who gave me feedback.

I enjoyed myself so much that I decided I wanted to keep on blogging about animation and related matters, such as comic strips. So I will–over at my own site, Harry-Go-Round. I’ve redesigned my home page into a bloggier place, and have posted my first item–a look at the newish FRACTURED FLICKERS box set. My Harry-Go-Round blog lets visitors leave comments, and my site still has its own MessageCenter. So I’d love to keep the conversation I had with Brew readers going.

See you there, I hope!

I’ve been remiss about following up on my November post about a piece of original art I bought marked “Return to Dave Tendlar.” I asked Brew readers if they knew what cartoon the sketch, apparently once owned by the famous New York animation, was from.

I got lots of guesses–most of which mentioned FANTASIA or Preston Blair’s how-to books. But Dave Mackey had a more specific, logical answer:

“I believe the artwork you posted on the Cartoon Brew web site is from the first
Popeye cartoon Tendlar worked on at the new Famous Studios, ALONA ON THE SARONG SEAS. In that film, Popeye meets up with the character you see here. He eventually takes his spinach and knocks the alligator into a nice set of luggage.”

I haven’t seen that cartoon, but thanks, Dave!

Meanwhile, just to confuse matters, Brew reader Kevin Koch reports that he too bought a piece of art stamped “Return to Dave Tendlar” many years ago. His was a drawing of…Donald Duck. Did Dave (Tendlar, not Mackey) spent a forgotten stint at Disney? Or did he acquire the Donald drawing for reasons lost to time? The mystery continues….

When Lili Chin and Eddie Mort posted an item on their fwak blog last September about the forthcoming upgrade of Macromedia Flash, it generated dozens of comments from other industry Flash animators about features they wanted to see included in the new version. A representative from Macromedia was copiously taking notes and the company’s software developers have been incorporating the feedback from that post into the next version of Flash. This is but one example of the effectiveness of animation blogs and the potential they have to create a positive impact on the animation community.

Last year saw not only the arrival of numerous new animation blogs, but also the roots of a community forming, which ensures the diverse voices on these blogs will be heard by a significant audience. These blogs are more than simply an attempt to collect and catalog news a la Animation World Network or ANIMATION MAGAZINE. Animation blogs are forums for rational discussion and thoughtful idea exchange, created by dedicated individuals working in and around the industry. They aren’t dragged down by the repetitive obnoxious griping that is a common feature of certain animation message boards. Animation blogs have also pushed beyond the stale mainstream media stories about animation like “Is 2D animation dead?” and “Why do so many celebrities watch SPONGEBOB?”; we have formed a custom, organically evolving media that is suited to the needs of this industry and art form.

The animation blogging community, while still in its infancy, expanded significantly in 2004. Mike Barrier started publishing his thoughts about animation regularly for the first time since the days of his groundbreaking magazine FUNNYWORLD. At AniPages Daily, Ben Ettinger shares views about Japanese animation that reach beyond the fanboy-ish tendencies of most anime discourse. The crew of Nick’s MY LIFE AS A TEEN-AGE ROBOT launched a blog of their own to communicate directly with the show’s fans and allow the average viewer a glimpse into the show’s production process. Artists like Ethan Hurd, Ronnie del Carmen, Enrico Casarosa and Jim Hull presented insights into their work techniques, tools of the trade and artistic inspirations. Ward Jenkins went a step further and fixed THE POLAR EXPRESS, elevating the discussion of how to improve modern animation to an entirely unprecedented level. This very site, Cartoon Brew, launched last March, and while I find it difficult to make any objective assessment of what (if anything) we accomplished, the fact that our readership has far eclipsed the combined readerships of our pre-Brew sites, Cartoon Research and Animation Blast, leads me to believe that we’re doing something right.

So who will create the next animation blog? In what directions will the community evolve? What can we do to push this art form to the next level? 2005 holds the answers and I can’t wait to find out.

Mother Nature’s new annual holiday tradition? Hopefully not. Almost exactly a year after the Bam earthquake in Iran that killed over 25,000 people came the recent earthquake/tsunami combo in southeast Asia. We’ll be talking cartoons the rest of the year here on Cartoon Brew, but I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the victims of the quake and encourage Brew readers to send them some help. There are plenty of organizations that can use your support right now; my personal choice is Mercy Corps. They’re a lean and effective aid group based out of Portland, Oregon that allocates 91% of donations directly towards aiding those in need (a higher percentage than most other relief organizations). They also post regular updates on their site of what they’re specifically doing in each country to help the victims.

And now that we’re done helping people, we can spend the rest of the year mocking Michael Eisner’s incompetence.

(Picture coutesy of Wayne Dagrepont)