During his recent Orlando trip, Harry McCracken took some photos of the Mary Blair murals inside of the Contemporary Hotel at Walt Disney World. His final analysis: “I can’t say this is great art, great Disney art, or even great Mary Blair art. But I’m glad it’s been there all these years, and I’m not sure if I saw anything during this Disney trip that put me in a cheerier mood.” See the rest of Harry’s photos HERE.

This rare Jim Flora spot illustration is courtesy of Irwin Chusid, author of THE MISCHIEVOUS ART OF JIM FLORA, a terrific book which I can’t recommend highly enough. The above image wasn’t printed in that book and is being seen on the Brew for the first time in many years. It’s from an April 1943 issue of Columbia Records’ CODA magazine. Flora is also online at JimFlora.com.

The animation blogging community is growing in leaps and bounds, and we’ve updated our “Brew Recommends” links section (in the right-hand column) with six new sites that we recommend. They are:

Cold, Hard Flash
http://www.coldhardflash.com
News and opinions about the rise of Flash-animated TV production from animation producer Aaron Simpson.

Drawn!
http://www.drawn.ca
A collaborative weblog devoted to illustration, art, animation and cartooning.

Nancy Beiman’s Blog We Must
http://madcartoonist.blogspot.com
A blog by veteran animator Nancy Beiman.

Nick Cross’ Plog
http://pyatyletka.blogspot.com
Documenting the production of the hand-drawn animated short THE WAIF OF PERSEPHONE.

The Private Dick Plog
http://trnorton.com/pdplog.html
Documenting the production of Tennessee Reid Norton’s stop-motion short RICHARD PRIVATE: THE PRIVATE DICK.

The Wubblog
http://wubby.typepad.com/wubby
Documenting the production of the Nick Jr. tv series WUBBY, WIDGET & WALDEN created by Bob Boyle.

This year’s edition of THE ANIMATION SHOW has a great opening sequence produced by a new German animation collective called studio soi. The 20-second ANIMATION SHOW spot, named BUNNIES, was a commercial originally produced for MTV. Check out studiosoi.de to see BUNNIES and lots of other recent work by soi.

From McSweeney’s: “If Only They Kept Diaries: Roadrunner.”(Thanks, Gary Meyer)

I just stumbled upon animator Nancy Beiman’s new blog. Beiman, a very talented cartoonist, director & teacher - and former neighbor of mine - has posted a great quote from Greg Ford on his reaction to LOONATICS:

“They are the perfect models for the current era,” Greg told me. “Bugs Bunny was created during a populist era in the second Roosevelt administration, and a few years later, he fought the Fascists.
These characters are the Fascists.”

Fred Seibert’s Frederator website has just posted online the title cards from his three current Nickelodeon series. 105 title graphics from ChalkZone, The Fairly Oddparents and My Life As A Teenage Robot.The Teenage Robot cards are particularly good - and these were all designed by one Joesph Holt (In fact, the one pictured above is probably the least creative one in the bunch - but the most appropriate for this blog). For more news on Seibert’s current doings, check his Frederator Blog.

I have some reservations about Robin Williams as an animation voice actor (and by some reservations, I mean many), but Emru Townsend reminds us on his fps magazine blog In-Betweens that Williams also deserves praise for some of the more positive things he does for the cartoon art form.