I don’t know about you, but I just booked a hotel room for July 20-23 in downtown San Diego. Eleven months in advance.
• San Diego Comic Con

A couple days ago, I mentioned a couple new bloggers who work in the London animation scene: Gerben Steenks and Stephane Kardos. Now, two more cartoonists from London have started blogs: Matt Jones and Matt Cruickshank. All four of these guys produce excellent work and I’ll be checking them out regularly. Here’s the links:

Crookie’s Blog by Matt Cruickshank
MattJonezAnimation by Matt Jones
Gur-B by Gerben Steenks
Stef’s Sketches by Stephane Kardos

We will be having a contest the week of September 12th relating to Tim Burton’s CORPSE BRIDE. Warner Bros. will be giving us prizes and we will hand them out to the first readers who answer our simple trivia questions that week.In the meantime, Ron Barbagallo has, on his website, posted a great behind the scenes interview with Graham G. Maiden (Mars Attacks and Chicken Run), Head of the Puppet Department at the London studio set up exclusively to produce Corpse Bride. The interview includes art and images from the film’s production that illustrate the process behind the craft of puppet making. Click here to read it.

My expectations were so low for VALIANT, that I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed the film at an Asifa-Hollywood screening last night. I also noted the audience laughed often throughout the film.I was expecting a disaster, but the story was solid (cliched, but solid), the animation was well done and the characters were funny. It played like a B-Film - a 1940s B-film, and that’s not a bad thing.It’s worth seeing.

John Canemaker’s Winsor McCay - His Life and Art, his 1987 biography of the great newspaper cartoonist and pioneer animator, will be published again in October by Harry N. Abrams, Inc. in a revised and expanded edition. The original tome, long out-of-print, is one of the most valuable - and entertaining - animation histories on my bookshelf. This new edition has me salivating.The revised edition is now 272 pages - 48 more pages than the old edition - and filled with never-before published photos, artwork and research. New material includes:

• Never-before published pages from McCay’s private animation production notebook revealing the filmmaker’s ideas for timing and visualizations in “Gertie the Dinosaur” (1914), “Lusitania,” and “Flip’s Circus” (c. 1921).•Rare concept art by McCay for a second film starring Gertie the Dinosaur.•New documentation of McCay’s early career, including the Wonderland and Eden Musee in Detroit, where he sold his first cartoons.• McCay’s professional relationship and longtime personal friendship with cartoonist Apthorp “Ap” Adams, one of his two assistants on the monumental animated epic “The Sinking of the Lusitania” (1918).• Full-page reproduction of a 1907 New York Herald showcasing eight top comic strip cartoonists and illustratorm including McCay, and their art.• A complete Winsor McCay Chronology, and extensive additions to the Notes and Bibliography sections.• Many rarely seen photos and drawings from private collections.• A new cover, book design and page layout.

The book retails for $40.00, but I recommend you pre-order it on Amazon.com for $29.70.

Wanna see what Renegade Animation does when it isn’t working on PUFFY AMI YUMI?This spot for Cocoa Puffs combines cel animation and flash. Darrell Van Citters directs, Mike Giamo and Frank Montagna designed it and Scott O’Brien, Bert Klein and Will Finn, animated. Beautifully done. Now if only General Mills would rehire Chuck McCann to voice Sonny and Gramps, I’d be really happy.

My pick from last night’s competition: A SIXTY SECOND TRAGEDY by Dane Webster.
• Nextoons site

“Since everyone else draws hot women, I want to be the guy that draws fat men.” - Stephen Silver, in the comments section of his blog

So, if you dig…umm…chunky males…then head on over to Stephen Silver’s new sketchblog HERE. Don’t worry, he draws other stuff too. Also, I wanted to extend a congrats to Stephen, who recently jumped over to Sony Feature Animation and has become the lead character designer on their third CG movie, currently due to be out in 2008.

The Eurovision Art Contest is a monthly drawing contest where artists create an illustration based on a specific theme. The contest is open to anybody who registers on the site, but it seems that many of the participants are in-house staffers at the top-grade London commercial animation studio Uli Meyer (the contest is hosted on the studio’s servers, but not sponsored by them). The quality of the contest entries is generally stellar and I thoroughly enjoyed browsing through the contest archives. You probably will too.

Also worth noting, a couple of the animation artists participating in these contests have just started their own blogs and they’ve already begun filling them up with great artwork. Check them out:

Gerben Steenks
Stephane Kardos

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