Coolest video this year: Try Telling That To Your Baby by Montreal’s Fluorescent Hill, a directing team comprised of Mark Lomond, Johanne Ste-Marie and Darren Pasemko. The song isn’t so great, but the visuals are superb. More stuff here.

Lomond writes a bit about the production of the video:

The video is made from several thousand photos of candy, which were then digitally painted and composited together. Animation was completed with cg cutouts, stop motion, video, and plain ol’ drawings. The mouths are all 2d and although we were tempted to go 3d for the bulk of the project, we opted for ulcers, headaches, and passion.

Somehow I missed the news that Dark Horse Comics is working on a February 2006 re-release of the 1943 Roald Dahl children’s book, THE GREMLINS, illustrated primarily by animator Bill Justice (with the above cover reportedly by Mary Blair). The book has long been out of print, and copies run in the hundreds, and often thousands, of dollars. In the early-1940s, GREMLINS was being prepped as a full-length animated feature by Disney, and a lot of development art was created, but this book is ultimately the only thing that Disney ever released. Dark Horse is also planning to release a 3-issue comic book mini-series with new Gremlin adventures. Who knew WWII lore was so popular. What’s next: a Kilroy revival?

Update: Noted animation historian Jim Korkis writes:

It was Mark Kausler who identified for me that the cover of the original book was done by Mary Blair. The interiors were done by Bill Justice and Al Dempster, two longtime Disney artists. In fact, Bill was responsible for some of the gremlin designs and worked closely with Dahl. When I contacted the editor at Dark Horse, he said he wanted to make the reprint like a “DVD” with some extras but they hadn’t decided yet what those extras would be. I did offer them the extensive article that I did for the yet-to-be-published World War II issue of “Persistence of Vision” magazine on the unmade film.

I’ve been a fan of Joseph Holt’s work ever since I ran across a big stack of his exquisite background layouts for MY LIFE AS A TEENAGE ROBOT. Haven’t seen much else of his animation work, but here’s a website that features his personal paintings.

Also, be sure check out this gallery of incredible title cards that he designed for TEENAGE ROBOT.

Pictoplasma is holding their first-ever animation festival, CHARACTERS IN MOTION, on November 25-26 in Berlin. It is being billed as a “two-day celebration of contemporary character design in animation, music visuals and motion graphics.” Besides screeenings, there will also be lectures by Shynola and Fons Schiedon. Cartoon Brew friend Harald Siepermann gave an enthusiastic review of last year’s 1st Pictoplasma Conference On Contemporary Character Design & Art so this animation-specific event may also be worth checking out.

Here’s a quick update on the two biggest projects that I’m dealing with at the moment. First, the latest on the Chronicle book. It’s now officially titled CARTOON MODERN: STYLE AND DESIGN IN 1950S ANIMATION and I’m happy to report that it’ll be wrapped up within the next month or so. The page count continues to climb, and at the moment it’s looking like the final total will be 200 pages. Even with this many pages, it’s been a complex and challenging assignment for my book designer to fit in all the artwork that I want to have included in it. But he’s managing to do a superb job of packing in the visuals, while keeping the art at a decent size and giving the page layouts room to breath. Our goal is to make sure there’s no superfluous pages in this book; every page is going to have a rare piece of art or photo. I can’t wait to share the results with everybody in April ‘06.

Also, this week, I started working full-time on the long-delayed ANIMATION BLAST #9, in hopes of meeting the new December release date. I’m incredibly excited about starting up again on this issue and finally finishing it up. I’m also really excited to announce a major new article in this issue that is written by MONSTERS INC. director Pete Docter. The article gives some long-overdue credit to the amazing (and amazingly forgotten) Disney animator John Sibley (1912-1973), who is best known for his animation on the Goofy shorts, including HOW TO RIDE A HORSE, TIGER TROUBLE and HOCKEY HOMICIDE. Pete’s a big fan of his work and he spent a long time tracking down and interviewing Sibley’s colleagues and researching Sibley’s animation style. The piece he’s written is nothing short of incredible, and sheds all sorts of new light on Sibley’s life and work.

One piece that will no longer be in BLAST 9 is “Buy! Buy!: A History of Studios From The Golden Age of TV Commercials.” I’d started this piece long before I started working on the 50s design book, and what ended up happening is that I incorporated most of the article’s research into the book. It seems kind of redundant to reprint the same info in the BLAST now, so I’m giving the space over to more original research like the Sibley piece. I’ll have an updated contents listing on the BLAST #9 preview page soon.

Thanks again so much for everybody’s patience on this issue. I’m going to try my best to make this the strongest issue of the BLAST yet and not let anybody down.

Steve Worth has been working like gangbusters to get Asifa-Hollywood’s Animation Archive up and running. The Animation Center at 2114 W. Burbank Blvd. is open to the public and Steve has started a blog to report on its progress, the fund raising status and new archive acquisitions. Steve is also seeking volunteers to help create a massive online art archive.

Now that we have the network and scanner up and operating at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, we are ready to begin digitizing material for the archives. If you are available any time on Tuesdays or Thursdays between 1pm and 9pm, drop an email to me at sworth@animationarchive.org and let me know when I can expect you. I’ll have material ready for you to help out with. The more participation we get from volunteers, the faster the Archive will reach “critical mass”… the point where it begins to be functional to researchers. Every bit of help moves us closer.

I’ve seen what Steve is up to first-hand. It’s a huge job, and extremely worthwhile. Preserving this material - and making it available to animators, historians and everyone else - will inspire present and future artists, give insight into the process and be a lasting resource we can all appreciate. If you live in the area, please check it out. Or better yet, help Steve continue his work.

My friend John Donaldson sent me this link. I suspect it’s a clip from FAMILY GUY - since I don’t watch that show I have no idea. But it sums up the current corporate attitude toward classic cartoon characters better than LOONATICS ever could.That said, the LOONEY TUNES GOLDEN COLLECTION Vol. 3 goes on sale in less than two weeks.

We’ve plugged and praised our pal Oscar Grillo’s work, website and blog before - but this week Oscar has begun a new blog written in English. Bookmark this and check in regularly.