Here’s something I never thought I’d post (and Amid will probably cringe when he sees it): a picture of Filmation’s HE-MAN. The complete Season One DVD collection comes out next week - and I have a chance to offer our readers a chance to win a set this week. Yes, it’s time for one of our zany trivia contests.Tuesday morning around 9 am Pacific (noon on the east coast) I will post a quickie question for several minutes. First two people to send in the correct answer will win. The question will be a relatively easy one about HE-MAN. Please, only enter if you REALLY want to win the HE-MAN collection. My Hornswiggle colleagues at G7 Animation, Tom Tataranowicz and Tom Sito are both veteran directors on this series and I think I can get them to autograph the boxes.

THE GOOD NEWS: Wallace and Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit opens as the number #1 film of the week, with a box office gross of 16.1 million.THE BAD NEWS: The Aardman studiostorage warehouse burns down, destroying much of the company’s archives, props and history. Full CNN report here.

Thank you Patrick Morgan for sending me your full color, 54 page sketch book! And you have a blog! Keep up the great work.

A lot of people over the past few years (myself included) have been highly impressed with student animation films coming out of European schools such as Les Gobelins and Supinfocom. We’ve even mentioned a number of the films on the Brew including OVER TIME, LE BUILDING and SUPER TIBETAN RACER. This interesting AWN article by Christopher Panzner attempts to explain why the films produced by European students are so damn good. Want to know the most impressive figure cited in the article? Cost of one year’s tuition at Gobelins: US$2,200. That should make a few CalArts and RISD students weep over the weekend.

The final digest sized, pulp paper issue of TV GUIDE is on sale this week. At least they go out with a bang: 9 covers featuring current TV celebrities recreating classic TV Guide covers from the past. It was hard to choose between the Homer Simpson/Flintstones tribute and the Conan O’Brien/Howdy Doody cover, so I bought ‘em both.

Cold Hard Flash liked this music video.
Drawn liked this music video.
And now it’s my turn to like it.

“War Photographer” is a Flash animated music video directed by Joel Trussell for musician Jason Forrest. The design, color and graphics are all superb. Little surprise considering Joel’s list of artistic influences. The video is smartly designed, and serves as a great example of how to achieve a dynamic effect with a relatively limited amount of animation.

The new issue of PRINT (Sept/Oct) has a good piece by John Canemaker about the legendary collaboration between Walt Disney and Salvador Dali on the short film DESTINO. He explores the history of the project and how it ultimately led to the 2003 version directed by Dominique Monfery. Canemaker also offers the following food for thought:

The making of DESTINO is a reminder of how daring Walt Disney was in initiating and exploring this film, which is so unlike any he ever produced. It also underlines how comparatively timid today’s mainstream animation producers are, and how animation’s unlimited potential for expression remains restricted to children’s fare.

This issue of PRINT also has a piece on the young Kansas City motion graphics/animation studio MK12 (their A HISTORY OF AMERICA short looks promising) as well as a profile of JibJab’s Gregg and Evan Spiridellis, the duo behind the cult Flash cartoon of 2004, THIS LAND.

Illustrator Eric Sturdevant has a really excellent collection of scans of children’s illustrated books on Flickr. There is gorgeous art by a lot of mid-century illustration greats, including a number of artists who worked in animation, such as Aurie Battaglia, Martin Provensen and Mel Crawford. For more of this type of art, check out Ward Jenkins’s Flickr group, The Retro Kid, with a constantly updated stream of inspiring children’s book art posted by lots of different Flickr users.