The big news in kidvid land today is the departure of Herb Scannell from Nickelodeon. Herb was, for the last ten years, the top guy at Nickelodeon and one of the true good guys in the business.I met Herb before I got involved with Nickelodeon, and he was always interested in hearing what I had to say - though usually it was about reviving the Terrytoons library that the company owned. Herb had an open door policy and would listen to (and carefully consider) any and all new ideas. When I worked for the company between 1994 and 1997, I saw him take the reins from Gerry Laybourne and move the company to even greater success. He was a unique executive who had vision, determination, and a heart.I’m sure Herb is going off to bigger and better things - but I know he will be missed by all at Nick.
Good luck Herb!

Welcome to a new feature that we’re introducing here in 2006: the Cartoon Brew Film of the Week. Every week Jerry and I will highlight an animated short, music video or commercial that we feel deserves to be seen by a wider audience. The Internet has truly revolutionized the world of animation, and whereas once upon a time, one had to travel to animation festivals to see such films, today everybody can experience the world’s greatest animation from the comfort of one’s own home or office. We want to make sure that the cream of the crop independent animated films are recognized and given the attention they deserve, so we’re going to make our best effort to offer one exemplary piece of animation here every week. And we promise, only the good stuff on Cartoon Brew. If you have your own film that you feel should be the Cartoon Brew Film of the Week, please drop us a line.

Our first film sets the bar for quality extremely high. It’s an exquisite 8-1/2 minute short from France called LES AILES DU PAPILLON (THE WINGS OF THE BUTTERFLY) by 24-year-old Benjamin Gibeaux. Over the last seven months, he single-handedly wrote, animated and directed the film, as well as composed its music, and he just finished it last week.

It’s a sweet and charming story on the surface, but the light tone masks some surprisingly deep political undertones. I personally read it as an allegorical tale of what happens when one country invades another for its own selfish reasons, but does so under the pretenses of helping that other country’s people. However you choose to read it though, there’s no mistaking that the artwork is superb. Color is used in an elegant and sensitive manner, the animation is spare but effective, and the loose calligraphic quality of the drawings remind me at turns of Ludwig Bemelmans, Matisse, and André François.

Benjamin Gibeaux is an artist to watch and I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next. You can see more of his work at Imagique.net.
(via Llámame Lola)

Animator/director Joel Brinkerhoff emailed me with a couple of his recent historical discoveries that he wanted to share. I thought they were both interesting observations and worthy of further debate, so here they are:

Wilhelm Busch
Many know the German humorist Wilhelm Busch (1832-1908) to be the inspiration for the comic strip creation of “The Katzenjammer Kids.” I suspect he also may have fathered the outrageous ‘takes’ and gags of the Avery’s and Clampett’s. The accompanying image shows examples of the steamroller pancake gag, the rubber hose body, and very interesting ‘takes’ involving enlarged organs, morphing, multiple appendages, and smearing–all forty years before animation introduced them to a new audience.
(click on image for larger version)

DUCK AMUCK
Undisputedly Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese created the 1953 classic cartoon “Duck Amuck,” but the ideas and comic bits were around for a long time before they brought them to new light. The springboard seems to be Buster Keaton’s 1924 masterpiece “Sherlock Jr.” In it we find the continuity gags of changing backgrounds and props pulled and replaced. Next, a very specific split-frame gag can be traced to an obscure 1941 Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson adaptation of the play “Hellzapoppin.” Director H.C. Potter continually broke the fourth wall in this self-referencing farce, and created a projectionist joke where the film became stuck with the framing splitting the screen. The characters comment on their condition before the supposed projectionist can make the correction, twelve years before Daffy found himself in the same situation.

UPDATE: Another fine animator/director - Steve Segal - offers some thoughts about the DUCK AMUCK entry:

Thank you for the insightful treatise on “Duck Amuck.” Any discussion that brings attention to “Sherlock Jr.” is OK with me. In a sense, the earliest animations broke the fourth wall since the early chalk talk animations showed the animator’s hand. That was followed by Fleischer’s Inkwell series, where the animator is as visible as the toon, plus Koko and Bimbo can be seen having heated discussions with the animator. Another early cartoon that seems to echo Jones’ classic is “Comicalamities” (1928) where Felix argues with the animator and talks him into making his girlfriend cuter.

Here’s the most intriguing 2006 animated film I’ve heard about. Actually, it’s the only intriguing 2006 film I’ve heard about, but that’s another story. RENAISSANCE is a French feature directed by Christian Volckman that’s scheduled for release in March 2006. It looks to be in a noirish sci-fi vein and is entirely in black-and-white. I’m assuming March is the French release date, but a quick search on Google reveals that the North American distributor is (believe it or not) Disney so perhaps we’ll be seeing this film soon in the states. I’d never heard of Christian Volckman, but apparently he directed a well received short film in the late-90s called MAAZ. There’s a bit more about him and a clip from MAAZ posted at AWN.

Here’s the big question mark. The film’s character animation was created using motion capture techniques. Fortunately, unlike some awful uses of mo-cap, like Robert Zemeckis’s performance capture characters in THE POLAR EXPRESS, the production design here seems to be sufficiently stylized enough to mask the look of the technology. It’s a little difficult to tell from such a small sampling of animation, but there’s reason to be hopeful. There’s also some more clips and information about the film posted at Twitch.
(Thanks, Gérald Guerlais)

This is hands-down the funniest John Kricfalusi interview I’ve ever seen. It’s not funny because of what he says, but rather because the Canadian TV program for which this interview was done decided to create a Flash animated version of John (above) to deliver his words. There is no better example of irony than to see an incompetently drawn, awfully animated John talking about how people can’t draw worth a damn today. At least nobody can say he’s wrong this time.
(via hydrocephalicbunny)

DoCopenhagen offers a list of their top 50 music videos of last year. Lots of solid animation on their list including works by Pat Smith, Joel Trussell and Passion Pictures.

I recently did a short email interview with TV SQUAD’s Adam Finley about my forthcoming Chronicle book CARTOON MODERN. The chat is now posted up at their site HERE.

2006 begins - and I’ve just updated my running list of animated features. It’s going to be an interesting year for theatrical animation. Is this the year where CG goes bust and Hollywood comes to it’s senses? (Well scratch that last part, “comes to its senses” - that’ll never happen).Already I have listed at least 15 films scheduled for major theatrical release (16 if you count the wide release HOODWINKED will get later this month). Twelve are what I’d now label as traditional computer generated films. One (CURIOUS GEORGE) is essentially hand drawn, another (MONSTER HOUSE) is in the technique I call “Zemeckis motion capture” (also known as uncanny valley), and still another is in the strange “computer enhanced rotoscope” world of Richard Linklater & Bob Sabiston (previously seen in WAKING LIFE, this year in A SCANNER DARKLY).Two films are about inanimate objects coming to life (Pixar’s CARS and Threshold’s FOODFIGHT), and two are about the lives of stylized human characters (Disney’s MEET THE ROBINSONS and IDT’s YANKEE IRVING).Here’s the scary part - eight films scheduled for release between March and November (almost on a monthly basis) are about a group of anthropomorphic animals on a grand adventure (think last year’s MADAGASCAR). Here’s the list I’ve compiled thus far:

Blue Sky’s ICE AGE 2: THE MELTDOWN (3/31), Disney’s THE WILD (4/14), Dreamwork’s OVER THE HEDGE (5/19), Warner Bros. THE ANT BULLY (8/4) and HAPPY FEET (11/17), Sony’s OPEN SEASON (9/29), Nickelodeon Movies’ BARNYARD (10/6), and Aardman’s FLUSHED AWAY (11/3).

So the question is this: Will all of them succeed - or will Hollywood’s CG boom implode? Can the already-eroding moving-going audience support a steady stream of similar sounding pictures? Can the DVD backend for such derivative material maintain the level of sales required for the producers to recoup their investments? Most importantly, can all these films be good?The industry has survived one VALIANT - can it endure an onslaught of such product? As I said up front - It’s going to be an interesting year.