Visit HERE for an excellent blog post by feature story artist Jenny Lerew discussing simplicity in animation storytelling and how it applies to LADY AND THE TRAMP and THE INCREDIBLES:

Where “Lady and the Tramp” succeeds is in taking a simple story and making absolutely sure that every character and every scene makes an impact on the audience. As leisurely as some of the pacing is, it’s deliberate and crucial to establishing the mood–either of the time period, the time of day, or the characters’ emotions. And there is very little dialogue–as well as the fact that it’s not so much what the characters say, but how they act while saying it. The humor comes from context and expression, not from verbal jokes.

How cool is this - Pixar animator Andrew Gordon has done a three-part podcast interview with co-worker Andrew Stanton, the director of FINDING NEMO. Haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet, though I’ll definitely be making time for this. Check out part one which was just posted at Spline Doctors.

Pixar previewed a couple clips from CARS at WonderCon in San Francisco last weekend. Here’s a description of the clips shown. More interestingly, below is a collection of blog comments I found online that offers some sense of what WonderCon attendees thought of the clips. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Ohmi

They showed a couple of clips of it. Ugh Nascar.. and the main car character makes me think Nemo got turned into a Nascar car :P I sure hope this movie is better than it seems to be.

DocPockets

Pixar showed updated trailers to Cars that looks much better than the advanced trailers we saw last year (it’s a very NASCAR movie, with some camera moves that are impossible in the real world. It looked cool.)

Macaco

Also I saw One Man Band and CARS IS GOING TO BE SO AWESOME oh my god I cannot even describe, it looks AMAZING they showed the first sequence in the film and like… I really don’t like cars much but that bit they showed us… man it made me want to go hump a lambhorghini.

Michael

Overall, the trademark Pixar humor is still there, but I felt the topic of auto-racing limited its potential, as the footage didn’t make me more excited about seeing the film.

SFist

The Pixar panel was pretty snooze-inducing, but we did get to see the Oscar-nominated short “One Man Band.” We only wish Cars looked half as entertaining as that short.

Elton Wong

The clips shown generated excitement and laughter from the crowd. Looks like Disney and Pixar’s merger will prove to be a valuable partnership in the long run.

Ryan Olsen

“Cars” looks a lot better with some of the fully-rendered clips presented by a panel from Pixar. The details are pretty breathtaking, IMO. Before I was concerned because the cars looked like Silly Putty in last-year’s trailer. I’m still a little ambivalent, but I’m willing to see it.

The tribute to UPA on March 26th at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood is shaping up nicely. Mark your calendars now. Scheduled to appear for a Q&A are Bill Melendez, Willis Pyle, Alan Zaslove, Fred Crippen, and Sam Clayberger - among others. Films will include rare 35mm presentations of such classics as ROOTY TOOT TOOT (1952) and THE TELL TALE HEART (1953), as well as commercials, BOING BOING SHOW shorts (like Ernie Pintoff/Fred Crippen/John Whitney’s BLUES PATTERN and Rod Scribner’s THE LOST DUCHESS) and industrial films like THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN (1946) and MAN ALIVE! (1952). More info will be posted here in the coming weeks or check UPApix.com.

I am blown away by images appearing on the internet from the International Toy Fair being held this week in New York. In addition to the cool Looney Tunes figures from DC Direct (mentioned below) there are also some nice items on tap from Disney’s MEET THE ROBINSONS and Pixar’s CARS. And Dark Horse has an incredible selection of stuff for 2006, ranging from Harvey Comics HOT STUFF to Disney’s wartime GREMLINS (above), Kellogg’s cereal cartoon mascots and Al Capp’s Shmoo!(Thanks, Ted Pratt)

A favorite Mexican character actor of mine, Pedro Gonzales Gonzales has passed away at age 80. His only connection to animation was loaning his distinctive personality to several DePatie-Freleng Speedy Gonzales/Daffy Duck cartoons in 1966.

Animation director Michael Sporn points out a depressing moment he saw on JEOPARDY’s “Teen Tournament” a couple nights ago. There’s apparently more than a bit of truth to all those research studies that claim kids today have no idea who Walt Disney was. And these teens on JEOPARDY are supposedly the smart ones.

UPDATE: Tim Nickel writes:

You can view the game with that clue HERE. The clue itself is in the second round under the category “NATIONAL INVENTORS HALL OF FAME” and the clue reads “‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ was the first full length animated film to use this inductee’s multiplane camera”. Which makes it sound like the answer should be Ub Iwerks, not Disney. So you can see why no one got it, it was a confusing clue.

Did Michael Eisner attempt to break up the Disney-Pixar merger?
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(Thanks, klahd222)