What a way to start the week - here’s the new trailer DreamWorks recently released for OVER THE HEDGE. I’m speechless, but fortunately for audiences, the characters in the film are not. If anybody’s idea of animated entertainment is listening to ninety minutes straight of over rehearsed lines by Wanda Sykes, Garry Shandling and Steve Carell, then this film surely won’t disappoint.

And here’s the third trailer Warner Bros. has released for HAPPY FEET. It features:
The vocal “talent” of Robin Williams.
Super-realistic (i.e. super-boring) penguin designs.
Creepy stilted (mo-cap?) animation.
Looks like some filmmaker has discovered the magic formula to CG success.

In a new WIRED interview, film/music video director Michel Gondry offered an interesting personal perspective on CGI:

People rely too heavily on CGI. Digital filmmaking should be used to do more edgy stuff, not to replace techniques that are already functioning well. I like to take a digital effect and push it to do something different.

(Thanks, Pete Levin)

I’ve been periodically posting the progress of my very own six minute cartoon on a separate blog.Frederator Studios is producing 39 such shorts for a new series on Nickelodeon (Fall 2006 or sometime in 2007). All 39 creators are doing blogs and documenting their productions online. There are some real goodies in the works. Mine is HORNSWIGGLE, and it is being directed by Rich Arons (Tiny Toons, Animaniacs) and produced with Gang of 7 Animation in North Hollywood. The project is in post production this month and will be completed in early April. I’m very proud of the film, it’s shaping up very nicely. Obviously I’ll be promoting Hornswiggle much more as we get closer to its airdate - I’m planning some limited edition promo pieces that I’ll be giving away at the San Diego Comic Con (and on Cartoon Brew). More on that - and Hornswiggle - later.

HUGE news out of the Walt Disney Co.’s shareholders’ meeting today! I’m surprised that nobody else has picked up on the story yet. Animation fan Daikun, who attended the meeting, took lots of notes about what was said and posted them HERE. The big news is that he says a trailer was shown for Brad (THE INCREDIBLES) Bird’s next film at Pixar. The film is RATATOUILLE, which will be released in summer 2007.

This is the first time that Bird’s name has been officially associated with the film. The original director of the film had been Jan Pinkava, who had helmed the Oscar-winning Pixar short GERI’S GAME. While modern Disney films often times have had the original director replaced during the course of production, I believe that this is the first time a Pixar film has not had its original director see the film through completion. It obviously raises a lot of questions about what happened, but with Brad Bird directing, I think we can all be assured that the film is in good hands.(Thanks, Graham Finch)

UPDATE 2: Local 839 president Kevin Koch offered a brief comment about RATATOUILLE on the Animation Guild blog. He wrote: “I’d heard a few weeks ago that the film was having some problems, and that Brad had been called in for a major revision, but I figured they’d find a way to keep Jan Pinkava (original director) a part of things.”

UPDATE 1: I received a couple of emails pointing out that this is not the first time a Pixar film has changed its original director. That precedent was set on TOY STORY 2, on which John Lasseter assumed directing duties midway through production.

Incredible find on eBay - Walt Disney’s 1923 business card. From the listing:

This business card was found in a career scrapbook compiled by Bert Sylvester of Los Angeles, CA. Mr. Sylvester founded one of the first electrical lighting companies in L.A. during the Silent period. Bert Sylvester was right in the center of moviemaking during the early Hollywood years and would very easily have known and worked with Walt Disney in any number of ways. Since the card still has Walt Disney’s Kansas City address, it is likely that he handed this out when he first arrived in L.A. in 1922-1923.

On the flip side, also on eBay is animator Fred Kopietz’ rather dull business card from Walt Disney Productions in the 1960s.

The passing of legendary American photographer/filmmaker Gordon Parks reminds me of an interesting fact I learned while researching my upcoming book CARTOON MODERN. Parks’s first film, the documentary FLAVIO (1964), was produced by the animation studio, Elektra Films, in New York. The studio was one of New York’s most well regarded commercial animation studios in the late-50s and early-1960s and pretty much anybody who was somebody on the East Coast animation design scene worked there at some point. It was started by former UPA artist Abe Liss, who had done layout on a number of the early Mister Magoo shorts in LA. He had also been the creative director of UPA-NY and Transfilm prior to starting Elektra in 1956 with business partner Sam Magdoff.

It’s unclear how Liss and Parks got connected though they shared similarly tough Depression-era upbringings. Both of them came from working class families and had done back-breaking work in the Civilian Conversation Corps during the mid-1930s (though not together). May Liss, Abe’s wife, told me that Liss had been heavily involved in the production of FLAVIO, particularly because Parks had no prior filmmaking experience. The film was among a number of eclectic independent and commissioned film projects that Liss undertook beginning in the late-1950s. He certainly could have gone in some interesting directions both as filmmaker and producer, but unfortunately, Liss died in December 1963 from a heart attack, right around the time of FLAVIO’s completion. Parks was one of the speakers at his memorial service.

You know what I was thinking the other day?
That one or more of the Wayans brothers should create an animated cartoon.
And they should call their cartoon something really stupid, like THUGABOO.
And that this cartoon should look incredibly incompetent, like it was drawn by high school students during after-school detention. Something along these lines…

Well, what do you know! Thank you Nickelodeon for being so in tune with my innermost thoughts.

I love feel-good stories like the one that ran in yesterday’s MONTREAL GAZETTE (the article is unfortunately not online). The piece is about Jack Dunham, a 95-year-old former animation artist who gave up his apartment last month. Both he and his wife are homeless now. The article doesn’t explain whether he was forcibly evicted from his home or not, but it’s still depressing as hell. In the 1930s, Dunham worked at Disney and Lantz. I can’t find any record of him at Disney because he was probably only an assistant, but he’s in this early-1930s Lantz photo. Here’s an excerpt from the piece:

[Dunham] created the St. Hubert Chicken [St. Hubert Bar B-Q is a chain of restaurants in Québec, the first restaurant being on St. Hubert St.; the chicken is shown on their webpage]. But Dunham, a former Walt Disney Studios artist, is old and a bit frail now; instead of throwing the bawk-bawk-bawk at him, perhaps we should forgive Dunham his red-thatched trespasses.

He’ll be 96 in September. Where he’ll be celebrating his birthday is uncertain, because Dunham and Dorothy Stewart, the former New York fashion model to whom he’s been married for 51 years, are homeless.

Since giving up their St. Marc St. apartment in early February, the Dunhams have been staying at St. Luc Hospital. Social service agencies are trying to place the couple in a care facility, but that could take awhile.

The article also has this priceless quote from Dunham: “I was 6-foot-4 as a teenager and I was still 6-foot-4 when I was 90. But then I started to lose height. I’m about 6 feet, and I weight 125 pounds, down from 250 when I was 90. I told my wife that at this rate, she’ll be able to carry me around in her purse.”

(Thanks, Craig)