A lot of folks are keeping close tabs on the box office gross of Pixar’s CARS. If you’re one of those people, then you’ll probably dig Box Office Mojo’s day-by-day comparison of the CARS gross to earlier Pixar efforts like THE INCREDIBLES, FINDING NEMO and MONSTERS, INC. Check out the grosses HERE.

For those of you who have gotten your fill of the original Preston Blair Animation book, Clay Croker has posted pages from an even rarer 1946 book by animator/comic book artist Ken Hultgren on his Argle Bargle blog. Hultgren was a Disney animator of the 30s, 40s and 50s who is probably better known these days for his volumes of comic art on dozens of miscelleaneous books like HA-HA, GIGGLE, and COO-COO COMICS, as well as on numerous Disney comic books.

Just thought you’d like to know…

Women do not do any of the creative work in connection with preparing the cartoons for the screen, as that work is performed entirely by young men….To qualify for the only work open to women one must be well grounded in the use of pen and ink and also of water color. The work to be done consists of tracing the characters on clear celluloid sheets with India ink and filling in the tracings on the reverse side with paint according to directions.

This is an excerpt from a letter that Walt Disney Productions sent out to prospective female animators in 1939. Read the entire letter at the Animation Guild blog. This letter is also included in Tom Sito’s upcoming book DRAWING THE LINE: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE ANIMATION UNIONS FROM BOSKO TO BART SIMPSON.

Here’s a couple more rare animated shorts that were recently added to YouTube. The first, FLYING MAN (1962), was helmed by YELLOW SUBMARINE director George Dunning and caused quite a stir when it was first released in the early-60s. I’d always read that the film used a paint-on-glass technique, but I just reread a John Canemaker article about Dunning, in which Canemaker says that the characters were painted onto cels, which probably means that the animation wasn’t created under-camera. Regardless of how it was created, the freedom of the movement and looseness of the brushstroke style are both inspiring.

Also worth checking out: John Lasseter’s 1979 student film from CalArts - LADY AND THE LAMP. This would be a pretty cool extra for the dvd release of CARS.

(Thanks, Wilbert Plijnaar and Chris Sobieniak)

Art by Jim Flora is being posted by guest blogger Irwin Chusid this week on Leif Peng’s Today’s Inspiration blog. Chusid, author/editor (with Barbara Economon) of The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora is showcasing rarely seen 1950s commercial art by Flora (1914-1998). Flora’s only connection to animation was as an inspiration to animators, especially Gene Dietch - who returned the favor by adapting Flora’s childrens book, The Fabulous Fireworks Family as a Terrytoon (released in 1959). More Flora can be viewed at JimFlora.com and at JimFloraArt.com.

Cartoonist Eddie Fitzgerald tells a hilarious story on his blog about his first animation job in 1979 at Filmation and his experiences with animation veteran Paul Fennell. The photo above (which I published in ANIMATION BLAST #8) shows Eddie’s bully, Paul Fennell, back in 1941, when Fennell owned the commercial studio Cartoon Films Ltd. Personally, I think Eddie could have taken him.

Rik Maki began his career as a baseball pitcher in the minor leagues for seven years before trading in his wooden bat for a wooden pencil. He became a freelance cartoonist and advertising illustrator, and worked for the National Film Board of Canada, before coming to America 1978. He’s spent the past 18 years designing characters for Disney and Pixar, for such films as THE LION KING, FINDING NEMO, A BUGS LIFE, HERCULES, THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, TREASURE PLANET and DINOSAUR. This week Maki will mount an exhibition of his original sketches at Van Eaton Galleries. The opening reception is Wednesday, June 21st, from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m. and he’ll be there, sketching all night long at his animation desk. Admission is free and everyone is welcome. The Van Eaton Galleries are at 13613 Ventura Blvd. in Sherman Oaks, California. The art show runs through July 8th. For more information, visit Van Eaton’s website or call them at (818) 788-2357.

Hans Bacher (art director of MULAN) has posted on his blog some tantalizing page spreads from his forthcoming instructional book, DREAMWORLDS, which is a how-to book about animation production design. No details yet on how to purchase it, but the book should be out this winter and it looks to be a must-have.

Also worth noting, in the comments section of his blog, Bacher makes a brief comment about his work on the new Disney short THE LITTLE MATCHGIRL short, saying, “I am very unhappy about that short. it’s a disaster…” That opinion seems to be largely in line with the thoughts of the audience who saw the film at the Annecy animation festival a couple weeks ago. I could not find many people at the festival who had anything positive to say about the film.

MATCHGIRL also managed to generate some controversy at Annecy. The buzz from insiders was that Disney had already submitted MATCHGIRL to Annecy in 2005. It was rejected by the pre-selection committee last year, and it was “resubmitted” again this year, which is, of course, a big no-no in the festival world. If the audience reaction was anything to go by, Annecy organizers should have accepted the decision of the ‘05 pre-selection committee and not pushed the film into official competition.