I’m ashamed to say that until today I’d never seen Bob Godfrey’s classic animated short DO IT YOURSELF CARTOON KIT (1961). Cheap and crudely made to be sure, but it does deliver some good laughs. Check out the film below:

Last week Coke unveiled a new CG spot for its latest campaign, “The Coke Side of Life.” The commercial, “Happiness Factory” (watch it HERE), was directed by Todd Mueller and Kylie Matulick at New York City-based studio PSYOP. It’s a slick well-produced piece, but the visuals are too cluttered for my taste. While watching the commercial, my attention was constantly diverted from the primary action revolving around the bottle to the photorealistic settings and characters running around in the background. An even more questionable artistic choice, in my opinion, was the use of a photorealistic Coke bottle in a photoreal setting. It’s a definite turnoff seeing all those furball creatures slobbering over a bottle of Coke that looks exactly like the one I might pull out of a machine. Had either the bottle or the setting been more overtly stylized, the idea would have been an easier sell.

A final note: this Feed post draws a comparison between the Coke spot and the Smith & Foulkes ad for Honda called “Grrrr”. There’s a big difference between the spots, however. In the “Grrrr” spot (HERE), Smith & Foulkes offset the photoreal car engines with a spare and stylized setting that gives the entire commercial a charming airy vibe. If the “feel-good” music of the Coke commercial is any indication, they were probably after the same effect as Smith & Foulkes, but the labored visuals obscure any charm that the original concept may have had.

Next up on the PBS series History Detectives is an investigation of Mickey Mouse and Disney’s history with toy licensing. The episode airs next week (Monday night in most major cities). A video promo for the episode can be seen here.(Thanks, Anne D. Bernstein)

I don’t expect much from Cartoon Network these days. After all, this is the same “Cartoon” Network that announced a few months back that they’ve started to develop live-action programming. Their latest attention-grabbing move isn’t quite as offensive, it’s just plain dumb.

CN has unveiled a series of billboards in various US cities, including Chicago, Miami, Atlanta and New York, featuring random bits of dialogue from series like GRIM ADVENTURES OF BILLY AND MANDY, CAMP LAZLO and MY GYM PARTNER IS A MONKEY. Photos of some of the billboards can be found here, here and here. According to this article, these billboards are leading up to the unveiling of new programming on the network.

Isn’t it ironic that a network specializing in cartoons - that most visual of art forms - has chosen to promote its product by highlighting the dialogue in its cartoons? That says far more than I could ever say about the visual entertainment value - or lack of - in the shows that they currently produce.

Thanks to the restoration efforts of Warner Home Video, and the series of Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD sets, there are (or will be) very few pieces of Warner Bros. animation lost to history. But not every bit of “Termite Terrace” animation is safe, nor is every bit owned by the studio. When Leon Schlesinger ran the studio independently (prior to 1944), he took on several outside assignments (for example the opening titles to Paramount’s The Lady Eve) and even loaned his characters (and animators) to other studios (see our previous link to Bugs Bunny in the George Pal Puppetoon, Jasper Goes Hunting).One rare piece of animation, long unseen, is the cartoon sequence in She Married A Cop (1939). This film was a Republic Picture, and that library is today controlled by Viacom (Paramount Pictures). The film was a fairly typical Republic B picture, with two notable claims to fame: (1) It was one of Cy Feuer’s first Oscar nominated film scores - but more importantly (2), the plot revolves around a Hollywood cartoon studio. The story followed the romance of a New York City policeman (played by real life “singing cop” Phil Regan) and a female animator (actress Jean Parker, playing “Linda Fay”, producer of the Fay-Fables cartoon series for Mammoth Pictures). The fact that this is a New York based animation studio, and that a woman is portrayed as the producer/director of the cartoons, are two interesting and unusual aspects of the film.In this first clip below, we see Linda (Jean Parker) directing her animators (note she refers to a model sheet from Tashlin’s Case Of The Stuttering Pig [1936] as a “cue sheet”) and being romanced by studio suit (and suitor), played by Jerome Cowan.Here’s the film’s plot synopsis from All Movie.com:

This comedy is set in New York and centers upon a singing Irish cop who causes quite a sensation among two producers when he sings at the annual Policeman’s Ball. For a long time, they have been looking for a voice for their new cartoon feature, “Paddy the Pig,” and the cop is just perfect. The policeman is tickled pink at the prospect of being a star and begins telling all his friends about his good fortune (he has no idea what they plan to do with his voice). Eventually he ends up marrying one of the producers, who still hasn’t told him the truth. Suddenly the night of the big premiere finally arrives and all of the policeman’s old friends and colleagues are there. As it begins, the policeman is appalled and humiliated to see that he has been mocked and has become a laughing stock. He immediately spurns his new wife and goes back to the police force. Time passes, and fortunately, the two reunite and settle their differences.

Below is the “Paddy The Pig” animation sequence itself. I love the part where Parker turns to Regan and says in disgust, “Jim, it’s a cartoon!”. If I were a betting man, I’d say Schlesinger gave the animation assignment to the unit Cal Dalton was supervising at the time (but if anyone can definitively ID the animator involved here, we’d appreciate it). It certainly doesn’t look like the work of Tashlin, Avery, Jones or Clampett.Eight years later, Republic dusted off the script and remade She Married A Cop as Sioux City Sue (1947), a Gene Autry B-western (with an animation sequence by Walter Lantz Productions). The western has been remastered and is available on DVD. Meanwhile, the original nitrate film elements to She Married A Cop still await restoration at the UCLA Film & Television Archive in Hollywood.

Stop-motion animator Joel Fletcher (Nightmare Before Christmas, Dinosaur, King Kong, Land Of The Lost, X-Men: The Last Stand) has established a new website to show off his talents - which includes a great demo reel of his freelance commercial work.Animator Tom Sito has moved his blogging activites from the G7 Animation website to his own webspace, www.thomassito.com, where he will continue to note highlights in world history on a daily basis. Hey, did you know Cab Calloway recorded The St. James Infirmary Blues today back in 1931? Also check out Tom’s forthcoming book (I’ll be plugging this more extensively as we get closer to publication date): Drawing The Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart SimpsonPat, of the Silver Age Comics blog, wrote a neat overview of the COOKIE comic book series by Dan Gordon (without naming the creator). Gordon was a top golden age animator (and director of Superman and Popeye cartoons) who went on to co-create The Flintstones. Cookie is one the many bizarre comic strips Gordon dreamed up in 1940s and 50s.(Thanks to Milton Knight for the Cookie link)

The ARK is a new CG animated short written and directed by Polish artist Grzegorz Jonkajtys. It is scheduled for completion by the end of 2006. The trailer - watch HERE - looks pretty dark and intense. Jonkajtys, who has one other short to his credit (MANTIS), has been working at a digital fx house in the US where he has contributed to films like HELLBOY, GOTHIKA and SIN CITY. The official ARK website has more images and details about the short.

The relationship between animated cartoons and breakfast cereal goes back to the 1930s. But it was the weekly TV cartoons shows of the 1960s that permanently cemented the connection between the two. Dan Goodsell, on his Sampler Of Things blog, has posted a bunch of rare General Mills cereal box package backs featuring Total Television’s Underdog, King Leonardo, Tennessee Tuxedo, the Go Go Gophers, Jay Ward’s Rocky & Bullwinkle, Hoppity Hooper and Hanna-Barbera’s Space Kidettes. Great fun, whether you grew up with this stuff or just seeing it for the first time.