Garrett Gilchrist, the chap responsible for the recent THIEF AND THE COBBLER re-edit, has YouTube’d nearly half an hour of classic commercials produced by the Richard Williams Studio. Check them out below:

My book CARTOON MODERN: STYLE AND DESIGN IN FIFTIES ANIMATION will be making its official debut in San Diego this week. These are the first copies that are being sold to the public. My publisher Chronicle only managed to get forty books from the printer so they may not last through the weekend, but they’ll definitely be there when the doors open Thursday morning. I’ll be doing a signing on Friday, July 21st, from 3-4pm at the Chronicle Books booth (#1019). If I find the time, I’ll try to make a special dvd with a few of my favorite difficult-to-find 50s cartoons. Anybody who purchases the book at the signing will receive this lovely dvd as a thank-you gift.

Artist Chris Appelhans has posted some superb concept art that he created for the upcoming MONSTER HOUSE. If the finished “performance capture” animation looked half as cool as Appelhan’s work, I’d be the first in line to see this film when it opens on Friday.

Based on the reaction the film received last month at the sneak preview at the Annecy animation festival, I’d have to predict that MONSTER HOUSE is going to be a hit. Nearly everybody I spoke to who attended the Annecy screening enjoyed the film a lot. The film is apparently entertaining and a refreshing change of pace from the childish animal-oriented comedies that every other animation studio is producing nowadays. A lot of people at Annecy were comparing it to early Spielberg films as well as THE GOONIES. It didn’t win everybody over however. One animator I spoke to walked out of the film after half an hour, saying that there was no reason for the film to be animated in the first place.

Back here in the States, Sony held sneak previews of MONSTER HOUSE last Saturday at 700 theaters. According to Box Office Mojo, attendance was strong at two-thirds capacity, eighty percent of which were families. Sony’s distribution chief Rory Bruer, however, is being extremely cautious with MONSTER HOUSE estimates, saying, “I think we’ll open in the mid-$20 million range, hopefully.” Bottomline: it may not be a very good animated film, but signs are pointing that MONSTER HOUSE will be a very successful animated film.

PS - San Diego Comic-Con attendees can get a sneak preview of the film - in 3D - while at the convention. Here’s the info from the Comic-Con website: Screenings are Wednesday night at 10:00 PM, and Thursday 12:00, 2:00, 4:00, 6:00, 8:00, 10:00 PM and 12:00 AM at the United Artists Horton Plaza theater. Tickets are available at the Sony booth (#3945) on a first-come, first-served basis.

(MONSTER HOUSE concept art via Flight Comics)

My first exposure to the talented artists at Blue Sky Studios was a couple years back when I wrote the ART OF ROBOTS book. The general feeling I got while working on the book was that the development artists at Blue Sky took more of an illustrative/fine art approach to animation design as opposed to the cartoon-oriented production design sensibilities of Pixar and its imitators. This sensibility is front and center in the new graphic anthology, OUT OF PICTURE: ART FROM THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN, a dazzling collection of work by eleven artists who currently work (or have previously worked) at Blue Sky Studios.

It would be a disservice to label this simply a collection of comics or a graphic novel. On every page, there are gallery-quality paintings and illustrations. Freed from the need to conform to the stale narrative routines of modern animated filmmaking, the Blue Sky artists explore looser, more personal storytelling styles which are a perfect complement to their stunning visuals. The artwork is uniformly excellent throughout, but a few of the pieces that stood out for me were David Gordon’s disturbing post-9/11 cautionary tale “The Wedding Present,” Dice Tsutsumi’s atmospheric and beautifully painted “Noche y Dia,” and Daniel L—pez Muñoz’s intensely drawn “Silent Echoes.”

OUT OF PICTURE was originally intended to be self-published, but it was picked up by French publisher Paquet, and is now available in both French and English editions. The English edition, which has just come out, will be available at the San Diego Comic-Con exclusively at Stuart Ng Books. Four of the book’s artists will be signing at Stuart’s booth: Dice Tsutsumi, Robert MacKenzie, Michael Knapp and Nash Dunnigan. The book’s official website is HERE.

Clearly the presence of animation and animators at the San Diego Comic Con will be great. On Saturday at 12 noon a whole jam of events is happening in aisle 700.

Booth 720 = Thinking Animation book signing.
Booth 720 = Mike Polvani and Wayne Carlisi from the 1 on 1 Animation school will be looking at portfolios and demo reels, and talking to students about their school in North Hollywood.
Booth 721 = Rik Maki will be sketching and signing his book Scribblin on Scrap
Booth 722 = Brandon Ragnar Johnson of littlecartoons.com will be doing a signing.

Storyboard artist ‘Skribbl’ has a hilarious illustrated guide to the various types of oddballs that attend San Diego Comic-Con. Scroll down the Story Boredom blog to familiarize yourself with everybody, or if you’re a first-timer to San Diego, print out his drawings and use as a field guide.

I noticed the similarities to the current feature film LITTLE MAN to a particular Bugs Bunny cartoon when I first saw the trailer back on May 3rd - and many critics have mentioned it in their reviews. I have no interest in seeing the flick. But thankfully our pal Art Bininger scored a free ticket and reports back that the film is even closer to the cartoon than we thought:

LITTLE MAN, from the Wayans Brothers, is an unmistakeable rip-off of BABY BUGGY BUNNY, which you mentioned in Cartoon Brew a while back. As comedy misfires go, this one does have a few chuckles sprinkled throughout. There are at least three lifts from the Bugs Bunny
cartoon:1. The couple discovering a military tattoo on the tyke.
2. John Witherspoon (”Pops”) giving the “baby” the old “upsy daisy” against the ceiling.
3. The lights-out gag, where little Calvin clubs a henchman (in cartoonish silhouette) every time the lights are turned off. The henchman then leans over the sleeping baby, says “Click” and gets whomped again.I stayed through the closing credits, hoping that maybe there would be a reference to Chuck Jones or Michael Maltese but no such luck.

Based on the opening weekend grosses, and the success of Disney’s Pirates of the Carribbean, perhaps the Wayans brothers should have studied BUCCANEER BUNNY instead!

The annual Screenwriting Expo in Los Angeles (October 19-22) is turning its focus to Pixar this year. The conference will have a whole day devoted to Pixar, with Andrew Stanton delivering a keynote address titled “Understanding Story” or “My Journey of Pain.” Pixar principals Lee Unkrich, Brenda Chapman, Gary Rydstrom, along with story artists Jim Capoblanco, Ronnie Del Carmen, and Jason Katz will appear on panels - and at 6pm Brad Bird and Mark Andrews will discuss Creating The Incredibles. Should be very interesting!(Thanks, Micah)