JibJab co-founder Evan Spiridellis gave an inspiring talk at the Ottawa International Animation Festival last September titled “A Brave New World: The Rise of Independent Creators.” The festival recently posted the second part of his talk as a podcast and the entire talk can now be heard online.
Download Part 1 / Part 2

I had to take a bit of a break from the CARTOON MODERN blog last month but wanted to let everybody know that it’s starting up again and there’s a lot of good stuff planned for the site. Updates in the past few days include hi-res stills from Ward Kimball’s short MELODY (1953), Playhouse Pictures commercial stills, and a nice letter I recently received from 50s-era designer/director Gene Deitch about the book.

Yesterday morning, after I attended the Stan Lee ribbon cutting ceremonies at the new Golden Apple Comics location on Melrose, I ran over the hill to the Valley to do business with my buddy Scott Shaw! Scott recommended we meet at his favorite new store, Big Kid Collectible Toy Mall & Retro Store. Wow! What a place! I urge all our L.A. area readers (and all of you who visit L.A. in the future) to stop in at both of these great stores.The new Golden Apple is beautiful. Very well organized, neat, attractive and loaded with wall to wall geek goodness. Stan was (as always) really gracious to the crowd (yes, he said “Excelsior!” as he cut the ribbon; BTW, there was a pretty big crowd for 10am on a weekday. Spotted animation director Terry Lennon on the line to get in. Big Kid Collectibles (in a mini-mall on the corner of Burbank and Hazeltine) is an amazing museum of great stuff - much of it animation related and all of it for sale. Classic TV items, cartoon cereal boxes (I snagged a cool tin reproduction of the Kellogg’s sign above), old Terrytoon board games, Soaky toys, 8mm Castle films, Harveytoon toys - everything, with the exception of comic books, was there. I highly recommend a visit to this place, you won’t regret it.

Wade Sampson at MousePlanet.com writes about the fascinating story of Retta Davidson, a female Disney animator who worked there between the 1940s and 1960s. It’s traditional knowledge that most women at the classic Disney Studio worked in ink-and-paint and only a few held creative positions, like Mary Blair, Sylvia Moberly-Holland and Retta Scott. That’s why it’s interesting to discover new artists like Retta Davidson who had broken into animation so early. The article has some stories I haven’t heard before, such as how in 1941, the studio attempted to train ten women as animators. By the 1950s, there were a number of women working in animation at Disney besides Davidson, including Grace Stanzell and Janice Kenworthy. It’d sure be nice if somebody did more research into this forgotten aspect of Disney history.

Virgil “VIP” Partch (1916-1984) is, in my humble opinion, the funniest print cartooniest ever. Besides creating laugh-out-loud-funny work, Partch, who was a former Disney animator, was also an excellent draftsman. Matt Jones has posted some rare cartooning lessons that VIP wrote for the Famous Artists course wherein Partch describes his working process and talks about how he writes and draws his cartoons. There’s some really good tips in here and it’s well worth a read. For more vintage Partch cartoons on the ‘net, check out HERE and HERE.

Typically I prefer to be the one interviewing others instead of being the subject of the interview myself. Simon Sandall of ReadersVoice.com asked for an interview a couple times before I finally agreed, and he’s just posted our email chat on his site. In the interview we discuss my new book CARTOON MODERN, the decline of Western civilization (which is hopefully not related to my new book), the future of 2D animation, and upcoming plans for Cartoon Brew, among other things. The interview is formatted a bit awkwardly where every sentence is its own paragraph, but hopefully you’ll be able to follow along. Big thanks to Simon for asking me to participate. Be sure to check the Readers Voice archives for interviews with some other fine folk like Peter Bagge, Gary Taxali, Ivan Brunetti and Kaz.

Meet my new friend, Dave White. In his commentary published on MSNBC.com today - titled “Talking-animal movies are ruining my life” - he writes about how this year’s animated features are mind-numbingly pointless and stupid (not exactly news there) and then offers Hollywood some wise tips on how to stop producing unwatchable cartoon films. But first, he rants like mad about this year’s films:

Why do “Madagascar” and “The Wild” and “Open Season” and “Flushed Away” all have the same plot? How many domesticated menageries of circle-of-life-defying zoo pals actually find themselves tossed into the wilderness on a regular basis, learning the true meaning of family and home in the process?

Why did you make me sit through “Barnyard,” a movie where a bull with a milk-heavy udder played a guitar and sang Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down?” And why was I expected to take that scene seriously for even one second? Why did that lactating bull’s pals have a rave in the barn, dancing to techno and getting fake-drunk on milk and honey? Was it his milk they were drinking? And why did my four-year-old and nine-year-old nieces willingly walk out of that movie with their mother, unconcerned with how it all ended?

Why did “Doogal” get made? What was it even supposed to be about? Why was Jon Stewart a talking coiled spring?

Why weren’t “Antz” and “A Bug’s Life” enough? Why did we need “Ant Bully” too? Were there not enough ant-centric films on the pop culture landscape? Did all the DVDs of those other two movies turn to dust, creating an aesthetic void?

Why would I rather watch someone get beheaded on the Internet than sit through another one of these stupid, cheap, insulting, corporate toy commercials? When will the eyeball-scorching awfulness end?

Following Keith Lango’s blog post about how clunky CG film production pipelines result in awkward looking features, Brian McEntee sent over some additional thoughts on why animated features look the way they do nowadays. McEntee was the art director of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and CATS DON’T DANCE and production designer of ICE AGE making him well qualified to speak on this topic. With his permission, I’m reprinting Brian’s thoughts below:

Production Design and Art Direction are rarely taken seriously at the studios these days, and this is why statements like “nobody ever saw this all together until it was too late” make me cringe. It is the Art Director/Production Designer’s very job to guide the many parts of an image into one complete whole (and I wish we could dispense with the splitting up of the singular art direction task into Production Designer and Art Director - a big mistake in my book.)

The unfortunate reality is that the position(s) of Art Director and/or Production Designer these days are many times viewed as a perk or promotion, and given to someone the studio or director likes rather than to an individual who demonstrates the proper skill set for the job.

Then there is the “director/auteur” problem: the studios overindulge the Director’s ego and in essence make the visual contributions of the Art Director - who was hired to oversee the visual “direction” - irrelevant. Same problem again with studio brass, who feel the need to “shop” through any and all design drawings in order to pick and choose things they like, rather than allowing the Art Director to develop and produce one cohesive style. This results in movies that resemble rock collections rather than animated worlds.

I have personally been fortunate to have worked with several fine Directors and studios who gladly let me do my job, but such is not always the case, as is all too painfully clear.