I read the LA Times during lunch today and found this tribute cartoon by Gary Varvel in the Editorial pages. The LA Times printed it in black & white, but I found it online in color for you. It’s a nice piece, but does anyone else find it odd to see Johnny Bravo standing in there?Meanwhile, over in the LA Times Book Review section, Ed Park reviews Fantagraphics excellent POPEYE comic strip compilation book, I Yam What I Yam, Vol.1. A little late for Christmas, but it’s great to see Popeye (in any form) receiving some recognition in a major newspaper.

Jerry and I tend to view Cartoon Brew as both a complement and antidote to the mainstream media’s coverage of the art form. We aspire to fill in the gaps of MSM coverage by offering historical and independent perspectives on the animation art, and by creating a reliable outlet for sharing the insider views of all the industry artists who are in constant communication with us.

Looking back at our monthly news archives, I personally think this past year was our most successful in fulfilling these aims. I have a feeling that many readers would agree with that assessment, especially because we also experienced a banner year in terms of site traffic. In fact, Cartoon Brew’s traffic more than doubled from the previous year with over 1.6 million unique visits to our homepage in 2006, and well over 2 million uniques across all Cartoon Brew pages. It may be true that the Brew is something of a niche blog, particularly when compared to general interest blogs like BoingBoing or Metafilter, but with these type of numbers, it’s safe to say that animation is a thriving and popular blog niche.

What went on behind the scenes at our humble website was even more exciting. We’ve been hard at work on a major overhaul of the Brew website which will add all types of new functionality including individual entry pages, search functions, and the ability for reader comments. There’s also an even bigger Brew-related project in the works, one that I can’t discuss right now, but which I’m sure many of our readers are already aware of. 2006 was a great year for us, but 2007 promises to be even bigger and better. None of this, of course, would be possible without you, our valued readers, and we hope you’ll continue to come along with us for the ride.

Just for fun, here’s a roundup of some of my most popular/controversial posts from 2006:

Artist reactions to the Disney-Pixar merger

Continuing coverage of Cartoon Network’s abandonment of animation: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Interview with Garrett Gilchrist about his THIEF AND THE COBBLER: RECOBBLED CUT project

Commentary: Is My Animated Short Worth A Penny? and responses

Commentary:To Pitch or Not To Pitch

The year of stupid animation comments, courtesy of Mick LaSalle, James Lipton, Jason Anderson, Jeff Lenburg and George Miller

“Cartoonist, painter, antique auto collector, railroad-in-his-back-yard Kimball, trombonist, photographer, leader of the Firehouse Five: all these are one and the same guy,” a magazine once wrote about animation legend Ward Kimball (1914-2002). And now he’s got his own MySpace. Check out his profile and become his friend at:

http://myspace.com/wardkimball

Karl Cohen (president of ASIFA-San Francisco) reports that Prescott Wright, a co-founder of the Ottawa International Animation Festival and ASIFA-San Francisco, and the original producer of the Tournee of Animation, has passed away.Prescott had been in slow decline for several years with Picks Syndrome, a form of dementia related to Alzheimer. He died on December 28th at age 71. Karl Cohen writes:

“Pres spent about 40 years of his life promoting animation as a great art form. In the late 1960s several of his friends with ASIFA-Hollywood decided to put together an international animation program. It was almost impossible to see quality animation in the US at that time. Pres was active with the group and having worked previously in film distribution, he was asked to head the project, The International Tournee of Animation, when they decided to show the program in other places. He continued to organize and distribute the annual celebration until Terry Thoren’s Expanded Entertainment purchased rights to the program in the late 1980s.”For many years Prescott was on ASIFA’s international board of directors, and was an advisor to the Ottawa and other major animation festivals. More recently he worked for Disney as an artist recruiter and then worked in the Philippines and India as an instructor and in development with emerging animation studios.”

I met Prescott myself shortly after I moved to L.A. in 1986, when I came to work with Terry Thoren to distribute the Tournee for Expanded Entertainment. Prescott was always friendly, knowledgeable and eager to help us communicate with filmmakers and theater owners across the country and around the world. Prescott was a pioneer - in those pre-cable, pre-Internet days - by getting independent and international animation showcased and making those films accessible to those unable to attend festivals in far off lands. Without Wright’s vision, the Ottawa festival would not be what it is; successor touring programs like Spike and Mike and The Animation Show would not be; ASIFA-SF would not be the strong chapter it is. Karl Cohen says Prescott’s family will have a small ceremony in his honor in Albuquerque, New Mexico in a couple of days; and ASIFA-San Francisco will dedicate their annual party, on Friday January 5th, to his memory.

I don’t really collect anything (besides dust) so I’m always a bit in awe of people like this guy who’s amassed an unbelievably massive collection of IRON GIANT-related merchandise and memorabilia. In the miscellaneous section of his site, he even shows off his IRON GIANT license plate and a permanent Giant tattoo. Talk about being a hardcore collector.

Alex Chun, who’s been writing a lot of superb animation and comic-related pieces for the LA TIMES over the past year, is now also reviewing some animated films for the paper. His first review, published today, is of Luc Besson’s ARTHUR AND THE INVISIBLES. Chun isn’t pulling any punches; he writes, “Director Luc Besson, best known for ‘La Femme Nikita’ and ‘The Fifth Element,’ admits he knew nothing about animation before he started this project, and it shows…taken together, there’s little in ‘Arthur’ to evidence the seven years it took to put the project together.”

It’s also worth pointing out that Alex has been involved as editor and writer for some great Fantagraphics books over the past few years including TOPHATS AND FLAPPERS: THE ART OF RUSSELL PATTERSON (with Shane Glines), THE PIN-UP ART OF DAN DECARLO, and the upcoming must-have WHERE’S DENNIS?: THE MAGAZINE CARTOONS OF HANK KETCHAM.

Screenwriter Jeff Massie, an executive board member of The Animation Guild, has started blogging about his life and stuff he likes, mostly about culture and politics. However, earlier this month Massie started posting about his artist dad, Reginald Massie:

Not long after Paramount signed (George) Pal to a contract in 1939, Reg Massie came to work for him briefly between gigs at Disney. Along with much of the Disney studio’s best and brightest, Dad walked out of Disney in the 1941 strike, where he met my mother on the picket line.During WWII he was in charge of effects animation at the Army Signal Corps Photographic Center in Astoria, Long Island, working with Frank Capra and John Huston on animated maps and special effects. After the war, he returned to Pal in time for the Puppetoon’s brief golden era.Although he was only credited for “backgrounds”, Dad was essentially the art director, responsible for the overall look of the shorts.

More on Reginald Massie and downloads of his his Puppetoon films are posted here on Jeff’s This Is Not My Blog.(Image above is a gag drawing by Virgil “Vip” Partch of fellow Disney inbetweeners, left to right: Sam Cobean, Tony Rivera, Bill McIntyre, Partch, Reginald Massie (foreground), and Dick Shaw. More info on this drawing see Massie’s post here)

HAPPY FEET director George Miller gives us a classic line, from a recent piece in the WASHINGTON POST:

“I knew even the greatest animators in the world would take a lifetime to pull off the nuances of dancing that a gifted dancer is able to pull off.”

Animation director Mark Mayerson comments on his blog about Miller’s ignorant and uninformed quote. And somebody remind me, if Miller feels this way about the potential of the lowly animation art and its artists, why the hell is he directing animated films? Just look at the prince’s final kissing scene in the COAL BLACK link directly below this post; Rod Scribner’s animation performance in that scene is genius. One could easily counter Miller’s statement by saying that it would take the greatest live-action actors in the world a lifetime to pull off the animated performance that Scribner offers in that film. But why these apples-and-oranges comparisons? Animation allows you to do things that can’t be accomplished in any piece of live-action film or dance. It amazes me that a guy who just directed an entire animated feature still doesn’t understand that most basic and fundamental of concepts.