The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive has posted an amazing 1942 LIFE magazine article about the Disney Studios during WWII. Lots of great artwork and photos worth peeping.

DoCopenhagen has compiled a list of their top 50 music videos of 2006 with a YouTube link to each video. Plenty of animation throughout. This is a perfect way to ensure that you don’t actually get any important work done on the Friday-before-holidays.

No idea how long this is going to last but Amazon is offering a major discount (70% off) on dvd sets of various Adult Swim series. The VENTURE BROS. set might actually be worth the money:

VENTURE BROS. Season 1 - $8.99 (70% off)
ROBOT CHICKEN Season 1 - $8.99 (70% off)
HARVEY BIRDMAN Volume 1 - $8.99 (70% off)
THE OBLONGS Complete Series - $8.99 (70% off)
THE BRAK SHOW Volume 1 - $8.99 (70% off)

Can you guess who this quote is from:

I have a number of figures that are caricatures of me with an extra-big nose and a longer chin, and I do a lot of animations with myself dancing. But the tough stuff is really smoke, water and fog. I’m forever working on my water effects.

It’s none other than 81-year-old actor Dick Van Dyke, who apparently has been dabbling with CG animation since the days of the Amiga Video Toaster. Today’s LA TIMES talks with Van Dyke about his fascination with visual fx.

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You won’t find a funnier commentary about the pathetic creative state of American animated features than this short called OUTSIDE THE HOUSE. It’s created by Alex Whittington. The discussion of the “storyline” is dead-on. The film is posted on YouTube as a “video response to OVER THE HEDGE” but it could describe the filmmaking process at just about any of today’s major studios.

Following our mix-up about Kaj Pindal, we received an email from Michael Carter, Pindal’s producer and partner on the new animated series THE WANDERBIRDS (52×7). He sent us one of Kaj’s development drawings (above) from the series. The show is “a Flash animated series that follows a family of penguins as they leave the crowded South Pole in search of a mysterious new home called the ‘North Pole’” and it’s currently in production at Shaftesbury Films in Toronto.

Also, wouldn’t you know it, Pindal’s Oscar-nominated short WHAT ON EARTH! (1966) can be viewed online in its entirety HERE. The mockumentary, created from the pespective of Martians, documents the life of a typical Earthling (an automobile).

One final bit of Pindal online: Sheridan student Amir Avni has posted a set of frame grabs from Kaj’s hilarious animation in the NFB short I KNOW AN OLD LADY WHO SWALLOWED A FLY (1964). See the full set of frame grabs HERE.

The boys and girls at one of my favorite stop-motion studios, Screen Novelties, were recently assigned an unlikely task: restoring the original (and now dilapidated) puppets used in the production of the 1964 Rankin/Bass holiday classic RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER. There’s a documentation of the puppet restoration (restored by Robin Walsh) along with plenty of photos posted on the Screen Novelties blog. The puppets are currently on display at Atlanta’s Center for Puppetry Arts.

Gabriele Pennacchioli, an animator/story artist/designer at Dreamworks Animation, has completed his on-line graphic story Kamuc. Says Gabriele:

It “only” took 6 months of my spare time. During this time my main job was animating on “Flushed Away” and as you know, that takes a lot of energies but nevertheless I managed to do the 23 panels that create the full story.

The panels are posted one a day on his blog. It’s best to scroll down to July 13th (that’s the first panel of the story), and work you way up to December 19th to enjoy the full experience.