There have been many cartoon characters based upon… uhh, shall we say, doo-doo.

From Spumco’s Nutty, the Friendly Dump to South Park’s Mr. Hankey, and not forgetting doodie.com, Burgerlog and Winnie the Pooh (Winnie is a doo-doo, take my word for it).

Now Manny Galan (who in real life is Director of Animation for Nickelodeon’s on-air promotions) has just created Dookie-Poo, and it’s a real contender for biggest brown lump of the year. (I mean that in a good way). Galan says:

This whole endeavor is just my way of keeping as much control over one of my own creations as possible. And doing something outside of the NICKELODEON system.

His characters are charming and the website is a lot of good clean fun. There’s a CG music video by upstate NY studio Virtual Persuasion, a cool Theatre section filled with small animations and short films, an interactive fun page and of course, a blog. Give it a look.

Ok, as promised in the post about the book last Friday, we’re giving away two copies of the book Three Trees Make a Forest, courtesy of the folks at Gingko Press.

The first two people to correctly post the answer in the comments below will win the book. Here’s the question:

One of the artists in Three Trees Make a Forest, Ronnie del Carmen, has had one of his drawings appear in almost every issue of Animation Magazine published in the last decade. What company/organization/product is his drawing advertising?

The Contest Is Now Closed! The winners are Chad Townsend and Peter Avanzino. Thanks to all who participated. And be sure to read Ronnie’s great story about how the ad came to be at the bottom of the comments section.

Happy Feet won. Does it matter?
The sad fact is, it may.

I won’t deny that Happy Feet was a well made, entertaining film. I liked it personally. It does qualify under the definition of an animated film. But it doesn’t respresent the medium.

Unfortunately, the win by Happy Feet will reinforce to the powers-that-be in Hollywood that motion capture is a valid subsitute for authentic character animation. That live action writers, directors and actors can make a “cartoon” without the skills honed by decades of accomplishment created by Walt Disney and his successors.

Oscar winning animator and Academy member Gene Deitch sent us his thoughts:

So, exactly as I feared, a Performance-Capture movie has won the Oscar, masquerading as an Animated Film.

HAPPY FEET is a good movie, full of charm, and with something important to say. Bravo!

But now, what about us? To paraphrase what General Douglas MacArthur once said, “Old animators never die, they’ll just fade away.” I just read that Disney will be setting up a new studio, dedicated to performance-capture production. I’m personally lucky. I’ve had five of my shorts nominated, one which actually won the Oscar. So I’ve had it.

Even better, my long-time client - nearly 40 years - Weston Woods/Scholastic, is virtually immune from mo-cap and even CGI, as they produce short films adapted from children’s picture books. Practically the only way they can be made is with traditional drawn animation. So my harangues against accepting performance-capture films for the Animation Feature Film category have not been in any way an effort to save my personal skin. I grieve for our craft in general, and for those skilled traditional animators, who will increasingly be shunted off into special-effects work. Their only hope of getting back into the big time of feature film animation will be if a powerful enough producer, with a powerful enough story, brave enough to finance a graphically advanced production - something that can only be drawn - immune from mo-cap - who will give frame-by-frame animation a chance to live. Aardman is still clinging to clay, and they may survive, but where is there a future for feature-length drawn animation?.

May the Power of Pegholes be with us!

My first thought last night was that this is the first time the Annie Award didn’t portend the Oscar winner. That made me a bit prouder of my fellow Asifa-Hollywood members who do indeed honor films created by actual animators.

I agree with most of Gene’s points - and share his discomfort with this new technique. To clarify, Happy Feet is an animated film - but it’s not a cartoon. To paraphrase Gene, where is the future of the feature length cartoon?

The plus side? 2007 is an exciting year for authentic animated features. Between Brad Bird’s latest, Shrek III, Bee Movie, the stop motion Coraline and the hand drawn Simpsons there seems to be some potential - both at the box office and with the Academy - to reverse Hollywood’s mind in this matter.

Perhaps this win will cause Warner Bros. to now take animation a little more seriously, after a history of botched releases (notably The Iron Giant and The Ant Bully). Perhaps this will inspire John Lasseter and the revived 2-D team at Disney to really prove themselves, to blow us away with something that mo-cap can never be - and force Hollywood to return the art of animation to the hand of the artist.

Let’s hope.

The 5th Tehran International Animation Festival (English website) kicked off yesterday in Iran and continues through March 1. It’s a festival that I doubt many Brew readers will be attending anytime soon. Still I think it’s worth pointing out for a couple reasons. The first reason being that their website offers a good sense of the animation being produced in Iran today. Just check out the national competition page to see stills from a wide variety of contemporary Iranian shorts and commercial projects. The international competition offers more standard festival fare like Run Wrake’s Rabbit, Gaelle Denis’s City Paradise, Andreas Hykade’s The Runt, and Georges Schwizgebel’s Jeu, as well as features like Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle and Christiane Cegavske’s Blood Tea and Red String.

The most interesting feature on their website is that the festival is producing two hours of live video programming every day of the event and the programs are in English. If you miss the live broadcasts, the programs are also archived here. I watched a portion of the Day 2 (Morning) program and there’s a roundtable discussion with an Iranian animation director and a book author. The majority of their talk is focused around, what else, but Flash animation and its impact on the industry. Also cool to see was an interview with an independent Iranian filmmaker about his CG short in competition, A la Mode (the interview is about three-quarters into the program). From the constant barrage of skewed, inflammatory media coverage of Iran in the Western media, one would never even know that artistic activities like animation happen in Iran, much less that the country has a thriving and fast developing animation industry. This website provides a rare look into their industry and shows that no matter what part of the world you live in, sooner or later you’re going to be using Flash and Maya.

Tehran photo found on Flickr

Just a few interesting bits I’ve run across recently:

Perhaps the best tribute I’ve read to Ryan Larkin is this piece by animation artist Joe Gilland at Animation World Magazine.

The inspiring Michel Gagné, who maintains an impressive balance between personal projects and mainstream studio work (Pixar, Nickelodeon), discusses what he’s been doing lately in this interview.

Filmmaker Joanna Quinn and her producer, Les Mills, talk about their award-winning film, Dreams and Desires.

In case you haven’t heard, at the Academy Award Ceremonies tonight the Oscar for Best Animated Short was won by The Danish Poet.

The Oscar for Best Animated Feature was won by Happy Feet.

I just came across this trade ad from a 1945 issue of Box Office Magazine. Click on thumbnail image at left to see it in full size.

Now this is the way to sell a cartoon short - with Sex. Apparently MGM was hot to promote “Red” and had big plans for her. The ad reprints a trade article claiming Red Hot Riding Hood had 15,000 bookings - with more to come! The article wrongly credits the film’s direction to Fred Quimby (Avery’s name is no where in sight). Imogene Lynn, of Artie Shaw’s orchestra, is credited as Red’s vocalist in The Shooting Of Dan McGoo.

If you’re interested in seeing Dan McGoo, the short will be released on DVD as part of Tex Avery’s Droopy - The Complete Theatrical Collection on May 15th.

Here’s a heads up on two unusual animation screenings on Friday night, March 2nd—one in New York, the other in Los Angeles.

In New York, Marv Newland is appearing in person a retrospective of his amazing International Rocketship short films. The screening includes such classics as Lupo The Butcher, Anijam, Pink Komkommer and many more - projected in 35mm! This event will occur at the Two Boots Pioneer Theatre on East 3rd Street near Avenue A, at 7pm.

In L.A. Laemmle’s Sunset 5 in West Hollywood is screening the independent stop motion feature Blood Tea and Red String. Since filmmaker Christiane Cegavske lives in L.A. there’s an excellent chance she’ll be there in person. It plays at midnight on both Friday March 2nd and Saturday March 3rd.

There’s an interview with Nickelodeon development exec Peter Gal in the new issue of Animation Magazine and I’d been debating about whether I should make a post about it here on Cartoon Brew. Well, John Kricfalusi saved me the trouble by doing a post about the Gal interview tonight. Unlike John, I don’t have any personal history with Gal. I also have nothing against him, but I was still quite annoyed by the piece. The classic line in the interview: When Gal is asked about the “Do’s and Don’ts of Pitching,” he offers this golden nugget, “Listen to my comments and feedback and really think about them.” I’m not sure if that’s one of the do’s or don’ts.

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