Forget the fact that Glenn Barr did backgrounds for Ren & Stimpy, or The New Woody Woodpecker Show, or has contributed to Mad Magazine and DC Comics. Barr has emerged as a fine artist and painter in his own right and one of stars of the low brow art movement. He’s got a new book, Haunted Paradise, and he’ll be in L.A. tonight and in Palm Springs tomorrow to do book signings.

Catch him tonight from 6pm to 9pm at La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Silverlake, at 4633 Hollywood Blvd. On Sunday afternoon from 4pm to 7pm he’ll be at M Modern Gallery, 2500 N. Palm Canyon Drive.

A few years ago, Ray Pointer (aka Inkwell Images) put together a superb DVD collection of seven Alice Comedies, Disney’s 1920s silent-era series combining live action and animation. About a year ago, Disney Home Entertainment put out vital set of Disney Rarities as part of their Disney Treasures DVD series, which contained six restored Alice Comedies from their archives. What we really need is a “complete collection” of these Alice films, but alas, several of the titles are lost, and many surviving prints are in poor shape.

What we don’t need is another incomplete DVD set of Alice comedies, especially one that repeats three cartoons available on the aforementioned two collections out there (and repeats two others that Ray also released). However, I’m here to tell you that VCI’s new collection, Alice In Cartoonland: 35mm Collector’s Set is worth buying. There are at least five Alice films here that don’t appear elsewhere - and all ten are spectacular 35mm restorations from nitrate negatives, and I have to say they look really great. These are 35mm negs of Alfred Weiss TV versions (with their wacky added sound tracks), and there are a few edits from the era (in particular, the drinking scenes in Alice Solves The Puzzle are out). But I’m delighted to have such great looking versions of these films, I’ll take them any way I can.

There is some additional bonus material here, including essays by JB Kaufman and Russell Merritt culled from their outstanding Walt In Wonderland book. There are three bonus “Life” cartoons by John McCrorry (silent shorts from 1927), also transfered from nitrate negs (retitled Krazy Kids Cartoons from their 1931 reissue in sound). These little rareties feel like Terrytoons of the era - bizzarre, cartoony and a lot of fun. All in all, I recommend the DVD. It’s great to see silent era animation that doesn’t look like “old movies.” And any effort to restore these cartoons deserves our support.

Canadian animation legend Ryan Larkin passed away on February 14 from brain cancer. Larkin directed and animated the 1969 Oscar-nominated short Walking, as well as Syrinx (1965), Cityscape (1966) and Street Musique (1972). The news of Larkin’s passing comes from Ottawa International Animation Festival artistic director Chris Robinson who heard the news from Chris Landreth, director of the Oscar-winning short Ryan (2004), which documented Larkin’s amazing art and troubled life. Larkin had recently been making a comeback into the animation world; his most recent pieces—a series of three interstitials—had appeared on MTV Canada in December 2006. Ryan’s official website is RyanBango.com.

Here are a few more details about Larkin’s passing from an email written by his longtime friend, Felicity Fanjoy:

Ryan departed this life on Valentine’s Day around eleven o’clock in the evening. He died in the palliative care unit of the Hotel Dieu Hospital in St. Hyacinthe QC of lung cancer that had spread to the brain.

Before slipping into unconsciousness at the beginning of this week, his last words to Laurie Gordon (his guardian angel who, along with her family, have encouraged, supported and helped Ryan in every way possible in the last couple of years) were: ‘I’m happy. I’m okay. I like it here.’ A few days earlier he also said, ‘I just want to rest and rest and rest and rest and rest until the end of my days.’ And that is what he did.

Update: Interesting memories of Ryan Larkin here and here. A nice obit can be found in the Montreal Gazette.

Below are Larkin’s short Syrinx and Chris Landreth’s short Ryan. (Thanks, Rogelio Toledo)

Pixar animators Adam Burke and Andrew Gordon of the Spline Doctors blog have posted a terrific 53-minute podcast interview with Brad Bird. Bird covers a lot of his personal history (not many who can lay claim to being mentored by Milt Kahl as a teen) and offers sound advice throughout (story! story! story!). Makes for inspiring weekend listening. Here’s a few choice thoughts from Brad:

So we often hear about the comeback of 2d animation. Do you think 2D has to change in order to be successful again?

Brad Bird: Yeah, I think they have to tell good stories. I think that’s a radical change.

Can you give any advice to aspiring students and animators about staying fresh and original?

Brad Bird: Don’t just look at animation. Look at everything else. Look at your own life. Feed other things into the medium of animation. Observe plays, paintings, TV shows that you like, poems, the girl that broke your heart two years ago, the car accident you almost had. Bring it all into the medium and the medium will stay as alive as it needs to be. To animate means to give the appearance of life, and you can’t create the illusion of life if you haven’t lived one.

And when Brad talks about quality television, he cites The Wire as an example. Perfect!

Kevin Langley found this vintage clip online in which Walter Lantz describes the duties of a cartoon director at his studio. It’s nice to hear Lantz stress one of the fundamental concepts of how cartoon animation is properly produced: “Both the writer and the director have to be artists because we draw stories instead of writing them.”

Great news for fans of Walt Kelly (like me). Fantagraphics Books has acquired the rights to publish a comprehensive series of Walt Kelly’s classic POGO comic strip. The first volume will appear in October, 2007, and the series will run approximately 12 volumes.

Kelly joined the Walt Disney Studio in 1935, where he worked on numerous shorts and features, including Pinocchio, Dumbo, and The Reluctant Dragon. Kelly left Disney in 1941, moved back east and began drawing comic books for Western Publishing (Dell comics). It was during this time that Kelly created the character Pogo Possum for Dell’s Animal Comics (as a supporting player in the Albert the Alligator stories). In 1949, the Hall Syndicate started distrbuting Pogo as a comic strip to newspapers in the United States.

Each Fantagraphics Pogo volume will be designed by Jeff Smith (Bone). This continues Fantagraphics teriffic series of hardbound comic strip collections - which already include Schulz’ Peanuts, Ketchum’s Dennis the Menace and Segar’s Popeye. For more information, check the Fantagraphics website.

Mark Evanier posted this Tex Avery-directed Raid commercial on his blog and I couldn’t resist linking to it as well. At the risk of offending pretty much everybody I know, let me say that I could watch hours of every single current animated series on CN, Nick and Disney, and not find five seconds of cartoon animation as beautifully executed as the animation in this spot. From the second these characters appear on the screen, everything about them exudes personality—their posing, distinct styles of movement, and little bits of personality animation, like the big bug scratching himself or the little bug readjusting his cap. The movement is timed funny, and their designs have appealing contrasting shapes (look at the big bug’s lumpy body, gangly arms and couple-sizes-too-small jacket).

What’s amusing is that this Raid spot is not what anybody would ever consider a classic piece of animation. It was probably knocked out by Avery and a couple freelance animators in a few weeks, and viewed by them as little more than a job. But boy, do their years of experience show. The guys who animated in the Golden Age had nailed the art of funny cartoon animation down to a science. Today, even with plenty of animation being produced in the States again thanks to Flash, there are few animators pushing themselves to elevate cartoon animation to this prior level of excellence. Everything I see in the mainstream is generic and blandly animated—as long as it moves across the screen, it’s good enough. It saddens me to look at what we had before, and how funny and entertaining even an inconsequential bit of animation like this Raid spot could be.

Twitch Film is reporting that the Weinstein Company has picked up Michel Ocelot’s French feature Azur and Asmar for distribution. As we’ve reported earlier, the fledgling Weinstein Co. has not had a particularly inspiring track record with animated films. Ocelot’s film, which premiered at Cannes last year to rave reviews, is the Weinstein’s first decent pick-up. There’s reason to fear though: among other adult touches, Azur and Asmar features a woman breastfeeding her children and has unsubtitled sequences with characters speaking Arabic. Knowing the amount of respect that the Weinsteins have for the animation art, a good probability exists that there’ll be substantial changes to Ocelot’s vision before the film reaches American audiences. I’d love to be proven wrong on this one.