Just got a last minute call to appear on a radio show tonight (4/30) at 11pm Pacific (2am Eastern). I’ll be discussing classic cartoons with Morgan White Jr. on Boston’s oldest and biggest radio station WBZ 1030AM. Tune in or listen live on the Internet. Billy West is Morgan’s guest in the first hour (at 10pm PST/1am EST).

I took a break from my deadlines on Saturday to see Mike Barrier discuss his Walt Disney biography at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Milt Gray, Eddie Fitzgerald, Miles Kruger, and award-winning author Amid Amidi were also there to cheer Mike on. The auditorium was packed (the entire LAT Book event itself has evolved over the years to become an annual must-do) and the panel of biographers (the others tackling Frank Lloyd Wright, Einstein, and Hitler) were fascinating. I just picked up my copy of Barrier’s new book at the Festival and will begin reading it this week. I know that once I open it I’ll never put it down till I finish, so I’m reserving some time to it during the next few days.

I couldn’t attend the panel with Neal Gabler on Saturday afternoon, but CSPAN telecast the session in the wee hours of Sunday morning. I haven’t read Gabler’s tome yet either - I’ll do so after I devour Barrier’s - but you can’t deny his enthusiasm for the subject. I took the liberty of posting just Gabler’s comments on Disney in two parts on You Tube. Here is the first part (5 mins.), the second part (9 mins.) is embedded below.

FPS Magazine informs us about Norman, a new mixed-media stage production that combines the works of an animation legend with live performance. Created by 4D Art’s Michel Lemieux and Victor Pilon, the show is based around the life and work of National Film Board of Canada director Norman McLaren. Performer/choreographer Peter Trosztmer leads the one-man show which combines interviews, visual and sound explorations, and live movement interacting with film.

The performance debuted last weekend in Ottawa and will be performed in the coming months in Canadian cities like Toronto and Montreal, as well as France. A video preview and performance schedule can be found at the 4D Art website.

This review from the Ottawa Citizen offers some interesting details about how the show is designed:

In most multi-media presentations, the video is projected on a screen behind the performers. In Norman, however, these images appear to be mid-stage, allowing Trosztmer to dance between them, coil his supple body around them or sometimes be knocked flat by a hurtling geometric shape. In other scenes, holographic visitors, most of them former colleagues, drop in to chat about the Scottish-born animator’s influence. These snippets are in English or French, with translation provided by surtitles.

In one of the most enchanting moments, Trosztmer opens the NFB vault that holds McLaren’s work and out tumbles a line of miniature men, followed by several cats, who prowl past the dancer’s feet.

Are The Simpsons and Family Guy creatively bankrupt? Is the Pope Catholic? The New York Sun’s David Blum wrote a sharp commentary about this topic earlier this month:

Is it genuinely funny to see an animated, overweight, middle-aged dude on a living room couch, waiting for the chorus of the “Maude” theme song to kick in? To me it’s mildly amusing, but I don’t think I’m supposed to be the target audience for Fox’s “The Family Guy,” where that reference turned up on a recent episode. Very few 12-year-olds have a working knowledge of theme songs from 1970s sitcoms, and those who do need to get into something more useful, like stamp collecting. But this is what happens when you entrust the writing of prime-time cartoons to adults. They write what they know. And if you’ve ever met a Hollywood television comedy writer, you know that most of them grew up with baby sitters named Sony and Panavision.

I don’t think there’s all that much entertainment value in a television version of Trivial Pursuit, and that’s what television cartoons have largely become — a catalog of lines from old movies, theme songs from 1960s sitcoms, and mentions of actors like David Hasselhoff. I’m probably the only person in my ZIP code to catch the “Simpsons” reference to Fox’s 1991 sitcom trainwreck “Herman’s Head,” and that’s not a proud moment.

(again, via Michael Sporn’s Splog)

Don’t miss this charming set of sketchbook drawings by legendary Disney production designer Ken Anderson, posted at Mark Kennedy’s always excellent Temple of the Seven Golden Camels blog.

(via Michael Sporn’s Splog)

The first one was a big success, so here comes Too Art for TV, Too, the second annual exhibition of personal art by New York’s animation industry. Curators Liz Artinian, Amanda Baehr Fuller, Jessica Milazzo have set up the Stay Gold Gallery for 35 artists, for their exhibit of toys, comics, prints, and paintings, “liberating the skills otherwise “owned” by their television networks bosses.” The show runs May 4th through May 25th.

Too Art for TV, Too is the biggest showing of this movement to date; featuring the artists who create, write, direct, storyboard, design, color, and animate “Venture Bros.” (Adult Swim), “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” (Fox Network), “Ice Age” (Blue Sky Studios), “A Scanner Darkly” (Richard Linklater), “SpongeBob SquarePants” (Nickelodeon), “Code Name: Kids Next Door” (Cartoon Network), “Stanley” (Disney TV), “Daria” (MTV Animation), “Blue’s Clues” (Nick JR), and more.

Contributing artists include Liz Artinian, Amanda Baehr Fuller, Jennifer Batinich Blue Bliss, Jeff Buckland, Jared Deal, Kelly Denato Jason DiOrio, Marina Dominis, Nash Dunnigan, Jonathan Ehrenberg, Chris George, Marta Jonsdottir Danny Kimanyen, Rick Lacy, Dave Levy, Douglas Lovelace, Todd K Lown, Jim Manocchio, Miguel Martinez-Joffre, Richard Mather, Jessica Milazzo Dagan Moriarty, Liam Murray, Jackson Publick Reject, Kim Rygiel , Pammy Salmon, Tim Shankweiler, PeeDee Shindell, Justin Simonich, Alex Smith, Kate Tyler, Martin Wittig and Irene Wu.

Opening Reception: Friday, May 4th, 7pm-10pm at Stay Gold Gallery, 451 Grand St. (between Keap & Union) in Brooklyn. For more info click here.

Disney animator Rob Corley (Mulan, Lilio and Stitch) has posted this fun little (80 second) pencil test he made around ‘94 or ‘95, produced during down time at Disney Animation in Orlando, FL.

Corley explains on his blog:

I wanted to play around with squash and stretch so I decided to start animating straight ahead and see how many ways I could change the character….after many moons, and after my hand almost fell off, I went back and just created a set up and ending to the piece to finish it off. It was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun to do.

Rob is now co-owner of FunnyPages Productions with Tom Bancroft.

Working on a tight budget? The piece below is a beautiful example of how great artwork combined with creative compositing can be just as effective as a piece of full animation. True, the movement may be limited, but the graphic thinking behind the piece is fully developed and intelligently executed. It is called “Men in Black,” and it’s a sequence based on a story by U.S. Army Specialist Colby Buzzell. It premiered on April 16 as part of the PBS film Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience.

The illustrations were done by Christopher Koelle of South Carolina-based Portland Studios. Animation and compositing was created by a group called The Law of Few.

(Thanks, Chuck Gammage for letting me know about this, and to Brad Constantine for finding the whole film on YouTube)

Fleischer Studios made arguably the funniest cartoons of the 1920s and ’30s — and they made them, from 1923 through 1938, in studio space leased at 1600 Broadway, the heart of Times Square, in Manhattan.

The original building was demolished several years ago. Its replacement is ready for tenants. It’s now a modern high rise condo. Wanna live where Betty Boop was created? Where Popeye met Sindbad? Wanna sleep where Wiffle Piffle was born? It’s all yours at the new 1600 Broadway.

(Thanks, Anne D. Bernstein)

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