Hans Perk has posted a fascinating historical document on his blog: a list of Disney artists serving in uniform during WWII. The document, which is from spring of 1943, says that 165 Disney artists were in the service at the time, or more than 25% of the studio’s workforce. It’s definitely a trip seeing animation artists identified as Lt. Lee Blair, Pte. Jules Engel and Corp. Donald Lusk.

If this doesn’t get you excited about Ratatouille, then nothing will.

This is part of a new Ratatouille podcast series that can be subscribed to for free at iTunes.

(via Seward Street and FilmIck)

Michael Arias, director of Studio4°C’s Tekkon Kinkreet, recently commented on a Cartoon Brew post about upcoming theatrical screenings of his film in the United States. In addition to the previously mentioned NYC screenings, he mentions a couple theatrical screenings coming up in LA and Honolulu. I’ve posted complete screening details below.

I’m glad that these festival screenings make it available on the bigscreen, though it begs the question: why is a studio like 4°C, which is consistently producing some of the most innovative animation today, unable to secure stateside distribution for its films like Mind Game and Tekkon Kinkreet. I’m sure the reasons are complicated but it’s still a huge failure on the part of the US film distributors to not make quality foreign animation like this available to the public.

SCREENING INFO
NEW YORK
MoMA - The Museum of Modern Art
Roy and Nita Titus Theaters 1 & 2
Wed 4/25 (T1), Thurs 4/26 (T2), Fri 4/27 (T2) - 8:30 pm
Sat 4/28 (T2), Sun 4/29 (T2) - 2:00 pm
Mon 4/30 (T2) - 8:30 pm
Screening info here
Ticket info here

LOS ANGELES
Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival
Laemmle’s Sunset 5
Sunday, May 6 - 5:00 pm
Tickets available here

HONOLULU
Hawaii International Film Festival
Dole Cannery
Thursday, April 26 - 8:45 pm
Tickets available here

Chris Padilla recently hipped me to some visually striking animated spots from the 1970s. Chris actually showed some of these commercials theatrically as part of his late-70s theatrical release Fantastic Animation Festival. The spots have an exciting spirit of innovation and are in a wholly different league from the mainstream work being produced in the industry during that period. Some of the ads are notable for their groundbreaking use of computer animation, while others use processed live-action to achieve an effect similar to Bob Sabiston’s techniques on Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly. The agency art director for the Levi’s campaign was Bay Area-based artist Chris Blum.

Levi’s “The Stranger”
AD: Chris Blum

Levi’s “Walking Trademark”
Studio: Robert Abel & Associates
Director: Richard Taylor
AD: Chris Blum

Levi’s “Rodeo”
Studio: Duck Soup Produckions
Director: Roger Chouinard
Studio AD: Mel Sommer
Agency AD: Chris Blum

Mark Kausler, of It’s the Cat fame, animated on the “Rodeo” commercial. I asked him if he could share a few memories:

Duck Soup did that one, Roger Chouinard directed it. The late, great Mel Sommer was the art director at Duck. It’s mostly processed live action (the cowboys), Xeroxed onto cels and then we animated the clothes as if they were herds of cattle. I did the opening scenes, it took a lot of hours to do that shot where the clothes “fan out” as the cowboys ride alongside. In the end, I don’t like this spot very much, too much work for too little pay. Animating disembodied pants and shirts was no fun at all, no eyes, no personality. I guess now computers would “animate” stuff like this, they can have it!

7-UP
Studio: Robert Abel & Associates
Director: Richard Taylor
There’s another spot from the same campaign on Taylor’s site

Charles Shopsin has been semi-regularly posting old articles on early cartoon production, from 1920s-1930s science and mechanics magazines, on his Modern Mechanics blog. Some of these we’ve plugged before, but they are worth compiling here again for easy reference:

Drawing Animated Cartoons for the Movies (1924), a basic article explaining how animation works, illustrated by Felix the Cat and a youthful Walter Lantz!

How the First Color Cartoons were Made (Jan, 1932), a look behind the scenes at the forgotten Ted Eshbaugh studio.

Machine Shows Cartoons Without Screen (1932), demonstrates a wacky new invention by Max Fleischer.

Real Scenery for Popeye (1936), about the 3-D sets in Fleischer cartoons.

Movie Cartoons Gain Third Dimension (1936), another article about Fleischer’s 3-D sets.

New Cartoon Camera Combines Drawings And Photographs (1940), which explains how Terrytoons combined live action and animation in the 1938 short, The Last Indian.

I can’t decide if these are cool—or really creepy.

These tiki garden statues are being sold through the Disney Stores (and online). I imagine they’d be fun to stare at while eating some Mickey Mouse Liver Paste.

(Thanks, Brad Constantine)

Gorillaz animation director Pete Candeland of Passion Pictures has turned out a visually stunning spot for the videogame Guitar Hero II. It would have been even better if the animation of the guitar playing had been more closely timed to the music, but the superb drawing and movement of the two main characters, not to mention great inking style, makes this spot a winner.

(Thanks, Aaron)

UPDATE: Dany points out in the comments that this spot was animated by Robert Valley who has a blog here.

I Am 8-Bit, the yearly artistic celebration of retro-video games, returns tomorrow night, April 17, to Gallery 1988 (7020 Melrose Ave, LA, CA). This year’s lineup, curated as always by Jon Gibson, features over 100 artists. Tomorrow night’s opening party, from 7-11 pm, will also include music performances by 8 Bit Weapon and ComputeHer, a giant playable 5-1/2 foot Atari controller, and an installation designed by Tony Mora that’ll be projected inside and outside of the gallery. The installation is comprised of videogame sprite animation, including Super Mario Bros., Mega Man and Metroid, ripped directly from each of the games, frame-by-frame, and assembled in Flash.

Below are a few of the pieces on display this year. The artists are: (top to bottom) Joe Vaux, Michelle Valigura, Dave Wasson, Johnny Yanok, Amy Sol, Jon Burgerman, Carlos Ramos and Ryan Heshka.