Auctioneers Bonhams & Butterfields will hold an Entertainment Memorabilia and Animation Art sale on June 4th 2007 in Los Angeles, featuring property from the Estate of Carl Barks. The auction will include rare original animation drawings, working storyboards and watercolors from his personal archive. From the press release:

From the early 1940s until the late 1960s, Carl Barks illustrated Walt Disney’s comics and stories and drew the beloved “Donald Duck” character as well as “Huey, Duey and Louie” (adding his own creation “Uncle Scrooge” in 1948). Having never signed his name to a single Donald Duck story, Barks received no biographical notes in any of the Disney comic books (unlike artists of comic book publishers of the 1950s). Barks toiled in privacy for more than 25 years before fans of comics and animation sought him out.

Featured highlights from the Estate of Carl Barks include: a large collection of preliminary drawings for many of his more famous Walt Disney Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge paintings (offered individually, estimates from $600 to $2,000); an unfinished painting of a Saloon Woman in a White Dress (est. $5/8,000); a selection of early paintings from Barks’ private studio including landscapes and historical portraits; a selection of framed and signed gold plate artist’s proofs; unpublished circa 1940s pencil cartoons; early finished watercolors; and a collection of five caricature cartoon drawings done by colleagues of Carl Barks while he was working at the Disney Studios.

The auction also includes other Hollywood memorabilia, Disneyana and animation art. Los Angeles public preview events are scheduled for June 1-3. Pick up the catalog on the website.

Looks like they’ve nailed it.

Considering the track record of most cartoon-to-live action movies, I’m not getting too excited about the new live action Speed Racer movie. But the Wachowski brothers sound pretty smart discussing it in yesterday’s USA Today article. I like that Chim Chim is going to be a real chimp - not CG animation.

(Thanks, Tommy Day)

A couple new blogs which I’ll be visiting frequently:

Director/animator/writer Will Finn has started a personal blog. In his introductory post, Will says he hopes to “post thoughts, anecdotes, original sketches and share art and other influences that inspired me to seek a career as a cartoonist in the first place.” So far his blog has convinced me that I really need to see the TV play The Comedian starring Mickey Rooney.

(Thanks to Blackwing Diaries for the tip)

And here’s the production blog for The Cat Piano, an upcoming hand-drawn animated short blending beat poetry, film noir flavor, bold production design and lots and lots of cats. The film is being directed by Eddie White and Ari Gibson out of one of Australia’s more promising young animation studios, The People’s Republic Of Animation. Stay tuned to CartoonBrewFilms where another of the PRA’s shorts, Carnivore Reflux (2006), directed by Eddie White and James Calvert, will debut shortly.

Opening on Sunday, June 24, 2007, The Art of Warner Bros. Cartoons will fill the Allentown Art Museum’s Kress and Rodale galleries through September 16, 2007. This exhibit is an expanded version of the 1985 Museum of Modern Art retrospective, curated by Steve Schneider (author, That’s All Folks, The Art Of Warner Bros. Animation), consisting of over 150 drawings, paintings, cels, and animated films of Warner’s classic cartoons from the 1930s through 1960.

If you are anywhere near the New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia area this summer, you gotta go. The exhibit’s opening will be celebrated with a public preview party on Saturday, June 23, 2007, from 6 to 8 PM. For more info, go to the museum website.

Some people would go to any lengths to get a autograph from Walt Disney. But would you go to any depth? An abandoned cave in Cody, Montana reportedly has Walt Disney’s personal endorsement—his signature—scrawled on the cave wall. Is it for real? Check out this report from Channel 8 News.

(Thanks, Mark Gittman)

Development piece by John Hubley from UPA’s Rooty Toot (1952).
From the collection of Mike Glad.

The folks at Chronicle Books, publisher of the finest pop culture and design books, including books by both Brewmasters as well as all of the “art of” Pixar books, have launched a new blog. All the book editors are participating and they’re already posting some meaty entries. Alan Rapp, who edits art, photography and design books, and is the person who should be thanked for making Cartoon Modern a reality, has just posted his first entry. He’s chosen to write about one of my favorite topics: me. Ok, ok, actually the topic of the post is mostly about you: readers of Cartoon Brew and Cartoon Modern. Remember in December 2005 when we asked for your suggestions on the cover design of Cartoon Modern. Alan remembers that. He writes about the lingering lessons of that democratic experiment in book publishing:

The online buzz around the making of [Cartoon Modern] was unique in my experience, and attested to the convergence of the fusty old industry that is illustrated book publishing (read: slow) and the hypercatchy medium of blogs (fast). When Amid conducted an inclusive, non-binding poll of his readers to vote on the various jacket designs that had been proffered so far, the results were eye-opening.

What we had pragmatically hoped for—clear consensus—was not achieved. Instead, the big ideas behind the internet came to life: divergent, informed, impassioned opinions that represented the wide spectrum of the audience for this book. No cover direction was clearly favored, but the community around the book was invested in the process, pointing to potential new models of how we announce and make books.

So congratulations to Amid and the readers of Cartoon Modern and cartoonbrew. You all helped make this book a success and taught a small but significant to an “old media� company and editor.

Read his full post on the Chronicle blog.

A couple other quick notes about Chronicle which may be of interest:

* To celebrate their 40th anniversary, Chronicle will be giving one reader 40 free books every month this year. Enter the contest on this page.

* Hot news: Chronicle is turning one of my favorite blogs into a book. Get ready for Geoff Manaugh’s The BldgBlog Book. If you’re a fan of architecture, urban planning and futuristic landscapes, this promises to be an amazing book. The only downside: it won’t be out until 2009.

Well, there goes Popeye the Sailor Man, It’s A Hap-Hap Happy Day and Casper The Friendly Ghost. Not the characters (they were sold off years ago), but the theme songs and music from 80 years of Paramount Pictures. Viacom announced today the sale of Famous Music to Sony/ATV.

“This is a milestone event for Sony/ATV Music Publishing,” said Michael Jackson (yes, that Michael Jackson. He co owns Sony/ATV). In addition to all the Fleischer and Famous Studios cartoon themes (which include Superman, Little Audrey and Herman and Katnip’s Skiddle Diddle Dee) the Famous Music catalogue includes 125,000 songs, including themes from The Brady Bunch and Star Trek, songs from Broadway shows such as A Chorus Line and The Producers, and hundreds of pop tunes and Academy Award winning soundtracks.

The Famous brand name dates back 1912 when Paramount Pictures founder Adolf Zukor created Famous Players. In 1942 when the studio removed the Fleischer brothers and established their own animation studio, they named it Famous Studios, a sister company to Famous Music. All that tradition comes to an end today.

Wanted to put the spotlight this morning on two young animation filmmakers whose work has caught my attention and who I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot more from in the future.

Irene Kotlarz, the director of the upcoming Platform Animation Festival introduced me to the work of Miwa Matreyek, a recent grad out of the CalArts Experimental Animation program whose films combine CG, illustration, live-action and live performance. There’s the sense of a well-formed artistic voice throughout her films, which is uncommon among younger filmmakers. Her work can be viewed at SemiHemisphere.com. Be sure to check out the “Digitopia” video.

Moving on, a few months back I posted a link to a rather experimental bit of CG called RGBXYZ. At the time, I didn’t know who had produced the shorts. It turns out that the filmmaker is David O’Reilly from Ireland. More of his work can be seen at DavidOReilly.com. It’s always exciting to see somebody taking CG into a more stylized direction, especially when they’re as fearlessly experimental as OReilly has shown himself to be. He has a digital short called WOFL which has some fascinating compositional ideas and camera moves. I was also surprised to find out that he did the animation for Shynola’s Beck music video “E-Pro,” which is also posted on his site.