I’ve just discovered the blog of Enzo Avolio and am blown away by his beautiful artwork and animation design. Avolio teaches character design at Sheridan College and a brief interview with him was posted last year on CharacterDesign.blogspot.com. Nice stuff.

CONTEST OVER! I thought it was a fairly difficult question but obviously not for Brew readers. Before I could even get to my computer, over a dozen readers had responded correctly. The first two correct answers, and thus the winners, are Jennifer Klein and Joe Apel.

Of course, everybody can be a winner if they pick up a copy of The Ancient Book of Myth and War. Support some great artists and buy your copy today!

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We’ve got a good one today. We’re giving away TWO signed copies of the handsome new art book The Ancient Book of Myth and War created by four of Pixar’s most talented: Don Shank, Scott Morse, Lou Romano and Nate Wragg. All four artists will be signing each copy.

Winners will be the first two people to correctly post a response in the COMMENTS section to the following question:

Two of the book’s artists, Scott Morse and Lou Romano, have the distinction of receiving art training from which famous Warner Bros. layout artist/background designer, and what are the contemporary artists trained by this Golden Age legend collectively known as?

(Note: Folks who have already won something from Cartoon Brew in the past year or two are ineligible for this contest.)

When the CIA isn’t busy destabilizing other countries, they apparently like to help animation studios create cartoons. At least that’s the premise of an interesting new animation book I just found out about from FPS Magazine. The book, published by Pennsylvania State University Press, is Orwell Subverted: The CIA and the Filming of Animal Farm by Daniel J. Leab. It takes an in-depth look at the making of Halas & Batchelor’s Animal Farm, the first feature-length British animated film, and the CIA’s influence (and interference) during the production of that film. From the book’s description:

Recently, a number of works have been written–notably, those by Frances Stoner Saunders and Tony Shaw–that make reference to the underlying governmental control surrounding Animal Farm. Yet there is still much speculation and confusion as to the depth of the CIA’s interference. Leab continues where these authors left off, exploring the CIA’s dominant hand through extensive research and by giving fascinating details of the agency’s overt and subtle influences on the making of the film.

Leab’s thorough investigating makes use of sources that have been excluded in past accounts, such as CIA papers retrieved through the Freedom of Information Act and material from the Orwell Archive. He also incorporates the testimonials of animators John Halas and Joy Batchelor and, most significantly, the previously unexplored archive documents of Animal Farm producer Louis de Rochemont.

The book has a hefty $55 price tag, but FPS says that there’s a 20% discount if you call 1-800-326-9180 and mention the code OSRC. I should also point out that, though the topic sounds fascinating, it’s hard to recommend this title without having seen it. The author’s clumsy use of the word “filming” in the title immediately raises a question in my mind about how accurate his technical understanding of the animation process is. To be fair though, the book seems to focus more on the political intrigue surrounding the film’s development than the actual production process.

If there’s one question I’ve received more frequently than any other since the release of Cartoon Modern, it’s “Where can I see the UPA films?” There’s a lot of Golden Age animation being released onto dvd this year (Droopy, Popeye, Lantz cartoons, Tom and Jerry, etc.) but the catalog of classic cartoons produced by United Productions of America (UPA) during the 1950s remains completely off the radar. The studio produced just over ninety shorts and these films have not enjoyed a major release since a series of VHS tapes released the late-’80s.

It’s depressing that the only suggestion I can offer to folks looking for these films is to search for twenty-year-old out of print VHS tapes. I think it’s about time that Columbia pulled together a decent box set of all of the studio’s shorts, a package that gives us the classic characters (Gerald McBoing Boing, Mister Magoo, the Fox and Crow) along with the studio’s groundbreaking one-shot shorts (The Unicorn in the Garden, The Tell-Tale Heart, Rooty Toot Toot, The Jaywalker and Madeline). Until then, you can find some of the UPA shorts on video sharing sites. I’ve included links to all the ones I could find below, though unfortunately, if there’s one animation studio whose work doesn’t deserve to be seen in this crummy compressed Flash format, it’s the graphically intensive filmmaking of UPA.

Robin Hoodlum (1948)
The Magic Fluke (1949)
Gerald McBoing Boing (1951)
Rooty Toot Toot (1952)
The Tell-Tale Heart (1953)
Christopher Crumpet (1953)
The Unicorn in the Garden (1953)
Ballet-Oop (1954)
The Rise of Duton Lang (1955)

I don’t normally endorse corporate animation contests, but the one my friend Rita Street has been co-producing (with Frederator, the fourth year in a row) for the Nicktoons Network is a fair, well run and ultimately, an entertaining showcase for animators working in all techniques and media.

The top prize is ten grand and nominees are telecast on the Nicktoon channel in August. The deadline to enter this year’s contest is next week (June 1st). Calling all filmmakers: Go to the website and check the rules and requirements.

A few weeeks ago, I posted a few pages of Bruce Timm storyboards from The New Adventures of Beany and Cecil (1988). I also said if any reader wanted to scan in the entire set of Timm storyboards from this episode and share them with the online community, I’d be happy to send over my copies. Brew reader Micah Baker took me up on the offer and has generously scanned the boards for everybody. He’s posted the entire storyboard set onto Flickr. Also, another reader has posted the finished episode onto YouTube so if you’re curious to see how Timm’s work was adapted to film, compare his boards to the cartoon below.

After a bit of an unexpected lag, we’ve debuted our latest film on CartoonBrewFilms: Safety Shoes (1965) directed and designed by Leonard Glasser. This film is part of our Rarities section and it is truly worthy of that distinction as it has rarely been seen since the early-’70s. It was commissioned by the Lehigh Safety Shoe Co. after the company’s first film about safety footwear flopped with audiences. Glasser decided that the only way to make a film about shoes watchable was to turn it into a loony non-narrative assortment of animated bits and live-action skits.

Working with a barebones budget but plenty of animation and acting talent, Glasser and his studio Stars and Stripes Productions Forever, turned out Safety Shoes which ranks as one of the most off-the-wall screwball advertising films in history. Preview clip, film history and purchase link can all be found here. And after you see the film be sure and submit questions; Len would love to hear from you.

As a sidenote, we’re going to be adding loads of new content to CartoonBrewFilms over the upcoming summer months with new films planned for every week. Some of our upcoming releases include Chansoo Kim’s Vaudeville (US), Eddie White and James Calvert’s Carnivore Reflux (Australia) and Joost van den Bosch and Erik Verkerk’s The Shoebox (The Netherlands). We’ll be posting a more complete release schedule on BrewFilms soon.

I’m still not sure about this flick… but the trailer looks pretty good to me.