…I’d be seeing The Simpsons Movie today.

I’d love to hear what you thought of it.

San Diego Comic Con Thursday, 7.26.07, 5:30pm
Signing Popeye DVD posters with Stephen DeStefano at the Warner Bros. booth. (Thanks to Dan O’Shannon for the iPhone photo)

One of the best pieces of Fleischer Popeye memoribilia ever created was a 32 page compilation of sheet music, the Popeye Song Folio, published by Famous Music in 1936. Brotherly Love, Clean Shavin’ Man, I Wanna Be A Lifeguard, King Of The Mardi Gras, and of course, Popeye The Salior - and others - are each illustrated with a nice piece of art by one of the studio’s top artists (Willard Bowsky?). Coincidentally, with you know what going on sale next Tuesday, Brew reader Joe Busam has posted several of the best pages of the Song Folio on photobucket. These songs are great - and this is a perfect warm up to the restored cartoons which will soon be here.

Reader Lliam Amor spotted this 1968 Gene Hazelton Pete Alvarado (see Mark Evanier’s comment) Yogi Bear Sunday comic strip original on the Heritage Auction site and thought it was interesting because (a) “the great line work & paste up marks” and (b) “the fact that Yogi has no hesitation about reading Playbear in front of the young and impressionable Boo Boo…”

Three good artist blogs you can’t go wrong with…

Alberto Mielgo is among those animation artists today whose work really excites me. He works in the London commercial scene, both on live-action and animated spots, such as this recent Guitar Hero piece. The kitchen illo above is a concept for a cereal commercial. He’s also working on a graphic novel called The Asparagus Seeker which looks stunning.

New York director/animator Pat Smith has launched a blog with the goal of giving people “a glimpse into the life of an independent animator in New York.” Pat’s one of those people who’s not afraid to speak his mind so I expect we’ll be seeing plenty of interesting entries from him. He has an eloquent opening missive in which he discusses his passion for the art form:

I love animation, but I’m not the biggest fan of the type of animation that is ingested in mass, supplied by the majors in this industry. I like animation to be a bit more personal, have some gravel in the gut and spit in the eye. On a technical level, I like to see animation with texture and soul. I never think about CG, don’t desire to work with those techno puppets. I like to draw, I like to create a real drawing with a pencil on paper. artwork that exists when the power is out, that exists as more than 1’s and 0’s. I like smudges, I like the bottom of my hand to get graphite on it.

I’m not sure why I’ve never written about David Gemmill’s blog because he certainly deserves a link. His voluminous “hipster studies” posted throughout his blog provide as accurate a portrait of contemporary LA types as anything I’ve seen. Plus he does story posts with lively sequential drawings (like this or this), as well as producing the occasional piece of Flash animation exclusively for his blog. Good stuff all around.

Thanks to everybody who responded. I still haven’t chosen anybody but there were literally dozens of responses and there’s tons of qualified people among them. I’ll try to respond to folks within the day. Thanks again!

We’re currently working on the first book that’ll be released under the Cartoon Brew imprint (see here) and looking for somebody to help prepare the black-and-white photo files for the printer. Basically I’m trying to make sure the values are consistent throughout the photos. I know how to use Photoshop, as I’m sure everybody else does too, so knowing the program is not enough; we’re looking for somebody who’s done a lot of photo editing and understands how to create tonal consistency across a batch of b&w images. There is financial compensation for the project. Not to mention the book itself should be quite unique. If you’re interested, please email me at amid at cartoonbrew dot com and let me know your qualifications.

A few months ago, I posted about the “Women in Animation” symposium taking place in Columbus, Ohio. If you were unable to attend the event (and I assume that would be most Brew readers), Nick Burkard has posted the event’s lectures online as downloadable MP3s. I haven’t listened to any of them yet, but plan to do so. Among other things, there are roundtable discussions between all the guests, a lecture by British animator Joanna Quinn, and a talk by Rebecca Allen about pioneering computer animation. More details about the talks and presenters can be found on the event blog.

We’ve talked about it for weeks. Today’s the day. Support the cause.

Buy the Woody Woodpecker DVD collection.