No doubt you’ve seen this fine performance by Miss Teen South Carolina, but have you seen her follow-up interview on The Today Show where she reveals that she wants to study and become, such as, a visual effects artist. Frankly I think she’d be squandering her talents working in vfx when she so clearly has all the makings of an animation executive.

Adam Yaniv, an animator at Rhythm & Hues by day, recently pointed me to this small personal project he created as an entry in Heinz’s Top This TV Challenge.

What’s notable about this spot is how he used a combination of 3D software and Flash to achieve the hand-drawn look. Cel shaders in CG programs generally bother me because in order to create a hand-drawn look, they attempt to mask the CG, and the end result is neither fish nor fowl. Yaniv, on the other hand, used CG only as a foundation to assist the hand-drawn process. He explained the pipeline to me via email:

“I use 3D as kind of my blue pencil phase, getting the characters down in simple shapes, animating their action in front of the camera and so forth. Then I move into traditional frame-by-frame cleanup, using Flash in this case. The key is that cleanup is done in the same exact way that it would be in 2D, no cut corners. Meaning that I make judgment calls on every frame pertaining to model, volume, line-quality and animation style same as I would in 2D. So I use the best of both worlds, it’s all in the technique.”

Yaniv has plans to use this process in future personal projects. He’s excited about the potential of the process citing its flexibility to make changes right through the end of production, the sped-up timeframe in which hand-drawn animation can be created, and the ability to distribute the workload across a team of animators.

It should be noted that Aardman’s recent multiple-award winning short The Pearce Sisters uses a somewhat similar technique, beginning with CG roots and ending up with a hand-drawn look. Though Yaniv’s technique isn’t groundbreaking, it excites me to see artists experimenting with the digital tools at their disposal and finding ways to make technology work for them. As more and more artists like Yaniv embrace hybrid approaches, we can finally put to rest the tired 2D versus 3D debate and recognize the possibilities that exist when digital and hand-drawn are combined.

Lest we forget: This year marks the anniversary of Disney’s biggest commercial cartoon star: Fresh-Up Freddie.

It was fifty years ago (in 1957) when the Leo Burnett Agency created the Freddy ad campaign for 7-Up and its sponsorship of Disney’s prime time Zorro TV series. The Disney studio made the commercials and designed the character (essentially a hybrid of Panchito and the Aracuan Bird from The Three Caballeros). I’ve seen very few of them myself, but luckily, like everything else, they are now showing up on the Internet. There is a nice long Freddie commercial currently featured at The Museum of Broadcast Communications website near the start of the American Bandstand episode (at the 1:50 mark). And here’s another one from YouTube:

These spots are nice, but they are nothing Walter Lantz or any other commercial cartoon studio couldn’t do just as well. Commercials were not really part of Disney agenda…perhaps he should have stopped doing them 35 years earlier, after Tommy Tucker’s Tooth.

This morning, from 9:30 to 10am (PST), tune in to S.W. Conser’s radio program Words & Pictures for an interview with Pixar sound designer Gary Rydstrom. Rydstrom also directed the studio’s most recent short Lifted. Portland-based listeners can listen on KBOO 90.7fm, and folks elsewhere can listen to a real-time webcast at KBOO.fm.

The Word & Pictures audio archives also houses interviews with Understanding Comics author Scott McCloud, animation director Marv Newland (Bambi Meets Godzilla), and this recent chat with Jerry and I, which marks the only time the Brewmasters have done a joint radio interview.

Well blow me down!

This “Popeye Mariuana Pot Guy Weed Hip Hop Hustler” t-shirt is currently for sale on ebay. I doubt it was officially licensed by King Features.

A quick little plug for our Cartoon Dump live comedy show tonight in Hollywood. Join us at 8pm.

I’ve mentioned it before but the new Cinderella storybook, illustrated with Mary Blair’s conceptual artwork from the Disney feature, is arriving into bookstores this week. There’s also this article in Publisher’s Weekly which talks about how the project came to fruition, and more importantly, offers the news that two more Disney storybooks using Blair’s concept art are scheduled: Alice in Wonderland in ‘08 and Peter Pan in ‘09.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t update Brew readers to the forthcoming Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 5 - which will be released on October 30th, available from your favorite online retailer or at a brick and morter video store near you.

Details of its contents have been floating around various websites for a couple of weeks. TVshowsOnDVD.com has the best listing - but even their information has a few omissions and errors: for example, the Snafu and Hook cartoons are actually part of Disc 3 (not Disc 2) and the Walter Lantz Hook cartoon, “Take Heed Mr. Tojo”, and the Private Snafu cartoon “Gas” are unfortunately not included, despite what others on the Internet have reported. There are a few things on the set that nobody has mentioned yet. Disc 1 has a bonus section featuring of over a dozen rare Bugs Bunny Show prime time TV commercials for sponsor General Foods, for such products as Tang and Post Cereals. I’m particularly delighted with the inclusion of these little advertising gems, most transferred from 35mm elements, which were produced during the waning days of the original studio.

And then there are the restorations (see comparison below: laser disc frame at left, DVD frame at right) and several newly restored original titles… but I’ll be telling you much more about that in the weeks to come. For now, mark the date: October 30th.