(Thanks Steve Moore)

Independent animator Jeff Scher (who won the New Media prize in Ottawa on Sunday for his TimesSelect piece L’eau Life) made another little film of note, Lost and Found, by tracing over several bits of Fleischer, Van Beuren and Felix animation. I love stuff like this. It’s fun, and takes nothing away from the original works (and may encourage artier types to take a closer look at classic cartoons).

Here’s a contest for the super-nerds in our readership (and I use the tern super-nerds in the most affectionate way - I’m one, too). Whoever is first to name all the clips rotoscoped in Lost and Found will win a brand new DVD collection: Felix the Cat: The Complete 1958-1959 Series. I will select the winner (at my discretion) from comments recieved today (9/25). Winner will be announced on Wednesday.

Congrats to our friend, and the animation art form’s friend, John Canemaker, who won an Emmy award last night at the 28th Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards. His film, The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation, which has already won the 2005 Oscar for Best Animated Short, took home the Emmy in the category of “Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Graphic & Artistic Design.”

Additionally, John will be honored in Italy this October at the 26th annual Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone, Italy. He will be the first animation historian to receive the Jean Mitry Award, which is awarded to an individual or institution for their “reclamation and appreciation of silent cinema.” We are aware you are a true pioneer,” write Giornate Festival organizers Livio Jacob and Piera Patat, “making claims for the importance of Winsor McCay and Otto Messmer when even silent film historians were ignoring them.”

If you want a free animation desk, and are willing to move it yourself from North Hollywood, this Craigslist post is offering thirty of them, sans disc.

(Thanks, Gary)

For those who doubt it - Hand drawn animated features are alive and well in Europe. Case in point: Die Drei Rauber (The Three Robbers).

Unfortunetly, as stated here before, this is one of dozens of foreign animated films produced every year that don’t get distributed in North America. Our friend Sinem Sakaoglu writes:

I thought it might interest you to know we’ll soon be premiering (so far only in Germany and France) the feature version of The Three Robbers (based on the book by Tomi Ungerer; Gene Deitch produced a six minute short version for Weston Woods in 1972)

It was a relatively small crew that made it all happen and though I now have a few more gray hairs than when I started the project (I did production management and overseas supervision), it was a fun and rewarding time… Hope it gets over to the other side of the pond.

So do I. It looks cute. See the trailer here.

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

Guest comedians Andy Kindler and Michelle Maryk join our regular cast, Frank Conniff, Joel Hodgson, Kathleen Roll, Erica Doering, Joe Keys and Eddie Pepitone and me, in presenting the worst cartoons ever!

P.S. New podcasts resume later this week.

• Disney theme park designs by animator Marc Davis.

• Funny frame grabs from an Iwerks Willie Whopper short.

• Grim Natwick and Dave Hand talk about Norm Fergusons’s rough animation. The post goes well with this Michael Barrier piece, “How Rough Were ‘Fergy Ruffs.’

• There are more funny drawings in this Alvin Show pilot board than in entire runs of most animated TV series nowadays.

• Weightless Life was a recent four-part documentary about the history of Russian animation. The first part of the doc has been translated into English by blogger Niffiwan and posted on his blog. His post is well-annotated with plenty of links to the films and artists discussed in the special.

• A step-by-step painting by classic Disney background painter Ralph Hulett, plus an extra tip about perspective from Hulett.

• Bob Camp is in the house, and he’s started a second blog to post older artwork. Currently, he’s sharing some delightful Disney concept art by Ferdinand Horvarth. There’s more biographical info about Horvarth in this article by Wade Sampson.

• Animator/director Will Finn talks about learning how to draw like yourself and uses a couple classic print cartoonists as examples.

Previously on Cartoon Brew:
Animation History Round-Up #1
Animation History Round-Up #2

From the sublime to the ridiculous…

My laryngitis on Wednesday developed into a full fledged cold on Thursday and Friday, forcing me to to miss many screenings and events at Ottawa this year. However, I did manage to sneak out each day to attend at least one screening or panel (and the picnic) and still had a great time. Of the Competition screenings and International Showcase I attended, I didn’t see any film unworthy of showing. Either it was a great year for short films, or the selection committee really did a great job (or probably, both).

I did catch two significant 2-D films worthy of special note—Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud’s Persepolis and Disney Animation’s new Goofy short How To Hook Up Your Home Theater.

Persepolis - This is an important film. I’m not saying it’s a great film—or the best animated film of the year—but it’s a good film with a great story. More significantly, we in animation need it.

It’s a mostly black and white 2-D hand drawn cartoon—think Little Lulu, if Lulu grew up in Tehran during the overthrow of the Shah—and strictly for adults. It’s the antithesis of the Hollywood CG blockbuster mentality that is currently stifling creativity in animated feature films. This film’s success could help revive the idea that animated films could be drawn by hand.

It’s based on Satrapi’s own life story and her heartbreaking graphic novel, and it’s been faithfully adapted in such a way as to make palatable a tale which would perhaps be less compelling in live action. It’s both dramatic and comedic, and never dull for a moment. A must see for anyone interested in animation or current world events.

Compared to other recent foreign films, it doesn’t have the character animation and design of The Triplettes of Belleville, or the cutting edge graphics of anime, but it has something those other films don’t - a coherent storyline, told against a backdrop of contemporary life in the Middle East. France has qualified the film for an Academy Award, as its entry for Best Foreign Film. It also has a good shot as Best Animated Feature Film. I’m crossing my fingers for its nomination.

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How To Hook Up Your Home Theater - They nailed it.

Unlike other recent tries at reviving Disney classic characters via new shorts (think The Prince and the Pauper or Runaway Brain), the goal of this new film was not to reivent Goofy but to recapture the spirit of the Disney shorts of the late 40s, particularly the Jack Kinney classics like Hockey Homicide or a Goofy Gymnastics. They did it. It all felt right to me.

Though the film boasts the cream of the crop of current Disney animators (Deja, Henn, Baer, Goldberg, etc.), this isn’t an animators film - it’s a director’s picture. Just as Tex Avery’s cartoons are masterfully skewed through his twisted vision, here directors Kevin Deters and Stevie Wermers-Skelton (the first woman to direct a Disney cartoon!) take control, weaving numerous contempory gag situations into a refreshingly old school cartoon structure.

The red burlap opening titles are back. Michael Giacchino provides a perfect Oliver Wallace-styled musical score, and Corey Burton narrates with intonations falling somewhere between John McLeish and Frank Graham. Certain layouts are direct lifts from Motor Mania (Goofy’s home) and How To Play Football (the football field). And there are literally dozens of gags - truly funny ones and several visual in-jokes for those looking extra hard - packed into the six and a half minute running time.

The bottom line: How To Hook Up Your Home Theater feels exactly like a contemporary 1949 Goofy cartoon - and I can’t pay it any higher compliment than that. It’s the perfect film to start the new shorts program with. A nod to the past as the studio looks to the future. I just hope the studio will promote it properly when it decides to release it later this fall.

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Despite the haze I was in due to the cold medicines I was on, I understand our blogging panel went pretty well. We had a full house at the venue selected and great questions from our lovely moderator, Maral Mohammadian (Associate Producer at the NFB). Don’t let the drowsy group in the photo below fool you… it was quite a lively panel. (left to right, yours truly Jerry Beck, Jeff Hasulo, Mike Barrier and Mark Mayerson).

(a photo of four bored bloggers by Alan Cook)

We’ve plugged the blogs of both Hans Bacher and Rob Richards numerous times recently. Both are putting a spotlight on the unsung work of background painters in animated cartoons. Today, Richards posts a composite of the pan shot showing the three dimensional cave (actually an intricate miniature live action set) in Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad The Sailor. Fleischer artisans clearly put a lot of thought, hard work and artistic know how into these Stereo-Optical “set-backs”. Considering how some of these elaborate shots only appear on screen for several seconds, I encourage Rob to create more composites of these. They certainly deserve a closer look.

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