Pepper Melon, a young motion graphics company in Buenos Aires, Argentina, created a hypnotic liquid open for last month’s Pictoplasma Animation Festival in Berlin. The piece was directed by Tomás Garcia. Watch the Quicktime version HERE.

On sale starting today, the latest three volumes of the amazing Walt Disney Treasures series. Talk about a gift that all animation buffs, Disney enthusiasts, and cartoon fans must have. Take your pick, there is something here for everyone: Donald Duck Volume 3 contains some of the best Duck shorts from the golden age of animation, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit restores Disney’s pre-Mouse work to both the studio, and to fans of lost silent-era animation (but don’t forget, it didn’t really “start” until after the rabbit), and Disneyland: Secrets, Stories and Magic. I know some animation fans who ignore the live action entries in this series. My advice: Don’t. These Disneyland discs are loaded with great things about Walt, and rare footage of the artists, designers and animators behind the Magic Kingdom.

Amazon.com is selling these at $22.99 each, Best Buy (see ad above) is selling them even cheaper. You have no excuse. Pick ‘em up for yourself or some animation nut you love.

Billed as “home to the world’s largest online archive of vintage illustration, animation, comics and cartoons,” Cartoon Retro is the creation of character designer Shane Glines (Spumco, Batman Beyond, Superman). With over two years of daily updates, the site now boasts thousands of images that are guaranteed to inspire and educate any artist. Best of all, a mere $5 a month offers access to all the material, while a year-long subscription runs $50. More details at CartoonRetro.com.

Sometimes it’s better to just let the pictures do the talking so here’s a small selection of artwork recently posted to the site:

A company called Documentary Educational Resources (DER) has begun releasing episodes of a rare 1970s tv series called Screening Room that featured interviews with lots of independent animators including John and Faith Hubley, Derek Lamb, Ed Emshwiller, George Griffin, Suzan Pitt, Robert Breer, Caroline Leaf and Mary Beams. Their site offers the following description of the TV series:

Screening Room was a 1970s Boston television series that for almost ten years offered independent filmmakers a chance to show and discuss their work on a commercial (ABC-TV) affiliate station. The series was developed and hosted by filmmaker Robert Gardner (Dead Birds, Forest of Bliss), who was Chairman of the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies and Director of the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts at Harvard for many years.

Upcoming releases offer discussions with directors Jan Lenica, John Whitney, and Stan Brakhage. The downside is each interview dvd is $50, but then again it’s not everyday that one finds lengthy filmed interviews with such a who’s who of the animation world. Personally I’m tempted to pick up the chat with the Hubleys. The episodes can be purchased from the DER website.

I ran into Willie Ito at The Animation Guild Holiday Party on Friday night in Burbank. Ito, as you may know, started his animation career at Disney in the 1950s and has worked on Clampett’s Beany & Cecil cartoons (and did many comic books and merchandising art for same), on some of the last (pre-1964) Warner Bros. cartoons and had a lengthy stay at Hanna-Barbera from the ’60s through the ’80s.

He gave me a copy of his hot-off-the-press, self-published children’s book Hello Maggie. The book is written by Shigeru Yabu and is a story taken from his childhood experiences in a Japanese internment camp during World War II. It’s a wonderfully upbeat tale about a difficult period in Japanese-American history. As far as I know, the only place you can get it (unless he hands you a freebie like he did to me) is at the Japanese American Heritage Source website. Ito is planning further publications and collaborations with Mr. Yabu through their Yabitoon Books (website to come).

Check out this informative post by John McElwee on his Greenbriar Pictures Shows blog. McElwee describes what a 1930s Saturday matinee Popeye Club meeting was like, recalling the memories of a local theatre manager and illustrating the post with vintage Popeye short subject trade ads. Ahh, those were the days!

Once I saw this image (above) of Spritle and Chim Chim, I had the feeling the filmmakers were on the right track (pun intended).

And then I saw the trailer - and I think the Wachowski’s have nailed it. I’m not a fan of live action versions of cartoon shows (think Underdog, Scooby Doo, Josie and the Pussycats, Dudley Do-Right, Mr. Magoo and on and on), but the Brothers Wachowski’s forthcoming live action Speed Racer movie is lookin’ very good to me. It’s the 60s Japanese cartoon come alive in a candy-colored, pop art way, not seen since Adam West’s Batman series from 1966. I’m sure there are some purists out there who will feel the subject isn’t being treated as seriously as they would like. To those people I say: Get over it. It’s not Jonny Quest or even 8th Man. It’s Speed Racer!

I have no idea if the film is any good. It’ll be out in May and we can all judge it then. In the meantime this looks like a lot of fun. And thank goodness Chim Chim is a real chimp, not a CG animated blob. Watch the trailer here and see more still images here.

Kansas City-based motion graphics/design collective MK12 recently completed their long-awaited epic short The History of America. I, among many others, have been curious about this film ever since they posted a trailer of it online a couple years back. The film, a combo of CG and rotoscope animation with live-interludes, is a self-described “psychedelic Western space opera,” presenting an alternate American history of warring cowboys and astronauts.

Both streaming and downloadable versions of the short are available at Ventilate.ca. The film is certainly a curious effort. The pacing of the story and overall tone of the film are very “live-action,” due in large part to the reliance on live actors, though for the most part MK12 manages to dress the roto with enough artistry to make it palatable to the senses. The film’s ultimate downfall is its half hour length, which is far too sluggish for the amount of story it offers. I can’t help but think this would have been much more entertaining and effective as a tightly edited fifteen-minute short. Still, one has to give them kudos for their ambitiousness, both graphically and conceptually, and their willingness to tackle such a large project inbetween commercial gigs. The film has been selected to screen next month at Sundance.

MK12 has a website about the film at HistoryofAmerica.tv and there’s also a recent interview with the MK12 crew in New York Magazine in which they talk about their ideas behind the film.