DreamWorks has released the first latest official image from their March 2009 feature Monsters vs. Aliens. It’s hardly groundbreaking visually, but the simple fact that a DreamWorks publicity still doesn’t make me want to claw my eyes out is cause for celebration. I’ve been hearing the same whispers on this film that I have for nearly every other DreamWorks feature: at first, it was that the artists were getting a chance to really show themselves, and more recently, that it’s being watered down. What’ll end up on the screen is anybody’s guess but this image at least offers a glimmer of hope.

There’s an accompanying article in today’s USA Today about Monsters vs. Aliens, in which Jeffrey Katzenberg says that to avoid confusion between 3-D computer animation and stereoscopic 3-D, he’s going to begin calling stereoscopic animation “the Ultimate 3-D.”

(via Cooked Art)

This Saturday, March 15, Moral Punch Art Gallery in West Hollywood will be hosting a show called “Studying Character: Seeing Everyone We Know.” The show comprises character driven-artwork by five young LA artists, all of whom are graduates of or currently studying animation at CalArts: Eliza Frye (whose work illustrates the top of this post), Leo Matsuda, Tim Beard, Christian Robinson, Nic Sweet. Moral Punch is a relatively new gallery on the LA scene that also hosts fun-sounding “themed” life drawing sessions every week. They are located at 7600 Melrose Ave. (upstairs) in West Hollywood, CA. This weekend’s opening is from 7pm-10pm. Lots of artwork from the show and additional details at MoralPunch.com.

John Kricfalusi has posted a fascinating visual analysis of the early episodes of Rocky & Bullwinkle. If there’s one bit of advice that contemporary animation producers could take away from his post, it’s this bit of wisdom:

“If you gotta do limited animation, use great drawings I always say. They don’t cost that much. Just hire real designers and don’t step on them.”

In other words, even if you’re working on a limited budget, there’s no reason a piece of animation should ever look this incompetently designed or atrociously drawn.

Please Say Something is a visually and narratively intriguing series of CG micro-shorts by David O’Reilly, creator of RGBXYZ. O’Reilly tells me that the series of five dramatic pieces is designed to be seen on the Web and is influenced by the “amazing comics” of Jason. The shorts speak for themselves but should you require additional explanation, there’s always this blog entry.

Places I’d like to visit (number 1 in a series):

Tony Medeiros from Sandbox World sent in this photo:

I thought I would share with you a fine establishment called the “Donald Duck Taverne” in Montreal. I personally find this place to be out of place and character in our fair city.

If you find yourself in this quaint Canadian neighborhood, check out Taverne Donald Duck at 3223 rue Beaubien Est. And don’t order the orange juice.

(click on the image above to see more of this model sheet)

With so much attention being paid nowadays to film gimmickry like stereoscopic 3D, it may be only a matter of time before Hollywood begins resurrecting other outlandish ideas from the past, like Smell-O-Vision. As far as I’m aware, there’s only one piece of animation ever produced using the Smell-O-Vision process, in which audiences were exposed to aromas that accompanied the visuals onscreen. The cartoon is called A Tale of Old Whiff. I’ve never seen the short, but I can offer the model sheet above which allows us to see what the characters looked like.

A reviewer named F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre has written extensive commentary about the short on IMDB that includes the following synopsis:

Bert Lahr does hilarious work as the voice of Old Whiff, a cartoon bloodhound searching for a museum’s lost dinosaur bone worth $100,000 … but whose search is hampered by the fact that he has lost his sense of smell. While the bloodhound meanders through this cartoon, muttering to himself in Bert Lahr’s distinctive voice, we see various items which Old Whiff encounters … including a hot dog, mustard, soap, soup, chocolate, violets, pine trees, a field of clover and a horse. We also SMELL those objects; at least we smell them if the Smell-O-Vision process is working properly. But poor Old Whiff can’t smell anything.

I found the faded and many-times photocopied model sheet in the collection of Alan Zaslove, who is credited with directing the film. The film was originally being directed by John Hubley in New York but, for reasons that are unclear, he abandoned the project midway. The most likely scenario is that he had a financial or creative conflict with the bankroller of the Smell-O-Vision process, the notorious Hollywood producer Mike Todd.

Zaslove remembers that all of the artwork, including much of the completed animation, was shipped by Hubley to to Format Films in LA, where it was photographed and completed. Story artist Leo Salkin, who was working at Format at the time, is credited with storywork on the film, which perhaps implies that the story of the film wasn’t completely figured out when Hubley stopped working on the film. I’m not sure if the model sheet above was drawn entirely by Hubley, but the designs are certainly his, and a lot of the drawings look like they could be from his hand.

We’re going to begin doing a regular roundup that indexes some of the more noteworthy items on Cartoon Brew. Here are some of the news items that created the most buzz and generated the most discussion during the past couple months. Any that we missed?

• The Little Island by Richard Williams
• Superjail
• Hatti Noel as Hyacinth Hippo: Part 1 and Part 2
• 1930s Wartime Japanese cartoon
• The Rocky and Bullwinkle statue: Part 1 and Part 2
• Spongebob Rectal Thermometer and Spongebob Voice-overs
• Kung Fu Panda Trailer
• In by Philipp Hirsch and Heiko Tippelt
• Why Don Hertzfeldt Probably Won’t Win An Annie
• Marcell Jankovics’s Fehérlófia
• Lili Chin and Eddie Mort Abandon Flash Animation
• Diznee’s Aladin and Ratatouille Knock-off
• Studio 4°C’s Genius Party
• The Hard Lessons of Kwicky Koala
• Academy Ignores Animation for Best Foreign Film
• Usavich
• Who Writes Cartoons?

In the video below, Disney’s version of Winnie the Pooh teaches kids that, “There are certain private places on your body that nobody is supposed to touch except you.” Let’s hope Pooh isn’t speaking from personal experience.

(Thanks, Christian Larocque)