Mike Kazaleh sent in this photo and asks, “I’ve been seeing this truck around my neighborhood for years, and I finally snapped a picture of it. Can anybody explain it to me?” Click here for larger image.

Whatever your opinion of It’s A Small World (and its unforgettable - no matter how hard your try - theme song) there’s no doubt it’s a work of art and a tribute to its designer Mary Blair.

The Re-Imagineering blog has posted details on the “updating” currently underway at the Disneyland attraction. These “improvements” include adding Disney characters to foreign locales and an expansion of an American presence to the piece -an expansion the blog points out was “…never intended for American audiences from the show’s very inception.

In consciously excluding a large scale U.S.A.-land from It’s a Small World (a lone cowboy and indian in the finale was just enough), the original show writers were asking American audiences to step away from their own national consciousness and take stock in the wider world around them. It’s a Small World was never about nationalistic fervor. It was about finding our common humanity outside our own borders.”

Read more at Re-Imagineering.

Nothing says more about the sad, pathetic, desperate, moribund state of the US TV animation industry than the fact that Seth MacFarlane is the only artist trusted to create new animated shows for a major TV network.

Cartoonist Rex Hackelberg has posted a ton of development artwork that he created for a project called The KidMan and Lemon Show.

The idea was conceived by animation guru Chuck Gammage and the finished animated promo below was directed and animated by Jamie Mason (aka Hobo Divine). Other credits include Graham Falk (layout), Mike Geiger (inking), Clive Powsey (backgrounds) and Scott Bucsis (music).

The finished product is exactly the type of cute, fun and appealing cartoon idea that I don’t expect any contemporary animation network to produce because…well…because it’s cute, fun and appealing in a day and age that demands loud, obnoxious and ugly.

My pal Sharon Burian sent me some information on the project she just completed:

I want to alert you to a short film that I recently worked on that was one of the top ten finalists for the Coca-Cola Refreshing Filmmaker Award for 2008. Go to 2008 finalists and it’s called The Museum. Actually, even though it’s still listed as a finalist, it WON and will screen in 30,000 theaters across the country!!!

Austin Formato, the director, is supposed to receive the award in the middle of March and my guess is they won’t update the site until then, but I figured I would give you a heads up for Cartoon Brew.

The film was made by all UCLA film students and animators. I animated/rotoscoped the entire Warhol painting sequence at the end. Will Kim did the Degas, James Suhr and I both worked on the animation of the Van Gogh (someone else painted the background and her name escapes me), and Donna Segal animated the Picasso. It was a very positive experience all around and I’m so excited that it’s going to screen in theaters!

Congrats to director Formato and his team. To see the short click here.

Golden Legacy: How Golden Books Won Children’s Hearts, Changed Publishing Forever, and Became An American Icon Along the Way is a book chronicling the behind-the-scenes history of the famous children’s book publisher. Though it is published by Golden Books, it appears to be more than your average corporate fluff piece, and seemingly has lots of original historical research. It is also copiously illustrated with illustrations and photos, and includes coverage of all our Golden Book favorites including Mary Blair, Gustaf Tenggren, Aurelius Battaglia, JP Miller, Alice and Martin Provensen, Mel Crawford and Tibor Gergely, among others. If anbody has actually read the book, please share your thoughts about it in the comments.

In the 1950s it was coonskin caps… fifty years later couturier Supreme is offering a line of Coonskin T-shirts, based on the controversial 1975 Ralph Bakshi feature film.

(via Meathaus)

The Brew strives to stay apolitical, but this very funny and trenchant Slate article by Jeff Greenfield is worth a mention: Bugs Bunny vs. Daffy Duck: Why voters always choose the wascally wabbit for president.

(Thanks, B. Baker)