Ralph’s comin to town… to party.

Meltdown is hosting a Ralph Bakshi bash in Hollywood next week with a gallery full of original drawings, paintings and animation production art. Chris McDonnell and Jon Gibson will also be on hand to sign copies of their new Bakshi book.

McDonnell tells us:

We are trying to invite as many people from Bakshi Productions’ past as possible. It’s a reunion, it’s a party, it’s Ralph in a room. Ralph is looking forward to talking and hanging with people so he’ll be signing books only as an exception to the rule, if at all. We are looking forward to this really being a great “reunion” for Ralph and all his old artists (and everyone else is welcome of course too).

Join us on Saturday night June 14th. The party starts at 7pm and will go on till 11pm. Admission free. Meltdown Comics and Gallery, 7522 W Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, CA.

If you want to do a little drawing at the Annecy animation festival, take note that Flight artists Bannister and Dik Pose are hosting the first-ever Sketchcrawl drawing jam during the festival next week. The event is planned for Thursday, June 12, beginning at 2pm. Full details can be found on the Flight Comics blog. The drawing at top of this post is by Matt Jones, who held a personal Sketchcrawl at last year’s festival.

In yesterday’s NY Times there was a lengthy article about how things are going at Disney two years after its merger with Pixar. The Times’ opinion? Things are going pretty damn well. For anybody who has been following the companies closely, as I’m sure many Brew readers have, the Times piece offers little in the way of new information or insights, but it serves as a fairly good overview of what’s been happening during the past couple years.

There will be, I’m sure, the standard complaints of Lasseter and Co.’s continuation of Disney animation outsourcing and direct-to-video sequel productions, but perhaps the question should be asked, Was anybody so naive as to believe that either of these practices would come to a screeching halt when Pixar took over? The Disney corporation is far too big a machine to operate solely on the fuel of artistic integrity. The hope should rather be that Lasseter can balance the inevitable corporate shilling with enough artistic experimentation and new ideas to keep the Disney brand relevant in today’s entertainment world.

The jury is still out on whether he’ll be able to accomplish that at Disney. The studio’s first two Lasseter-era projects are questionable: a labored bid to repeat past glories (The Princess and the Frog) and a homely-looking deal with a dog and hamster. On the other hand, Pixar’s direction has never been more clear or promising. Pete Docter’s Up, the next feature from Emeryville following Wall-E, had me hooked from the very first image (posted at top). The film features an unlikely lead character, a stubby cane-wielding 78-year-old man, who travels the world by attaching helium-filled balloons to his house. It sounds like one of the most unconventional and interesting mainstream cartoon features in a long while.

Honestly, I believe that there’s too much baggage at Disney—in the form of Walt Disney and the legacy that he created—to allow for the Disney animators of today to produce anything of artistic merit. The studio is spinning its tires in Walt’s legacy, mired with the responsibility of maintaining the “integrity” of the Disney brand and simultaneously stunted with the fear of creating works that are “unDisney.” Disney, when it was actually run by Disney, defined the quality and innovation possible in the art form. That ship sailed over forty years ago and frankly, it’s time to get over it. The studio has been running on fumes for the better part of two decades, and coloring a princess a darker hue won’t alter a single thing, save for adding a few dollars to the value of shareholders’ stocks.

In tying the knot with Pixar, however, Disney can finally have its cake and eat it too. The Pixar brand is still young and malleable; it can be molded in wholly new creative directions like those of Wall-E and Up. Disney proper can continue exploiting its vast catalog of classics (bring on the Tinkerbell features) and perhaps add an occasional new character to the Disney patch (everybody loves a wacky hamster), while Pixar indulges in the risk-taking and innovation that is vital to the studio’s long-term health and reputation. It’s a shrewd bit of maneuvering, whether intended or not, for which Iger deserves a lot of credit. By purchasing Pixar, he assures that at least one part of Disney can live up to the company’s reputation for pushing the art of animation forward.

Steve Moore’s summer edition of Flip is now online.

In it, Dave Pruiksma discusses the Fleischer Gulliver’s Travels and PD Famous Studios DVDs, Dan Jeup talks about Frank and Ollie, there’s a gallery of work by featured artist John Kleber (above), an interview with Disney Imagineer turned editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes, and much Moore (pun intended!). Check it out here.

Gary Leib created a delightfully inventive 50-second animated history of the Meatpacking District in Manhattan. Watch it on the NY Times website.

(via Meathaus)

A fire broke out this morning on the Universal Studios backlot. Current live TV news reports are saying that, in addition to the destruction of the New York street and King Kong ride, the film vaults are threatened.

Let’s pray this isn’t true. In addition to Universal’s own library of classic films (and Walter Lantz cartoons) the studio holds the master elements to Paramount’s pre-1950 feature films.