Director Michael Sporn has recently been in touch with the son of animation legend Irv Spector. Spector worked as an animator, designer and storyman from the 1930s onwards. He asked the son Paul Spector to share photos, artwork and information related to his father, and Paul has responded with an amazing blog entry about his dad that includes lots of beautiful gag drawings by Sam Cobean. There’s other bits and pieces about Spector online such as this beautiful cartoony one-page comic and photos from his time at the Charles Mintz Studios.(On a sidenote, one of Spector’s commercial designs is printed in my book Cartoon Modern on page 29.)

The French CG student film Oktapodi has been winning all sorts of awards this year including the “Best Animation” prize at the Imagina Awards 2008. It was mentioned on Cartoon Brew a few months back and now the entire short can now be viewed online at the Autodesk website (link to 60mb file) . It’s directed by Julien Bocabeille, FX Chanioux, Olivier Delabarre, Thierry Marchand, Quentin Marmier and Emud Mokhberi.

(Thanks, Matt Morris)

Another recent music video to point out. This one is for the band Late of the Pier and their song “Space and the Woods.” The video is directed by the great Ian Emes, who’s been making animated shorts, films and music videos since the 1970s including Pink Floyd’s concert film “The Dark Side of the Moon.” The high-energy visuals do a fine job of evoking a Seventies early-CG vibe while simultaneously remaining fresh and contemporary.

(Thanks, Chris Padilla)

This could be one of the “Worst Cartoons Ever” if it WAS a cartoon! Just another insane old children’s record found by Mark Kausler on ebay. This is so wrong in every direction - I’d love to hear Shaddup You Face. Sounds like a real winner.

Head’s up on Don Hahn’s new book The Alchemy of Animation, which will be available on October 7th. Hahn is, of course, the producer of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, and is currently developing a stop-motion animated feature of Frankenweenie with Tim Burton.

In his new book Hahn details the process Disney uses to make animated films from traditional animation, to CG to stop-motion. Says Hahn:

It’s been almost seven years since I wrote my first animation book, Animation Magic, and what I really wanted to do this time, was write a book about the making of animated films in the modern age, for a slightly older audience. We were fortunate to be able to pack it with amazing, never-before-seen art from Disney and Pixar films through the ages, including a few sneak peeks at art from upcoming projects such as Bolt and The Princess and the Frog.

I haven’t seen the book myself, but Hahn clearly knows his stuff. Such a book coming from a Disney insider is certainly a positive indicator of the studio’s interest in all three techniques - and that, in of itself, is a very good thing.

Music videos are such a great place for experimentation with visual techniques and ideas. Here’s three that have caught my attention recently. One is cross-stitched stop motion, one is puppets, and one is digital collage and live-action.

“Like It or Not”
for Architecture in Helsinki
directed by Josh Logue at Mathematics

“Champion”
for Kanye West
directed by Neon

“Sophisticated Side Ponytail”
for Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head
directed by That Go

Everything I see from Henry Selick’s new film Coraline looks terrific. Rotten Tomatoes is posting a new, different behind-the-scenes video each day this week. It looks to be shaping up to be something very special. Coraline is scheduled for release next February. I can’t wait.

Someone made an unauthorized video for Cartoon Song by Chris Rice, a song intended as a parody but taken to heart by the Christian community. In an article on his web site, Eulogy For A Song About Cartoons, Rice explained that his misunderstood intention in writing the song was to mock the commercial-Christian tendency to “make a Christian version of everything.”

(Thanks, Vincent Alexander)