Looking for something to do in NY tonight. Check out “Cartoon Movie Night with Kim Deitch” (son of Gene, creator of Waldo the Cat). The FREE screening is open to the public and takes place at 7 pm at MoCCA (594 Broadway, Suite 401, between Houston & Prince). Here is a description of the event:

Kim Deitch will host a Cartoon Movie Night featuring rarely seen animated cartoons from the 1920s and 1930s hand-picked for the occasion from Deitch’s own personal collection. This period of animation inspired Deitch’s signature character Waldo the Cat and is the subject of his acclaimed graphic novel The Boulevard of Broken Dreams, which is featured in the exhibit. As a special Halloween treat, MoCCA will also display for one night only selected specimens from Deitch and spouse Pam Butler’s extensive collection of antique toy cats. The blurring of fact, fiction and autobiography in Deitch’s work is a major focus of Kim Deitch: A Retrospective, and this display will present a rare opportunity to see the historical artifacts that motivate the fictional narrative in Deitch’s graphic novel Alias the Cat.

(Thanks, Anthony Kibort)

It’s plenty refreshing to see a CG character that is designed with a sense of caricature in both his appearance and physical movement. Rocket Jo is a series of 52 one-minute shorts created by French animator Julien Charles for French TV network France 3. The shorts, produced by Millimages and 2d3d Animations, are slated for premiere in January. Julien explains that the series focuses on a single character, Rocket Jo, who makes his own jetpacks and attempts to fly in each episode. He writes that he’s trying, “to put the focus on storytelling and animation with just with one character, no speaking and a blue gradient for the set.” He has set up a production blog about the show, and one of the episodes can be viewed on this page (click on the “Play” button).

How could Sweden, a country that is synonymous with tasteful and elegant design, turn out an animated feature that is so decrepit-looking and painful on the eyes? The trailer for Gnome and Trolls: The Secret Chamber is so pitiful that it almost plays like a parody of a children’s animated movie. A sequel called Gnomes and Trolls: The Forest Trial is already in production.

(Thanks, Tobias Lind)

Worthy of noting in this week before the U.S. elections, Gemstone’s Uncle Scrooge #381 (on sale this week, cover pictured below left) features a story (Breakfast of Champions by Bruno Concina and Lara Molinari) about Scrooge trying to promote his name brand marmalade by getting celebrity endorsements on the cheap. Along with thinly disguised actors and sports stars, the celebs include spoofs of our presidential candidates as well (including Governor Palin).

While I’m at it, I might as well plug Gemstone’s entire line of Disney comic books. The current editors, writers and artists really know the classic characters, and their love of Disney lore comes through on every page. In addition to the terrific new material, they aren’t stingy on reprinting classic work by Carl Barks, Floyd Gottfredson and Paul Murry. Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #696 (pictured below right) doubles as a special issue for Mickey Mouse’s 80th anniversary. Along with rare Gottfredson and Romano Scarpa Mickey comics material, they’ve got a new birthday story by Byron Erickson and Cesar Ferioli. Not to mention what I think is the first-ever modern publication of a 1929 Iwerks ad drawing from PLANE CRAZY’s sound re-release (see portion in center thumbnail below)!

It seems that the talented Dutch animator and illustrator Fons Schiedon is always working on something interesting. We’ve written about him in the past (here and here), and more recently he’s been cooking up a variety of projects that are worth mentioning.

Fons has a painting show “Revolution Deformation” opening on November 6 at the Concrete Hermit (5A Club Row, London, UK). The show features various explorations of his personal character Jesus who “is an anamorphic figure that lends itself to the projection of ideas, and can withstand the intuitive process of painting, without losing its own features.” More info about the show on his website.

Also not to be missed is this delightful collection of key backgrounds and character designs that Fons created for the animated TV series Kika & Bob, on which he served as head production designer.

Last but not least is this striking loop of a walking woman that was projected onto a building last summer:

I like the simplicity of these two new line-animation spots for the Detroit Institute of the Arts, which were made to help increase attendance at the museum. The animation is hand-drawn and composited in After Effects. They were directed by Julian Grey of Toronto’s Head Gear Animation. Check out both ads below:

CREDITS
Title: “Son of Hatman” and “Thinker”
Client: Detroit Institute of Arts
Creative Agency: Perich Advertising + Design, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Director: Julian Grey
Production Company: Head Gear Animation, Toronto
Producer: Kathryn Rawson
Animators: Sean Branigan, Julian Grey
Compositor: Nick Fairhead

Editor’s Note: Welcome to the first post by regular Guest Brewer Linda Simensky. The picture above is from from her cameo appearence in episode 6 of PBS Kids’ WordGirl.

I just finished celebrating my birthday. My actual birthday was about a month ago, but I was busy then and kind of distracted and it rained that day, so we didn’t really do much. But there was a high point that day, and it was a big one for me. My daughter asked to watch Bugs Bunny cartoons with me.

A little background first — I have a son, Ethan, who is eight and a daughter, Sara, who is three. They find my job in kids TV mildly interesting, but as far as they know, every kid’s mom works in kids TV. That’s just how life is for them. They do like TV, at least. But as far as ways to kill time, Ethan would just as soon play games. He loves his Wii, videogames and Club Penguin the most. Coming in second would be his Bakugan toys. Next would be Bionicles. Next would be reading or anything to do with Harry Potter. Then we get to watching Bakugan. By the time we get to this point, his free time is all used up.

You’ll notice no mention of funny cartoons. He does watch the occasional funny show, but only if for some reason it isn’t time for Wii. Now one of my major interests in life, as well as my career, is animation — and specifically funny cartoons. So you see the irony here. Others in animation with kids warned me of the “they don’t always like what you want them to like” syndrome. I always knew it could happen to me.

My daughter, on the other hand, is still open-minded and malleable. She does have some definite opinions, and she does love TV. She likes funny things. She hasn’t really discovered computers yet, and she doesn’t play videogames yet. So this was her birthday gift to me — she came shuffling in to the bedroom on the morning of my birthday and said, “Let’s watch some Bugs Bunny cartoons.” I’d have to say this may be one of my biggest accomplishments in child rearing as of late.

We did watch Bugs Bunny cartoons that morning. And we’ve watched on several weekend mornings since. She seems to like Bugs the best, although she is definitely drawn to Daffy as well. And the crazier the gags, the more she likes them. My mother had mentioned to me that by three, she already could see that I liked cartoons, so maybe it just runs in the family.

With that in mind, I spent my Amazon gift certificate getting caught up on the Looney Tunes DVD sets. I already had four of the DVD sets, and with volume six coming out just last week, I realized I had better get volume five. Especially now that I have an eager three-year-old to share them with. (Subliminal advertising: Go buy the Looney Tunes DVDs.) Apparently volume six is the last of this excellent series.

A three-year-old watching Bugs Bunny probably doesn’t seem like a bi deal to many of you, but consider that kids aren’t watching the Looney Tunes the same way we all did. When I started in the kids TV industry in the mid-1980s, I was ten years older than the oldest kids in the audience. We had pretty much the same lives. Sure, they grew up with cable, and we didn’t have it until I was in junior high, but that was the biggest difference. Otherwise we all had had many shared experiences growing up, and watching Looney Tunes on Saturday morning was one of them. Kids now don’t watch the Looney Tunes much — it’s hidden on Boomerang. And there are more funny cartoons available to kids these days — and most of them were made in the past decade, not half a century ago.

You can see why it would be such a big deal that my daughter would want to watch Looney Tunes. So yes, it was a pretty good birthday.

Next up for my daughter — some NFB films. We’ll start slowly.

One week after giving his blog a nice plug, Jason Anders interviewed me on his Fulle Circle Productions website. Even if you’ve already read everything about me posted online, I’m sure I say something new in Jason’s interview.