Studio aka has completed a 25-minute film adaptation of the children’s book Lost and Found. The film, directed by Philip Hunt, will debut on the UK’s Channel Four on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day. It’s about the friendship that develops between a boy and a lost penguin who shows up at his doorstep. The film is narrated by Jim Broadbent and scored by composer Max Richter (Waltz With Bashir). Sounds like a charming film and looks promising too.

More exclusive images from the film after the jump…

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Click on thumbnails above for full screen image. Mike Van Eaton just acquired these very rare cels from the Ub Iwerks studio of 1930s and wanted to share. Take a look and drool! The first is apparently a model sheet on a cel, probably created for the ink-and-paint department for reference. The one on the right comes from Aladdin and The Wonderful Lamp (1934), but strangely enough the Genie is green here, on screen he’s red (or orange). Could this have been a test cel for the ink & paint crew? That film, and the center one from The Headless Horseman (1934), were released in the two-color CineColor process. Note that Bram Bones vest is yellow, but on screen its orange. Mike is also wondering about the background:

The background on the headless horseman piece has a very strange timing bar across the bottom…almost looks like a ruler..see if you can see it in the scan. Have you ever seen anything like that? Do you know what it was used for?

Van Eaton plans to sell these in the near future. If interested contact Mike through his website.

Among the discoveries in the newly available Life Magazine photo archives is this headstand by Ward Kimball during one of his steamups in the late-1950s. (A larger version is here). There are also a couple other photos from the same day: a nice panoramic shot and this one which includes Ward’s railroading friend, Gerald Best, standing on the ground and wife Betty and son John on the train with him.

(On a sidenote, the poor set-up of the Life photo archives on Google is incredibly frustrating. Many of the photos are uncaptioned—like these Kimball ones—or in some cases, incorrectly identified. They really should start allowing the public to tag and annotate the images. For example, wouldn’t it be nice for everybody to know that the artists standing with Walt in this photo are Ham Luske and Ward Kimball. A collection of images that can’t be properly searched doesn’t serve much function.)

We want to wish Tyrus Wong a belated happy birthday. He turned 98 years old on October 25, 2008. Wong is best known for being the chief architect of Bambi’s visual style though he had an even longer career (25+ years) working at Warner Bros. as a storyboard artist and illustrator for live-action films. Below are excerpts from a video interview conducted with him last year by students at Otis College of Art and Design, the school that Wong attended in the 1930s back when it was known as Otis Art Institute. His energy and enthusiasm for life that comes through in this interview is truly inspiring. The entire conversation can be viewed by going to the Otis school’s library in LA.

Bob Clampett’s daughter Ruth has started a blog!

Baby Ruthy’s Blog is an extension of Ruth’s Wildsville Gallery where she sells limited edition art based on Warner Bros. and DC Comics properties (as well as Beany & Cecil originals). She plans to post a few times a week and will definitely dip into the Clampett personal archives for topics to discuss. I know several fans (including myself) who will be regularly checking in to see what Ruthy has to show and tell.

Inappropriate it may be, but the music video for Lele’s “Breakfast” gets a chuckle out of me. The raunchy lyrics (NSFW) are made that much funnier by the crude animation that illustrate the words literally. The drawings in the video are by Piet Parra, who is also a member of the band. It is the first animation work done by Parra, though he is a well known Dutch illustrator who runs runs the clothing label Rockwell. Parra, whose style owes a lot to Sixties and Seventies graphic trends, didn’t exactly animate the piece so much as he made a bunch of illustrations that were later timed out to the music by another artist, Sandder.

There’s an extensive interview with Parra on the Submarine Channel. His description of working in animation for the first time is rather amusing:

Yeah, that was a lot of work. Especially since I had never animated before. Jezus! And Sandder helped a lot. He did the editing. I just made the drawings. We kind have a double process going on. I draw everything onto paper first and then I scan it in and trace it in Illustrator, so that it becomes vector. That way I can scale it. Then Sandder took all the single frames and put those into a program to do the editing. He also took care of the timing, made sure it all matched up with the beats. I would be drawing and after thirty frames I thought, oh well, that’s more than enough, but with that you only actually fill a second and a half. It’s completely crazy! That’s why some parts are repeated. Otherwise we would still be working on it.

A new exhibit of Parra’s artwork titled “Boo to the Hoo” opens this Friday, December 5, in Paris at the The Lazy Dog (2 Passage Thiere 75011). Opening reception is from 6-9pm with an afterparty at Le Regine.

Also worth checking out is this video documentary with Parra. The final minute is particularly interesting as he shows a clip from a Famous Popeye cartoon that directly inspired a new series of MacBook and iPhone sleeves that he recently created:

Can’t wait for the live-action version Akira that Leonardo DiCaprio is currently producing? Here’s a satirical version showing what would happen if Akira were made by Americans. I was unable to dig up details on who made it. Please post in the comments if you know.

Jerry Beck is back with a brand-new commentary edition of “Brew Vaults.” This week he takes a look at three vintage trailers for old-school anime features—Jack and the Beanstalk, Princess Knight and Little Prince and the 8-Headed Dragon. Head on over to hear Jerry’s thoughts on vintage anime only on Cartoon Brew TV!