Animation director and designer Dave Wasson has launched a new website DaveWasson.net packed with examples of his design and animation work. Dave is currently directing the Nick series Making Fiends based on this webcartoon. In the past, he created Cartoon Network’s Time Squad and directed the animation on Disney’s first Flash series The Buzz on Maggie. He also does a lot of TV commercial and film title work, such as the Wisconsin Lottery spot shown above. And to top it all off, he’s the director of what is, in my opinion, one of the funniest and all-around solid animated shorts of the past decade: Max & His Special Problem.

Lawyers from Warner Bros. have come down on a firm called Booby Doo, a maker of sports bras in the UK. Booby Doo’s owners want to register the name as a trademark, but the lawyers representing Hanna Barbera properties say it sounds too much like the name of their famous doggy detective. Read the full story in London’s Daily Express.

So let me get this straight. Bras are a problem, but a Canine waste removal service with a similarly derivative name is okay?

The Wexner Center for The Arts at Ohio State University in Columbus is opening a show devoted to animator-turned-comic book great, Jeff Smith, in May. The exhibit will include about 70 original BONE pages and covers, work from his recent SHAZAM! series and current RASL project, and work by artists who have influenced him including Walt Kelly, Charles Schulz, Garry Trudeau, Carl Barks, George Herriman, E.C. Segar, and Will Eisner. Ohio State’s Cartoon Research Library will be hosting a sidebar show at the same time that features Jeff’s work when he was a cartoonist for the Ohio State student newspaper back in the 80s.

In addition, The Wexner Center will host a number of related panels and events, including a conversation between Jeff Smith and Scott McCloud on May 10th at 2pm; and A Looney Tunes Evening with Jeff Smith, where Jeff will introduce a selection of WB cartoons that most-influenced BONE (especially the Chuck Jones ‘hunting trilogy’), on June 5th at 7pm.

See the Wexner website for more information.

Perhaps the most obscure of the pioneering anime series imported to the U.S. in the 1960s was Osamu Tezuka’s The Amazing Three. Why has it has been missing-in-action for so long? Perhaps because, unlike Astro Boy, Gigantor, 8th Man and Prince Planet the show did not feature a costumed super-hero or high tech robot. Or perhaps, unlike Speed Racer and Kimba, the show wasn’t produced in color.

It did have a science fiction premise – three aliens come to Earth disguised as a rabbit, a duck and a horse and must decide if they should blow up the planet, or save it. The design of this show was faithful to Tezuka’s original manga, and the stories were always a fun mix of comedy, drama and action.

Now, as all things must, it has shown up on ebay. Someone has found twelve original negatives to the English dubbed version in the vaults of Los Angeles’s KCOP-13 and is selling them on ebay for $24,000. Close up images of these negs can be viewed here. Note that one is marked for use by New York’s TV station WPIX (where I saw it as a kid).

Twenty-four Grand is too rich for my blood. Let’s hope someone smart acquires this material and puts it out on DVD for all of us to enjoy. In the meantime, courtesy of Toontracker (via You Tube), here is the rarely seen opening to the American version:

Mike Van Eaton has unearthed the original art to a rare Looney Tunes promotional book from 1939 – apparently created exclusively either for motion picture exhibitors or merchandising licensees. He sent me scans of the pages (below; click on each to see a larger image).

1939 was an interesting year for Leon Schlesinger’s studio. The text page here refers to Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies as being “constantly before the public as they are played in over 8500 theaters throughout the Unites States and Canada”. Wow. If it were only so today. Note that “Elmer” (nee Egghead) was promoted as the star of Merrie Melodies, while Bugs Bunny was considered only as an “incidental character” (see the last page). Were they really planning further cartoons with “Spunky” (from Now That Summer Is Gone), “Patrick Parrot” (From I Wanna Be a Sailor), “Little Eva” (from Uncle Tom’s Bungalow) or “Fluffnums” (from “Porky’s Romance”)? I don’t think so. And for some reason Sniffles rates both a full page portrait (by Charlie Thorson) and is included with the “incidental characters” as well.

Van Eaton is selling most of the pages individually. He has the originals on display at his gallery in Sherman Oaks, California. Contact Mike directly if you are interested in acquiring some of these pieces.

That’s today’s topic of discussion on the Cartoon Brew Facebook page. We’re planning a refresh of the site and want to hear from Brew readers how you’d improve the site’s design and layout, and which technical features and additions you’d like to see implemented on Cartoon Brew.

Meltdown Comics in Hollywood is celebrating the “wonderfully mesmerizing phenomenon of ’80’s era cartoons” with a gallery show opening this Saturday (4/5). Gag Me With A Toon features a fine array of artists (including Jim Mahfood, Roman Dirge and 24 others) re-interpreting their favorite little blue creatures and transforming robots from that mind numbing decade, in a show show curated by artist Steven Daily. Sneak peek online here.

(photo via)

The great American diplomat and Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson may have well been talking about Li’l Abner creator Al Capp when he said, “Nothing so dates a man as to decry the younger generation.” In the final decade of his life, Capp launched vitriolic attacks against everybody and anything that didn’t adhere to his extremist views, even going so far as to label student protests against the Vietnam War as “mugging, vandalism and thievery.” Another example is this video clip of Capp going to meet John Lennon and Yoko Ono just so he could verbally berate them:

Capp’s antics became the subject of a colorful documentary—This is Al Capp—that premiered on NBC’s “Experiments in Television” on March 1, 1970. What makes it especially relevant to Cartoon Brew is that the special was co-directed by animation designer and director Ernie Pintoff, who created classic cartoons like Flebus and the Oscar-winning Critic. (Pintoff and his writing partner Guy Fraumeni also directed two other documentaries for the series—”This Is Marshall McLuhan” and “This Is Sholem Aleichem.”)

Somebody has posted onto YouTube the first twenty minutes of the Al Capp documentary (viewable in two parts below). Capp comes across as a one-man Fox News Channel—reactionary, naive, and intellectually vapid. Still, it’s somehow entertaining to hear such hostile bile coming from the mouth of a famous cartoonist. After all, I think this may be the only instance of a cartoonist’s political ideas being the subject of a documentary on network television. The special also features quotes from John Steinbeck, and onscreen appearances by legendary cartoonists Milton Caniff and Walt Kelly, underground cartoonists Spain and Trina Robbins, and others like William F. Buckley, Paul Krassner and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

The presentation of the material is topnotch, and even in live-action, Pintoff’s animation sensibilities come through loud and clear. He employs energetic quick-cuts, intimate close-up interview shots and cheeky juxtapositions of images and sounds resulting in a playful presentation that make even Capp’s rantings seem semi-tolerable.

(via Mike Lynch)