In this economy, any work is better than none, but as I pointed out last week, there are some offers you may want to think twice about. Here’s a good one that popped up on Craigslist:

Animator needed for tv pilot episode!

Seeking Animator to create 15 second animation to illustrate a point for a personal development TV pilot episode. Pay is low, however if show is picked up there is chance for future work, and credits off course…

I am an awesome person to work with, young/ hip /entrepreneur!

Pay: $250
Send email with links or samples of work.
Thanks! Email borchevitz@gmail.com
Exposure and joy guaranteed.

I did a little research on the email address, and it turns out the person commissioning this is a masseuse, which gives potentially new meaning to her guarantee of exposure and joy.

(Thanks, Patrick Tuorto)

I always love an excuse to post an obscure Walter Lantz cartoon from the 1930s featuring swing music, rotoscoped dancers and un-P.C. stereotypes, set against the backdrop of an animation studio. The excuse this time is a Lantz in-house memo (below left - click thumbnail to enlarge) that collector Eric Calande just sent me. Lantz asks the staff (”Dear Gang”) to contribute gags to this cartoon, with prizes ranging from $2 to $10 for the best ideas. Note that the memo is dated September 26th 1938 and the cartoon was released January 23rd 1939. From board to screen in four months!? Perhaps the rush to cash in on “a fad” necessitated a production crunch. Also note the set up to this premise pre-dates Friz Freleng’s Looney Tune You Ought To Be In Pictures by a year.

Though the Jitterbug character never reappeared, the concept of this cartoon was the basis for several other swing music cartoons, and the forerunner of the Swing Symphonies series Lantz initiated in 1941. Despite the title card, this was not an Oswald Rabbit cartoon - it was actually one of Lantz’s miscellaneous Cartune series (it was released to TV in the 1950s in the Oswald television package). Frame grabs from the original titles are posted below (click thumbnails to enlarge)

Dreamworks Animation announced its release slate today. Here’s what’s coming up:

• How to Train Your Dragon will be released on March 26, 2010. Written and directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois about a teenager who fights dragons as a way of life.

• Shrek Forever After will be released on May 21, 2010. Directed by Mike Mitchell.

• Oobermind (formerly titled Master Mind) will open on Nov. 5, 2010. Directed by Tom McGrath and starring Robert Downey Jr. and Tina Fey; It’s about a super villain (Oobermind) who falls into despair after defeating his foe, the super hero Metro Man.

• Kung Fu Panda: The Kaboom of Doom will be come out June 3, 2011. Directed by Jennifer Yuh Nelson, Panda will feature the return of the original voice cast including Jack Black and Dustin Hoffman.

• The Guardians, based on forthcoming books by William Joyce, will be released on Nov. 4, 2011. The world’s five unlikeliest heroes - Jack Frost, North (aka Santa), Bunnymund (the Easter Bunny), Tooth (the Tooth Fairy), and Sandy (the Sandman) band together to stop an ancient spirit called Pitch (the Boogeyman) from plunging the world into eternal darkness. Sounds intriguing.

• Puss In Boots will be released on March 30, 2012. Antonio Banderas is back as Puss, who tackles an evil Humpty Dumpty and a street-savvy Kitty who have stolen the famed Goose that lays the Golden Eggs.

• Another Madagascar sequel will be released on May 25, 2012.

• On Nov. 2, 2012, the company plans to release one of three projects currently in pre-production: The Croods directed by Chris Sanders and Kirk DeMicco, about a caveman; Truckers about a society of tiny beings living in a department store; or an untitled Super Secret Ghost Project, about … ghosts.

More details on these releases is posted at the San Francisco Business Times.

Mike Judge’s new series The Goode Family made its debut on ABC tonight. It’s gotten mixed reviews from the media — here’s what the L.A. Times and the NY Times had to say. What did you think?

The latest film by Oscar nominee Tomek Bagiński (The Cathedral, Fallen Art) will be released to theatres in Poland next month. The Kinematograph is based on one of Mateusz Skutnik’s steampunk Revolutions graphic novels. For more info check the Platige Image website.

(Thanks, Anna Adamczak and Piotr Panasewicz)

I hadn’t seen this before, but thanks to You Tube we now know that long before Robert Smigel and TV Funhouse, a short-lived British sketch comedy show The End of Part One (1979-80), also featured a parody of limited animation TV cartoons:

(Thanks, John Dredge)

I love seeing examples of animation from around the world, especially from regions that have developing animation scenes. This is the trailer for a stylish short film from Santiago, Chile-based Plano Visual. The directors of Lalen, Estar Muriendo are Felipe Montecinos E., Mariana Contreras and Constanza Wette.

Animation writer Antony (Tony) Peters passed away this past Sunday in New York. He was a longtime Asifa-East board member and veteran animation story artist on several Rankin-Bass classics, including Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Willie McBean & His Magic Machine and Tales of the Wizard of Oz. He also wrote episodes of Rocket Robin Hood and Grantray-Lawrence’s Marvel Super Heroes cartoons of the 1960s. Since then, he produced dozens of industrial and commercial films out of his studio, Instant Miracles in New York. David Levy has posted a proper obit on the Asifa-East website.

I met Tony once about fifteen years ago in New York and told him I was a big fan one his work on the 1960s Paramount cartoons. We both agreed his best film was The Itch (1965) - he was quite proud of it, in fact. So was Howard Post, its director, who told me how he decided to tell the story with Ronald Searle-inspired art style - and how he convinced actress Hermione Gingold, appearing on Broadway at the time, to come in to record, uncredited, the part of the wife. It hasn’t been shown much at all, and is one of the best cartoons the studio ever made — so here in tribute to Tony Peters, is The Itch:

(Thanks, David Burd)