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. According to the date on the envelope, Bob would have been thirteen years old at the time. It’s amazing that these childhood sketches have survived for over eighty years.
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TAG FOR “Animators”Cartoon Brew's home for up-to-the-minute, unedited announcements and press releases direct from industry sources.
August 26, 2011 11:30 pm
As we head into this heatwave (west coast)/hurricane (east coast) weekend, we pause to take note of the passing of Tex Avery 31 years ago today. (Click on obituary above to read how Variety reported it). I never met Avery, but by sheer coincidence I attended his funeral and memorial service. I was living in New York at the time, but came into L.A. that fateful week to attend Cinecon (where I’ll be hanging out once again next weekend). Everybody who was anybody – from Hanna and Barbera, to Chuck, Friz and Bob Clampett, Bill Melendez, Virgil Ross and probably the whole Termite Terrace crew – was there. I don’t remember much of the details, except that the tone was serious and somber. I was personally thrilled to see so many veteran animator luminaries in one place – but it was obviously not a place to network… But enough about me. Let’s take a moment to remember Avery today. Click the images below to enjoy some of Avery’s work, starting with his first directorial credit, Gold Diggers of ‘49. Tex Avery was a superb cartoonist, animator and filmmaker; a timing genius, a brilliant gagman and above all, an innovator. Chronologically, after Fleischer and Disney, Avery changed the face of popular animation. His influence over Warner Bros. cartoons, and later at MGM, defined what the Hollywood cartoon would be world famous for – and his influence still felt today in the biggest TV series and feature films. “Incredible, ain’t it?”
36 Comments » posted in Animators, Tex Avery 
August 25, 2011 9:03 am
This just might be every cartoonist’s worst nightmare: Syrian political cartoonist Ali Ferzat was kidnapped and later found bleeding on the side of a road with his hands broken. Unsurprisingly, the attack is being blamed on the security forces of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Ferzat, according to the Guardian, is “one of Syria’s most famous cultural figures,” and he has “long criticised the bureaucracy and corruption of the regime and since March has turned to depicting the uprising.” His work has also served as inspiration for animated projects in Syria. A few weeks ago, the Syrian regime killed the singer Ibrahim al-Qashoush, the composer of a popular anti-regime song, and dumped his body in a river with his vocal chords ripped out of his throat. These desperate attempts to shut down the voices of the country’s most creative people is disheartening, but it also speaks to how much power artists wield throughout society and how much fear they can instill into governments. Even in the United States, cartoonists have been responsible for bringing down corrupt politicians with nothing but their pens. Ferzat’s story is something that every cartoonist and animator should remember the next time they make a drawing: cartoons have the power to create positive change, and there are cartoonists around the world risking their lives to do just that. The Facebook page We Are all Ali Ferzat has been set up in his support. We applaud Ferzat’s bravery and wish him a speedy recovery. According to a tweet, this is the last cartoon Ferzat drew before he was beaten and here’s a selection of more cartoons by him: 51 Comments » posted in Animators, Cartoon Culture, Ali Farzat, Ali Ferzat, Political Cartoons, Syria
August 21, 2011 5:15 am
Bob Schuldt was going through his grandfather’s possessions when he discovered an envelope addressed to his grandfather from Robert J. McIntosh:
Click on the image above to see all the drawings. Bob McIntosh was, of course, a superbly skilled background painter who worked on Bambi and dozens of UPA theatrical shorts. One of Bob’s background paintings appears on the back cover of my book Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in 1950s Animation The lesson: always look through your grandparent’s belongings, and when you find something, email Cartoon Brew. 4 Comments » posted in Animators, Classic, Comics, Bob McIntosh
August 17, 2011 6:35 am
Del Connell, who was a veteran Disney animation artist, Western Publishing editor, and comic strip/book writer, passed away on August 12 at age 93. Connell started working at Disney in 1939. Among other accomplishments, he worked in Joe Grant’s Character Model department, served as a story artist on Alice in Wonderland, and wrote the shorts The Pelican and the Snipe and The Cold-Blooded Penguin. In the 1950s, he started a thirty-year run at Western Publishing where he wrote and edited thousands of Dell and Gold Key comics featuring cartoon characters from Disney, Warner Bros., Walter Lantz, Hanna-Barbera, and MGM. He remained especially close to the Disney characters: he wrote Donald Duck comics for decades, scripted the Mickey Mouse newspaper strip between 1968 and 1988, and invented Goofy’s alter-ego Super Goof. I never met Connell, but heard plenty of nice things about him from his colleague Pete Alvarado who worked with him at Western Publishing for many years. For more about Connell’s life and work, follow these links: Extensive chronology and memories of Del Connell by his grandson (story via Disney History blog; the Connell photo at the top of this post is taken from Mark Evanier’s remembrance post) 4 Comments » posted in Animators, Comics, Disney, Del Connell, RIP
August 16, 2011 12:30 am
Manitoba-based indie animator Jason Doll makes modest little shorts between his higher paying professional gigs. His latest production, Steve the Super Hero, is a traditionally animated kid’s music video about a boy who battles Bad Guys using “only his natural stinky boy body odor powers”. It feels like a Sesame Street spot, or the opening credits for a pilot – and I mean this in a good way. Jason has just started a blog which features a few posts on the production of the video. 19 Comments » posted in Animators, Jason Doll
August 15, 2011 12:05 am
Experimental animator Robert Breer has passed away. Breer was a fine art painter who became interested in creating films as art in the 1950s. In his early shorts he experimented with the form by creating films using distinctly different images photographed one frame at a time. He became one of the most important figures in the 60’s New York experimental scene. In his later years he taught at Cooper Union in New York and created films for PBS’ The Electric Company. His longest piece, an experiment using the rotoscope, Fuji (1974), was added to the National Film Registry in 2002. You can watch a nice selection of his shorts at UBUweb. Below is one of his most celebrated later films, Swiss Army Knife With Rats and Pigeons (1980): 5 Comments » posted in Animators, Experimental, RIP, Robert Breer
August 12, 2011 12:12 am
The outpouring of love and affection after Corny Cole’s passing has been tremendous. In the past three days, over one hundred artists have shared their appreciation for Corny’s friendship and teaching on our obituary post. Take a few minutes to read through the comments in that post. You may be touched, as I was, seeing the profound effect he had on the lives of so many artists. Dozens of former students have shared lessons they learned from him, such as these words from Scott Morse:
It’s not just younger artists expressing admiration either. Bob Inman first met Corny over fifty years ago:
Dan Haskett perhaps put it most succinctly:
Cole’s death has also spurred some wonderful tributes. Legendary director Bob Kurtz posted Corny’s animation reel: Also, historian Michael Barrier posted a fantastic interview that he conducted with Corny Cole in 1991. It’s packed with fresh insights about the early years of Corny’s animation career, and especially about working at Warner Bros. For example, I never knew Corny was Abe Levitow’s inspiration for the animation of Daffy Duck in Robin Hood Daffy. In the interview, Corny also offered the following thought about how he felt he differed from his boss Chuck Jones:
The image at the top of this post shows Corny (at far left) surfing at Malibu in the late-1950s. The photo is from Tom McBride’s website about vintage SoCal surfing. 17 Comments » posted in Animators, Corny Cole, RIP
August 8, 2011 1:00 pm
Beloved animator, graphic artist, book illustrator, painter and teacher Cornelius “Corny” Cole has passed away. His close friend, animator Bob Kurtz, confirmed to us that Corny died this morning. Cole was reportedly 81 and had been suffering with MSA (Multiple System Atrophy). Cole was born and raised in Southern California and was a fine art major at the Chouinard Art School. He entered the animation industry in 1954 as an in-betweener on Disney’s Lady & The Tramp. He went on to work for UPA in the latter ’50s, then for Warner Bros. Cartoons in the early ’60s. He became a production designer for Chuck Jones on Gay Purr-ee (1962) and The Phantom Tollbooth (1969) and designed Super Six (1966) and Ant & The Aardvark (1969) for DePatie-Freleng. |
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