Cartoon Brew

BARRIER AND BIRD

Michael Barrier writes about THE INCREDIBLES in today's L.A. Times.

GREAT TO BE NOMINATED - Part II

Tulips Shall Grow

For the last three years, you can usually find me and Marea on Monday nights hanging out at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences on Wilshire. Starting April 11th, we'll be back for the rest of the year when Great To Be Nominated: Part Two begins. Each Monday at 7pm a feature film from each year (starting with 1940) which received the most nominations without winning the Best Picture Award will be screened, along with nominated animated and live action short subjects, original advertising trailers, out-takes, newsreels and other surprises to recreate an evening at the movies of that particular year.

The very best prints available are screened at the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater, one of the finest screening facilities in the world. Bugs Bunny's debut A WILD HARE (1940) will be screened with the first program (4/11); Fleischer's initial SUPERMAN (1941) and Tex Avery's debut SPEAKING OF ANIMALS short, DOWN ON THE FARM will screen the second week (4/18); and a Technicolor nitrate print of George Pal's TULIPS SHALL GROW (1942) will accompany the third program (4/25). Seeing these prints in 35mm, at the best possible theatre in L.A., is worth the price of admission alone - and get this, the tickets are only $5. each show, or $30. for the entire series (18 weeks!). It's the best bargain in town.
See you there.

SEE THE OSCAR SHORTS - NOW!

Pssst! Hey, Bud! C'mere... Here's a good tip: for the next four hours - till midnight Eastern Time (9pm Pacific) - you can download three of the five Oscar nominated animated shorts (and two live action nominees) at Salon.com. Guard Dog, Ryan and Gopher Broke. Go now.

CALVIN & THE COLONEL SCREENING

A reminder that tomorrow afternoon (Saturday February 26th at 3pm) I am hosting an Asifa-Hollywood program devoted to the rarely-seen ABC primetime series CALVIN & THE COLONEL (1961).

Though show was originally broadcast in black & white, we will screen several 16mm episodes of the series in color. Special guests from the cast & crew will attend and a Q & A after the screening will include voice actress June Foray and animators Phil Roman, John Sparey and Frank Andrina. The screening will take place on The American Film Institute campus, in the Ted Ashley-Warner Bros. Screening Room, at 2021 N. Westen Ave. in Hollywood, CA. Asifa members admitted FREE. General public admission price is $10.

Here's a nifty shot of the Milton Bradley Calvin & The Colonel board game.

FLEISCHER MEMORIES

Harry McCracken laments the loss of the former Fleischer Studios building in New York - 1600 Broadway - with pictures, at Harry-Go-Round.

MR. BUG GOES TO EBAY

MR. BUG GOES TO TOWN (1941), Max Fleischer's second and arguably best animated feature film, is considered a classic by animation buffs - and completely forgotten today by the general public.

Brew buddy Vince Waldron just spotted this item on ebay:

This curious item caught my eye on eBay. Looks to be an animators model for the Honey bee character in that film (or one of them, anyway.) What struck me as interesting is the little tag attached to it which would seem to indicate that this sort of thing was given away at the end of a production. Can you imagine the attention a similar Disney item would garner?

Holy Mackeral - an original maquette - and it's signed by Dave Fleischer! Good luck to potential bidders on this item. If any Brew reader wins this baby let us know. We are already jealous!

Toy Fair and WonderCon reports

Lili Chin has a report on Toy Fair in New York City and Ronnie del Carmen writes about WonderCon in San Francisco. Good reading and pics.

Klasky Csupo Drawing LEssons

Looks like Christopher Hart may have some new competition. Behold, animation and drawing lessons from Klasky Csupo. What's next - singing lessons from Ashlee Simpson?

Hack My Robots Book

Amazon has enabled the "Search Inside This Book" feature on my recently published book, THE ART OF ROBOTS, and because a handful of names appear throughout the book, you can view most (if not all) of the book's pages online. For example, type in "Bill Joyce" and over fifty pages turn up, and then see even more pages by using the 'forward' and 'back' buttons. Unfortunately, Amazon limits the number of pages you can view online (somewhere around forty), but it's still a nice way of previewing the book before deciding whether or not to buy it.

JJ Villard Show in LA

Recent CalArts grad J.J. Villard is having his first LA solo exhibition at Cirrus Gallery (542 S. Alameda Street, Los Angeles, CA 90013). His Bukowski-inspired animated short SON OF SATAN is an incredibly raw and powerful work, and the exhibit will include drawings from that film, as well as new paintings and sculptures. The opening night reception is tomorrow, Feb. 26, from 5-8pm, and the show runs through April 9. See artwork from the show HERE.

David Stone Martin Lives ON

Tom Neely, director of BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE A JOB?, wrote in about yesterday's post, which included the Bird cover by David Stone Martin:

I thought you might find it interesting that I recently designed an album cover that is directly influenced by the Charlie Parker cover you posted (check out the arms and feet of my Godzilla-esque monster).

Drawings that swing

This has nothing to do with animation, but everything to do with good drawing and design. It's a Japanese website that has an extensive collection of JAZZ RECORD COVERS. There's sixteen pages of covers, so click around. (Thanks, Oscar Grillo)

Frédéric BACK

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences will be holding it's 9th Annual Marc Davis Lecture on Animation Wednesday March 23rd at 7:30pm at it's Samuel Goldwyn Theatre on Wilshire Blvd.

This year, the focus is on the work of Academy Award winner Frédéric Back, one of the world's most honored animator-directors. Back earned his first Oscar with Crac! (1981), a chronicle of the changes the 20th century brought to life in rural Québec. Back followed Crac! with The Man Who Planted Trees, which won the Oscar in 1987. He spent more than five years on that film, with only a single assistant to help color the drawings.

Back's influence and work will be discussed by a panel of animators and historians including Pete Docter (Monsters Inc.), Production Designer Paul Felix (Lilo and Stitch and The Emperor's New Groove), Glen Keane (Tarzan, Pocahontas), Bob Kurtz (owner of Kurtz and Friends animation studio, & creator of Cool Cat), and Charles Solomon (animation critic for The Los Angeles Times).

Tickets are $5 for the general public and $3 for Academy members and students. The Samuel Goldwyn Theater is located at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences building, 8949 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. For more program information, check oscars.org

Ottawa 05 Preview

The Ottawa International Animation Festival (September 21-25, 2005) has issued a call for entries for its 2005 edition. Entry forms are available at the FESTIVAL WEBSITE. The deadline is June 1 so there's still plenty of time to enter. The competition categories are very similar to last year's festival, but one particularly interesting twist is the creation of a Children's Films competition that will be judged by a jury of local children. Festival director Chris Robinson explains the idea behind this category: "Every year there is controversy over the choices for Films and TV shows for Children. After the last Festival a posse of kids approached the OIAF organizers to complain about the 'utter incompetence' of the jury decisions. So this year, instead of just giving them a free t-shirt and sending them on their way, we decided to give the kids an opportunity to put their words into action."

In addition to the competition and non-competitive Showcase screenings, OIAF 05 special screenings include Drawing in Pink: A Tribute to The Pink Panther (curated by Cartoon Brew's very own Jerry Beck), The Best of Pee-Wee's Playhouse Animation, Slovak Animation, a retrospective of award winning Italian Animator, Guianluigi Toccafondo, and DIY: Canadian Independent Animation.

Here's an exclusive preview of this year's Ottawa poster, designed by Gary Panter:

Animators All Wet

Check out the recent diary entries by MGM animator Irv Spence...apparently in February 1944 it was raining like crazy in Los Angeles...and if you're in Los Angeles in February 2005, I'm sure you can relate.

Bob Boyle's Wubblog

Here's another production blog called THE WUBBLOG. Bob Boyle explains it all:

After seeing your post about the production blog of Nick Cross I thought I'd let you know about mine. While Nick is documenting the struggle of an independent filmmaker I will be documenting the challenges of developing and producing a show for a network. I'm starting production on a pre-school show (WUBBY, WIDGET AND WALDEN) that I created for Nick Jr. through Frederator, and I'm attempting to keep a journal of the process.

The blog is only a month old but there's already tons of valuable info on it that will help anybody interested in creating their own animated TV series. Well worth a bookmark.

Blogging Persephone's Production

Nick Cross, an incredibly talented Canadian artist who worked on REN & STIMPY: ADULT PARTY CARTOON, has started his own plog (or "production blog") where he's documenting the production of his 12-minute personal animated short THE WAIF OF PERSEPHONE. He's been in production on the film for four years already and is well into the animation stage. Read his plog HERE and watch some of his earlier short films at his WEBSITE.

A SCANNER DARKLY

Submitted for your approval: the trailer for A SCANNER DARKLY

Monday Morning Inspiration

Here's a work by Bay Area animation veteran Charlie Canfield called HIDE & SEEK. Download it HERE (23mb). It's a light minute-and-a-half short about a young wolf cub interacting with different forest animals, set to Chopin's MINUTE WALTZ. ASIFA-San Francisco prez Karl Cohen, who sent me the link, described it as "charming," and that's a nice way of putting it. Though the technique is overtly digital, employing After Effects or some similar software, the film feels like cut-out animation because of the segmented parts used to construct the characters and minimal use of squash-and-stretch. It's nicely designed and has its own distinctive aesthetic. Charming, indeed. See more of Canfield's work at CharlieCanfield.com.

Tonight: Plympton at the Nuart

One more time. Tonight at 7:30pm at the Nuart Theater (11272 Santa Monica Boulevard) is another screening of the new 2005 ANIMATION SHOW and afterwards I'll be doing a little Q-&-A with the legendary Bill Plympton, director of this year's Oscar nominated GUARD DOG, which is playing in the show.

ADVERTISING & INDUSTRIALS

Brew reader Bob Foster found a trio of dvds that compile the best of the industrial and advertising films produced between the 1930s & 1960s. These collections contain mostly the work of the Jam Handy Corporation and John Sutherland's studio, and - although you can download most of these for free at Archive.org - they seem like a good deal for a dvd hardcopy. Check out the contents of the 1930s-40s disc, the 1940-50s disc and the 1950s-60s disc.