Here's a page of wonderful and inspiring caricatures by master Disney story artist Bill Peet (1915-2002). Peet re-imagined many of his co-workers as animals, including a particularly biting impression of Walt Disney as a rodent. The site, BillPeet.net, is run by his son, and there's other rare Peet artwork scattered throughout the various pages, so take a look around.
Six animators at Pixar have banded together to start a (well titled) blog named Spline Doctors. Besides animating, all these guys teach animation in the evenings. The goal, they write, is to create "a forum to discuss animation education and whatever else." Should be fun to see what they come up with. The animators involved are:
Scott Clark
Andrew Gordon
Stephen Gregory
Angus MacLane
Billy Merritt
Mike Venturini
ICv2.com is reporting that Turner Classic Movies will be running nine Miyazaki films in January 2006. This is the package of Studio Ghibli features that Disney acquired, which includes Spirited Away, Kiki's Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind, Castle in the Sky, Porco Rosso and Whisper of the Heart. No word if TCM is going to run them subtitled or dubbed. This is probably timed to remind Academy voters to consider Howl's Moving Castle for Best Animated Feature. While I'm not crazy about TCM showing anything after 1970, I do admit Miyazaki's works are true modern classics.
And there's no doubt in my mind that Disney does the best English dubs. Last night I had the the privilege of screening the new dub of MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO and doing a Q&A with the staff of Disney Character Voices responsible for the Ghibli adaptations. Having been principally involved with the original 1989 dubs of TOTORO and KIKI, I am delighted with these upgrades. And seeing Totoro again, after so many years, confirms my own subjective belief that this is Miyazaki's best film - period. It also reassured me that traditional hand drawn feature animation is not dead, and will not die if animators are inspired to tell a great story.
Check the TCM homepage in January for more information on the Miyazaki festival.
Jack Mathis passed away a week or so ago. I never met the man, but I have great respect for him and his life's work chronicling the history of Republic Pictures. Mathis ran an advertising agency in Illinois as a day job, but on the side he spent decades self-publishing several books detailing the history of Hollywood's greatest B-movie studio. And detail is the operative word. His books, particularly VALLEY OF THE CLIFFHANGERS, are as meticulous as they were beautifully produced. And they were very influential to me and the approach I try to aspire in researching and writing about animation history. He was finishing up his magnum opus, REPUBLIC CONFIDENTIAL (part 3), when he passed away. I certainly hope his estate will finish the project for him - as a tribute to his life.
It's always exciting to see animated films and animation artists receive recognition in mainstream art publications. Achieving this type of acceptance has been an uphill battle for many years, but it seems that nowadays, art publications are increasingly opening their doors to animation-related stories. For example, SWINDLE MAGAZINE, a top-notch art/culture quarterly with a heavy West Coast bent, has an interview with David Weidman in their latest issue (#4). They call him "one of the friendliest, most jovial 85-year-olds you'll come across," and having interviewed Dave for my 1950s animation design book, I can attest to the accuracy of that statement. Animation was an important part of Weidman's career, but he also spent a lot of time producing his own artwork, including beautiful silk screen prints that can be purchased at WeidmansArt.com. The only downside to the SWINDLE article is that the writer isn't particularly well versed in animation history so he's unable to ask Weidman specific questions about his animation career and find out exactly what he did at UPA (and other studios like Storyboard and Hanna Barbera). There's also some errors, like the chronology of when Weidman worked on the ill-fated John Hubley feature FINIAN'S RAINBOW. Pretty minor stuff. Overall, it's great to see a classic animation artist receive an 8-page spread (and the back cover) of a classy publication like SWINDLE.
The equally commendable East Coast arts publication, ESOPUS, also has an animation feature in their most current issue (#5). No errors are to be found in this article because it's written by John Canemaker. In the piece, entitled "Let a Thousand Drawings Bloom," John examines a scene from "The Nutcracker Suite" sequence in FANTASIA, and discusses the contributions of the scene's various artists including development artist Elmer Plummer and fx animator Cy Young. The piece, which includes a beautiful color sketch by Plummer and four pages printed on translucent paper to recreate the light table effect, serves as something of an ode to the painstaking, labor-intensive process of creating hand-drawn animation. Though hand-drawn animation is becoming increasingly obsolete at modern studios, Canemaker believes that animation on paper has an effect that today's digital creations cannot replicate. He writes:
While much is gained using the new technologies, there is a certain sense of loss, too. There's the touchy-feely aspect of artifacts that represent the solid residue of human imagination; they don't exist in the digital world as they do in these thought-filled lines on tactile paper. By feeling the paper, holding it in one's hand, one is able to get a sense of the artist and the artist's mental processes, not to mention the effort that went into making the sketch.
Props to both SWINDLE and ESOPUS for publishing these stories and treating animation with respect. Hopefully we'll see more magazines doing these type of animation stories in the future.