Cartoon Brew

Oscar Nominees on YouTube

Two very good animated shorts, both nominated for an Oscar in 1995, have turned up on YouTube. In the short but amusing BIG STORY, a stop motion Kirk Douglas argues with himself. The film was directed by David Stoten and Tim Watts.

Michael Dudok de Wit's THE MONK AND THE FISH is a beautifully designed and animated short by an artist who understands how to use the animation medium to tell a story. I'm sure many have already seen this short, but if you haven't, here's your chance.

Disney's MEET THE ROBINSONS

MEET THE ROBINSONS trailer here.

Chatting About Cartoons in London

There's a solid animation lecture series currently happening at London's Science Museum in conjunction with the Pixar: 20 Years of Animation exhibition. The series—Talk Animation!—continues through June 9. Upcoming speaker highlights include directing duo Smith & Foulkes, Philip Hunt of Studio aka, and stop motion director Barry Purves. More details HERE.

Cartoon Brew Film of the Week: The Tale of How

THE TALE OF HOW is a mostly CG animated short produced by the South African animation collective Blackheart Gang. Credits are Marcus Wormstorm (music, writer), Cherie "Ree" Treweek (design/illustration), Jannes Hendrikz (creative director/2D animation and compositing) and Justin Baker (lead CG animator). According to the filmmakers, the story is about an octopus named Otto, "and he's an island that all the Piranha birds live on. His broken heart has made him mean, and he eats piranhas even though he's not hungry." The lush, densely layered visuals look completely unlike anything else out there. Blackheart Gang doesn't fall into the all-too common trap of using computer animation to make photorealistic art, instead creating a fluid and organic world that draws upon the tradition of illustrators like Rackham, Nielsen and Beardsley.
(Thanks, Craig Clark)

THE LOOKING BOX

Here's some fresh talent. Two young Dutch animators, Joost van den Bosch and Erik Verkerk (Ka-Ching Cartoons), have posted a test section of their new film, a clever, well designed CG piece produced to look like paper cut-outs in stop-motion animation. Bosch and Verkerk developed this idea as a concept for a television series during their graduation at the Arts Academy in Rotterdam. According to them:

"It comes from an old tradition in the Netherlands of young children using old shoeboxes to make small theatres from cardboard figures. Through one small round opening on one side of the box one can look at the small motionless stages in 3D. The lid of the box can be used for lighting the 'stage'. It is called a 'kijkdoos', a looking-box. Like a 3D drawing. In our animated series, thirteen short adventures come to life in 'shoebox' style.

We are both very big fans of the old 30's cartoons and wanted to make something that was influenced by that era - and hopefully can create films that will be as timeless funny as they are. At the same time we thought it would be nice to combine it with this old dutch tradition of making these lookingboxes which pushed us into the style it is right now. At the moment we are in production on our graduation film, which will be the pilot for the series, and will be finished at the end of June. The producers at il Luster Productions already are making plans to develop it into a real televison series."

The completed film is going to be about ten minutes (six minutes of animation and four minutes of live action). We wish them luck. More information on their website.

Ambiguous DUO RETURN

After almost four years, J. J. Sedelmaier Productions and Robert Smigel, the creators of NBC’s Saturday Night Live “Saturday TV Funhouse” cartoons, are bringing back Ace and Gary, The Ambiguously Gay Duo, to host the “Best of Saturday TV Funhouse” on NBC, airing April 29th. This is the first ever collection of animation shorts to run as an SNL special. The ninety-minute program will showcase the recurring series of “Funhouse” segments including “The X-Presidents,” “Fun with Real Audio” and of course “The Ambiguously Gay Duo.” The SNL animated special will feature new material especially animated for this show, with Ace and Gary as the show's hosts interacting “live” with the current cast throughout the program. Ace and Gary are voiced by Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell of “The Office.”

CARTOONS: NO LAUGHING MATTER

Heads up, New Yorkers! The Film Forum is presenting CARTOONS: No Laughing Matter?, a program of new animated shorts begining Wednesday, May 10th. These new works, by eight well known independent animators, include Suzan Pitt’s bizarre Mexican fantasy, "El Doctor" (pictured above), Lisa Crafts’s "The Flooded Playground", a nightmare of childhood fears, the latest film from George Griffin, "It Pains Me to Say This" and JJ Villard's riff on Charles Bukowski, "Son Of Satan". Films from Andy & Carolyn London, Suzie Templeton, Chris Shepherd & David Shrigley and Debra Solomon are also included. CARTOONS: No Laughing Matter? will play for two weeks, May 10-23, and they say the program is not appropriate for children.

RALPH EGGLESTON INTERVIEW

Pixar animator Andrew Gordon has posted an extensive 45-minute audio interview with fellow Pixarian, art director/production designer Ralph Eggleston, on his Spline Doctors blog.

True Characters

Story artist Jenny Lerew has posted another excellent entry about storytelling in animation on her blog, Blackwing Diaries. This time, she tackles the importance of creating honest, likeable characters that the audience can relate to. It seems like an obvious point, and yet, the type of characters which she speaks about are missing from the vast majority of contemporary feature and TV animation.

Dave Wasson...On You

Director/designer Dave Wasson (TIME SQUAD, MAX AND HIS SPECIAL PROBLEM) has launched a new line of T-shirts called Vot-Not. He's starting out with three designs and they're all quite fetching. Ordering info HERE.
(via Gabe Swarr)

ANIMATION BENEFIT AUCTION

On April 20th, Cartoon Network will be holding a silent auction to benefit Fyn Stec. Fyn is the young son of current Nickelodeon and former Cartoon Network animation art director Paul Stec (Fosters) and his wife Dayla Corcoran (production coordinator on Dexter's Lab and Shrek). Fyn has recently been hospitalized with a rare form of liver cancer. They are raising funds to help defray the astronomical medical expenses that won't be covered by insurance. Craig Kellman, Chris Reccardi, Lynne Naylor, Tim Biskup, Craig McCracken, Seonna Hong, Miles Thompson, Don Shank and many other great artists are contributing art for this cause. The studio will be open next Thursday night from 5:30 to 9:00pm, and they'll be live music. Here is a website with more info. Here is a blog with updates on Fyn's progress. Please help!

POOH ON THE SIDEWALK

Better watch where you step!

As if there isn't enough s--t in Hollywood already, now there's permanent Pooh on the sidewalk. From the AP:

Johnny Grant, the honorary Mayor of Hollywood, poses for a photo with from left, Rabbit, Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore and Tigger during a ceremony yesterday, celebrating Pooh's 80th anniversary with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles. Pooh, created in the 1920's by British author A.A. Milne, debuted as a cartoon character in the 1966 Disney featurette "Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree," and went on to star in dozens of films, specials and several cartoon series.

NEW HANNA BARBERA FIGURES

Our buddy Scott Shaw! designed these cool new action-packed Hanna Barbera figures. Tom & Jerry (above), Fred Flintstone, Hong Kong Phooey and Quick Draw McGraw (as El KaBong) never looked so good. MacFarlane Toys are producing these under license from Warner Bros. Nice stuff.

Cartoon Network

An article in last week's VARIETY reports that not only will Cartoon Network continue to air live-action films like ACE VENTURA and DUMB AND DUMBER, but that they're also beginning to plan production of original live-action TV series and movies. Now I know a lot of people are probably going, What the hell? Why is Cartoon Network going to produce live action?

I, for one, however applaud this out-of-the-box thinking on the part of the CN execs. After all, just because a channel is called Cartoon Network doesn't mean they actually need to air cartoons. That's so obvious...so 20th century. By giving audience what they're not expecting, Cartoon Network is showing it's a risk-taker, and that they aren't afraid to add an element of surprise to their programming.

The execs at Cartoon Net have stumbled upon a secret that will revolutionize the cable industry, and that's if you ignore the name of your channel and just air whatever you feel like, the possibilities for programming are endless. If this catches on, I predict an exciting renaissance in cable TV. No longer will channels be limited to their tired routines. Seriously, how many weather reports does the Weather Channel really need? Imagine how much more interesting it'll be to catch NBA games on The Weather Channel. And sports on ESPN? Been there, done that. What ESPN really needs to distinguish itself from the competition is a month-long film tribute to Edward G. Robinson. The idea could potentially even spread to individual shows. Bill O'Reilly on The O'Reilly Factor? We all saw that coming a mile away. But the O'Reilly Factor hosted by Oprah—now that's what I call some innovative television. It's a wonder that nobody's every thought of this before, and to think we owe it all to those geniuses at Cartoon Network.

WHO IS OSWALD THE LUCKY RABBIT?

Find out in a short film now playing on Disney.com.

URMEL AUS DEM EIS

URMEL AUS DEM EIS is a German CG animated feature slated for release in August 2006. You can suffer through the trailer HERE. I'm not sure what the translation of the title is, but I think it's something along the lines of, "Our attempt at making an obnoxious, bland, charm-deprived, aesthetically repugnant, American-style CG film." The film, produced by Ambient Entertainment, is based on a fondly remembered German marionette TV series from the late-1960s, though chances are it won't be fondly remembered after this film is released. On a sidenote, is anybody keeping track of the number of animated features in recent years that have used Sister Sledge's song "We are Family" in their trailer or in the final product? And has anybody considered, instead of having a song that spells out to audiences that the characters are like family, wouldn't it be more impressive to create characters who exude warmth and personality, and communicate that feeling of family through their actions?

The Adventures of Digger Nail Fungus Infection

Dateline: Hollywood has a hilarious parody piece about what happens when pharmaceutical companies start producing CG features, like Mucinex's MR. MUCUS and Lamisil's THE ADVENTURES OF DIGGER NAIL FUNGUS INFECTION. Don't laugh too hard though; the way the animation industry is headed, these films will become reality soon enough.
(Thanks, Steve Moore)

THE LAST WARNER BROS. CARTOON

Peter Paltridge has posted a bunch of funny/strange pages on his website, such as this one devoted to the worst TV cartoons he's seen, and another one devoted to weird Archie comics.

However, his most obsessive rant is devoted to the last Looney Tunes cartoon INJUN TROUBLE (1969). This Cool Cat cartoon isn't the worst cartoon Warner Bros. released, and it certainly wasn't the last Looney Tunes (the series was revived several times in the 1980s, 90s and as recently as 2003). But the studio ended its regular theatrical distribution of cartoon shorts (dating back to 1930) with this film - and the cartoon has a surprising number of politically incorrect gags (which has kept it off television for years).