Cartoon Brew

MONKEYHEADS ON MEDIUM

When was the last time a live action network primetime drama series featured an original animation segment as part of its plot? Van Partible (creator of Johnny Bravo) has just produced and directed three and a half minutes of cartoon madness for the two-hour season premiere of Medium on NBC. And it may just be a first.

With characters designed by Dan Haskett (in a loose Jim Tyer style), the four brief Monkeyhead dream sequences were animated in flash by Six Point Harness Studios under Partible's direction. The script was written by Javier Grillo-Marxuach (Supervising Producer from "Lost") and Glenn Gordon Caron (the creator).

So, is this the first time an adult theme - like murder - has been explored through animation in prime time? I know Fred has tried to kill Barney over a bowl of Cocoa Pebbles, but that's not what I mean. Animation segments have been used on live action prime-time network series before, primarily on comedy shows like Caroline In The City, My Wife and Kids, The Drew Carey Show, and Mad About You, The Duck Factory, My World and Welcome To It. There was an outstanding episode of George Burns Comedy Week (1985) called "The Honeybunnies" with a dark comedy animation segment created by Nelvana. Anything else?

In the meantime, I'll be watching the November 15th episode of Medium. It sounds great - and it might just be an historic occasion!

UPDATE: Animator Mark Mayerson writes: "Glen Gordon Caron previously used Will Vinton to do an animated segment on Moonlighting. I remember that they turned Bruce Willis into a clay frog for that."

IMDB's Jon Reeves mentions that "a stop-motion segment for an episode of My Name Is Earl will air some time this month".

And finally, Bob Miller wants to remind us that Hanna Barbera's New Adventures Of Huck Finn was a dramatic prime time series that combined live action and animation on a weekly basis.

(Image from model sheet above Property of CBS Paramount Network Television / Picturemaker Productions / Grammnet Productions)

Sketchtravel

Sketchtravel is an exciting new project initiated by Dice Tsutsumi (of Blue Sky fame) and French animation artist Gérald Guerlais. The idea is to take one sketchbook, deliver it all over the world to more than fifty different artists, and end up with one amazing book of original artwork. It's not a contest and the artists aren't participating for profit—it's about bringing together talented artists from around the globe and inspiring an exchange of visual ideas. The completed sketchbook will be exhibited in the Arludik Gallery in Paris and auctioned off for charity. So far, participating artists include Pierre Alary, Rebecca Dautremer, Andrea Blasich, Alexandra Boiger, Vincent Nguyen, Peter de Sève and Mike Knapp. There's a nice website with many more details about the project at Sketchtravel.com.

A CURIOUS SHOW

At the Copro Nason Gallery, A Curious Show: The Collective Works Of Pressure Printing has an opening reception tomorrow night (Nov. 4th). I'm not sure how many of the artists in the show will be in attendance, but the talent on display includes Glenn Barr (above), Gary Baseman, Coop, Jim Woodring, Tony Millionaire, Kim Deitch, Tim Biskup, Mark Mothersbaugh, and a dozen others.

Reception: November 4th, 8pm-11:30pm, Copro Nason Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave. Santa Monica, CA

Bill Wray's New Cartoon Blog

Animation background painter Bill Wray decided to go legit a while back and become the fine artist William Wray, but thankfully for us, he still dabbles in cartoons as well. In fact, he has a new blog—Mad About Cartoons—where he's sharing some of his recent animation and comic work. Be sure to check out the loads of really appealing superhero babies that he's posted on there.

DON BLUTH DOES H-B

Man, I'd forgotten about this.

Thanks to YouTube, somebody has posted a video of the old FUNTASTIC WORLD OF HANNA BARBERA ride at Universal Studios Florida. As I recall, this was produced at Sullivan Bluth Studios in 1990, and directed by David Steinberg.

This ride ended its run at Universal in 2002, but it lives again and is being re-installed this year at Paramount's Great America theme parks.

Evan Spiridellis Talks About Being Independent

JibJab co-founder Evan Spiridellis gave an inspiring talk at the Ottawa International Animation Festival last September titled "A Brave New World: The Rise of Independent Creators." The festival recently posted the second part of his talk as a podcast and the entire talk can now be heard online.
Download Part 1 / Part 2

Blogging Modern

I had to take a bit of a break from the CARTOON MODERN blog last month but wanted to let everybody know that it's starting up again and there's a lot of good stuff planned for the site. Updates in the past few days include hi-res stills from Ward Kimball's short MELODY (1953), Playhouse Pictures commercial stills, and a nice letter I recently received from 50s-era designer/director Gene Deitch about the book.

TWO COOL LA STORES

Yesterday morning, after I attended the Stan Lee ribbon cutting ceremonies at the new Golden Apple Comics location on Melrose, I ran over the hill to the Valley to do business with my buddy Scott Shaw! Scott recommended we meet at his favorite new store, Big Kid Collectible Toy Mall & Retro Store. Wow! What a place! I urge all our L.A. area readers (and all of you who visit L.A. in the future) to stop in at both of these great stores.

The new Golden Apple is beautiful. Very well organized, neat, attractive and loaded with wall to wall geek goodness. Stan was (as always) really gracious to the crowd (yes, he said "Excelsior!" as he cut the ribbon; BTW, there was a pretty big crowd for 10am on a weekday. Spotted animation director Terry Lennon on the line to get in. Big Kid Collectibles (in a mini-mall on the corner of Burbank and Hazeltine) is an amazing museum of great stuff—much of it animation related and all of it for sale. Classic TV items, cartoon cereal boxes (I snagged a cool tin reproduction of the Kellogg's sign above), old Terrytoon board games, Soaky toys, 8mm Castle films, Harveytoon toys—everything, with the exception of comic books, was there. I highly recommend a visit to this place, you won't regret it.

The Mystery of the Female Disney Animator

Wade Sampson at MousePlanet.com writes about the fascinating story of Retta Davidson, a female Disney animator who worked there between the 1940s and 1960s. It's traditional knowledge that most women at the classic Disney Studio worked in ink-and-paint and only a few held creative positions, like Mary Blair, Sylvia Moberly-Holland and Retta Scott. That's why it's interesting to discover new artists like Retta Davidson who had broken into animation so early. The article has some stories I haven't heard before, such as how in 1941, the studio attempted to train ten women as animators. By the 1950s, there were a number of women working in animation at Disney besides Davidson, including Grace Stanzell and Janice Kenworthy. It'd sure be nice if somebody did more research into this forgotten aspect of Disney history.

Vip Partch Cartooning Lessons

Virgil "VIP" Partch (1916-1984) is, in my humble opinion, the funniest print cartooniest ever. Besides creating laugh-out-loud-funny work, Partch, who was a former Disney animator, was also an excellent draftsman. Matt Jones has posted some rare cartooning lessons that VIP wrote for the Famous Artists course wherein Partch describes his working process and talks about how he writes and draws his cartoons. There's some really good tips in here and it's well worth a read. For more vintage Partch cartoons on the 'net, check out HERE and HERE.

An Interview with Amid

Typically I prefer to be the one interviewing others instead of being the subject of the interview myself. Simon Sandall of ReadersVoice.com asked for an interview a couple times before I finally agreed, and he's just posted our email chat on his site. In the interview we discuss my new book CARTOON MODERN, the decline of Western civilization (which is hopefully not related to my new book), the future of 2D animation, and upcoming plans for Cartoon Brew, among other things. The interview is formatted a bit awkwardly where every sentence is its own paragraph, but hopefully you'll be able to follow along. Big thanks to Simon for asking me to participate. Be sure to check the Readers Voice archives for interviews with some other fine folk like Peter Bagge, Gary Taxali, Ivan Brunetti and Kaz.

MSNBC Article About This Year's Animated Films

Meet my new friend, Dave White. In his commentary published on MSNBC.com today—titled "Talking-animal movies are ruining my life"—he writes about how this year's animated features are mind-numbingly pointless and stupid (not exactly news there) and then offers Hollywood some wise tips on how to stop producing unwatchable cartoon films. But first, he rants like mad about this year's films:

Why do “Madagascar” and “The Wild” and “Open Season” and “Flushed Away” all have the same plot? How many domesticated menageries of circle-of-life-defying zoo pals actually find themselves tossed into the wilderness on a regular basis, learning the true meaning of family and home in the process?

Why did you make me sit through “Barnyard,” a movie where a bull with a milk-heavy udder played a guitar and sang Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down?” And why was I expected to take that scene seriously for even one second? Why did that lactating bull’s pals have a rave in the barn, dancing to techno and getting fake-drunk on milk and honey? Was it his milk they were drinking? And why did my four-year-old and nine-year-old nieces willingly walk out of that movie with their mother, unconcerned with how it all ended?

Why did “Doogal” get made? What was it even supposed to be about? Why was Jon Stewart a talking coiled spring?

Why weren’t “Antz” and “A Bug’s Life” enough? Why did we need “Ant Bully” too? Were there not enough ant-centric films on the pop culture landscape? Did all the DVDs of those other two movies turn to dust, creating an aesthetic void?

Why would I rather watch someone get beheaded on the Internet than sit through another one of these stupid, cheap, insulting, corporate toy commercials? When will the eyeball-scorching awfulness end?

Brian McEntee on Feature Art Direction

Following Keith Lango's blog post about how clunky CG film production pipelines result in awkward looking features, Brian McEntee sent over some additional thoughts on why animated features look the way they do nowadays. McEntee was the art director of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and CATS DON'T DANCE and production designer of ICE AGE making him well qualified to speak on this topic. With his permission, I'm reprinting Brian's thoughts below:

Production Design and Art Direction are rarely taken seriously at the studios these days, and this is why statements like "nobody ever saw this all together until it was too late" make me cringe. It is the Art Director/Production Designer's very job to guide the many parts of an image into one complete whole (and I wish we could dispense with the splitting up of the singular art direction task into Production Designer and Art Director—a big mistake in my book.)

The unfortunate reality is that the position(s) of Art Director and/or Production Designer these days are many times viewed as a perk or promotion, and given to someone the studio or director likes rather than to an individual who demonstrates the proper skill set for the job.

Then there is the "director/auteur" problem: the studios overindulge the Director's ego and in essence make the visual contributions of the Art Director—who was hired to oversee the visual "direction"—irrelevant. Same problem again with studio brass, who feel the need to "shop" through any and all design drawings in order to pick and choose things they like, rather than allowing the Art Director to develop and produce one cohesive style. This results in movies that resemble rock collections rather than animated worlds.

I have personally been fortunate to have worked with several fine Directors and studios who gladly let me do my job, but such is not always the case, as is all too painfully clear.

ZIP-A-DEE-DOO-DAH

SONG OF THE SOUTH is still not scheduled for DVD release. But when it does appear someday, I hope it includes bonus material like this:

(Thanks, Uncle Wayne Daigrepont)

Neal Gabler Talks About Disney

Neal Gabler, author of the just-released book WALT DISNEY: THE TRIUMPH OF THE AMERICAN IMAGINATION, appeared on NPR's FRESH AIR yesterday to discuss the book and Walt Disney. The interview, which can be heard HERE, runs a little over thirty minutes.

(Thanks, Jared Chapman)

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)

It's Halloween and that can mean only one thing...

Happy Birthday, Ollie Johnston!

Today marks the 94th birthday of legendary animator Ollie Johnston, the last surviving member of Disney's Nine Old Men. Let's celebrate his amazing life with a few pics.

Johnston (right) with Frank Thomas in the 1930s:

Johnston (seated) with Frank Thomas during the production of SLEEPING BEAUTY:

Ollie's animated cameo in THE IRON GIANT:

His other cameo in THE INCREDIBLES:

And here's a nice vacation photo from Ollie's trip to Hell last year:

How To Make Your Animation "Not Rubbish"

Tony Mines, director at UK-based Spite Your Face Productions, has come up with two simple and thought-provoking rules for creating "not rubbish" animation. See if you agree and then discuss on his blog. Tony writes:

When creating animation, for one to produce work which can be defined as 'not rubbish', one must observe the following two rules. Failure to observe either one will result in animation which can be rightly identified as 'rubbish'.

Firstly, one must be in the same room as the animation for which one is responsible. Being in the same building is not sufficient, and being in a different postal district or hemisphere is right out.

Secondly, one must recognise that animation in all its forms concerns the creation of sequential imagery, and therefore consideration and attention must be paid to every frame! This does not mean that one must animate consistently on 1's - rather, it means that supervision be given to each frame, and that the amount of movement and nature of movement therein, be personally observed and considered. Attention to only key frames, or to key poses, shall equally result in 'rubbish' animation.

Read Tony Mines's entire post here.

Run Wrake Commercials

I saw the above spot for Triaminic on TV yesterday, and while not a classic by any means, I thought it had an appealing cut-out aesthetic. Surprisingly enough, a quick search online reveals that it was directed by Run Wrake, who's been getting a lot of positive attention recently for his animated short RABBIT. You can view a nice sampling of Wrake's commercial work, including this Triaminic spot, at his ad rep's website, BermudaShorts.com.

Cartoon Brew's Father of the Year

Far be it from Cartoon Brew to offer advice on raising children, but we have to say that Adam Koford has some solid parenting skills. The photo below of his son, which he posted onto Flickr, proves that it's never too early to start giving your kid a proper cartoon education.

DISNEY'S WONDERFUL WORLD OF COLOR

For sale on eBay is a rare 16mm Technicolor print of a Walt Disney Wonderful World of Color show, "Magic And Music". Originally telecast in black and white on Walt Disney Presents in 1958, this is the 1963 color rebroadcast. The most interesting aspect of it is the entire, uncut Pastoral Symphony sequence from Fantasia with all the footage of the black centaurette.

Disney has been great about releasing its library in recent years, but racial images (think Song Of The South) are the last taboo the company still keeps under lock and key. The seller has a steep minimum price of $1500 for the item. Considering how rare this material is (and IB Tech prints of anything are scarce) he might just get it.

Why Does Shrek Make Your Eyes Bleed?

There's not much of a question that the above publicity image for SHREK THE THIRD is a graphic travesty. That much is obvious. The real question, however, is, Why? How could something look like this especially when there are hundreds of talented artists working on the film and tens of millions of dollars at their disposal. After seeing the above image, Keith Lango, an experienced CG feature animator, wrote an exceptionally insightful commentary on his blog where he discusses the assembly-line system under which big-budget CG films are created and why he feels this flawed production pipeline is more responsible for these type of images than any individual artist working on the films. Here's how Lango sets up his piece:

It's almost like nobody ever saw this all together until it was too late. The thing is, if it was made like 99% of the imagery in big budget CG then most likely nobody did see it until it was too late. The problem is not so much with any single artist. That’s because in all likelihood no single artist is responsible for this. It is assembly line imagery. The flaw is in the system under which this is made.

Imagine taking 10 talented solo singers and asking them to sing the US national anthem to the same instrumental track. But due to scheduling conflicts they have to each perform in solo, not as a group. Oh, and gee, we don’t have everybody’s performance here yet so you’ll need to just do your part the best you know how without hearing the others. Naturally these singers are to going to make it the best national anthem they know how. So they sing and sing, beautiful notes that rise and fall- all creating fabulous solo performances. Now take these 10 solo artist’s performances and mix them together in editing. The overall result would be hideous. There are no background singers, nobody is doing harmony, nobody takes the lead because all take the lead. It’d be like some kind of gladiator battle of voices. The jumble of notes flooding forth would cause ears to bleed.

Read Keith Lango's entire piece here.

Super Rex

What sort of top-secret project is talented mad cartoonist Rex Hackelberg developing up in Canada? I don't know, but the cartoon designs featured in THIS POST on his blog totally blew my mind. The model sheets of the cat and the bespectacled kid—which reminds me of a mini-Ward Kimball—have some of the most exuberant, imaginative and fun poses I've seen in a long while. The only thing missing here is some funny loose animation that matches the energy of these model drawings. Let's hope that's coming up next.

GOLDEN APPLE MOVES

My local comic book store, Golden Apple Comics on Melrose Avenue, is moving to a new location this week.

The first day I moved to L.A. (from New York City) in 1986 my first question to my new co-workers was "where are all the local comic book stores?", and was directed toward Golden Apple. I walked in to the Melrose store that day and immediately felt at home. Bill Liebowitz was behind the counter and I told him how happy I was to find this place. We became instant friends and my once-a-week visits have become a weekend ritual for 20 years. A few years later Bill was the first to support my efforts to launch and promote Streamline Pictures, and we did several animation related events together throughout the years. Bill's passing a few years ago has been a terrible loss to the local fan community. But his widow Sharon and son Ryan (and the incredible store staff led by Tony Edwards) have kept the store and its activites going without missing a beat.

The old store, due to its Hollywood location, has been featured in numerous news stories and several Hollywood movies. Its clientele includes big stars (I've personally stood on the checkout line with Michael Jackson, Joss Whedon, Samuel L. Jackson, Seth Green, etc.). So now they are moving (supposedly because the landlord unexpectedly and unreasonably wanted to jack up the rent). I personally think the new location (7018 Melrose) will be a good thing for the business. They are moving next door to Gallery 1988 on the corner of LaBrea and Melrose. Stan Lee will be there (to cut the ribbon) on Wednesday morning, November 1st, at 10am.

So will I.