December 09, 2006
SITO AT THE BARN
Attention all Angelenos: Tom Sito, Disney animator, former president of the Animation Guild, and now author of Drawing the Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson will speak Thursday, December 14, 2006, 7:30 pm, at the Hollywood Heritage Museum. No one has collected more stories about the Golden Age of Hollywood animation than Tom, and his book is a must have. The Hollywood Heritage Museum is in the Lasky-DeMille Barn at 2100 North Highland Avenue (across the street from the Hollywood Bowl). Parking is free. Admission is $8 (Hollywood Heritage Members: $5) for this special event.
THE LIVING ANIMATION FESTIVAL
Animation director Matt Ferguson (Harold Rosenbaum Chartered Accountant and Grossology for Nelvana) has, over the past week, been posting clips and full versions of the 2006 Annie Award nominees on his new blog, The Living Animation Festival. Matt's also been posting all kinds of great stuff he finds on YouTube, including early films of John Lasseter and Michael Dudok de Wit. Well worth a daily visit.
December 08, 2006
UBUWEB
UbuWeb bills itself as a "YouTube of the Avant-Garde" and I can't think of a better description. Among other things, they have a great collection of avant-garde film, all available for free viewing. The animation offerings are kind of sparse, but there are some difficult-to-find films that are worth checking out including Robert Breer's A MAN AND HIS DOG OUT FOR AIR, numerous shorts by Walerian Borowczyk, Ed Emshwiller's early CG landmark SUNSTONE, Frank and Caroline Mouris's Oscar-winning FRANK FILM, and a couple of stop-motion classics by Ladislaw Starewicz.
BREW HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE: STUART NG BOOKS
The fifth in a series of holiday gift-giving suggestions from your pals at Cartoon Brew.
This one is only for folks in southern California. It used to be that to get your hands on Stuart Ng's amazing collection of out-of-print and contemporary illustration and cartoon books, one had to wait for the annual San Diego Comic-Con or arrange a personal visit to Stuart's collection. But now, Stuart has opened a 1000-square-foot showroom in Torrance, and he's holding his first-ever open house this holiday season. The showroom will be open from 11am to 5pm for the next two weekends: December 9-10 and 16-17. The Stuart Ng showroom is located at 22910 Crenshaw Blvd., Suite B, Torrance, California 90505. To check out his catalog or for more details, visit StuartNgBooks.com. But please, leave a couple Ronald Searle books for me.
Cartoon Brew Holiday Gift Guide
Animated Soviet Propaganda dvd
Terr'ble Thompson book
Scott Bradley cd
Silly Symphonies book
Hardly a Miracle
What happens when a nutty evangelical homebuilder decides to become the next Walt Disney, and hires a bunch of ex-Disney animators to build his own 2D animation empire in Wisconsin? That sounds like the set-up to a bad joke, but unfortunately, it actually happened last year and the results were predictably disastrous. The story of Tom Hignite and Miracle Studios is recounted in painful detail in the current issue of MILWAUKEE MAGAZINE. It's a long but mighty entertaining read.
December 07, 2006
Amazing 1950s French Commercials
Here's a series of ten beautiful animated spots produced in France during the 1950s. It's inspiring how these commercials take full advantage of the medium's graphic potential. There's no compromise in these pieces which is what keeps them so fresh and interesting over fifty years later.
December 06, 2006
Platform Animation Festival
We've needed a good animation festival here in the US for the long time and we may finally be getting it in the form of the Platform International Animation Festival, which will take place June 25-30, 2007 in Portland, Oregon. The recently launched festival website has more info including details on how to submit films (deadline is March 1, 2007).
The festival is sponsored entirely by Cartoon Network, which was initially some cause for concern, but thankfully, CN seem to be taking a largely hands-off approach and allowing this to become its own festival. I've spoken extensively with the festival's director and founder Irene Kotlarz, and she's attempting to really push the limits of what an animation festival can be. In addition to screenings of short films and special programs, Platform will weave in and out of related arts by having installations and art exhibits, as well as incorporating comics, illustration and toy design into the programming. It's exciting to finally have a major festival so close to the animation epicenters of Southern California and the Bay Area. I definitely know where I'll be next June.
A DATE THAT WILL LIVE IN INFAMY
What are you doing on Pearl Harbor Day?
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I myself will be half a mile away, running a fine selection of vintage animated cartoons at the Janet Klein concert at The Steve Allen Theatre. I do this every month, the first Thursday of each. It's a great evening of fun which starts at 8:00pm. For more info go here.
Learn How To Paint H-B Backgrounds
Art Lozzi, a background painter on the early Hanna-Barbera TV cartoons, has written a great little tutorial on his background painting techniques. It is posted on John K's blog. In it, Lozzi shows when he used sponges, friskets and brush lines, and also discusses a bit of color theory. Well worth checking out.
December 05, 2006
SCARY POPPINS
Somebody recut Disney's MARY POPPINS into a horror film. A cheap laugh but it works.
Happy Birthday, Walt!
Today is Walt Disney's 105th birthday!
As good a reason as any to celebrate.
Preston Blair Swipes: Policeman
What's one of our favorite recurring topics here at Cartoon Brew? Of course, it's the "Preston Blair swipe," which is when an illustrator-hack pilfers artwork from Preston Blair's classic animation textbook and uses it for their own commercial projects. The latest swipe was found by Adam Koford in Orlando, Florida. If you want to visit this shrine of cartoon incompetence, Adam has geotagged the location on Flickr:
Previous Blair rips on Cartoon Brew: Halloween decals, Ohio lottery ticket, Australian restaurant ad and Ohio school mascot.
HILARIOUS SNOWMAN SPOOF
Brew reader Arthur writes about this funny and well done commercial spoof of the classic British holiday special THE SNOWMAN:
To promote their tangy soda drink Irn Bru (the number one soft drink in Scotland), Scottish soft drink company Barr have created a cheeky homage to Raymond Briggs much loved christmas classic The Snowman, the commercial is also causing a bit of a stir due to the current hysteria in the UK over advertising junk food to children.
Read about the controversy HERE or watch the commercial below:
December 04, 2006
NY TIMES on New Disney Shorts
Yesterday's NEW YORK TIMES had an article by Charles Solomon about Disney's new plan to produce animated short. The article states that four animated shorts are in development:
“The Ballad of Nessie,” a stylized account of the origin of the Loch Ness monster; “Golgo’s Guest,” about a meeting between a Russian frontier guard and an extraterrestrial; “Prep and Landing,” in which two inept elves ready a house for Santa’s visit; and “How to Install Your Home Theater,” the return of Goofy’s popular “How to” shorts of the ’40s and ’50s, in which a deadpan narrator explains how to play a sport or execute a task, while Goofy attempts to demonstrate — with disastrous results.
(Use BugMeNot.com if registration is required)
UPDATE: The storyboard art in the NY TIMES article, including the image above, is by Wilbert Plijnaar.
ANNIE AWARD NOMINEES
The nominees for the 34th Annual Annie Awards have been announced. The complete list is posted here. Here's a sampling of some of the nominees:
Best Animated Feature
Cars – Pixar Animation Studios
Happy Feet – Warner Bros.
Monster House – Columbia Pictures/ImageMovers/Amblin Production
Open Season – Sony Pictures Animation/Columbia Pictures
Over The Hedge – DreamWorks Animation
Best Animated Short Subject
Adventure Time – Nickelodeon
Fumi and the Bad Luck Foot – Thunderbean Animation
No Time For Nuts – Blue Sky Studios
Weird Al Yankovic “Don’t Download This Song” – Acme Filmworks
The Awards will be presented Sunday February 11th at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, CA. For more information click here. Congratulations to all the nominees.
December 03, 2006
SID RAYMOND 1909-2006
Mark Evanier is the first to note the passing of my friend Sid Raymond. Raymond was best known as the voice of Baby Huey and Katnip for Famous Studios during the 1950s. He also did voices for Terrytoons and radio, and appeared in many classic TV shows (including The Honeymooners) and movies. He made a fortune playing a bartender in a series of commercials for Schlitz Beer in the early 1960s.
That's a picture of Sid and I, above, taken in Vancouver during the voice recording sessions for the new Baby Huey cartoons produced by Carbunkle Cartoons for Harvey Entertainment in 1994. If you want to see a larger version of the photo click here. I not only spent a whole week with Sid that year, but subsequently met up with him in New York (where he took me to breakfast at the Friars Club, and to a party at Jackson Beck's apartment!). If that weren't enough, I visited with Sid and his lovely wife in Miami where he showed me several pieces of Famous Studios memorabilia. We kept in touch throughout the years - and Sid never stopped working! He was on The O.C. last year - that was his last appearence on screen. Say what you will about the Famous Studios cartoons, the voice work is teriffic. Stang, Mercer, Beck, Questel and Raymond are hilarious, and give classic vocal characterizations.
Howard Weinberg made a documentary about Sid a few years ago, Sid At 90 which is well worth buying. Below is a brief clip from the film where Sid discusses voicing Baby Huey, his small part in The Prize (1963) and excerpts from his Schlitz Beer commercials.
His niece wrote about him on my My Space. He will be missed.
Classic Animation on Flickr
Today marks the launch of the Animation History Archive on Flickr, a new group I started where we can all share interesting visual bits of animation history. Hopefully this can be sort of like a 'show and tell' of classic cartoon history and, in time, become a valuable visual resource for artists everywhere. Here's a quick description of what can be posted in the group:
Visual materials related to Golden Age animation and animation artists. "Golden Age" means 1920s-1950s, though depending on the material, it could also encompass a few things in the '60s and '70s The material posted could include sets of storyboards, layout drawings, old magazine articles about animated films, photos of animation artists and other ephemera related to the industry (for example, gag cartoons or the currently incuded Top Cel union newsletter covers drawn by animation artists).
If you've got things in your collection that you want to share or just want to see cool stuff from other people's collections, you can join the group here:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/animationarchive/