Cartoon Brew

ARTHUR DISQUALIFIED

Haven't seen the flick myself yet, but word has filtered out that Arthur And The Invisibles has been officially disqualified from Academy consideration for Best Animated Feature. Apparently the film has animation in less than 75% of it's running time.

The film is currently playing in Los Angeles to qualify for the 2006 Awards, and will open wide around the U.S. on January 12th. But with no chance for an Oscar, and with reviews like this, Arthur is headed for an invisible future, indeed.

The film's disqualification will now alter the amount of films that can be nominated. We had 16 eligible features. Now it's 15. Which means we just lost two nominees. (The rules state that if there are 16 or more eligible movies, there are 5 nominee slots. Less than 16, it's three).

Great Kris Moyes Music Video

Softlightes "Heart Made of Sound," a music video by Kris Moyes, is one of the most fun and playful pieces of stop-motion I've seen in a while. Visual eye candy as only possible in animation.

(via Kottke.org)

Animator Helen Hill Killed In New Orleans

This is the sad type of story that obviously no one would like to be reporting. After losing their home during Hurricane Katrina, filmmaker/animator Helen Hill and her husband, Dr. Paul Gailiunas, returned to New Orleans last August. Yesterday morning, Helen Hill was shot and killed in her home and her husband was also shot, in an apparently random act of violence. An AP story says Hill was the fifth person violently killed in New Orleans in a span of 14 hours. All the sad details about her death can be found in the South Carolina paper THE STATE.

Hill, 36, earned her Master of Fine Arts in experimental animation from CalArts in 1995. Her animated shorts screened at numerous festivals, and in 2004 she received a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation's Program for Media Artists for THE FLORESTINE COLLECTION, a film "reflecting on handcrafted work and race in New Orleans through the story of a collection of hand-sewn dresses and the woman who made them." In addition to her filmmaking, Hill taught filmmaking and animation to youth and adults, and served as visiting artist at the California State Summer School for the Arts and the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts.
(Thanks, Heather Harkins)

UPDATE: Ottawa International Animation Festival director Chris Robinson writes a beautiful tribute to Helen Hill.

More blog remembrances of Helen are HERE, HERE and HERE.

Brew reader John Carter offers a memory of Helen:

I was saddened to hear about Helen's passing. I knew Helen and her family, I went to school with Helen at Dreher High School in Columbia, SC and her mother Becky Lewis was my fourth and fifth grade teacher. Mrs. Lewis was perhaps one of my favorite teachers that I ever had.

Helen loved film and animation and I remember seeing a film that their family made at their home in our fifth grade class. It was a stop motion and live action piece. Very creative. In fact if there are ever two words that could sum up Helen's character it would be creative and loving. She was one of the most genuine people I have ever met, kind and very sincere. I had lost touch with the family over the years and did not know she was in New Orleans.

I wanted to share with you a story about her mother, and in a way, Helen. You see, we watched Helen's homemade film in class as a preparation for an assignment from her mother. We were going to make an animated film as a class. We listened to different selections of music and we drew what came in our minds while listening. While listening to Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag I drew an Elephant coming upon a rainbow and then sucking in that rainbow through his nose. (Hey, I was in fifth grade—cut me a break.) Mrs. Lewis loved it and so my section of the film was Maple Leaf Rag. I cut out an elephant and rainbow a la South Park and in fifth grade made my very own animated segment. Helen even came to class a couple of times with her mom to help (she was a grade ahead of me). Our class made a short film of animated segments as individuals or teams and then put everything together. It remains one of my fondest memories of my childhood and helped to make me even more passionate about something I already loved: animation. So even at a very young age, Helen was making films and sharing her passion and helping others.

Upcoming ASIFA-Hollywood Events

Next week, on Wednesday January 10th, if you are in L.A. and are a member of ASIFA, you can join me at Nickelodeon Studios in Burbank where I will host a preview screening of several new cartoon shorts. We will be running six Random Cartoons (Frederator's new series for Nick) including Doug TenNapel's Solomon Fix, Nikki Yang's Two Witch Sisters, Pen Ward's Adventure Time, Hiroshi Chida's Boneheads, Melissa Wolfe and Anne Walker's Sparkles and Gloom... and, oh yeah, my Hornswiggle. It's gonna be fun.

Tonight I'm doing a Q&A with producer John Williams at an Asifa-Hollywood members screening of HAPPILY N'EVER AFTER (I'm also showing cartoons at my monthly Janet Klein gig—don't ask how I'm doing both at the same time, but I am!). Next month is the Annie Awards ceremony in Glendale. In advance of voting, ASIFA-Hollywood members received DVD screeners of HAPPY FEET, CARS, MONSTER HOUSE, FLUSHED AWAY and OVER THE HEDGE. The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive is growing and has become an Internet hit. In case you can't tell, this is a plug for ASIFA-Hollywood. If you live in L.A. you really should be a member. ASIFA-Hollywood isn't a closed clique of animation elites—it's for everyone who cares about the artform—whether your interest is anime, games, stop-mo, cg or traditional; or if your interests are in classic theatrical shorts, current TV animation or the latest feature film; or if you just like cartoons—ASIFA is your resource, an invaluable resource.

The group was founded in the 1960s by the likes of Bill Scott, Ward Kimball, Chuck Jones and June Foray. Be part of that tradition. Now is the pefect time to join, we've got a lot of great events planned for this year. For more information go here.

Woman Power

The title of this post is the headline from a 1943 newspaper article that Hans Perk recently posted on his blog. It's about Bee Selck, whom the article claims was the first woman assistant director in the animation industry while working on Disney's VICTORY THROUGH AIR POWER. This reminds me of a few months back when I was at a random non-animation event and was introduced to a woman who had been an assistant animator at Warner Bros. during the mid-40s, until she left to raise a family. As a matter of convenience, animation histories routinely tell us that during the Golden Age, with few exceptions, the men held all the creative artistic positions and women were ink-and-paint artists. But if one digs a little, they'll discover that there were far more women working in creative positions at that time than traditional animation histories let on. For example, while researching my book CARTOON MODERN, I discovered that at UPA alone, women in creative positions included background painters Michi Kataoka and Rosemary O'Connor, assistant animators Joyce Weir and Tissa David, character designer/layout artist Sterling Sturtevant, and various other designers including Shirley Silvey, Dolores Cannata and Charleen Peterson.

On a related note, Ben Ettinger at AniPages Daily recently wrote a fascinating profile of two pioneering woman animators in Japan during the late-1950s—Kazuko Nakamura and Reiko Okuyama.

SAMURAI BY THREE LEGGED LEGS

SAMURAI, a slickly produced and visually striking mini-film created for GE's "Imagination at Work" campaign, tells "a tale of a pint-sized samurai faced with a seemingly impossible challenge as proposed by a behemoth Emperor and his wicked minions." The short can be seen in its entirety HERE. It's produced by Three Legged Legs, the LA-based animation collective comprised of Greg Gunn, Casey Hunt and Reza Rasoli. Three Legged is also responsible for such quality pieces as "Los Angeles Lets Be Friends" and "Humans!" SAMURAI is currently airing on various cable providers' trailers-on-demand programs and will debut in a few weeks on GE's website.

(Thanks, Reza)

The History of Animation on French Radio

This one is only for our Francophone friends: Brew reader Olivier Ladeuix lets us know that last month Radio France broadcast a 20-part series about the history of animation. Each episode is a half-hour and the entire series can be heard at the Radio France website.

Uli Meyer Draws

Animator/director Uli Meyer has posted this fantastic YouTube video of himself drawing a character. Wouldn't it be a terrific resource to have more of these drawing vids from other prominent animators? By the way, on his blog, Uli suggests to kids that smoking won't make you a better draftsman. But it'll definitely make you look cooler.

CONTEST QUESTION

Our first contest of the New Year, for the terrific limited edition CD set Tom and Jerry, and Tex Avery Too! was held this morning. The first two respondents to answer this question correctly won a free copy. The question:

What Walt Disney Silly Symphony cartoon did Scott Bradley compose the score for?

The correct answer was MERBABIES. Our winners were Andrea Ippoliti of Italy and Adam Koford of Orlando, Florida. Thank you to all who entered!

SCOTT BRADLEY CD CONTEST

Only 3000 were produced. We've raved about it. Mike Barrier raved about it. You still have time to get one before they all sell out. Tom and Jerry, and Tex Avery Too!, a two-disc CD compiling the best Scott Bradley scores from MGM animated shorts of the 1950s is an absolute must-have. What better way to ring in the new year than to have the crisp clear fast-paced soundtracks to Dixieland Droopy, Barbeque Brawl and Little Johnny Jet blasting out of your car stereo? Additionally, co-producer Daniel Goldmark's detailed program notes (in the color booklet included) is the final word on Bradley's work and career (image above, from the booklet, is of Bradley and Bill Hanna). A second set, examining Bradley's earlier work, is being considered, but it's dependent on sales of this first volume. So do your part and buy this CD today.

For those of you who need a little coaxing: tomorrow morning (Wednesday) at 9AM Pacific (12 noon Eastern) I will post a simple trivia question and the first two Brew readers to answer correctly will win a free copy of the Scott Bradley limited edition CD set. Be here tomorrow and try your luck.

Amanda Visell Show In LA This Thursday

Amanda Visell will be opening her first solo painting show, "Switcheroo," this Thursday, January 4, from 7-10pm, at Gallery 1988 (7020 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90038). Her fun and light-hearted painting style has a distinct animation sensibility, which shouldn't be a surprise since she's worked plenty in animation, mostly as a fabricator and sculptor on stop-motion projects. She's also one-half of the creative group The Girls Productions which develops everything from merchandise to animation projects. Here's a recent video interview with Visell where she discusses her work.

Everybody Can Learn From Animation

What can software developers learn from animation? Apparently, quite a bit. This post by Matt Linderman at 37signal's Signal vs. Noise blog highlights some of the lessons that he's picked up from studying animator Walt Stanchfield's drawing and animation notes.

A KITTY BOBO SHOW

It's nice to see this finally turn up on YouTube. A KITTY BOBO SHOW was a Cartoon Network pilot from 2001 created by Meaghan Dunn and Kevin Kaliher. It has a beautiful look and appealing character posing (if not particularly appealing character personalities). Lots of top-flight talent contributed to the short including background design by Dan Krall, bg paintings by Anna Chambers and Tim Maloney, and animation layout by Charlie Bean, Chris Mitchell, Albert Lozano, Aaron Springer, Carey Yost and Mike Stern, among others.

Happy New Year!

READING THE LA TIMES ON NEW YEAR'S EVE

I read the LA Times during lunch today and found this tribute cartoon by Gary Varvel in the Editorial pages. The LA Times printed it in black & white, but I found it online in color for you. It's a nice piece, but does anyone else find it odd to see Johnny Bravo standing in there?

Meanwhile, over in the LA Times Book Review section, Ed Park reviews Fantagraphics excellent POPEYE comic strip compilation book, I Yam What I Yam, Vol.1. A little late for Christmas, but it's great to see Popeye (in any form) receiving some recognition in a major newspaper.

Cartoon Brew: Year in Review, Year Ahead

Jerry and I tend to view Cartoon Brew as both a complement and antidote to the mainstream media's coverage of the art form. We aspire to fill in the gaps of MSM coverage by offering historical and independent perspectives on the animation art, and by creating a reliable outlet for sharing the insider views of all the industry artists who are in constant communication with us.

Looking back at our monthly news archives, I personally think this past year was our most successful in fulfilling these aims. I have a feeling that many readers would agree with that assessment, especially because we also experienced a banner year in terms of site traffic. In fact, Cartoon Brew's traffic more than doubled from the previous year with over 1.6 million unique visits to our homepage in 2006, and well over 2 million uniques across all Cartoon Brew pages. It may be true that the Brew is something of a niche blog, particularly when compared to general interest blogs like BoingBoing or Metafilter, but with these type of numbers, it's safe to say that animation is a thriving and popular blog niche.

What went on behind the scenes at our humble website was even more exciting. We've been hard at work on a major overhaul of the Brew website which will add all types of new functionality including individual entry pages, search functions, and the ability for reader comments. There's also an even bigger Brew-related project in the works, one that I can't discuss right now, but which I'm sure many of our readers are already aware of. 2006 was a great year for us, but 2007 promises to be even bigger and better. None of this, of course, would be possible without you, our valued readers, and we hope you'll continue to come along with us for the ride.

Just for fun, here's a roundup of some of my most popular/controversial posts from 2006:

Artist reactions to the Disney-Pixar merger

Continuing coverage of Cartoon Network's abandonment of animation: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Interview with Garrett Gilchrist about his THIEF AND THE COBBLER: RECOBBLED CUT project

Commentary: Is My Animated Short Worth A Penny? and responses

Commentary:To Pitch or Not To Pitch

The year of stupid animation comments, courtesy of Mick LaSalle, James Lipton, Jason Anderson, Jeff Lenburg and George Miller

Ward Kimball Arrives On MySpace

"Cartoonist, painter, antique auto collector, railroad-in-his-back-yard Kimball, trombonist, photographer, leader of the Firehouse Five: all these are one and the same guy," a magazine once wrote about animation legend Ward Kimball (1914-2002). And now he's got his own MySpace. Check out his profile and become his friend at:

http://myspace.com/wardkimball