Author Archives: Amid Amidi

About Amid Amidi

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Amid’s Most Popular Cartoon Brew Stories of 2012

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Lots of wonderful, crazy, and frustrating things happened in the animation world last year, and we covered most of it on Cartoon Brew. In case you missed some of the excitement, here are the 25 stories of mine that you read the most in 2012, in order of their popularity on the site.


1. Ricky Garduno, RIP. The untimely death of this well-liked artist happened in December 2011, but word spread about his passing in 2012, especially after a tribute to Ricky was run at the end of a Family Guy episode. This was the most viewed article on Cartoon Brew in 2012.


2. Pixar’s “The Avengers”. Pageviews don’t lie: unofficial mashups of cartoon characters earn more attention online than anything the studios themselves do with the characters.


3. Digital Domain’s John Textor Brags to Investors about Exploiting Animation Student Labor. A study last year revealed that the job of CEO attracts more psychopaths than any other profession. Anyone who reads about animation execs on Cartoon Brew could’ve told you that.


4. Disney Buys Lucasfilm, “Star Wars” Franchise for $4 Billion. In the past, corporations succeeded by being creative and innovative. Today, they eliminate those risks by simply buying companies that are more creative and innovative than themselves.


5. Full Text of Glen Keane’s Disney Resignation Letter. The end of an era.


6. The Hub Hopes Men Will Start Calling Themselves “Belly Bros” and “Care Dudes”.The Hub already has one show for preschool girls that is beloved by adult men. Now they’re just being greedy.


7. A Tale of Two Titmouses: A Cartoon Brew Investigation. Why work in retail when you can work twice as hard and make less money working in an animation studio?


8. “The Sweatbox”, the Documentary That Disney Doesn’t Want You to See. Far more people saw this documentary about corporate ineptitude in 2012 than when the film was officially released a decade ago.


9. Why “The Goon” Is A Troubling Kickstarter Project. People will crowdfund just about anything nowadays, even storyreels that they can’t see for films that may never get made.


10. Advance Praise for the Book That Disney Doesn’t Want You To Read. I knew I’d written a decent biography of Ward Kimball after the Disney Company spent all of 2012 telling me to change it.


11. Stephen Colbert’s Must-See Interview with Maurice Sendak. Cranky old animation artist, meet your new friend, cranky old children’s book illustrator.


12. How Much Money Animated Shorts Earn on YouTube. How much can successful online animators earn on YouTube? Almost enough to move out of their parents’ basement.


13. Animation Teacher Faces Termination For Refusing To Sell His Students Unnecessary Books. Bad: The Art Institutes chain has a money-making scheme wherein they sell unnecessary textbooks to students. Evil: When a popular animation teacher protested the policy, he was fired from the school.


14. “Kill Me Now”: An Artist’s Plea For Help? It may have been an in-joke, but it’s more fun to imagine that an artist who worked on The Lorax wanted to kill him/herself because that’s how most of the audience felt too.


15. Meet India’s Answer to Brave Called “Kiara the Brave”. To make the film more authentic to the Pixar version, the Indian company removed Kiara the Brave’s original female director.


16. “Disasterland” Depicts Disney Characters In Adult Situations. The line is blurring between artwork created by fine artists and artwork created by fifteen-year-olds on Tumblr.


17. Interview With The Artists Who Demand Better Working Conditions At Sony Pictures Imageworks. VFX artists fighting the good fight.


18. Disney Has Halted Production On Henry Selick’s Stop Motion Feature. Sad to hear about this one. Henry Selick is a consistently interesting filmmaker whose films I enjoy seeing.


19. The Disney Purchase of Lucasfilm: What Does It Mean? There’s always a lot of questions when rich people give each other money.


20. Seth MacFarlane Profile In “The New Yorker”: 10 Revelations. The New Yorker revealed some fun facts about Seth MacFarlane, just another typical animator who lives in a $13 million mansion, dates Hollywood starlets and get spray-on tans.


21. Does A ‘CalArts Sensibility’ Exist? Wreck-It Ralph director Rich Moore sparked a fascinating discussion about the influence of CalArts in contemporary animation.


22. Report: Animators Are Raising Big Money On Kickstarter. Crowdfunding went mainstream in 2012. Animators finally have an easy way to raise money without having to sell their bodies.


23. Rebecca Sugar Is Cartoon Network’s First Solo Woman Show Creator. It took Cartoon Network only 20 years to recognize that a woman is capable of having ideas just like a man. Next thing you know, they’ll start allowing women and men to work in the same building.


24. Worst Movie Tie-In Ever: Nesquik’s Deadly “Wreck-It Ralph” Chocolate Powder. What’s the world coming to when you can’t buy artificially-flavored, chemically-enhanced drink powders without fearing for your health?


25-A. Digital Domain May Be On The Brink Of Disaster. I’m guessing this isn’t going to end well.


25-B. 300 Digital Domain Employees Lose Jobs; “Legend of Tembo” Shuts Down Production; John Textor Ousted. What did I tell ya?

(2012 image via Shutterstock)

Meet the First (Stone Age) Animators

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The human desire to animate drawings may stretch further back (much further back) than a couple hundred years. French filmmaker/researcher Marc Azéma has published new research suggesting that the Paleolithic artists who created drawings in the Lascaux caves of France were also attempting to animate their drawings. There’s a subscription-only article about his theory on NewScientist.com. A shorter blog post and accompanying video below are available for viewing by all.

Modern Car-Toons: A Look At Autos In Mid-Century Animation

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Animation can provide a fascinating window into the past. In the 1950s and 1960s, as cars became a fixture in contemporary life, animators made all kinds of films about automobile culture, exploring its history, its prevalence within society, its effect on human behavior, as well as its future possibilities and potential consequences. These films didn’t merely feature cars as plot devices, but made a satirical commentary on the institutions of driving and vehicle ownership.

Cars were on the minds of everyone during the mid-century, and animated shorts about them were produced by both mainstream studios and independent animators, as well as both in the United States and Europe. Many of the shorts, like Motor Mania, Automania 2000, and Autókor, offered a bleak perspective on car culture, while other films were bought-and-paid-for by corporations who had an interest in promoting automobiles: the Portland Cement Association sponsored Disney’s Magic Highway USA and Ford sponsored TVC London’s The Ever-Changing Motor Car.

These films are, of course, mostly valuable as historical markers. Today, as our environmentally-conscious world shifts into a post-auto culture, we worry less and less about the anxieties of driving and car ownership. The contemporary animator views cars through a different prism, one that is most effectively reflected in Pixar’s Cars. John Lasseter’s film no longer questions or considers the idea of the car, but rather offers a wistful nostalgic ode to the golden age of the automobile, a bygone era that can only be glimpsed by looking into the rear-view mirror.

Green Light Go!

Motor Mania (USA, Disney, 1950) directed by Jack Kinney

Car of Tomorrow (USA, MGM, 1951) directed by Tex Avery

There Auto Be A Law (USA, Warner Bros., 1953) directed by Robert McKimson

Four Wheels No Brakes (USA, UPA, 1955) directed by Ted Parmelee

The Jaywalker (USA, UPA, 1956) directed by Bobe Cannon

Magic Highway USA (USA, Disney, 1958) directed by Ward Kimball

Automania 2000 (UK, Halas & Batchelor, 1963) directed by John Halas

Autókor (Hungary, Pannonia Film Studio, 1964) directed ‪by István Imre and ‪László‬ ‪Réber

Ever-Changing Motor Car (UK, TVC London, 1965) directed by George Dunning and Alan Ball

Mr. Rossi Buys a Car (Italy, Bozzetto Productions, 1966) directed by Bruno Bozzetto

What on Earth! (Canada, NFB, 1966) directed by Les Drew and Kaj Pindal

Gallery: The Amazing Character Designs of Ferdinand Horvath

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Let us celebrate the final day of 2012 with inspiring visuals in the form of character designs and studies by animation legend Ferdinand Horvath (1891-1973). Horvath was a European émigré who moved to the United States in 1921 after spending much of World War I in Russian prison camps. He worked for six years at Paul Terry’s Aesop’s Fables studio before moving to Los Angeles. On the West Coast, Horvath worked at Disney where he contributed character designs, backgrounds, story ideas and gags to over sixty shorts including Father Noah’s Ark, Mickey’s Circus, The Band Concert, The Old Mill, Woodland Cafe, and The Cookie Carnival. He also made important contributions to the studio’s first feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Later, Horvath worked at Columbia’s Screen Gems studio and George Pal’s Puppetoons studio.

Join the KKK (That’s Krazy Kat Klub, You Racist!)

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There’s some ugly stuff that can occasionally be found in the dusty bins of animation history. The Vintage Cinema Ads Facebook page uncovered a wildy inappropriate ad promoting Krazy Kat theatrical animated shorts. The double-meaning of this ad would have been more evident at the time of its publication in 1925 when the Ku Klux Klan claimed millions of Americans as members and exerted significant influence over American culture. Also, whoever made the was likely unaware—and most likely didn’t care—that Krazy Kat creator George Herriman was of mixed-race Creole lineage.

(h/t Charles Brubaker)

Keiji Nakazawa, Creator of “Barefoot Gen”, RIP

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Keiji Nakazawa, the creator of the manga series Barefoot Gen, passed away on December 19th from lung cancer. He was 73 years old. His comic, which was adapted into animated and live-action features as well as a dramatic TV series, was inspired by his own experiences as a survivor of the American bombing of Hiroshima that killed over 100,000 people including Nakazawa’s father and siblings. For more details, Comic Book Resources offers a nice obituary about Nakazawa’s life.

“Evoking Spirits” by Ori Toor

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Tel Aviv-based Ori Toor takes Flash concepts like looping symbols that other artists use for economic ends and subverts them into original artistic statements. His sinous, psychedelic loops in the video for Kingdom Crumbs’ single “Evoking Spirits” is quite unlike any other Flash animation I’ve ever seen.

“Ziggy’s Gift” by Richard Williams

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This is the eighth Christmas we’ve celebrated on Cartoon Brew, and in all that time, we’ve never posted the holiday special Ziggy’s Gift. Today marks the end of your Ziggyless holidays. Ziggy’s Gift is quite charming, and the production values are far better than they need to be—especially considering that it was produced in 1982 and it’s…well…Ziggy. No surprise then that the director was Richard Williams and the animation supervisor was a 27-year-old Eric Goldberg.

Andreas Deja Reveals “Mushka” Teaser Trailer

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Andreas Deja is a modern-day animation legend. He worked for 30 years at Disney where he was responsible for classic characters such as Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, Jafar in Aladdin, Scar in The Lion King, and Lilo in Lilo and Stitch. He left the studio a couple years ago to focus on personal projects, including producing independent animated films. This morning, Andreas teased audiences with a preview from his short film Mushka, featuring a girl and tiger as the lead characters. The film, which will be animated in a colored pencil style, is “a story of love and sacrifice set in Russia.”

On his blog, which also includes development sketches of the characters, Deja pointed out that he still has a long road ahead of him. He’s been working on story and pre-production this year, and plans to animate the film in 2013.