Blue Sky Studios is holding an AUCTION to benefit the victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The auction runs through December 19 and includes original pre-production artwork and maquettes from ICE AGE and ROBOTS. All proceeds (minus auction fees) will go directly to either the Red Cross or The Humane Society.

“Chicken Little is the third elaborate and expensive industrial product (I almost said ‘movie’ or ‘film’) whose principal fabricator (I almost said ‘director’) was Mark Dindal. It is an odd item, even by the warped standards prevailing in Hollywood.”

So begins Michael Barrier’s review of CHICKEN LITTLE. I haven’t seen the film yet, but I wholeheartedly concur with every word of Barrier’s review. His assessment could also describe most every other Disney animated feature of the past decade. The benchmark of animated storytelling, art and technology is no longer to be found at Disney, and CHICKEN LITTLE is simply a sad confirmation of that fact.

Among the cool things to see at the Pixar: 20 Years of Animation exhibit opening this week at MoMA is a giant 19th century-style zoetrope with TOY STORY characters in it. But unlike the traditional zoetrope which uses flat animation on paper, these zoetropes have three-dimensional models inside of them. Charles Solomon wrote about it in last weekend’s NY TIMES (reg. req’d, bugmenot.com). Says MONSTERS INC. director Pete Docter of the zoetropes, “When it’s working, you’d swear you can reach out and shake hands with these guys who are coming to life right in front of you.”
(via Michael Sporn’s Splog)

The opening titles for the live-action film MRS. HENDERSON PRESENTS are a stunning, eclectic ’30s pastiche’ created with hand-drawn and CG animation. The sequence is by London’s Foreign Office.
(via naked)

There is no question that Miramax has earned its reputation as a producer of classy live-action films, but when it comes to animation, the Weinstein brothers have proven time and again that they are utterly clueless. Their animation releases throughout the years have included clunkers like FREDDY AS F.R.O.7., TOM AND JERRY: THE MOVIE, ARABIAN NIGHT, POKEMON 4-EVER and POKEMON HEROES. (They do have PRINCESS MONONOKE to their credit, though that film was foisted upon them by Disney and, by all accounts, not a project on which they took the initiative.) Now that they’ve split from Disney and formed The Weinstein Company, the brothers appear intent on maintaining their streak of animated incompetence with HOODWINKED, which opens in wide release on January 13. Fear not, the Weinsteins understand that in this day and age, crappy hand-drawn animated films won’t cut it anymore; today’s audiences demand crappy computer animation, and HOODWINKED promises to deliver plenty of that.

This Reuters article offers some background on the film and says that HOODWINKED’s budget was $15-20 million. To put that into perspective, the Weinsteins could have produced two amazing animated films for $20mil — THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE and MIND GAME — with spare change left over. The reason we don’t see more films like BELLEVILLE and MIND GAME is not that they cost too much or that there aren’t enough talented animation directors who can create such films; it’s that Hollywood’s live-action establishment doesn’t understand (and remains willfully ignorant about) the animated art form. As long as these people continue to call the shots, the great possibilities of feature animation will remain untapped, and the development of the art form painfully stunted. And we’ll continue to see directors like Zemeckis blow fortunes on “uncanny valley” quasi-animated films like POLAR EXPRESS, studios spend tens of millions to produce Saturday morning-quality fare like CURIOUS GEORGE, and producers like the Weinsteins invest in torturously bad projects like HOODWINKED.

The new hand-drawn animation music video for the band They Might Be Giants is well worth checking out. “Bastard Wants to Hit Me” was released as a ‘bonus video’ in early November on the band’s VENUE SONGS dvd and has just been posted online. The video was co-directed by Aaron Sorenson (animation direction) and Courtney Booker (art direction) at LAIKA’s commercial division, LAIKA/house. There’s some strong expressive animation in it with cartoony facial expressions and funny, exaggerated mouth shapes. The video is nominated for an Annie Award in the TV commercial category.
(Thanks, Andrew Tisher)

I’m still working on my Chronicle book CARTOON MODERN, which is all about 1950s animation design. Right now, my editor, the design folks at Chronicle, the book designers and I are all working diligently to figure out a cool cover design. I’ve posted a bunch of the cover concepts on the CARTOON MODERN blog and I want to hear what everybody thinks. There’s a lot of options and your comments will help us forge a direction for what the final cover will look like. The more opinions, the merrier, so please participate.

I’m sure a lot of people have already seen this short. BIG BOX MART premiered on THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO back in October and since then has been seen online by many millions more. Still, I wanted to point it out here because it’s one of my favorite shorts that JibJab has produced. (JibJab, for those unfamiliar, is the six-year-old Flash animation studio started by brothers Evan and Gregg Spiridellis). As is typical of their work, the concept and lyrics are top-notch and the Flash animation is snappy and well timed, but on top of that, there’s a new level of graphic sophistication in their photo cut-out/collage technique that sets BIG BOX MART apart from the studio’s earlier films. The backgrounds have a greater level of detailing with thoughtful attention to color styling, and the layouts and camera moves take good advantage of deep space possibilities. It’s exciting to see this increasing graphic ambitiousness in their work, and as JibJab continues to receive other high-profile gigs, hopefully we’ll see even more of it.

Beyond producing solid Flash cartoons, JibJab also deserves props for doing something that very few other animation creators are able to do nowadays: reach an audience of millions without subservience to traditional studio distribution models. Flash producer Aaron Simpson, of Cold Hard Flash, summed up nicely JibJab’s unique accomplishments: “They create, develop and produce their own properties; they distribute to a massive audience online and beyond; they partner with media empires like MSN – all while maintaining ownership of their properties and brands.” JibJab is fulfilling the promise of online animation in an impressive manner, and they continue to innovate and experiment with progressive ideas like their ‘audience participation’ films. Here’s to their continued success, and to the hope that more animation creators can learn from how they’ve managed to exploit the potential of the Net.

JibJab’s films, including BIG BOX MART, can be seen on their site Jibjab.com. Also, a collection of some of their most well known shorts is available on the just-released JIBJAB: THE EARLY YEARS dvd.

For today’s inspiration, I want to highlight three new artist blogs which have a strong focus on showcasing the inspiring work of others. There promises to be much inspiration found at all three of their sites.

Dan Goodsell with an emphasis on kids’ food packaging, cereal art and other mid-century ephemera.
Will Kane for all things mod.
Eric Sturdevant and his great taste in mid-century children’s book and magazine illustrators.

Jerry mentioned a UPA tribute coming to LA in February, but folks in Paris can get their fill of UPA this month. There will be a film tribute to the studio’s work on December 13 at the Espace KODAK (26 rue Villiot 75012 PARIS). The screening starts at 7:30pm and is being organized by L’AFCA (Association Française du Cinéma d’Animation). The film line-up includes some of the classic standards like GERALD MCBOING BOING, WILLIE THE KID and BARE-FACED FLATFOOT, but it also includes a lot of rare BOING BOING SHOW shorts like THE OUTLAWS, TWO BY TWO and DUSTY OF THE CIRCUS. Another rare piece of UPA on the line-up is a version of FROSTY THE SNOWMAN, directed in 1952 by Bobe Cannon, which is something that I’d personally love to see.

EAT DOG CAT MOUSE is the first animated film by Kwok Fung Lam. It was commissioned by Channel 4 in the UK. It’s not a perfect film, but there’s a lot of fun ideas in it, including a sort of “Russian nesting doll” visual theme. (And as a sidenote, it’s a lot of fun saying the director’s name out loud: Kwok…Fung…Lam. Yeah, it’s definitely Friday around here.).

The fps magazine annual charity auction begins today and runs through December 9. All of the profits from the eBay auction will be donated to the Canadian Cancer Society.

Lots of nice cartoon stuff is available for bidding including:

Limited edition Gorillaz action figures donated by Kid Robot, including the sold-out Noodle Red Edition, limited to 2000 copiesFragile Machine posters signed by Aioneko’s Ben Steele, donated by the Waterloo Festival of Animated CinemaTim Burton’s Corpse Bride movie posters, including marquee posters signed by animation co-director Mike Johnson, donated by Warner Bros.