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VIEW POSTS BY “amid”Cartoon Brew's home for up-to-the-minute, unedited announcements and press releases direct from industry sources.
March 14, 2007 3:47 pm
Cartoonist extraordinaire Jim Smith (Ren & Stimpy, Samurai Jack, The Ripping Friends) will be performing a “farewell concert” with the band Freehead on Saturday, March 31, from 4pm until whenever at Safari Sam’s (5214 W. Sunset Blvd, Hollywood, CA). The concert is for a good cause: to raise money for Freehead band member Richie Hass who is currently fighting multiple myeloma, a type of cancer that affects plasma cells. Lots of other bands are also performing that evening, and Jim Smith notes on his blog that he will “draw and sign anything that holds still long enough.” 2 Comments » posted in Events 
March 12, 2007 1:52 pm
Last week our friends at The Animation Show started selling independent animated shorts on Apple’s iTunes. The films from their touring festival are packaged together into short episodes and there’s six episodes currently available. One episode features a couple of personal favorites from the past few years, Ward 13 and Overtime, another is a Bill Plympton compilation with his films Guard Dog and Eat plus a special making-of-Guard Dog, and another episode has Tomek Baginski’s CG shorts Cathedral and Fallen Art. All are priced at $1.99. They can be found in the TV Shows>Comedy section of iTunes. 5 Comments » posted in Shorts
March 12, 2007 7:50 am
“Homage or Rip-off” should be a new category on Cartoon Brew. Certainly we have enough material. In the comments of the Lee Lennox’s “Girl and the Sea” music video, which was a homage/ripoff of Yuri Norstein’s work, Brew reader Doug posted a link to this new commercial for GE. The commercial is more than a little inspired by Osamu Tezuka’s short film Jumping (1984), and unlike Lennox’s video, it doesn’t build on the original concept or offer any new perspective on the material. The commercial is part of GE’s fittingly ironic campaign called “Imagination at Work.” Below is Tezuka’s original (and much more creatively executed) short Jumping. 24 Comments » posted in Advertising, Shorts
March 11, 2007 11:24 am
Another contemporary animation classic on YouTube. This 1980 Hungarian short by Ferenc Rofusz won an Oscar. Hungary was at the time a Communist country and Rofusz himself wasn’t allowed to leave the country to attend the Oscars. Without his knowledge, somebody accepted the award for him during the show. I recall watching an interview once with Rofusz where he explained who the guy was, and how surprised he was during the broadcast to see somebody he didn’t know accepting the award for him. This excerpt from the LA Times in 1981 discusses the mystery person who took his award:
(Thanks, Philip Rogosky) 8 Comments » posted in Shorts, Ferenc Rofusz, Hungary
March 9, 2007 9:17 am
Russian animation director Fyodor Khitruk once said in an interview that the best award he ever received was when Disney director Woolie Reitherman told him, “You know, your Winnie is better than mine.” Now we can judge if Reitherman was right. The first of Khitruk’s three Pooh shorts, Winnie the Pooh (1969), has been posted online (watch it below). I think if I ever had to point to an example of perfect stylized animation, this short would be it. Just look at the way Pooh and Piglet move in this cartoon—so simple yet so much personality and humor throughout. There’s a moment when Pooh is talking to Piglet and he takes a deep breath before speaking. It is absolutely beautiful. You can truly feel these characters thinking before they act. Looking at this, I can’t help but think of all the Flash TV cartoons being produced nowadays. The character designs in this Pooh short, in terms of complexity and construction, are no more complicated than anything one would find in a contemporary piece of Flash animation. Yet the animation in Khitruk’s film is light years ahead of anything being produced today. I was just watching an episode of a Cartoon Network Flash series yesterday. The movement was even fuller than this Pooh cartoon, but it left me feeling completely empty. The characters moved with generic gestures, mechanically matched to the dialogue and scripted actions; there was never the sense that the characters were alive or had a thought process beyond their meaningless movements on the screen. To create great character animation, whether it’s stylized or full animation, one must believe in…empathize with…truly feel…their characters; clearly Khitruk and company did. Some stills from Khitruk’s other Pooh shorts are here. 40 Comments » posted in Ideas/Commentary, Shorts
March 7, 2007 7:45 am
Nike Love is a new ad campaign that encourages fat kids to exercise. The website has three animated spots; they’re not particularly noteworthy pieces but a pleasant enough diversion. 6 Comments » posted in Advertising
March 6, 2007 11:40 am
This post at Drawn! about Hank Ketcham’s comic work reminded me of an upcoming book that I can hardly wait for—Where’s Dennis?: The Magazine Cartoon Art of Hank Ketcham. The book, which is compiled by friends Alex Chun and Shane Glines, is slated for release by Fantagraphics in August. 2 Comments » posted in Books
March 6, 2007 7:57 am
What would happen if some Russians took a Dr. Seuss story and turned it into a paint-on-glass animated short? The results would be Welcome (1986), a gorgeous ten-minute cartoon directed by Alexei Karayev. It is based on Dr. Seuss’s 1948 book Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose. The film’s art director was a young Aleksandr Petrov, who today is the most famous proponent of the paint-on-glass animation technique with films like The Old Man and the Sea (1999). The three-dimensional rendering of the painted figures in Welcome is absolutely stunning; they manage to build on Seuss’s original line drawings while retaining the warmth and appeal of his characters, which is quite an accomplishment considering how easy it is to make Seuss’s characters cold and unappealing. One more note: the film is in Russian, but the YouTube version below is translated into English. The translation was done by Brew reader ESN, who also sent me the link to this film. A big thank you for translating this and allowing all of us to enjoy the film. 19 Comments » posted in Shorts
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