Following a battle with cancer, animation artist Dan Lee passed away last weekend at age 35. He had most recently been doing story and character design at Pixar where his credits included FINDING NEMO, TOY STORY 2 and A BUG’S LIFE. Jamie Baker and Ronnie del Carmen remember Dan’s life and work on their blogs. Recent photos of Dan taken by Amber MacLean can be found HERE.

UPDATE: Enrico Casarosa remembers Dan on his BLOG.

> Ben Ettinger takes an in-depth look at the work of independent Japanese animator Tadanari Okamoto. Okamoto worked in an impressive variety of animation techniques include clay, puppet, cel, low relief and yam animation. Let that be a lesson to all the people who said that yams belonged only in stews and not up on the bigscreen. I’ve seen only one of his films before, MONKEY AND CRAB (courtesy of Seamus and Mark), and it’s a wild stop motion trip. After reading Ben’s appreciation, I want to search out more of Okamoto’s work.

> Shane Glines has jumped on the blog bandwagon (blogwagon?), and started his own Cartoon Retro blog HERE. If you’re not subscribing to Cartoon Retro (a mere $5 a month), you’re missing out on one of the best cartoon/illustration/animation resources that’s ever hit the ‘net. No hyperbole there; it continues to become more impressive and inspiring everyday.

> Jim Hull is posting audio files of a lecture delivered by master animator Milt Kahl at Disney in the late-’70s. The first three tracks are currently posted on his site, SewardStreet.com, and he’ll be posting more clips of Milt’s talk weekly. I can only imagine how many great lectures are floating around out there or stashed away in people’s personal collections, and deserving to be preserved on-line where they can be heard by a global audience. Just the other night, I found in my own files a tape of 101 DALMATIANS color stylist Walt Peregoy speaking at DreamWorks around 1997 or so. It’s lively, thought-provoking and full of interesting exchanges between Walt and his attentive audience. This is exactly the type of thing that should be available for all to hear. Reading in a book about Eyvind Earle’s bg styling for SLEEPING BEAUTY is one thing, but hearing one of the main background painters on the film tell you why the work doesn’t gel is a completely unique experience, regardless of whether one agrees with the assessment or not. This exchange between Walt and one of the artists in the audience is particularly priceless:

DreamWorks artist: When I look at SLEEPING BEAUTY, compared to what I see today, it’s amazing.
Walt Peregoy: No.
DreamWorks artist: I think so.
Walt Peregoy: Well, you’re suffering from a delusion. I’m sorry.

Unfortunately, the Walt talk isn’t online (yet), but Milt Kahl is and he’s definitely worth hearing.

This week’s NEW YORKER (Jan. 17) has a piece by Margaret Talbot about Hayao Miyazaki. That piece is only in the print edition, but the NEW YORKER has an online interview with Talbot HERE wherein she discusses Miyazaki’s films, his influences, and his temperament. (via Ronnie del Carmen’s TIRADE)

Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt’s THE ANIMATION SHOW is back for a second edition, and it’s another fine film line-up. They recently announced the program and opening theatrical dates at TheAnimationShow.com. Included in this year’s festival: the terrific WARD 13 which Rita wrote about yesterday, the debut of Don Hertzfeldt’s epic short THE MEANING OF LIFE, the impressive-looking CG short FALLEN ART, and films by the likes of Bill Plympton, Amanda Forbis, Wendy Tilby and Georges Schwizgebel. Fireworks will be provided by Pes.

All that, plus this excellent poster by Tim Biskup…

Daily visual inspiration for the rest of ‘05. Sweet! Here’s an awesome BLOG where somebody (”Filboid Sudge”) is uploading the 1944 day-by-day illustrated diary of animation great Irv Spence. Irv was an animator in Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera’s Tom & Jerry unit at the time, and he kept the diary throughout the entire year of ‘44, documenting daily events at MGM and in his personal life. This was during the height of WWII so there’s plenty of references to victory gardens, gas shortages and the like. I’ve seen the entire diary and there’s beautiful energetic drawings throughout, somewhat reminiscent of George Lichty’s newspaper comic GRIN & BEAR IT.

THE ART OF ROBOTS is now shipping at Amazon.com. It’s not like Fox is paying me any royalties on the book so if you buy it through this LINK, at least Amazon will toss a few pennies my way. Bonus points if you geek out completely and buy it with THIS and THIS.

Mark Bunker sent in this nice memory of recently departed comic legend Will Eisner:

Eisner has long been my favorite comic book artist. The only comics with which I haven’t parted are my Spirit issues from Warren and Kitchen Sink. I marvel at his story telling abilities and the wide range of tone and subject matter he would explore within what would seem a limited superhero genre.

While I was in college, Denis Kitchen came to campus for a comic book expo. I dragged one of my friends along from the drama department. Holly had no interest in comics but I had to introduce her to the work of Eisner. It was one of two introductions for her that day because I insisted on meeting and talking with Denis Kitchen and introduced him to Holly, who would soon after become his wife.

I went on to do some acting and writing including a few radio dramas for Wisconsin Public Radio in Madison. The woman in charge of the statewide radio drama department had worked in the 40’s for another hero of mine, Carlton E. Morse of “One Man’s Family” and “I Love a Mystery” fame. She told me they had some money left over for a radio series and I pitched her “The Spirit” as a possibility. She was interested.

I wrote two sample half hour shows. The first was the Spirit’s origin with a wrap around of the “Death, Taxes and the Spirit,” the story of IRS agents investigating Denny Colt. The second script was based on “Meet P’Gell.” I laid out a series of thirteen stories taken from my favorite Spirit adventures. All would have been faithful adaptations that I hoped would bring greater attention to Eisner’s stories which were just starting to be reprinted by Kitchen Sink.

Okay, one wasn’t so faithful. I wanted to pay tribute to Eisner’s fondness of spoofing 40’s movies and radio shows by having one broadcast done completely as a Jack Benny show with Jack and the gang doing their version of “The Spirit.” It would have brought together two of my favorite passions at the time…and allow me to do my Benny impression again .

Denis gave me Eisner’s address and I approached him with the idea. Unfortunately, he had just signed a deal to bring the Spirit to the big screen as an animated film. As I recall, there was later an announcement from an animation studio about the film as well as another production based on Winsor McCay’s “Little Nemo.” While “Little Nemo” was released in 1992, I’m not sure if it was from the same studio although it likely was.

So I never got to do “The Spirit” but I did receive a lovely handwritten note from Eisner thanking me for my interest and explaining the situation. The Spirit film sadly never happened.

Christmas is over, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the following holiday-themed dvd: Ernie Ford’s THE STORY OF CHRISTMAS. It can be ordered HERE. The hour-long TV special from 1963 features an 18-minute segment designed and produced by SLEEPING BEAUTY background stylist Eyvind Earle. Earle wrote about the challenges of producing the piece (which primarily consists of camera moves over bgs and special fx) in his autobiography HORIZON BOUND ON A BICYCLE:

For many of the scenes showing the manger, Mary, the shepherds and the wise men, there was no time left to paint intricate overlays for my four-level multiplane camera setup which Chuck Arnold and I had built out of aluminum angle irons and four sheets of glass that moved under the camera.I ran outside and picked all the weeds I could find, and slung them on the glass sheets above Mary and the Christ child, and then tracked in with the camera, moving through a forest of overhanging branches created by the weeds. The effect was excellent and by some miracle I finished the whole product in time to be aired on NBC two separate times before Christmas.

(Thanks to Ken Hettig for the heads up on the dvd)