A couple brief notes on my soon-to-be-released book CARTOON MODERN. If you’re a member of the media and would like to receive a complimentary review copy of the book, please let me know ASAP and I’ll put you on the list. Just drop me a line at amid [at] animationblast [dot] com with your details. This offer is only valid to legit media, and it has to be sent to a news media address.

If you’re not media and want to be the absolute first to get your style-hungry hands on a copy of the book, I’ve just confirmed a signing at the San Diego Comic-Con on Friday, July 21st, from 3-4pm at the Chronicle Books booth (#1019). Chronicle doesn’t think the book will be in their warehouses at the time so they’re shipping a very limited number of copies from China especially for the Con. Also, Canadian folk will be able to find the book (and me) at the Ottawa Animation Festival (Sept. 20-24). More details to come about that signing.

Gallery 1988 on Melrose Ave. has an interesting show currently on display called “The Storybook Series: Winnie the Pooh.” Here’s the concept for the show: a bunch of preschoolers from the Hollywood Schoolhouse were read a Winnie the Pooh storybook and then asked to draw their favorite scenes from the story (without any visual reference, not that it would have made a difference). Then, the preschoolers’ drawings were handed off to a bunch of contemporary LA artists who reinterpreted the children’s drawings as paintings and mixed media works of art. The pieces are being sold as a set, with a portion of the proceeds going back to the preschool. All the pieces from the show can be seen at the Gallery 1988 website.

A lot of folks are keeping close tabs on the box office gross of Pixar’s CARS. If you’re one of those people, then you’ll probably dig Box Office Mojo’s day-by-day comparison of the CARS gross to earlier Pixar efforts like THE INCREDIBLES, FINDING NEMO and MONSTERS, INC. Check out the grosses HERE.

Just thought you’d like to know…

Women do not do any of the creative work in connection with preparing the cartoons for the screen, as that work is performed entirely by young men….To qualify for the only work open to women one must be well grounded in the use of pen and ink and also of water color. The work to be done consists of tracing the characters on clear celluloid sheets with India ink and filling in the tracings on the reverse side with paint according to directions.

This is an excerpt from a letter that Walt Disney Productions sent out to prospective female animators in 1939. Read the entire letter at the Animation Guild blog. This letter is also included in Tom Sito’s upcoming book DRAWING THE LINE: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE ANIMATION UNIONS FROM BOSKO TO BART SIMPSON.

Here’s a couple more rare animated shorts that were recently added to YouTube. The first, FLYING MAN (1962), was helmed by YELLOW SUBMARINE director George Dunning and caused quite a stir when it was first released in the early-60s. I’d always read that the film used a paint-on-glass technique, but I just reread a John Canemaker article about Dunning, in which Canemaker says that the characters were painted onto cels, which probably means that the animation wasn’t created under-camera. Regardless of how it was created, the freedom of the movement and looseness of the brushstroke style are both inspiring.

Also worth checking out: John Lasseter’s 1979 student film from CalArts – LADY AND THE LAMP. This would be a pretty cool extra for the dvd release of CARS.

(Thanks, Wilbert Plijnaar and Chris Sobieniak)

Cartoonist Eddie Fitzgerald tells a hilarious story on his blog about his first animation job in 1979 at Filmation and his experiences with animation veteran Paul Fennell. The photo above (which I published in ANIMATION BLAST #8) shows Eddie’s bully, Paul Fennell, back in 1941, when Fennell owned the commercial studio Cartoon Films Ltd. Personally, I think Eddie could have taken him.

Hans Bacher (art director of MULAN) has posted on his blog some tantalizing page spreads from his forthcoming instructional book, DREAMWORLDS, which is a how-to book about animation production design. No details yet on how to purchase it, but the book should be out this winter and it looks to be a must-have.

Also worth noting, in the comments section of his blog, Bacher makes a brief comment about his work on the new Disney short THE LITTLE MATCHGIRL short, saying, “I am very unhappy about that short. it’s a disaster…” That opinion seems to be largely in line with the thoughts of the audience who saw the film at the Annecy animation festival a couple weeks ago. I could not find many people at the festival who had anything positive to say about the film.

MATCHGIRL also managed to generate some controversy at Annecy. The buzz from insiders was that Disney had already submitted MATCHGIRL to Annecy in 2005. It was rejected by the pre-selection committee last year, and it was “resubmitted” again this year, which is, of course, a big no-no in the festival world. If the audience reaction was anything to go by, Annecy organizers should have accepted the decision of the ‘05 pre-selection committee and not pushed the film into official competition.

Animation fan Kenny Bullard has recently been posting some terrific, difficult-to-find independent animation on YouTube, including Will Vinton and Bob Gardiner’s CLOSED MONDAYS (1974), Borge Ring’s ANNA AND BELLA (1984), Osamu Tezuka’s JUMPING (1984), Bill Kroyer’s TECHNOLOGICAL THREAT (1988), and Henry Selick’s SLOW BOB IN THE LOWER DIMENSIONS (1990).

Best of all, Kenny has posted two rare Oscar winners from 1960 and 1961: Gene Deitch’s adaptation of Jules Feiffer’s illustrated story MUNRO, and Dušan Vukotić’s ERSATZ, which was the first foreign film to win the animated short Oscar. If this isn’t an excellent use of YouTube, then I don’t know what is.

MUNRO (1960)

ERSATZ (1961)