2 Comments »   posted in Shorts, Student, Hanna Carlson, Hungary, Maja Szakadát, Milán Kopasz, MOME, Nadja Andrasev

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Despite our moderation efforts, the comments section on Cartoon Brew can occasionally feel like a free-for-all. However, we also recognize the value of providing this forum. Readers feel comfortable and safe to comment about the animation industry in ways that they don’t anywhere else on-line. I was reminded of this when I took a look at Ross Perlin’s timely expose Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy. There’s a paragraph in the book where he quotes extensively from readers who commented on this Brew post about illegal internships at animation studios.

Illegal internships are a major issue in the animation industry and I hope to address this topic in greater depth in the coming year. Too many employers abuse the concept of internships, and make interns perform demeaning tasks that don’t pertain to the industry, or use interns for extended periods of time to perform tasks that they would otherwise have to pay staffers to do. Entry-level animation artists in New York are worse off today than anytime in the past twenty years, not just due to internships, but also because of minimum-wage positions for artists that have pushed salaries down to 1980s levels. The current situation is untenable in the long term and needs to be addressed openly. Reading Perlin’s book looks to be a good first-step for any college student who is considering an internship and wants to protect themselves from being exploited by unscrupulous studios.

36 Comments »   posted in Books, Ideas/Commentary, Intern Nation, Internships, Ross Perlin

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“Vésuves” by Kevin Manach

December 24, 2011 10:40 am



Robert Crumb meets the Estonian school of animation in this delightfully creepy short by Gobelins student Kevin Manach (previously on Cartoon Brew). He made Vésuves during an exchange program at CalArts.

6 Comments »   posted in Shorts, Gobelins, Kevin Manach

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“Be Our Guest” and Mahler’s Symphony No. 3

December 24, 2011 9:10 am

Alan Menken’s song “Be Our Guest” from Beauty and the Beast sounds familiar to a theme from the first movement of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 3. It’s a good thing that the Walt Disney Company respects the purpose and intent of public domain laws that allow artists like Menken to be inspired by earlier creative works. Oh wait…

(via Nick Cross’s Twitter)

25 Comments »   posted in Disney, Alan Menken, Beauty and the Beast, copyright, Gustav Mahler, IP, Public domain

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“Seed” by Ben Richardson and Daniel Bird

December 23, 2011 12:27 am

Seed is a stop motion short directed by Ben Richardson and Daniel Bird about “an egg and an apple who build competing broadcast towers that vie for the attention of a transistor radio” with a “narrative of animal evolution, competition and reproduction.” Your mileage may vary—I personally found the storytelling obtuse and drawn-out—but it’s an undeniably attractive piece of stop motion with lovely photography and production design.

2 Comments »   posted in Shorts, Stop Motion, Ben Richardson, Daniel Bird

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How to Make Tom and Jerry Popular Again

December 19, 2011 1:16 am

I wanted to find out what was the most viewed Tom and Jerry short on YouTube tonight, and it turned out to be Salt Water Tabby with 24.4 million views. But this is no ordinary copy of the short; it has a completely new dialogue track in a Moroccan Arabic dialect by Bouchana Abdelilah. By comparison, the non-Arabic version (i.e. the boring original) of Salt Water Tabby has a mere 346,000 views. Why does a remixed version of a classic short have seventy (yes, 70!) times more viewers than the original? And will an Arabic voice-over make any cartoon funny and popular? In that case, Allen Gregory could’ve used a whole lot of Arabic. I don’t claim to have the answers to such questions, but I’m intrigued by this YouTube anomaly.

37 Comments »   posted in Bad Ideas, Tom and Jerry

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“A Monster Calls” Book Trailer

December 17, 2011 11:31 am

This smartly crafted book trailer for Patrick Ness’s YA novel A Monster Calls actually makes me want to read the book. The After Effects animation was done by Eric Guémise based on artwork by Jim Kay.

(via Super Punch)

1 Comment »   posted in Books, A Monster Calls, After Effects, Eric Guémise, Jim Kay

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“Periwinkle Around the World” by Aaron Springer

December 16, 2011 9:28 pm

Here’s a real treat to start the weekend: Aaron Springer (SpongeBob SquarePants, Korgoth of Barbaria) created this series of Periwinkle shorts in the mid-2000s for Cartoon Network. Originally intended as a pilot, the network asked him to instead transform it into a series of two-minute vignettes that it wanted to use as cell phone content. They eventually aired them on a short-lived CN series called Sunday Pants and they’ve been out of sight since then. That’s a shame because they are among the most inspired, laugh-out-loud pieces of animation that Cartoon Network has ever produced. If I had to make a list of the necessary ingredients for a funny animated short, I couldn’t do better than what’s contained in Periwinkle: appealing characters who are fun to watch, simple set-ups that allow for visual storytelling, gags that build in intensity, and inventive animation.

34 Comments »   posted in TV, Aaron Springer, Cartoon Network

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