Have you ever thought about the guy who designs all the pasta based on cartoon characters? Neither have I. But now we know who it is. It’s Guillermo Haro, a Mexican immigrant who has overseen the production of cartoon-shaped macaroni for 22 years at Kraft Foods. The Wall Street Journal explained how he does it:

Back at Kraft’s pilot plant, Mr. Haro was prepared to discuss his technique, while his boss, Ricardo Villota, stood by to keep him from spilling trade secrets. “If I can put it on paper, I can imagine how it’ll end up in a box,” said Mr. Haro, opening a guide to Spider-Man poses: crouching, leaping, dangling. “You choose the ones that are easy for pasta.”

He draws pencil sketches, knowing that all lines must connect, and not be too thick or thin. “You get carried away with detail,” he said. Mr. Haro was about to tell how he employs stubby lines to suggest eyeballs when Mr. Villota said, “Watch it!” and cut him off.

Moving to a computer, Mr. Haro showed how he had perfected a Ferb likeness, which he sent to De Mari Pasta Dies in Dracut, Mass. De Mari cast a die, from which Mr. Haro made a Ferb prototype, which he then sent to Disney for the ultimate noodle test: hot water. “They want it to look like they want it to look, before it’s cooked and after it’s cooked,” Mr. Haro said on his way downstairs to Kraft’s test kitchen. “Right up to launch day, you’re nervous.”

Photo of cartoon pasta designer Guillermo Haro taken by Barry Newman/The Wall Street Journal.

This clip is a pretty good example of why Frank Welker is one of the most skilled, not to mention prolific, modern day voice actors:

If you’re looking for title art inspiration—past and present—Cartoon Title Art is a nifty Tumblr dedicated to cartoon titles and intros. The site is a project of the New York studio Rauch Bros. Animation.

Donald leads a tormented life on the unforgiving streets of Duckburg, where sometimes he must betray his own conscience to make ends meet. Donald has to raise his 3 nephews, deal with his girlfriend and put up working for his stingy uncle; the richest duck in town.

Sounds like Carl Barks? Think again. From Icelandic comedy group Mid-Island, comes this mock trailer about the lives and times of Donald Duck… in Danish and filmed in the style of Lars von Trier’s Dogme 95.

(Thanks, Cameron Koller)

In 1982, Alan Kay and Bob Stein of Atari’s Research Group began conceiving the idea of an “intelligent encyclopedia”. They hired young hot-shot Disney animator Glen Keane to create pitch art, to help visualize the concept to Atari’s owners (at the time): Warner Bros. Stein, now co-founder of The Institute for the Future of the Book, has posted the lost Keane drawings on his if:book blog. Check out the nine images, which are surprisingly accurate in their prediction of how we use the internet.

(Thanks, Keith Krall)

What’s better than seeing the bodies of a bunch of voice actors? Seeing the insides of a voice actor. Reader Jeaux Janovsky found this video purportedly showing Mel Blanc’s vocal chords in action.

This is the trailer for I Know That Voice, an upcoming documentary about voice actors. The trailer unfortunately makes the film look unfocused and lacking a point of view. The primary appeal of the documentary (if the trailer is any indication) appears to be filmed interviews with lots of popular voice actors talking about themselves and being goofy onscreen. Four minutes of that goes a long way. Let’s hope the final product offers some greater insight into the art of voice acting besides revealing that Mel Blanc was a legend and actors do video game voice-over nowadays.

Hard times for the Scooby Doo Crew? Apparently the “Mystery Machine” is now on Craigslist! A six cylinder/3-speed 1969 A100 Dodge Van that the seller says “drives good”. Take it away for $3200… sounds to me like a steal!

(Thanks, Jeaux Janovsky)

Somebody recently posted (in four parts) the entire British Channel 4 TV program Cartoons Kick Ass. This special was taped in 2000 and as far as I know only aired once, late in the evening, and never seen beyond Great Britain. It includes interviews with John Kricfalusi, J.J. Sedelmaier, Ralph Bakshi, Mike Judge, ASIFA-SF’s Karl Cohen (author of Forbidden Animation, which I believe was the basis of the program), animation historians Bill Moritz, Paul Wells and me. It dared to include X-rated animation and other images that can offend, so assume that it is NSFW.

Part 1 is embed below. Click here to see Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Don Markstein may not have been a household name in animation circles, but he was one of the best friends comics and cartoon history ever had. His wife, GiGi Dane, just informed us of Don’s untimely passing.

Donald David Markstein was a comic book writer and creator/proprietor of the indispensable online Toonopedia. Among his many accomplishments was being the founding editor and co-creator (with Rick Norwood) of Comics Revue and the co-founder (with wife GiGi) of the animation apa, Apatoons.

Long before the internet, Markstein got the idea of adapting the established comic and sci-fi fanzine communication network (known as Amatuer Press Associations) to a world wide community of animation enthusiasts. I was a grateful participant in Apatoons (cover of a typical edition, with art by Dave Bennett, below). This project was a rich and rewarding experience for all involved, and helped bond fans, professional animators, cartoonists, writers and all like-minded enthusiasts in an era way before blogs and Facebook.

Animation historian Jim Korkis recalled the group’s origin:

“On May 12, 1981, Don Markstein and GiGi Dane sent out a one-page orange flyer to a select group of fans. The flyer announced the formation of an apa for animation buffs. Markstein wrote, “There’s a potential for an animation fandom lurking among publishing fans. We don’t knowhow many people there are in it, but we do know Funnyworld and Mindrot aren’t being published in a vacuum. That potential has probably always been there, but lately, with more and more lifelong cartoon buffs becoming video collectors, it’s been exploding. Just as comics fandom grew out of science fiction fandom to create its own fan movement 20 years ago, we expect cartoon fandom to come into its own very soon now.”

“The first issue of APATOONS appeared July 1981 and that first issue had only seven members: Jim Korkis, Alan Hutchinson, Don Markstein, Meera Dane (GiGi’s daughter), GiGig Dane, Marcus Wielage and Rick Norwood. I think one of the key things I remember about Don is that he loved ideas, loved cartoons and loved doing something to fill necessary gaps whether it was with Apatoons or Toonpedia.”

I asked several fellow Apatoons alumni to contribute their thoughts about Don. Disney comics historian David Gerstein wrote to say,

“I had the great pleasure of editing Don Markstein’s Disney comic book stories for Egmont Creative Center, the Denmark-based Disney comics studio, from 2000 to 2004. Many of these inspired, often outrageous stories were later reused in the American-published Gemstone Disney comics. We can’t forget Don’s original Disney creations – Sam Simian and his giant wrestling robots; the high ministers of Outest Bungolia, forever seeking the “King of the Bungaloos”; even über-cheap filmmaker Freefer F. Freefer (Don told me that the middle F. stood for “Freefer,” too, though he was sworn not to reveal it in the story). Only Don could give us a supervillain whose master supercomputer was powered by a cat brain and a dog brain – which didn’t get along very well.

And only Don had an affection for Bucky Bug, Disney’s early newspaper strip character, so deep that it manifested itself – somehow, somewhere – in a good fifty percent of all the Disney output Don created. We’ll all miss you, Don.”

I’ve posted a panel (above) from Don’s King of the Bungaloos Strikes Back (WD C&S #680, 2007), drawn by the great Cèsar Ferioli, with what I believe is a caricature of Markstein in the crowd at left, with mustasche, beard and glasses.

Harry MacCracken, now a Technology editor-at-large for Time Magazine, wrote in:

“What sad news. I still think of Don as the grand master of APA mailing comments–he was perceptive, precise, funny and engaging. Things he said in Apatoons thirty years ago still rattle around in the back of my brain and influence my writing. I was very happy to see Toonopedia succeed and bring his work to a large audience.”

Comics, anime and animation expert Fred Patten remembered his longtime admiration for Don:

“My memories of Don Markstein go back to the 1960s. We were both in CAPA-alpha, the comics-fan APA, and Don’s “Om Markstein Sklom Stu” was one of the most literate, thickest, and most eagerly-read parts of the monthly mailings. Later, after we had both dropped out of K-a, he and his wife GiGi founded APATOONS in 1981 and we were both in that for — how many years? After that, we were not in things together but I would see his name in the masthead of Comics Revue and as the author of stories in the Disney comic books. Still later, I would go to his Toonopedia website for accurate and informative details about cartoon-related facts.

Although it has been decades since we were in close contact, I am very saddened to hear of his passing. Comics fandom has lost a long-time friend and a rare expert scholar.”

Markstein died of respiratory failure after a prolonged illness. His family can be contacted via email through toonopedia-at-yahoo.com.

File this one under “Things I Did Not Know About Dick Clark.” Apparently, he owns a one-bedroom Flintstones-inspired home in Malibu, and the LA Times reports that he’s selling it for $3.5 million, though the asking price doesn’t reflect the value of the home so much as it does the 23-acre plot of land it sits on. If you’re curious, here’s the full home tour in all its stone-age goodness.

(via Laughing Squid)

“Realigning My Thoughts on Jasper Johns” is an art project by Baltimore-based JK Keller that digitally reprocesses the animation from The Simpsons episode “Mom and Pop Art” into a glitchy, bright hot mess. Keller explained his process:

I ripped all the frames, then used software to turn the ripped images into vectors. Then I processed the files through Illustrator using the default Alignment & Distribution tools (23 different combinations). The resulting files were then brought back together for the 23 final videos.

With the audio, I used a similar process, making a spectrogram image of the audio from each cut in the episode. Then I applied a variety of processes to the image to mimic the alignment/distribution used. Then took the resulting image and turned it back into audio.

The project is intended to be shown as an installation of a 9 screen grid. Viewers would be able to adjust dials and switches to adjust volumes & video sources to create their own juxtapositions of the 23 videos.

Interested in the incorrect use of default software tools and how they can be used to generate new forms, and the absurdity that results between default digital manipulation and purposeful manual influence.

The results of Keller’s experiment are visually mesmerizing. The introductory video is below followed by the rest of the project on this YouTube playlist.

(via @FezFilms)