…if you enjoy Tex Avery, Virgil Partch, Roy Williams, Billy Barty and Spike Jones. Mark Evanier has a must-read story that ties all these folks together.

The L.A. Times is reporting the passing of cartoon voice actor Bob Arbogast. Not exactly a household name, Arbogast nonetheless entertained me greatly as General Brassbottom on Roger Ramjet and as various characters on numerous Saturday morning cartoons. He was also a well known radio personality and one of the writers behind Jay Ward’s ill-fated live action pilot The Nut House (1963) - of which I’ve posted the opening and closing credits below:

Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane has apparently become enough of a celebrity to appear as himself in a commercial for Hulu:

Continuing our ongoing monitoring of classic cartoon characters on modern food products, animator Alex Kirwan sent in this image of the new Donald Duck Orange Juice carton. Says Kirwan, “They seem to be using the style-guide of a much earlier, circa 40’s Donald, complete with pie-cut eyes, white hat, and black tie. Perhaps they are conciously following the recent trend, lead by Warner Bros. and Popeye, using earlier versions of their characters on their consumer products.”

The Onion reports that Barack Obama has been outfitted with motion-capture sensors and that his entire presidency is being recorded in 3-D. While the article is obviously in jest, I wonder how far away we are from the day where all of our lives will be recorded in digital form giving us the option to virtually replay personal events from different perspectives and to create different outcomes.

(via Motionographer)

When I think of the alcohol of choice for animators, I typically don’t think wine, but a number of animation artists are becoming involved in the wine industry. We start with indie filmmaker Bill Plympton who recently designed the labels (above) for PS1909 produced by the Dhaliwal Vineyards in California.

That’s nothing compared to Pixar’s John Lasseter who is starting up his own Sonoma Valley winery called Lasseter Family Winery . A newspaper article from last December discusses some of the ideas for the 38-acre property. Of particular interest to animation fans, the winery will also be the home of Ollie Johnston’s locomotive and Ward Kimball’s train depot. In other words, it’s going to be a pretty damn awesome winery.

(Lasseter wine info via Pixar Touch blog)

The good news about beginning Monday with this video is that the rest of my posts this week are guaranteed to be better.

(Thanks, Karim)

Warner Bros. cartoon art collector Eric Calande recently acquired this item through an antique dealer - a Bosko doll. Click thumbnails above for larger images. Is this the first piece of licensed merchandise of a Looney Tunes character? Whether it is or isn’t - it’s damn cool!