Combining two iconic Hollywood stars, pop artist Ron English has created a limited edition “bust” of Marilyn Monroe (click on image above to see full sculpture). For more info on these works of art, see the Toys R Evil blog.

I’ve been remiss in mentioning the new limited TV series from Warner Bros. - Man Vs. Cartoon - which began last night on cable’s TRU TV. It’s on every Saturday night at 10pm Eastern/7pm Pacific. The premise of the program is watching a team of New Mexico tech engineers and students build and demonstrate a variety of Wile E. Coyote Acme contraptions. I caught the first episode and it was typical of these reality shows - lots of interviews, lots of preparation for the stunt and a mediocre payoff at the end. Not very exciting, but it held my interest nonetheless. This week they recreated the Rube Goldberg Road Runner trap from Hook Line and Stinker (1958).

In coming weeks they will create a real life version of the Indestructo-Ball from Chuck Jones’ Wild about Hurry (1959) and will maneuver a hot air balloon to unload an anvil onto an oblivious target below (i.e. 1957’s Scrambled Aches).

If Cartoon Network is moving toward live action reality, this is the kind of idea they could have started with.

A tongue-in-cheek documentary about the racist origins of the WB cartoon characters, Cartoon Innovators is a short by Hammerkatz, a sketch group out of NYU. Worth a few chuckles.

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in NY is putting on a major retrospective about Tim Burton’s career this fall. It will run from November 22, 2009 through April 26, 2010. There is a page about the show on MoMA’s website, which includes the following information:

Following the current of his visual imagination from his earliest childhood drawing through his mature work, the exhibition presents artwork generated during the conception and production of his films, and highlights a number of unrealized projects and never-before-seen pieces, as well as student art, his earliest non-professional films, and examples of his work as a storyteller and graphic artist for non-film projects. The opposing themes of adolescence and adulthood, and the elements of sentiment, cynicism, and humor inform his work in a variety of mediums—drawings, paintings, storyboards, digital and moving-image formats, puppets and maquettes, props, costumes, ephemera, sketchbooks, and cartoons.

In conjunction with the show, MoMA is publishing a 64-page catalog that can be pre-ordered from Amazon. The images in this post are taken from a promotional item from the book. Tim Burton’s official website advertises that a new book called The Art of Tim Burton will soon be released that is 400 pages and has over 1000 illustrations. This appears to be a different book from the MoMA catalog.

More Burton images from the MoMA book after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

A tribute site dedicated to the chairs in The Incredibles. There are worse things one could do with their time…like writing a blogpost about a guy who created a tribute site to the chairs in The Incredibles.

(via swissmiss)

I hadn’t seen this before, but thanks to You Tube we now know that long before Robert Smigel and TV Funhouse, a short-lived British sketch comedy show The End of Part One (1979-80), also featured a parody of limited animation TV cartoons:

(Thanks, John Dredge)

You know the Raymond Scott tune from a million different cartoons. But I bet you’ve never seen it played like this:

(via BB, thanks Chappell)

I couldn’t let the day pass without noting the announcement of The Simpsons U.S. postage stamps.

I believe the rule is that something (a celebrity, an event, a landmark) must be 20 years old in order to rate the honor of being commemorated on a U.S. postage stamp - and The Simpsons have rightly earned this tribute. It’s kind of cool they are using Matt Groening designs over the more standardized “model sheet” look. Over at the Postal Service website you can vote for your favorite stamp or you can pre-order the set.

There will be First-Day-of-Issue Dedication Ceremony at 20th Century-Fox Studios in Los Angeles at 11:15 a.m. PT on Thursday, May 7. Matt Groening, producer James L. Brooks and several of the actors are scheduled to attend. A limited number of seats are available to the public on a first-call, first-reserved basis. Those interested in attending should call 1-866-268-3243 beginning Friday, April 10th between noon and 5 p.m. ET. For more info click here.