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TAG FOR “Books”Cartoon Brew's home for up-to-the-minute, unedited announcements and press releases direct from industry sources.
March 14, 2009 3:05 am
I’m pleased to report that Darrell Van Citters’s book on the making of Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol has now gone to press. If all goes well, advance copies will be available at the 2009 San Diego Comic Con, July 23-26 with a wide release in the fall. Darrell has been at work on this labor of love for several years and when he couldn’t secure a satisfactory publisher, he decided to go the self-publishing route. Events to support the book launch are in the works on both coasts with the intent to reach as wide an audience as possible. I will certainly keep you posted about it on Cartoon Brew — I can’t wait to get this! 24 Comments » posted in Books 
March 12, 2009 10:27 pm
If you appreciate good design and color work, then you’ll want to add the new hardcover publication The Whimsical Work of David Weidman and Also Some Serious Ones to your bookshelf. While this career retrospective features mostly his silk-screened prints from the Sixties and Seventies, there is also a healthy sampling of Weidman’s animation artwork from studios like UPA, Storyboard and TV Spots (later Creston Studios). Some of his UPA art from 1955 is identified as being from the ’70s and the writing (what little of it there is) didn’t particularly impress, but the star of this show is the artwork and there is loads of nicely presented imagery throughout. To see some of David Weidman’s artwork online, visit WeidmansArt.com. 4 Comments » posted in Books, Cartoon Modern
February 12, 2009 7:35 am
I could have sworn someone would’ve posted the animation section from Alan Dale Bogorad’s 1943 book Jr’s Fun To Draw by now. When comics/animation historian Mark Arnold offered to scan his copy (in better shape than my own) I jumped at the chance to put it here for posterity. This chapter was compiled by Nat Falk and is a companion to his 1941 How To Make Animated Cartoons, combining model sheets, storyboards and animation sketches from Terrytoons, Fleischer and Warner Bros. Click on thumbnails below for full size images.
14 Comments » posted in Books
January 30, 2009 2:16 pm
Just a quick note: if you’re part of the media (print or online—US/Canada) and would like a review copy of my new book The Art of Pixar Short Films (now with a striking cover of Luxo Jr.), then drop me a line with your details. Review copies will be going out soon. There’s a limited number I can send from my side, but I’ll try to get you on the list. I received an advance of the book this week and I think it’s a really nice addition to Pixar’s ‘art of’ series. I’ll also be doing book give-aways for Brew readers sometime in the next month or two. 13 Comments » posted in Books
January 30, 2009 3:27 am
PictureBox, a fine Brooklyn-based book publisher who I’m currently working with, is holding a sale on nearly every item on their website. The sale lasts through February 8 and there’s some real bargains to be had. For example, their huge two-volume 688-page retrospective of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse production designer Gary Panter, which was published last year at $95, is currently only $30 through their website. Overspray: Riding High with the Kings of California Airbrush Art is a beautifully-produced look at West Coast airbrush culture in the 1970s and shows how it entered the mainstream advertising and film through artists like Peter Lloyd who created airbrush art for Tron. That book which retails at $50 is available for only $20. Also, pick up Paper Rad and Michel Gondry books for $7, Mark Newgarden’s Cheap Laffs for $6, and lots of quality art/indie comics at fire sale prices. Every order also ships with a FREE copy of Paper Rad’s DVD Problem Solvers. 5 Comments » posted in Books, Comics
January 26, 2009 5:27 am
I’d been forewarned that the art of book for Coraline was not very good, but that didn’t prepare me for the publishing disaster that is Coraline: A Visual Companion. After looking at it in the bookstore recently, I can say with some confidence that this is the single worst ‘art of’ book I’ve ever seen published in conjunction with a major animated release. For beginners, all of the film stills in the book are pixelated and muddy. I’m not talking just about the full-page frame blowups, even regular-sized images that take up only a third or half of the page look like hell. Beyond the poor image reproduction, they also made an inexcusable editorial decision to print the visual development artwork of only two illustrators: Dave McKean and Tadahiro Uesugi. The book, in fact, neglects to showcase the work of any of the animation artists who worked on the film, including the people who actually designed the look and feel of the movie. One of the film’s primary character designers Shane Prigmore recently did a post on his blog about working on the film. In that post, he mentions some of the artists whose work shaped the film visually, including visual development artists Dan Krall, Shannon Tindle, Chris Appelhans, Jon Klassen, Andy Schuhler, and Stef Choi, sculptors Kent Melton, Damon Bard, Leo Rijn, Tony Merrithew and Scott Foster, and story artist Chris Butler, Andy Schuhler, Vera Brosgol, Graham Annable and Mike Cachuella. Unbelievably not a single piece of artwork from any of these artists can be found in the book. Instead it is page after page of Tadahiro Uesugi’s work. A lot of it is repetitive because they are costume suggestions that he drew using characters that had already been designed by the artists listed above. The irony is that even fans of Uesugi’s work will be disappointed because of the small print size of his artwork. For all I know, the writing in the book (and there is a lot of it) may be wonderful. The book, however, is called “A Visual Companion” and on that mark it is a complete and utter failure. I’ve never seen an ‘art of’ book that eliminates the work of every single artist who worked on the film save for one whose work wasn’t even a primary factor in the film’s final look. I’ve been looking forward to seeing Coraline for a long time and I still am. Unfortunately, with tie-in books like this and the film’s lackluster marketing campaign (the subway and bus stop ads around NYC are a subject for another time), I may be watching the film in an empty movie theater. (To see a representative sampling of artwork from this film, check out a discussion panel with the film’s key designers on Saturday February 7 at Gallery Nucleus.) 33 Comments » posted in Books, Feature Film, Jon Klassen, Shannon Tindle
January 9, 2009 12:05 am
The Looney Balloons above remind me that today is the deadline for you to contribute your personal lists of favorite Warner Bros. cartoons. This is your chance to influence the outcome of the contents of my forthcoming book, The 100 Greatest Looney Tunes. Please post your choices in the comments below – or in the comments of the original post. Thank you to all who have participated! (and thank you to Adam King for the Looney Balloon link) 63 Comments » posted in Books
January 4, 2009 11:39 pm
While the Internet has killed off the print animation magazine (or at least the demand for such publications), it hasn’t yet diminished our thirst for print animation books. To the contrary, there are more and better quality animation books being published today than ever before. This new year promises to be no different with a lot of interesting books slated for publication. Here is Cartoon Brew’s look at some of the forthcoming titles.
Let me put this one front and center. The book that I’m most looking forward to in 2009 is, without question, John Canemaker’s dual-biography of Disney story artist Joe Grant and Pixar story artist Joe Ranft. Two Guys Named Joe: Master Animation Storytellers Joe Grant and Joe Ranft will be released in Fall 2009 from Disney Editions. According to the official description, “This book explores the interplay between personal creativity and the craft of animation storytelling, as seen through the lives and art of two of its most inventive and imaginative practitioners, Joe Grant (1908 -2005) and Joe Ranft (1960 – 2005).” It’s a novel setup. Looking at Grant and Ranft through the same prism should shed fresh insights into the common storytelling values that have made classic Disney and Pixar such successful enterprises. Combined with Canemaker’s always infallible research, this book should be a real gem. No online pre-order info available yet but we’ll be posting plenty more about this book in the coming months.
British Animation:The Channel 4 Factor takes a look at the glory years of Britian’s Channel 4 and their dedication to bringing quality animation to television. Since 1982, they’ve aired works such as The Snowman, When the Wind Blows, Street of Crocodiles, Girls Night Out, Feet of Song, The Village, Creature Comforts, Screenplay, Bob’s Birthday, Abductees, City Paradise, Rabbit and Peter and the Wolf. In addition to this amazing line-up of animation, the channel also set up the Animate initiative with the Arts Council of England, and backed the animator-in-residence program hosted by the British Film Institute’s Museum of the Moving Image. The book, which will be published in February by Indiana University Press, should offer plenty of insider details because it’s written by Clare Kitson, who was the commissioning editor at Channel 4 from 1989 until 1999. Channel 4 is one of the bright spots in TV animation history and I’m looking forward to learning more about the people and circumstances that made their artistic approach to TV animation possible. If you want to get your own animation onto the air, don’t get your hopes up for a supportive forward-thinking broadcaster like Channel 4. But that shouldn’t stop you from trying. David Levy’s Animation Development: From Pitch to Production will guide you through the icky process of getting a TV show produced nowadays. It’ll be out in September from Allworth Press. Levy is an industry veteran, president of ASIFA-East, and proprietor of this fine blog. His first book Your Career in Animation: How to Survive and Thrive is packed with solid common-sense advice from successful artists working in the biz. I know he’s interviewed a lot of people for this new book and I’m sure it’ll be a valuable handbook for anybody who wants to create their own TV shows.
Two Pixar art books are coming out courtesy of Chronicle Books. The Art of Up by Tim Hauser presents all the artwork from Pete Docter’s new film. The Art of Pixar Short Films is by yours truly and it’s scheduled for release later this month. The book, which is a companion piece to this dvd, documents the studio’s shorts going back all the way to the 1980s. Because of its historical nature, there’s more text than the typical Pixar art of book. I haven’t seen the finished item yet but I’m really looking forward to seeing how it turned out. My experience working with the publishing team at Pixar was one of utmost smoothness and efficiency. Everybody went out of their way to make sure it turned out right, and I’m hoping the results reflect everybody’s hard work on the project. And there’s more ‘art of’ books. Coraline: A Visual Companion is officially released this week though I hear it’s already in some bookstores. The Art of Monsters vs. Aliens is out in February. Also, later in 2009, Disney’s The Princess and the Frog will receive ‘art of’ book treatment from Chronicle Books.
Mickey Mouse, Hitler, and Nazi Germany: How Disney’s Characters Conquered the Third Reich by Carsten Laqua has quite the eye-catching cover. It was originally published in the early-1990s in German. This English translation is eagerly anticipated by Disney book expert Didier Ghez which means that it’s probably worth picking up.
Disney Editions is releasing a bunch of Disney-related art books: A Disney Sketchbook 1928-2008, Disney’s Neglected Prince: The Art of Disney’s Knights in Shining Armor (and Loincloths), Hippo in a Tutu: Dancing in Disney Animation. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting much from any of these books until I saw a recent book by Disney Editions called Disney’s Dogs. It’s a mini-book designed for kids and Disney fans, which means they could have put together a slap-dash collection of cheesy film still artwork, but instead they turned out a wonderful volume packed with carefully chosen and never-before-seen artwork from Disney’s Animation Research Library. If that’s any indication of the new direction Disney Editions is taking with their animation-related books, then all three of the above books should be worth a look. If Disney is not your bag, then be sure to check out The 100 Greatest Looney Tunes (working title) by fellow Cartoon Brewer Jerry Beck. The book will be out in the fall from Insight Editions. More importantly, the online community is currently helping to choose the titles that’ll appear in the book. Submit your choices for the book on this special Cartoon Brew page. From University Press of Mississippi comes Iwao Takamoto: My Life with a Thousand Characters, which is the story of the late Hanna-Barbera art director and Disney artist Iwao Takamoto. The text is in his own words, with editorial collaboration from historian Michael Mallory. University Press of Mississippi deserves credit for publishing a number of animation artist bios in recent years though they’ve been a mixed lot; I was disappointed with the depth of research and quality of writing in last year’s Maurice Noble biography but the Martha Sigall memoirs they released a few years back were charming and fun. Here’s to hoping the Takamoto text reaches to the standard of the Sigall book.
Students, get out your credit cards: Focal Press is releasing two volumes of the legendary lecture notes by Disney in-house instructor Walt Stanchfield. Here are the Amazon links to Volume 1 and Volume 2 . Photocopies of these notes have been passed around animation schools for decades. It’ll be nice to have them collected in one place. The series is edited by Disney producer Don Hahn. The other big how-to book of 2009 is focused on a long-neglected aspect of the animation process. Elemental Magic: The Art of Special Effects Animation by animation veteran Joseph Gilland is also from Focal Press, the publisher of the Stanchfield books. According to fx animation guru Michel Gagné, the book is “fantastic.” Gagné wrote on his blog recently that, “I can assure everyone that this will be a ‘must have’ reference for animation students and those interested in the art. The book will feature step by step demonstrations covering all the main categories: liquids, fire, smoke, explosions, magic, transformations, and spiritual entities. In addition to Joe’s art, the book will display photographs, diagrams and artwork from various artists in the field.” Joe Gilland has also started a blog about the book.
Finally, one comics-related pick that I had to mention: The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics. Kurtzman is one of the few uncontested geniuses of the comic world, and his achievements are impeccable both artistically and editorially. This book draws upon his vast archives and spans everything from his early Hey Look! and EC war comics to Help and Playboy’s “Little Annie Fanny”, as well as including comic layouts, illustrated correspondence, and vintage photos. It’ll be out in April from Abrams and on my bookshelf shortly thereafter. |
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