Badmash a new Indian animation studio with bases in Pune, India and Berkeley, California is promoting itself with a political parody site about legendary Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan and his candidacy for “prime minister” of the US. The site is notable for a couple of slickly produced Flash animation pieces—Dishoom 2008, and a parody of a Hillary Clinton campaign ad, It’s 3AM, America.

(Thanks, Kevin Elam)

Simple but thoughtful storytelling in under a minute by Oscar-nominee Alexei Kharitidi. (via Cold Hard Flash)

I just finished reading the new Maurice Noble biography Stepping Into The Picture by Robert McKinnon and am working up a review of it. In the meantime, I thought it’d be worth posting the 1967 short The Bear That Wasn’t (1967), a film on which Noble receives co-direction and production design credit.

It’s based on a 1946 illustrated book by Frank Tashlin, and Tashlin detested the finished film, saying that, “[W]ith the exception maybe of your best girl friend running you over in your own car, that was just about the worst experience I ever had, the making of that cartoon.” He explains further in this interview with Mike Barrier why he hated the film.

Tashlin is right. It’s not a good film by any stretch of the imagination. Conceptual problems and weak animation aside though, I have to admit having a soft spot for Noble’s production design on the film. Even if in many ways the design is largely inappropriate to the tone of the story, it’s undeniably appealing, inventive and fun. Credit is also due the background painters Phil DeGuard and Don Morgan.

While The Bear That Wasn’t may not make anybody’s all-time greatest shorts list, it does show Noble at the height of his game, and a willingness to always push animation production design in new and exciting directions. This film has intriguing earmarks of a highly abstracted “pure” design approach that Noble was exploring in the mid-’60s, which become epecially evident when you place it alongide another film he worked on during that period, The Dot and the Line (1965). It’s a shame that Noble never had the luxury of letting this approach evolve over the course of multiple films, like his work on the earlier Warner shorts, because with appropriate stories and collaborators, I think he could have taken animated films in some fascinating directions in the 1960s.

Half-cat and half-octopus, Octocat is searching for his parents. And he manages to drink a relaxing cup of tea during the search. I hope we see a lot more cartoons from 13-year-old Randy Peters.

(Thanks, David O’Reilly)

British commercial director Simon Tofield, who is repped by Tandem Films is the creator behind Simon’s Cat, an absolutely delightful series of Flash-animated shorts. While the cartoons are minimalist to the core—simple line designs, no color and basic backgrounds—the animation has two key ingredients that make them a success: personality and charm. The latest short posted below, “Let Me In,” has racked up over 1 million YouTube views since its debut last week. The earlier one, “Cat Man Do,” is also a gem.

Please Say Something is a visually and narratively intriguing series of CG micro-shorts by David O’Reilly, creator of RGBXYZ. O’Reilly tells me that the series of five dramatic pieces is designed to be seen on the Web and is influenced by the “amazing comics” of Jason. The shorts speak for themselves but should you require additional explanation, there’s always this blog entry.

(click on the image above to see more of this model sheet)

With so much attention being paid nowadays to film gimmickry like stereoscopic 3D, it may be only a matter of time before Hollywood begins resurrecting other outlandish ideas from the past, like Smell-O-Vision. As far as I’m aware, there’s only one piece of animation ever produced using the Smell-O-Vision process, in which audiences were exposed to aromas that accompanied the visuals onscreen. The cartoon is called A Tale of Old Whiff. I’ve never seen the short, but I can offer the model sheet above which allows us to see what the characters looked like.

A reviewer named F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre has written extensive commentary about the short on IMDB that includes the following synopsis:

Bert Lahr does hilarious work as the voice of Old Whiff, a cartoon bloodhound searching for a museum’s lost dinosaur bone worth $100,000 … but whose search is hampered by the fact that he has lost his sense of smell. While the bloodhound meanders through this cartoon, muttering to himself in Bert Lahr’s distinctive voice, we see various items which Old Whiff encounters … including a hot dog, mustard, soap, soup, chocolate, violets, pine trees, a field of clover and a horse. We also SMELL those objects; at least we smell them if the Smell-O-Vision process is working properly. But poor Old Whiff can’t smell anything.

I found the faded and many-times photocopied model sheet in the collection of Alan Zaslove, who is credited with directing the film. The film was originally being directed by John Hubley in New York but, for reasons that are unclear, he abandoned the project midway. The most likely scenario is that he had a financial or creative conflict with the bankroller of the Smell-O-Vision process, the notorious Hollywood producer Mike Todd.

Zaslove remembers that all of the artwork, including much of the completed animation, was shipped by Hubley to to Format Films in LA, where it was photographed and completed. Story artist Leo Salkin, who was working at Format at the time, is credited with storywork on the film, which perhaps implies that the story of the film wasn’t completely figured out when Hubley stopped working on the film. I’m not sure if the model sheet above was drawn entirely by Hubley, but the designs are certainly his, and a lot of the drawings look like they could be from his hand.

Throughout the history of the animation art form, there have been a select group of innovators who have pushed the medium to its limits and explored the potential of animation to its fullest. These artists include Winsor McCay, Walt Disney, Max Flesicher, Tex Avery, John Hubley…and now, I’m pleased to announce, Fred and Sharon.

Fred and Sharon, hailing from Kelowna, Canada are redefining the possibilities of filmmaking and animation by producing movies for any type of occasion. You can learn about their skills by watching this introductory piece below, entitled “Who Needs a Movie.”

Of course, Cartoon Brew is an animation website and thankfully for us, Fred and Sharon are specialists in the art of animation. They work in a dizzying array of styles, including hi-end computer animation that is seamlessly integrated into live-action settings…

to a traditional hand-drawn look…

to more painterly and experimental styles of animation…

For more of their filmmaking magic, visit FredandSharonsMovies.com or their YouTube page. And when you see them accepting an Oscar, just remember that you read about them on Cartoon Brew first.