Australian cartoonist Elliot Cowan recently discovered that he could receive Cartoon Network on his digital cable. After watching it, he created a visual document (posted below) of his virgin CN viewing experience. It’s a brilliant piece of editorial illustration that perfectly sums up the vast majority of children’s TV animation being produced nowadays. Elliot’s brief comments accompanying this piece can be read on his blog.

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File this under “Weird Things I’ve Accumulated Over the Years.” While cleaning out some boxes recently, I ran across photocopies of a complete 70-page storyboard from the short-lived TV series The New Adventures of Beany and Cecil (1988). It’s for the episode “The Courtship of Cecilia.” I’m pretty sure the boards are drawn by a pre-Batman Bruce Timm; any Brew readers that can confirm, please do.

I’ve posted six of the pages below. The storyboards are beautifully inked—the care that went into creating finished art for each panel makes it feel more like a comic book than the average animation storyboard. It’s not clear to me whether Timm always works this clean or if this was perhaps a one-off presentation board. It’s also worth mentioning that a few of the episodes from the revival are posted on YouTube, though unfortunately not this particular cartoon.

Update: In the comments section, Tom Minton provides a nice history on the use of inked boards in ’80s TV animation. I’m reprinting them up here so nobody misses his comments:

John Dorman’s storyboard unit at Ruby-Spears started brush inking their in-house storyboards in the early 1980’s (on the likes of stuff like “Dragon’s Lair� and “Turbo Teen�), so Bruce [Timm] didn’t invent the notion of inking production boards. The product that Bruce (and Doug McCarthy, who also inked the initial Tiny Toon Adventures boards, with a brush pen) worked on had the advantage of a lot more money going into the completed result.

Many industry veterans complained about the upstart practice of inking storyboards back in that day, arguing that it was misplaced effort to ink a board. It’s only a waste of talent when the best work gets left behind in the board phase, which routinely happened in television animation for many years, depending in varying degrees on the studio in question. It’s true that some very talented people ended up producing some beautiful work that the public never saw. At different times, Dan Riba, Alfredo Alcala and even Duncan Marjoribanks were my inkers at Ruby-Spears. Thom Enriquez and Jim Woodring inked some magnificent looking boards there, as well. Yet the finished shows done by that studio speak for themselves.

The primary point of drawing on storyboards remains communication, not stellar inking, so the act of such a degree of polish will probably continue to be debated for decades to come. Inking on boards generally owes more to having a serious comic book jones than a yen for onscreen graphic blandishment. The two disciplines are related but they’re a couple of different animals.

Update #2: Brew reader Ted has posted the short, “The Courtship of Cecilia,” onto YouTube. Watch Part 1 and Part 2. And another Brew reader has volunteered to scan in Bruce Timm’s entire storyboard for this cartoon so look for that soon.

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Are The Simpsons and Family Guy creatively bankrupt? Is the Pope Catholic? The New York Sun’s David Blum wrote a sharp commentary about this topic earlier this month:

Is it genuinely funny to see an animated, overweight, middle-aged dude on a living room couch, waiting for the chorus of the “Maude” theme song to kick in? To me it’s mildly amusing, but I don’t think I’m supposed to be the target audience for Fox’s “The Family Guy,” where that reference turned up on a recent episode. Very few 12-year-olds have a working knowledge of theme songs from 1970s sitcoms, and those who do need to get into something more useful, like stamp collecting. But this is what happens when you entrust the writing of prime-time cartoons to adults. They write what they know. And if you’ve ever met a Hollywood television comedy writer, you know that most of them grew up with baby sitters named Sony and Panavision.

I don’t think there’s all that much entertainment value in a television version of Trivial Pursuit, and that’s what television cartoons have largely become — a catalog of lines from old movies, theme songs from 1960s sitcoms, and mentions of actors like David Hasselhoff. I’m probably the only person in my ZIP code to catch the “Simpsons” reference to Fox’s 1991 sitcom trainwreck “Herman’s Head,” and that’s not a proud moment.

(again, via Michael Sporn’s Splog)

Working on a tight budget? The piece below is a beautiful example of how great artwork combined with creative compositing can be just as effective as a piece of full animation. True, the movement may be limited, but the graphic thinking behind the piece is fully developed and intelligently executed. It is called “Men in Black,” and it’s a sequence based on a story by U.S. Army Specialist Colby Buzzell. It premiered on April 16 as part of the PBS film Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience.

The illustrations were done by Christopher Koelle of South Carolina-based Portland Studios. Animation and compositing was created by a group called The Law of Few.

(Thanks, Chuck Gammage for letting me know about this, and to Brad Constantine for finding the whole film on YouTube)

A quick follow-up to yesterday’s El Tigre review: the show’s supervising director Dave Thomas also has a blog where he’s posting many examples of his beatboards. Thomas would do between 30-60 pages of these beatboards before the episodes were handed out to the board artists, so he could visually describe how he wanted the action handled. It’s an immense amount of work that most TV directors don’t do, but it’s a good way for the director to take more control over the vagaries of the TV animation process. And the resulting quality speaks for itself. Dave also has an excellent post about his conversion from traditional pencil drawing to an all-digital paperless production using the Cintiq. Personally, I’m waiting for Dave to tell the story of his biggest accomplishment: how he came up with the 99 Cent Super Value Menu.

My introduction to Jorge Gutierrez’s work was at the 1999 CalArts Producers’ Show. It was a screening of his CG short Carmelo. If I recall correctly (and I may not be) the film wasn’t even finished that year and was presented as a work-in-progress. No matter though, Jorge’s film instantly stood out. Here was that rarest of rare among student filmmakers: somebody who actually had something to say. The CG in his film might be considered crude by today’s standards, but what hasn’t dated is the passion and affinity for Mexican culture that he infused into that work.

I met him around town shortly after that screening and over the years have had the pleasure of getting to know both him and his lovely wife, Sandra Equihua, who is equally passionate about her art and heritage. Together, they are the animation world’s answer to Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo…well, minus the physical abuse, marital infidelities and communist sympathies.

All this is to say that it’s hardly surprising somebody else has also recognized their talents. Jorge and Sandra now have a show on Nick called El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera. The show premiered earlier this month, and after watching the first four episodes, I’m delighted to report that it’s everything I could have hoped for and more.

When I first heard the series pitch a few years ago, I was immediately impressed by its concept and the dramatic possibilities it presented: the adventures of a young superhero (El Tigre/Manny Rivera) whose father is a superhero (White Pantera) and grandfather a supervillain (Puma Loco). As often as El Tigre fights villians in the show, he must also do battle with his own conscience and learn to distinguish between right and wrong. Does he cheat by his using his superheroic powers to win a soccer (sorry…futbol) match? Does he steal people’s pets and then return them to collect the reward money? Does he spend the family’s guacamole fund to buy a tattoo maker? These are the type of issues that young Manny struggles with in the series.

The series rarely broaches the deeper inner character turmoil inherent in such a setup, those fuzzy and exciting grey areas that fall somewhere between good and evil (I know, I know, it’s a kids show), but there are other levels of richness to be found in the series. Among them is a nicely fleshed out relationship between Manny and his best friend, Frida; a standout is the episode “Adios Amigos” where Manny makes the decision to stay away from Frida in order to protect her from harm, and the ensuing pain that it causes both of them. First and foremost though, the show is designed to entertain, and there’s no shortage of fun throughout. One of the show’s highlights is the stream of deliciously silly villains that El Tigre has to contend with: early episodes have included Dr. Chipotle Jr, General Chapuza and his grandson Che, Sartana and Titanium Titan. It’s a south of the border rogues gallery worthy of Dick Tracy.

Artistically, El Tigre clicks on all fronts. What is particularly impressive is how the visuals channel Mexican folk art without turning it into a caricature. It absorbs the bright rhythms, shapes and feeling of vernacular and folk art, and through digital means, transforms it into something new and exciting. Part of that new and exciting translation comes from how far the production pushes the use of Flash. El Tigre offers hands down the most dynamic implementation of Flash I’ve ever seen in an animated TV series, seamlessly combining the cinematic possibilities more commonly associated with 3D CGI alongside the organic appeal of drawn animation.

The show is intensely stylized but it is not the random styling one finds in most contemporary animation. The various pieces of the puzzle fit together well and form a compelling overall visual point of view. This includes tight energetic direction by Dave Thomas, lush color and background design by Roman Laney and Tod Polson, the eccentric and endearing character design sensibilities of creators Gutierrez and Equihua, and the artistic contributions of an almost too-good-to-be-true crew including Gabe Swarr, Fred Osmond, Chris Battle, Steve Lambe, Ray Morelli, Katie Rice, Sean Szeles, Joseph Holt, Luke Cormican, Ricky Garduno, Dave Knott, Gerald De Jesus, Eddie Trigueros, Fred Gonzales, Denise Chavez, Aaron Horvarth and Katrien Verbiest.

The show is not entirely free of weaknesses. Among them is its annoying tendency to stage too many scenes on slants and diagonals, voice acting performances that I couldn’t understand (good enunciation is apparently not in vogue among current voice actors), instances of out-of-character dialogue (though far less than other modern shows), and at least in the four episodes that I watched, not as much focus as I would have hoped for on the central relationship between El Tigre, his superhero father and his supervillain grandfather.

On the whole, the show’s strengths overwhelm its faults. Thanks to its creators, the series is colored with a generous Mexican spirit and personality, while remaining accessible to all audiences, whether you’re full-blooded Mexican or somebody whose knowledge of Mexican culture extends as far as the end of a churro stick. Refreshingly good-natured and lovely to look at, El Tigre is one of the finest animated offerings to appear on TV in recent memory.

New episodes of El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera air Saturdays at 10:30am/9:30c.

A sidenote: many of the El Tigre artists are also bloggers and they’re posting some illuminating production material on their blogs. Here’s a selection:

* Specialty poses by Gabe Swarr

* Rough Flash animation by Sean Szeles

* Various designs and paintings by Steve Lambe

* A piece of promo artwork by Chris Battle

* A great doodle of Frida by Katie Rice

Walter Tetley is a name you may not know, but you’ve definitely heard his voice.

He’s best known for his role as Sherman in Jay Ward’s Mr. Peabody (the Peabody’s Improbable History segments of Rocky & Bullwinkle), and he also did voice over for Walter Lantz (as Andy Panda and Reddy Kilowatt) and Warner Bros.

New York’s radio station WFMU posted a nice tribute to Tetley (1915-1975) on their blog yesterday. Check it out to learn more about the man behind the quintessential “kid voice”.

If Disney’s early-60s paper cutout short A Symposium on Popular Songs had included black people, they might have looked something like this music video that Megan Brain (mentioned here previously) recently designed for Cartoon Network’s Class of 3000 series. Joe Horne boarded and Chris Staples animated the characters in After Effects. Check it out below.