Monthly Archives: May 2007

Carl Barks estate auction

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Auctioneers Bonhams & Butterfields will hold an Entertainment Memorabilia and Animation Art sale on June 4th 2007 in Los Angeles, featuring property from the Estate of Carl Barks. The auction will include rare original animation drawings, working storyboards and watercolors from his personal archive. From the press release:

From the early 1940s until the late 1960s, Carl Barks illustrated Walt Disney’s comics and stories and drew the beloved “Donald Duck” character as well as “Huey, Duey and Louie” (adding his own creation “Uncle Scrooge” in 1948). Having never signed his name to a single Donald Duck story, Barks received no biographical notes in any of the Disney comic books (unlike artists of comic book publishers of the 1950s). Barks toiled in privacy for more than 25 years before fans of comics and animation sought him out.

Featured highlights from the Estate of Carl Barks include: a large collection of preliminary drawings for many of his more famous Walt Disney Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge paintings (offered individually, estimates from $600 to $2,000); an unfinished painting of a Saloon Woman in a White Dress (est. $5/8,000); a selection of early paintings from Barks’ private studio including landscapes and historical portraits; a selection of framed and signed gold plate artist’s proofs; unpublished circa 1940s pencil cartoons; early finished watercolors; and a collection of five caricature cartoon drawings done by colleagues of Carl Barks while he was working at the Disney Studios.

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The auction also includes other Hollywood memorabilia, Disneyana and animation art. Los Angeles public preview events are scheduled for June 1-3. Pick up the catalog on the website.

New Animation Blogs

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A couple new blogs which I’ll be visiting frequently:

Will Finn

Director/animator/writer Will Finn has started a personal blog. In his introductory post, Will says he hopes to “post thoughts, anecdotes, original sketches and share art and other influences that inspired me to seek a career as a cartoonist in the first place.” So far his blog has convinced me that I really need to see the TV play The Comedian starring Mickey Rooney.

(Thanks to Blackwing Diaries for the tip)

The Cat Piano

And here’s the production blog for The Cat Piano, an upcoming hand-drawn animated short blending beat poetry, film noir flavor, bold production design and lots and lots of cats. The film is being directed by Eddie White and Ari Gibson out of one of Australia’s more promising young animation studios, The People’s Republic Of Animation. Stay tuned to CartoonBrewFilms where another of the PRA’s shorts, Carnivore Reflux (2006), directed by Eddie White and James Calvert, will debut shortly.

Looney Tunes in Allentown

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Opening on Sunday, June 24, 2007, The Art of Warner Bros. Cartoons will fill the Allentown Art Museum’s Kress and Rodale galleries through September 16, 2007. This exhibit is an expanded version of the 1985 Museum of Modern Art retrospective, curated by Steve Schneider (author, That’s All Folks, The Art Of Warner Bros. Animation), consisting of over 150 drawings, paintings, cels, and animated films of Warner’s classic cartoons from the 1930s through 1960.

If you are anywhere near the New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia area this summer, you gotta go. The exhibit’s opening will be celebrated with a public preview party on Saturday, June 23, 2007, from 6 to 8 PM. For more info, go to the museum website.

Chronicle Blogging

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Rooty Toot Toot
Development piece by John Hubley from UPA’s Rooty Toot (1952).
From the collection of Mike Glad.

The folks at Chronicle Books, publisher of the finest pop culture and design books, including books by both Brewmasters as well as all of the “art of” Pixar books, have launched a new blog. All the book editors are participating and they’re already posting some meaty entries. Alan Rapp, who edits art, photography and design books, and is the person who should be thanked for making Cartoon Modern a reality, has just posted his first entry. He’s chosen to write about one of my favorite topics: me. Ok, ok, actually the topic of the post is mostly about you: readers of Cartoon Brew and Cartoon Modern. Remember in December 2005 when we asked for your suggestions on the cover design of Cartoon Modern. Alan remembers that. He writes about the lingering lessons of that democratic experiment in book publishing:

The online buzz around the making of [Cartoon Modern] was unique in my experience, and attested to the convergence of the fusty old industry that is illustrated book publishing (read: slow) and the hypercatchy medium of blogs (fast). When Amid conducted an inclusive, non-binding poll of his readers to vote on the various jacket designs that had been proffered so far, the results were eye-opening.

What we had pragmatically hoped for—clear consensus—was not achieved. Instead, the big ideas behind the internet came to life: divergent, informed, impassioned opinions that represented the wide spectrum of the audience for this book. No cover direction was clearly favored, but the community around the book was invested in the process, pointing to potential new models of how we announce and make books.

So congratulations to Amid and the readers of Cartoon Modern and cartoonbrew. You all helped make this book a success and taught a small but significant to an “old media� company and editor.

Read his full post on the Chronicle blog.

A couple other quick notes about Chronicle which may be of interest:

* To celebrate their 40th anniversary, Chronicle will be giving one reader 40 free books every month this year. Enter the contest on this page.

* Hot news: Chronicle is turning one of my favorite blogs into a book. Get ready for Geoff Manaugh’s The BldgBlog Book. If you’re a fan of architecture, urban planning and futuristic landscapes, this promises to be an amazing book. The only downside: it won’t be out until 2009.

Viacom sells Famous Music

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Well, there goes Popeye the Sailor Man, It’s A Hap-Hap Happy Day and Casper The Friendly Ghost. Not the characters (they were sold off years ago), but the theme songs and music from 80 years of Paramount Pictures. Viacom announced today the sale of Famous Music to Sony/ATV.

“This is a milestone event for Sony/ATV Music Publishing,” said Michael Jackson (yes, that Michael Jackson. He co owns Sony/ATV). In addition to all the Fleischer and Famous Studios cartoon themes (which include Superman, Little Audrey and Herman and Katnip’s Skiddle Diddle Dee) the Famous Music catalogue includes 125,000 songs, including themes from The Brady Bunch and Star Trek, songs from Broadway shows such as A Chorus Line and The Producers, and hundreds of pop tunes and Academy Award winning soundtracks.

The Famous brand name dates back 1912 when Paramount Pictures founder Adolf Zukor created Famous Players. In 1942 when the studio removed the Fleischer brothers and established their own animation studio, they named it Famous Studios, a sister company to Famous Music. All that tradition comes to an end today.

Up-and-Coming: Miwa Matreyek & David O’Reilly

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Digitopia by Miwa Matreyek

Wanted to put the spotlight this morning on two young animation filmmakers whose work has caught my attention and who I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot more from in the future.

Irene Kotlarz, the director of the upcoming Platform Animation Festival introduced me to the work of Miwa Matreyek, a recent grad out of the CalArts Experimental Animation program whose films combine CG, illustration, live-action and live performance. There’s the sense of a well-formed artistic voice throughout her films, which is uncommon among younger filmmakers. Her work can be viewed at SemiHemisphere.com. Be sure to check out the “Digitopia” video.

Moving on, a few months back I posted a link to a rather experimental bit of CG called RGBXYZ. At the time, I didn’t know who had produced the shorts. It turns out that the filmmaker is David O’Reilly from Ireland. More of his work can be seen at DavidOReilly.com. It’s always exciting to see somebody taking CG into a more stylized direction, especially when they’re as fearlessly experimental as OReilly has shown himself to be. He has a digital short called WOFL which has some fascinating compositional ideas and camera moves. I was also surprised to find out that he did the animation for Shynola’s Beck music video “E-Pro,” which is also posted on his site.

WOFL by David OReilly

Pingwings Rediscovered

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Pingwings

Tony Mines of Spite Your Face Productions sent me a note about an early-1960s British animated series, The Pingwings, which had been considered lost for the last forty years. The prints were recently found again and a small label in the UK has released the entire series onto dvd. I asked Tony if he could shed a bit more light on this stop-mo series. Here’s what he says:

Pingwings is, so far as I can gather, the very first production by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin’s Small Films. The pair would go on to create pre-school classics like The Clangers, Bagpuss and Noggin the Nog that generations of British children and parents have grown up with. I mention it because while the latter are household names over here, Pingwings is almost completely unknown. Which is criminal, because it’s amazing.

Demonstrating a gleeful disregard for the shortcomings of filming stop-motion out of doors, the show concerns the adventures of a family of wooly penguins that live in a farmyard. Even the most famous of Small Films work is notoriously low-tech, but here you can see how they started out, working literally out of a barn.

Shown only once in the UK, the series was thought lost until recently, and has now been released on DVD, under a small label here. You don’t even seem to be able to get it on Amazon. The DVD contains all three series of 6×5(ish) minutes episodes.

One of the greatest thing about it is to watch how everyone involved develops over the three series. Not only do the Pingwings themselves grow a little older as the show progresses, but story elements and new characters come into play that you can see were developed and reused in later series, notably Bagpuss and The Clangers. In that sense, it forms the blue print for a whole generation of programming.

Here’s a clip from the first episode:

The Great UPA Debate

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Madcap Magoo

It all started on John Kricfalusi’s blog in a series of posts where he analyzes UPA’s modern graphics, comparing them to traditional character animation as practiced by Warner Bros., Walter Lantz and Terrytoons.

Michael Sporn then responded on his blog, igniting a series of comments that are, in no particular order, thought-provoking, frustrating, insightful and maddening. Whatever your opinion, it’s a fun read.

Fleischer/Famous lettering

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One of my guilty pleasures, when watching Paramount cartoons from the mid-1930s through the late 1940s, is admiring the incredible “Fleischer lettering” in the main titles (and occasionally in the body of the cartoon itself). I’ve never been able to identify the mystery studio calligrapher, but this person’s unique work is as much a part of the studio’s style as the animation, voices and music. This lettering style first shows up right before the Fleischer studio moves to Miami and is prevalent throughout the 1940s Famous Studios period (you can view some of this work on my Paramount Original Titles page). This individual also did the Famous Studios logo, Fleischer/Famous letterheads and in-house publications.

Graphic designer Mark Simonson has just created two new fonts based on “Fleischer lettering” and they look terrific. Coincidentally, Mark has also been working on a font resembling to my second favorite classic movie lettering: Columbia Pictures titles (most recognizable from Three Stooges shorts, Sam Katzman serials and just about everything Columbia released from the late thirties through the mid 1950s). But I digress. I’ll be ordering his Fleischer styled Snicker and Kinescope later this week.

Harry-Go-Round

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Good news! Harry McCracken’s blog is back.

McCracken, former editor of Animato, current editor of PC World and webmaster of Scrappyland, has promised to step up the pace of his blogging at Harry-Go-Round, which he has just redesigned.

Also check out his many fun-filled archived articles and galleries like Those Wonderful, Memorable, Never-to-be-Forgotten Animation Restaurants of Yesteryear, his virtual museum of 8mm Cartoon Home Movie Boxes, and a curious section of Mystery Art.

The Beagles

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In all my years of watching and collecting animated cartoons, only a scant few of the shows I grew up with have eluded my review in recent years. One of those, The Beagles, has just surfaced this week on You Tube. It’s a clip of the opening — a kinescope, in black & white — but it’s all we got.

The show was Total Television’s (Underdog, Tennessee Tuxedo) final production and it aired two seasons (26 episodes) on CBS during 1966-68 (Saturday afternoons at 12:30pm). That’s Sandy Becker doing a Dean Martin impersonation for Stringer, and Allen Swift as Scotty their agent. Toontracker reports the possibilty that all the master elements are lost due to being thrown away. The show was never syndicated, and hasn’t been seen since 1968. Even though the characters are not a parody of The Beatles (as reported in numerous cartoon histories), I suspect King Features (who had the cartoon rights to The Beatles) or the Apple Corps. themselves may have had a hand in this series mysterious disappearence.

Whatever happened, thanks to Freenbean, some of my brain cells can now rest easy with the Beagles garage band theme song now restored in my memory bank.

Hollywood’s Men of Action

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1935 Everyweek article
(click for large version)

Shane Glines of the indispensable Cartoon Retro has sent over a fascinating 1935 article, titled “Hollywood’s Men of Action,” from Everyweek Magazine, a Sunday newspaper supplement. The Depression-era piece plays up the high salaries possible by working in animation.

There’s some interesting things about the article. For one, it has the only photo I’ve ever seen of Lantz animator LaVerne Harding. (I think the male animator at top is Norm Ferguson; does anybody know for sure.) Also curious, it mentions Flintstones designer Ed Benedict as one of the top Lantz animators. This was still relatively early in his career so it’s interesting that he got top billing over more experienced Lantz animators like Bill Nolan.

Of particular note is this section where Walt Disney explains why women don’t make good animators:

Ordinarily Disney keeps from 30 to 40 men in his apprentice room. The apprenticeship lasts from six months to a year.

As a rule this class is composed entirely of young men. Seldom is a girl found among them. For some inexplainable reason, women don’t make good animators. At the present time there is only one in the entire business—Verne Harding who works on Oswald at Universal.

“I don’t know why girls should be poor animators but they are,” Disney declares. “Very frequently they are better artists than men but for some reason they lack the knack of getting smooth action into their drawings.”

This quote from Walt is also amusing:

“I’ve often been told how lucky I am not to have any stars to go temperamental on me,” Disney remarks. “It’s true I never have any trouble with Mickey, the three pigs or any of my characters. But don’t ever think animators can’t be temperamental. Say, they can be just as bad as any star you ever saw.

“Occasionally one will have an off day on which he can’t draw anything worth while. Then he has to be pampered and pulled out of his slump with all the diplomacy that would be used on a star.”