Monthly Archives: July 2007

Popeye Song Folio

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popeyesongfolio.jpg

One of the best pieces of Fleischer Popeye memoribilia ever created was a 32 page compilation of sheet music, the Popeye Song Folio, published by Famous Music in 1936. Brotherly Love, Clean Shavin’ Man, I Wanna Be A Lifeguard, King Of The Mardi Gras, and of course, Popeye The Salior – and others – are each illustrated with a nice piece of art by one of the studio’s top artists (Willard Bowsky?). Coincidentally, with you know what going on sale next Tuesday, Brew reader Joe Busam has posted several of the best pages of the Song Folio on photobucket. These songs are great – and this is a perfect warm up to the restored cartoons which will soon be here.

A Few Good Blogs

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Three good artist blogs you can’t go wrong with…

Alberto Mielgo

Alberto Mielgo is among those animation artists today whose work really excites me. He works in the London commercial scene, both on live-action and animated spots, such as this recent Guitar Hero piece. The kitchen illo above is a concept for a cereal commercial. He’s also working on a graphic novel called The Asparagus Seeker which looks stunning.

Pat Smith

New York director/animator Pat Smith has launched a blog with the goal of giving people “a glimpse into the life of an independent animator in New York.” Pat’s one of those people who’s not afraid to speak his mind so I expect we’ll be seeing plenty of interesting entries from him. He has an eloquent opening missive in which he discusses his passion for the art form:

I love animation, but I’m not the biggest fan of the type of animation that is ingested in mass, supplied by the majors in this industry. I like animation to be a bit more personal, have some gravel in the gut and spit in the eye. On a technical level, I like to see animation with texture and soul. I never think about CG, don’t desire to work with those techno puppets. I like to draw, I like to create a real drawing with a pencil on paper. artwork that exists when the power is out, that exists as more than 1′s and 0′s. I like smudges, I like the bottom of my hand to get graphite on it.

Alberto Mielgo

I’m not sure why I’ve never written about David Gemmill‘s blog because he certainly deserves a link. His voluminous “hipster studies” posted throughout his blog provide as accurate a portrait of contemporary LA types as anything I’ve seen. Plus he does story posts with lively sequential drawings (like this or this), as well as producing the occasional piece of Flash animation exclusively for his blog. Good stuff all around.

Photo Editor Needed

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Thanks to everybody who responded. I still haven’t chosen anybody but there were literally dozens of responses and there’s tons of qualified people among them. I’ll try to respond to folks within the day. Thanks again!

We’re currently working on the first book that’ll be released under the Cartoon Brew imprint (see here) and looking for somebody to help prepare the black-and-white photo files for the printer. Basically I’m trying to make sure the values are consistent throughout the photos. I know how to use Photoshop, as I’m sure everybody else does too, so knowing the program is not enough; we’re looking for somebody who’s done a lot of photo editing and understands how to create tonal consistency across a batch of b&w images. There is financial compensation for the project. Not to mention the book itself should be quite unique. If you’re interested, please email me at amid at cartoonbrew dot com and let me know your qualifications.

Women in Animation MP3s

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Women in Animation

A few months ago, I posted about the “Women in Animation” symposium taking place in Columbus, Ohio. If you were unable to attend the event (and I assume that would be most Brew readers), Nick Burkard has posted the event’s lectures online as downloadable MP3s. I haven’t listened to any of them yet, but plan to do so. Among other things, there are roundtable discussions between all the guests, a lecture by British animator Joanna Quinn, and a talk by Rebecca Allen about pioneering computer animation. More details about the talks and presenters can be found on the event blog.

CONTEST: Fleet Street Scandal

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Fleet Street Scandal

For today’s contest, we’re giving away TWO signed copies of the book Fleet Street Scandal, a 48-page hardcover book collecting the digital artwork of Kevin Dart and Chris Turnham. It’s rare to find an artistic duo wherein both are equally talented, but Kevin and Chris each bring the goods to the table. In a blog post last year, I wondered why they weren’t working more regularly on animation entertainment projects. Well since then, Chris has done freelance work for Laika, and Kevin is currently doing an art internship at Pixar. I expect we’ll be seeing a lot more animation contributions from them in the future, but until then, be sure to check out the dazzling collection of illustration work they’ve compiled in Fleet Street Scandal.

For this contest, provide the answer to the following question in the COMMENTS section of this post. Instead of our usual procedure of choosing the first two correct answers, we will instead randomly choose two winners from all your correct answers posted between now and 3:15pm. If you have won anything from the Brew recently, please do not enter again. Here’s the the question:

Kevin and Chris came up with the name Fleet Street Scandal while looking through the London edition of a Czech artist’s series of worldly childrens’ books. What is the artist’s name?

CONTEST IS OVER! WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED SOON. THE CORRECT ANSWER WAS MIROSLAV SASEK. THANKS FOR PLAYING

R.I.P. Alexander Tatarski

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I just got word that Alexander Tatarski, an internationally known and praised animator, has passed away. He died yesterday at age 57.

Tatarski (spelled various ways, aka Aleksandr Tatarskii) was an animation producer, director and screenwriter and was managing director of Pilot Animation Studios, the first privately owned animation studio in Russia (which he co-founded with Igor Kovalyov). The studio is the country’s biggest producer of animation as well as home to a world-renowned school for animators.

His claymation opening for the Russian show “Good Night, Kids” has been airing for more than twenty-five years. He also directed several episodes of Cartoon Network’s Mike Lu and Og.

Here’s one of his early colaborations with Kovalyov, The Investigation is Held by the Koloboks:

(Thanks, Alexey Morozov)