Several months ago we featured Sascha Ciezata’s hand sketched animated short When Lynch Met Lucas. Since then, Ciezata’s been busy with his latest shot-with-an-iPhone animation, this time produced by Random House. It’s based a passage from the new book by Bret Easton Ellis, Imperial Bedrooms, read by actor Andrew McCarthy.
The official music video for Twin Galaxies by New Zealand’s Shapeshifter, directed by Matt Pitt (aka redkidOne).
(Thanks, Mukpuddy)
Consider me impressed. Here’s a 30-second trailer promoting the San Diego Comic Con panel for The Goon on Friday night. Based on the Dark Horse comic by Eric Powell, the animated feature is being produced by David Fincher and is currently in production at Blur Studios in Venice California. This could be interesting…
Here’s the promo for the new Looney Tunes Show which ran this past weekend on Cartoon Network. It’s our first peek at the CG Road Runner and redesigned Bugs and Daffy.
3-D films may make a lot of money, but Hollywood is no longer an art form accessible to the masses. From BoxOfficeMojo:
Toy Story 3 bagged $12 million in its fifth weekend, down 43 percent. With a $363 million haul, it now ranks as the 15th highest-grossing movie of all time (though it has yet to crack the Top 100 in terms of attendance).
Welcome to the updated Cartoon Brew. This was an important redesign for us. We wanted to make the site more useful for regular readers without significantly changing the look and feel of a design that already functions well. We also wanted to add more functionality without cluttering it up with bells and whistles that none of our readers would ever use. So we’ve judiciously added a handful of new features that we hope will enhance your site experience as well as upgraded our servers which we hope will make the site a lot faster for everybody. Here is a guide to the new additions;
Industry Headlines: We don’t have the time to write a full post about everything that’s happening in animation, so we created this section, located on the upper side of the right-hand column, where we’ll have a constantly updated stream of links to news from around the animation industry.
Animation Tweets: This box, in the middle of the right-hand column, is a continuously updated feed of tweets by artists working in the animation industry. If you click on the directory link at the bottom of the box, you’ll be taken to the full list of artists and each of their latest tweets. The list is by no means complete and we will be updating the directory regularly to include as many artists as possible.
Top posts: Some of our favorite and most popular posts drop off the front page far too quickly. Our new top posts, located at the top of the site, will offer links to posts that we feel deserve a second look.
Suggest: To suggest an item for inclusion on Cartoon Brew, do not e-mail Jerry or Amid individually anymore. Please use the suggest form which is accessible through the navigation bar at the top of the page.
Commenting: Exciting additions here. You can now respond to specific comments by other readers and your responses will be threaded below the original comment. Simply click on “reply to this comment” below the comment that you want to reply to. Also, if you like somebody’s comment, click on the thumbs up button for that person’s comment. If enough people like a comment, a colored box will highlight the comment permanently.
Sharing: Sharing items on Cartoon Brew is now easier and more efficient than ever before. We have greatly simplified the process for sharing posts via e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter. Simply click on the appropriate button below each post.
Events: The events links in the right-hand column now lead to a map of where each event is located as well as additional information about the event.
Also, we wanted to take this opportunity to give a shout-out to our site designer and new web host, Rob Kohr. None of these changes would have been possible without his expertise. If you need somebody to design a site for you or to host a site, we can’t recommend him highly enough. He has always been incredibly responsive to the specific needs of our site, and is a collaborative partner throughout the design process who offers plenty of good ideas along the way. There is never an unsolvable problem when he’s involved, only potential solutions. Not to mention that on top of being a web designer, Rob is also an emerging filmmaker. His most recent animated film The Lift is playing all over the festival circuit, including in a few weeks at Animation Block Party. What more could we ask for?
Pres and Jeannine Romanillos. Photo by Tim Hodge
Veteran feature animator Pres Romanillos passed away yesterday at the age of 47 after a battle with leukemia. His wife Jeannine posted on his Facebook group:
We have lost our wonderful innocent boy yesterday. Pres passed away peacefully on Saturday at 6 pm. He was surrounded by his family and friends. It is the next day and we are still waiting to wake up from this bad dream that just cannot be real. He had such love for all of you and that will stay with you. Goodbye, best friend, husband, lover, companion, shipmate, soulmate. I will love you forever, Jeannine
He most recently animated Prince Naveen in The Princess and the Frog. He studied fine arts and illustration at the School of Visual Arts in New York before beginning his animation career at Disney on The Little Mermaid. He worked on a total of eight animated features at Disney, including supervising animator of the villain Shan-Yu in Mulan. He also animated on five DreamWorks features including The Road to El Dorado, Madagascar and Shrek 2. His drawings can be seen on this blog and this blog.
UPDATE: Obituary by Charles Solomon in the LA Times.
Remembrances
Remembrance by Stephanie Olivieri
Remembrance by Kevin Koch
Remembrance by Paul Briggs
Remembrance by Steve Hulett
Remembrance by Tim Hodge
Remembrance by Patrick Mate
Remembrance by Tom Sito
Our tech guru warned us not to do any posts this weekend because we’re migrating servers, but I’m not a good listener so here’s a first look at Genndy Tartakovsky’s new Cartoon Network series Sym-Bionic Titan. If our site breaks or evaporates into thin air, blame Genndy. There’s lots of animation superstars working on this show including Stephen DeStefano, Kevin Dart, Scott Wills, and Joseph Holt, and the dozen or so preview images show that these guys are earning their salaries and then some. Graphics-wise, it appears to even outdazzle Tartakovsky’s earlier effort Samurai Jack; now to wait and see if the animation moves any better than that show. Comments are off on the Brew this weekend, but you can tell the crew directly how much you like their artwork through the link above.
We are switching servers this weekend, and as a result, commenting has to be deactivated until Monday. When we return next Monday, the site should not only load faster, but we’ll be unveiling a number of new website features that should enhance your Cartoon Brew experience. See you in a couple days.
Because we are changing servers over the weekend, Sunday comes early this week – as we post our weekly round-up of animation related newspaper comics a few days early – First up, a multi-part sequence from Heart Of The City (7/13-15) by Mark Tatulli:
Strange Brew (7/11) by John Deering; Argyle Sweater (7/14) by Scott Hilburn; The Quigmans (7/12) by Buddy Hickerson; Natural Selection (7/13) by Russ Wallace; and Reynolds Unwrapped (7/12) by Dan Reynolds.
(Thanks to Jim Lahue, Kurtis Findlay, Charles Brubaker and Ed Austin)
According to our friends at Toonzone, Peter Fernandez, best known to animation fans as the voice of Speed Racer, passed away this morning due to lung cancer at the age of 83.
Fernandez adapted scripts, voice directed and acted on Speed Racer and Marine Boy. Another significant credit for him was as the non-singing voice of Alakazam in Alakazam The Great (1961). He co-wrote the animated series Johnny Cypher In Dimension Zero for Joe Oriolo Productions, dubbed the animated French feature Light Years (aka Gandahar, 1988) and voice directed The Adventures of The Galaxy Rangers. He could also be heard in numerous live action Japanese monster movies – from Mothra and Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster to the Ultra Man series.
Most recently Fernandez had a cameo role in the live-action Speed Racer (2008) and was also the voice director for Cartoon Network’s series Courage the Cowardly Dog.
(click for full-sized version)
I should have waited until the holidays to post this, but I couldn’t resist. Cool stuff like this has to be shared immediately. I recently ran across this holiday card by Mary and Lee Blair and had to make a scan of it. Michael Sporn is also posting some worthwhile Blair-related artwork.
The images above and below are from a new environmental documentary currently making the rounds, Deep Green. The feature contains several animation sequences produced by Portland-based Bent Image Lab.
Interstitial sequences include Greenagraphics (pictured above), directed by Pascal Campion, using a stick figure line-art style for a Flash piece explaining the importance of energy conservation in the home; and Earth Faces, directed by Chel White and Brian Kinkley, a combination of 3D CGI, live action and still photography that provide different views of the Earth combined with images of human faces depicted in clouds, “implying that planet stewardship begins with each one of us.”
Bent also created the two animated shorts that accompany the film. Voiced by Tom Kenny (SpongeBob SquarePants), they take a comedic approach to explain the most serious manmade problems facing our planet’s forests and oceans: Trees directed by Randy Wakerlin, offers a humorous yet urgent warning about the effects of deforestation – told by two talking trees, “green-collar guys”, voiced by Kenny; and The Krill is Gone (pictured below), directed by Jeffery Bosts, is a mix of 3D CGI and 2D After Effects animation, featuring a comedic cast of marine life voiced by Kenny and his wife Jill Taley.
My old friend Mark Trost went to the Roy Rogers auction at Christies today and took some snaps of interest to us at Cartoon Brew. For some reason, Roy was in possession of the original art for the sheet music to Walter Lantz’ Chilly Willy. Does anyone have any theories as to why he would have this? (click thumbnail at left and below to see a larger images). Roy, of course, appeared in Disney’s Melody Time (1948) and narrates the story of Pecos Bill. Below are photos of three cels up for auction from the Roger’s estate: an unusual one representing Pecos Bill, and two production cels signed by Walt to Roy’s agent, Art Rush: Willie The Operatic Whale from Fun and Fancy Free Make Mine Music (1946) – perhaps given to explain that Roy would appear in a musical package film? And a Three Caballeros cel – perhaps symbolic that Roy would appear in a live action animation segment?? Mark also reported that the auction included “a number of letters from Walt to Roy on personal stuff”. There’s also a Mickey Mouse piece. Don’t fret, there’s still time to bid… this material goes up for bid tomorrow (Thursday July 15th) and the estimated prices are relatively low. Let us know if you win something.
The New York Post reported today that MTV is resurrecting Beavis and Butt-head. Unlike the original episodes which were produced in New York, the new episodes will be made at Starz Film Roman in Los Angeles, presumably due to their production work on Judge’s other long-running series King of the Hill.
