Animator/designer Gabriel H. Fermanelli has turned me on to the commercials he’s producing through Punga, a collective of artists in Buenos Aires who specialize in animation and branding. Fermanelli co-directed a series of spots for Wrangler Jeans (with Tomas Dieguez); this one is my favorite:
Fermanelli’s latest stylishly designed spot is for Volvo, featuring Sloths:
Indie animator PES (pictured above) moved from New York to Los Angeles a couple years back to fulfill his ambition to become a feature film director. It didn’t take long. Deadline Hollywood broke the story this afternoon that PES has been tapped to direct a feature film based on the Eighties fad Garbage Pail Kids.
The news is significant, representing not only a career shift for PES–best known for animated shorts like Roof Sex and Western Spaghetti as well as a slew of award-winning TV commercials–but also because it heralds the return of former Disney CEO Michael Eisner to feature filmmaking (at least on the financing side). Deadline reported that “Michael Eisner’s The Tornante Company will finance and produce the development of a feature film. . .Eisner bought the card company in 2007 and this is his first feature spinoff project.” Michael Vukadinovich will write the script and Toby Ascher will produce.
While neither the name Eisner nor “Garbage Pail Kids” instill much confidence, the real story here is PES’s involvement. He has proven himself time and time again as a force for innovative graphic ideas. A quick browse of Cartoon Brew’s archives will reveal some of his creative storytelling abilities (as well as some of his contributions as a guest blogger). I’ll certainly be looking forward to see what PES does with his first feature film.
PES’s latest short Fresh Guacamole debuted on YouTube last week:
If you still haven’t had your fill of “Why John Carter Failed” articles, then don’t miss New York Magazine‘s lengthy read “The Inside Story of How John Carter Was Doomed by Its First Trailer.” The piece goes to excruciating lengths to absolve Disney marketing of any wrongdoing over the film’s US box office performance, and lays the blame squarely at the feet of Andrew Stanton:
While this kind of implosion usually ends in a director simmering in rage at the studio marketing department that doomed his or her movie, Vulture has learned that it was in fact John Carter director Andrew Stanton – powerful enough from his Pixar hits that he could demand creative control over trailers – who commandeered the early campaign, overriding the Disney marketing execs who begged him to go in a different direction.
The article, juicy as it is, should be taken with a grain of salt. Much of the information in the article appears to be sourced from public statements by Stanton, and only one anonymous “Disney marketing insider” is identified as having been interviewed. There are factual errors too that made me question the piece’s accuracy–the writer claims that Disney marketing approached the New Yorker in September 2011 to profile Stanton, when in fact, if you read the New Yorker piece, the writer of that piece said he’d been working on it since April 2011. At best, NY Mag‘s takedown offers one version of how the film’s marketing plan derailed. The real story is likely far more complex, and won’t be understood until some point in the future.
A more insightful piece is the aforementioned New Yorker profile of Andrew Stanton, which has finally been posted online. Unlike an earlier New Yorker piece about Pixar that left me unimpressed, this profile sheds much light on Stanton’s personality and his collaboration with the lauded Pixar “Braintrust.” In spite of the profile’s positive tone, Stanton comes off as overly self assertive and oblivious to the effect of his comments, like:
“We came on this movie so intimidated: ‘Wow, we’re at the adult table!’ Three months in, I said to my producers, ‘Is it just me, or do we actually know how to do this better than live-action crews do?’ The crew were shocked that they couldn’t overwhelm me, but at Pixar I got used to having to think about everyone else’s problems months before all their pieces would come together, and I learned that I’m just better at communicating and distilling than other people.”
(Illustration by Luis Grañena)
Through the first 70 days of 2012, we’re averaging 2.8 posts per day on Cartoon Brew’s homepage. That’s not counting all the posts on our industry news section CB Biz. For the curious reader, here are Cartoon Brew’s most viewed and most commented posts through the first two-and-a-half months of 2012.
MOST VIEWED POSTS IN 2012
1. Ricky Garduno, RIP
2. A Tale of Two Titmouses: A Cartoon Brew Investigation
3. Preview: 2012 US Animated Features
4. Why Kids Today Think Walt Disney was a Jew-Hating, Hitler-Loving Racist
5. Web Premiere: “Wild Life” by Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby
6. Stephen Colbert’s Must-See Interview with Maurice Sendak
7. Rediscovered: Long-Lost Version of “The Hobbit” by Gene Deitch
8. The End of the Creator-Driven Era in Animation
9. Out of Context Animation
10. Ghostshrimp Exposes the Hypocrisy of Cartoon Network
MOST COMMENTED POSTS IN 2012
1. A Tale of Two Titmouses: A Cartoon Brew Investigation – 350 comments
2. Ghostshrimp Exposes the Hypocrisy of Cartoon Network – 135 comments
3. New Brave Trailer – “The Prize” – 112 comments
4. Lou Dobbs Says “The Lorax” and “Arrietty” Indoctrinate Children – 100 comments
5. My Favorite Super Bowl Commercial – 95 comments
6. The Oscars: Animated Feature Nominees – 90 comments
7. Academy Award Talkback; RANGO and MORRIS LESSMORE win – 86 comments
8. Joe Murray’s Kaboing Goes Kaput – 75 comments
9. “The Adventures of Tintin” Wins Golden Globe – 74 comments
10. How Cartoon Brew Spawned Bronies – 68 comments
Who needs the Disney Company! We’ve already got the movie poster for a biopic about Walt Disney so we may as well go ahead and cast the movie. That’s what Cartoon Brew reader Ron Yavnieli did in the comments section yesterday. Below are his novel casting choices for the likes of Roy Disney, Ub Iwerks, Margaret Winkler, Fred Moore, Bill Tytla, Art Babbitt, Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston and others. Share your dream cast in the comments.
Roy O. Disney :: Joel David Moore
Ub Iwerks :: Tarran Killam
Charles Mintz :: Jeremy Piven
Margaret Winkler :: Samantha Morton
Continue reading
This one’s a hoot… or a quack. The animation’s a bit crude, but this short story – about a boy transforming into a duck – has heart. It was created by Cody Walzel, a junior animation major at Pratt Institute, for his Character Animation class last fall.
Don Markstein may not have been a household name in animation circles, but he was one of the best friends comics and cartoon history ever had. His wife, GiGi Dane, just informed us of Don’s untimely passing.
Donald David Markstein was a comic book writer and creator/proprietor of the indispensable online Toonopedia. Among his many accomplishments was being the founding editor and co-creator (with Rick Norwood) of Comics Revue and the co-founder (with wife GiGi) of the animation apa, Apatoons.
Long before the internet, Markstein got the idea of adapting the established comic and sci-fi fanzine communication network (known as Amatuer Press Associations) to a world wide community of animation enthusiasts. I was a grateful participant in Apatoons (cover of a typical edition, with art by Dave Bennett, below). This project was a rich and rewarding experience for all involved, and helped bond fans, professional animators, cartoonists, writers and all like-minded enthusiasts in an era way before blogs and Facebook.
Animation historian Jim Korkis recalled the group’s origin:
“On May 12, 1981, Don Markstein and GiGi Dane sent out a one-page orange flyer to a select group of fans. The flyer announced the formation of an apa for animation buffs. Markstein wrote, “There’s a potential for an animation fandom lurking among publishing fans. We don’t knowhow many people there are in it, but we do know Funnyworld and Mindrot aren’t being published in a vacuum. That potential has probably always been there, but lately, with more and more lifelong cartoon buffs becoming video collectors, it’s been exploding. Just as comics fandom grew out of science fiction fandom to create its own fan movement 20 years ago, we expect cartoon fandom to come into its own very soon now.”
“The first issue of APATOONS appeared July 1981 and that first issue had only seven members: Jim Korkis, Alan Hutchinson, Don Markstein, Meera Dane (GiGi’s daughter), GiGig Dane, Marcus Wielage and Rick Norwood. I think one of the key things I remember about Don is that he loved ideas, loved cartoons and loved doing something to fill necessary gaps whether it was with Apatoons or Toonpedia.”
I asked several fellow Apatoons alumni to contribute their thoughts about Don. Disney comics historian David Gerstein wrote to say,
“I had the great pleasure of editing Don Markstein’s Disney comic book stories for Egmont Creative Center, the Denmark-based Disney comics studio, from 2000 to 2004. Many of these inspired, often outrageous stories were later reused in the American-published Gemstone Disney comics. We can’t forget Don’s original Disney creations – Sam Simian and his giant wrestling robots; the high ministers of Outest Bungolia, forever seeking the “King of the Bungaloos”; even über-cheap filmmaker Freefer F. Freefer (Don told me that the middle F. stood for “Freefer,” too, though he was sworn not to reveal it in the story). Only Don could give us a supervillain whose master supercomputer was powered by a cat brain and a dog brain – which didn’t get along very well.
And only Don had an affection for Bucky Bug, Disney’s early newspaper strip character, so deep that it manifested itself – somehow, somewhere – in a good fifty percent of all the Disney output Don created. We’ll all miss you, Don.”
I’ve posted a panel (above) from Don’s King of the Bungaloos Strikes Back (WD C&S #680, 2007), drawn by the great Cèsar Ferioli, with what I believe is a caricature of Markstein in the crowd at left, with mustasche, beard and glasses.
Harry MacCracken, now a Technology editor-at-large for Time Magazine, wrote in:
“What sad news. I still think of Don as the grand master of APA mailing comments–he was perceptive, precise, funny and engaging. Things he said in Apatoons thirty years ago still rattle around in the back of my brain and influence my writing. I was very happy to see Toonopedia succeed and bring his work to a large audience.”
Comics, anime and animation expert Fred Patten remembered his longtime admiration for Don:
“My memories of Don Markstein go back to the 1960s. We were both in CAPA-alpha, the comics-fan APA, and Don’s “Om Markstein Sklom Stu” was one of the most literate, thickest, and most eagerly-read parts of the monthly mailings. Later, after we had both dropped out of K-a, he and his wife GiGi founded APATOONS in 1981 and we were both in that for — how many years? After that, we were not in things together but I would see his name in the masthead of Comics Revue and as the author of stories in the Disney comic books. Still later, I would go to his Toonopedia website for accurate and informative details about cartoon-related facts.
Although it has been decades since we were in close contact, I am very saddened to hear of his passing. Comics fandom has lost a long-time friend and a rare expert scholar.”
Markstein died of respiratory failure after a prolonged illness. His family can be contacted via email through toonopedia-at-yahoo.com.
Installing an ant colony in a scanner and scanning it every week doesn’t sound like the ingredients for filmmaking success. But Paris-based François Vautier managed to uncover the exquisite visual possibilities within that concept. His camera and editing choices push the project from nature documentary into experimental film territory.
Vautier’s description of Ants in My Scanner:
Five years ago, I installed an ant colony inside my old scanner that allowed me to scan in high definition this ever evolving microcosm (animal, vegetable and mineral). The resulting clip is a close-up examination of how these tiny beings live in this unique ant farm. I observed how decay and corrosion slowly but surely invaded the internal organs of the scanner. Nature gradually takes hold of this completely synthetic environment. The ants are still alive: the process will continue…
(via Kottke)
An animated film led the US box office for the second week in a row: Illumination Entertainment’s The Lorax dropped 44% from its first week for an estimated earning of $39.1 million. Its two-week total now stands at $122 million, making it the top grossing film of the year to date. It is currently pacing $3.5 million ahead of Illumination’s biggest hit Despicable Me, which went on to earn $251.5 million domestically.
This weekend also saw the debut of John Carter, the first live-action feature from Pixar director Andrew Stanton (WALL·E, Finding Nemo). The megabudget sci-fi film, with a reported production cost of $200-300 million and marketing costs of $100 million, was positioned as Disney’s next “tentpole” property, along the lines of the Pirates of the Carribean franchise. It opened weakly, as expected by most industry observers as well as the Disney studio itself, with an estimated $30.6 million, on a par with the opening for Disney’s Prince of Persia, which opened with $30.1 million. It trailed the debut of last year’s sci-fi Cowboys & Aliens which opened with $36.4 million. The film’s saving grace may be its overseas performance, where it has opened powerfully, especially in Russia, and has already racked up over $70 million.
One can’t even begin to imagine the pressure that Stanton is under, but he hasn’t been particularly graceful in dealing with the film’s critical reception. In interviews, Stanton has been defensive about the film’s budget, and over the weekend, he wrote an oddly worded tweet that blamed moviegoers as “jaded” if they didn’t enjoy his film:
Studio Ghibli’s The Secret World of Arrietty added an extra $402,000 boosting its US total to $17.6 million. It is the fourth highest-grossing anime film ever released in the US, behind only Pokemon: The First Movie, Pokemon: The Movie 2000, and Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie.
No, it’s not real. But a remarkable mock up of a poster for a film I’d like to see – by Paris based art director Pascal Witaszek.
UPDATE: Brew reader Ron decided to cast the Walt Disney biopic.
RIP, French comic artist and illustrator Jean “Moebius” Giraud, who has passed away from cancer at the age of 73. This is a good place to begin learning about his work. His best known film design work is in live-action, like The Abyss, Alien, TRON and The Fifth Element, but he also contributed to a number of animation projects including Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, Space Jam and Time Masters (below). He was revered in France where they exhibited his comic art with respect and appreciation.
Moebius influenced many people in our industry. I’ve collected some of the animation community’s reactions on Twitter:
Here’s some fantastic weekend viewing: episodes of Bob Godfrey’s seminal British TV series Do-It-Yourself Film Animation Show. The episode above, broken into multiple parts, features Richard Williams. The rest of the videos are on Charactermation’s YouTube Channel. A few months ago, we also posted Terry Gilliams’ appearance on the show.
(Thanks, Joel Mayer)
To August And Youth by The Future Roots
Finnish animator/illustrator/visualist Aleksi Revonkorpi made this music video using “Cinema4D and it’s “Sketch And Toon”. From start to finish this took me one week to wrap up. This one was more of a favor to my friend and his new album.”
Nicholas Temple first heard this track last year and loved it so much he started producing his own music video for it. The general idea is that the monkey and the 70′s disco man are driving across a barren desert looking for a good time. They get lucky and find a pyramid in the middle of no where and meet up with a like minded panda, flamingo, hippo and get their boogie on.
A nobody named Eddie Crane dreams of what his life would be like if he made it to the big time. Actual talent is optional. This piece was animated in Flash, then texture was added to the characters and environment via compositing. Directed by Rhythm & Hues’ John-Mark Austin, animated by Nathan Smith (aka SWiTCH).
One more quick shout-out for the LAAF (The Los Angeles Animation Festival) now going on at the Showcase Theatre in Hollywood (near the corner of La Brea and Melrose).
Tonight at 10pm: a screening of MTV’s new version of Liquid Television, plus a Liquid Television/Titmouse sponsored after-party featuring live music from all-girl rock group Nylon Pink; Saturday afternoon at 4pm Sean Lennon will present at screening of Rene Laloux’s Fantastic Planet (1972) and at 5:30pm I’ll co-introduce the ASIFA presentation of of Fleischer’s Gulliver’s Travels (1939), a 35mm Technicolor print; Sunday night at 8pm Bill Plympton will present a 20th anniversary screening of his animated feature The Tune. (P.S. before his screening on Sunday, Bill Plympton will be at Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra giving a talk about his documentary, new films, Q and A, and signing books. Click here for details).
And these are only a few of the wall-to-wall animation screenings scheduled this weekend. For a complete list of events click here. The theatre is located at 614 N. LaBrea Ave. – right around the corner from Golden Apple Comics on Melrose. See you there!
It’s no secret that the Walt Disney Company is fiercely protective of its intellectual property, but the law works both ways, and they’ve been accused of wrongdoing almost from the moment that Walt’s company became successful. While researching my upcoming biography of Ward Kimball, I found a reference to a “Mann lawsuit” in his notes from 1940. Ward wrote about how animator Fred Moore had been questioned by Mann’s attorneys, as well as how animator Ham Luske had testified on the stand.
I became curious to learn more about what the lawsuit was all about. The plaintiff was Ned Herbert Mann, a well respected veteran special effects artist who had started his career working with the production designer William Cameron Menzies on The Thief of Bagdad (1924). Mann believed that he had patented an animation process back in 1934 that was similar to Disney’s and he was trying to prove that Walt had traced the mouths of characters off of photostats while producing Snow White. The Disney company was eventually able to prove that the claim was completely baseless and the judge dismissed the case.
The only information I could find online regarding the case was an article from the St. Petersburg Times from June 29, 1940. You can read the entire article below. The article is fascinating, not just for the information it provides about the Mann case, but also because it lists some of the dozens of other cases filed against Disney at the time. According to the Disney studio’s attorney Gunther Lessing, “The trouble seems to be that almost everybody sees one of his brain children somewhere in Disney’s cartoons.” Some of the cases against Disney at the time included:
* Adriana Caselotti, the voice of the character Snow White, had sued Disney because some of the songs she sang had been released as records, and she wanted a share of the record profits. The case was thrown out when Lessing produced a document that proved “she had signed all her rights in her performance to Disney every time she put her signature to her paycheck.”
* A guy in California filed a lawsuit because he claimed that one of the dwarfs used his laugh or “an exact imitation.”
* A woman filed a lawsuit which claimed that while Disney hadn’t copied her words or music, he had infringed on the spiritual feeling of her work.
* A gas station operator in Minnesota claimed he had sold 15 gallons of gas to an animator who was on vacation, and that he had suggested to the artist that the Disney studio produce Pinocchio.
The article also talks about how Disney had sued a biscuit company that was making unauthorized Mickey, Pluto and Horace Horsecollar animal crackers. The Disney company sued for $24 million dollars, but eventually settled out of court for $8,000.
Here’s the entire piece:
