Paul Grimault, whose feature LE ROI ET L’OISEAU was the subject of discussion HERE last month, also directed a short film in the late-1930s called LES PASSAGERS DE LA GRANDE OURSE. Michael Sporn has a book about this film and he’s posted some beautiful images from it on his BLOG. He writes, “[I]t was important historically because it was the first big French animated production trying to out-Disney Disney.” If we can’t see the actual film, at least we can enjoy these stills.

Three different artists, three different studios, three blogs worth noting:Colin Giles, an animator with Carbunkle in Vancouver, has started posting his work from Ren & Stimpy, with drawings and photos.Eric Wiese, a director at Laika Animation in Portland, doesn’t update his blog very often, but his artwork is so delightful I couldn’t resist mentioning it.Jakob Jensen, an animator and character designer at Dreamworks, is showing off his amazing talent and blogging about his drawing techniques.

If this doesn’t kill the SPONGEBOB craze, nothing will.(Thanks, Uncle Wayne Daigrepont)

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo currently has on display a massive exhibition of Disney artwork from the 1920s-1960s. The story, as I understand it, is that in the early-1960s, the Disney studio had lent 200 pieces of artwork to a Japanese museum for an exhibition. These pieces were never returned and considered lost until they were recently discovered at the Chiba University. Now, the’ve been put on display again, along with 350 additional pieces from Disney’s Animation Research Library.

The museum has also published a very handsome catalog of this work. The book is probably relatively easy to find if you’re in Japan, but not so easy for folks elsewhere. A limited number of these books were made available to Disney animation artists last week, and a couple of the studio artists – Mark Kennedy and Paul Briggs – are blogging about how great the book is and scanning pages from it. If you’re in Japan, I’d recommend checking out the exhibition, which ends on September 24. The rest of us will be trying to get the book. (If you happen to have an extra copy of the book that you’re willing to sell, please let me know. I’d love to get my hands on this!)

UPDATE: The official Japan Disney website for “The Art of Disney” exhibition is HERE. And, Tokyo Art Beat has details about the exhibition in English. (Thanks, Chris Keck)

I will never understand the appeal of HE-MAN AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, but to many of our readers under the age of 30, nostalgia for the Filmation series is very strong. If you are one of those compelled by the power of Greyskull, James Eatock has a blog for you. He writes:

I’m an animation enthusiast, Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Don Bluth, John Kricfalusi are guys whose work I adore – BUT I have a dark secret; I was born in the late seventies, thus my eyes, ears, and heart belong to Filmation studios, mainly He-Man and She-Ra…In short, since the beginning of this year I have been running a near-daily The He-Man and She-Ra BLOG which focuses on all aspects of He-Man and She-Ra, but more importantly I talk about the people who worked on the animated series; Bruce Timm, Tom Sito, Tom Tataranowicz, Don Manuel, Bob Kline and others.

And for those of you who can’t get enough of Filmation… Lou Scheimer now has a website.

Tonight from 7-10pm is the opening of the new and bigger Super7 store, right next door to the old store at 1628 Post Street, San Francisco, CA 94115. Among the festivities is a group signing by Pixar artists of their new edition of AFTERWORKS, an impressive collection of short comic stories. Plus, security at the event will be provided by the 501st Stormtrooper Legion. Sounds like a night out to me.

As promised, here are the RESULTS from the Cartoon Brew reader survey that we ran a month or so ago. We ran the survey for our new ad reps, Federated Media, who will be helping bring quality (hopefully) advertising to the site. I thought there were some notable figures that stood out in the results. For example, it was interesting to learn that a whopping 82% of our readers are male, though that percentage certainly isn’t as skewed as a site like Digg.com, which has a 94% male readership.

Other noteworthy numbers: one out of every three of Brew readers makes $75,000 or more a year (who said animation doesn’t pay), 64% of our readers are in the coveted 18-39 age demo, 75% of our readers view the site at least once a day, and 39% have their own blog. That last figure sounds a bit high, but that’s to be expected when the survey sample is in the hundreds and our readership is in the thousands. In general, the survey results look pretty solid so thanks again to everybody who participated.

Here is something to look forward to… high definition LOONEY TUNES! The first ones will debut on the ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD ultra-rez edition on sale September 26th (HD-DVD format only at this time. Blu-Ray format to follow in 2007 at some point). Bonus cartoons KATNIP KOLLEGE, RABBIT HOOD, and ROBIN HOOD DAFFY have been converted to true Hi Def from brand new HD 1080p transfers. (Image posted above is NOT from the Hi-Def version). This marks the debut for not only WB cartoons, but for any classic animation on High Def DVD. I’ve had a peek… and the quality is mind blowing!