Jonathan Groff, exec producer of the forthcoming NBC series FATHER OF THE PRIDE, explains why they’re producing the show in CG animation: “It lets us tell human stories and go further, I think, and do more with them than we could if we were just doing it with live actors.” According to this Zap2it article, the episode that NBC recently screened for critics went further than live-action by depicting the following: “…panda-on-panda loving, several graphic (if euphemistic) discussions of lion intercourse, a healthy dose of man-chimp passion and several jokes about the shame that comes from being an elephant in love with a turkey. Throw in a banjo-playing monkey who calls his wife a bitch and an assortment of language and images that would make an inanimate cartoon cel blush.” Between this and his SHREK franchise, it looks like Jeffrey Katzenberg is vying to become the John Kricfalusi of unappealing computer animation. (article link via Animated-News)

This new Disney blog seems like it could become a promising source of Mouse news. It’s run by John Frost, whose grandfather was early Disney Imagineer Vic Greene. Also we’ve added a new link to the “Brew Recommends” sidebar – Harvey Deneroff’s Deneroff.com, a site which does an admirable job of linking to articles about animation from around the globe.

Leslie Cabarga wrote THE FLESICHER STORY. Leslie Carbarga designs great fonts. (In fact he designed the Cartoon Brew logo above)And now you can buy a button to celebrate Leslie Cabarga – Dennis Kitchen has unearthed his 1975 series of “Famous Cartoonists” pinback buttons and put them back for sale online. Others in the series includes Grim Natwick, R. Crumb, Sergio Aragones, Harvey Kurtzman, Carl Barks, and Hugh Hefner. There is a total of 54 different buttons! Collect them all!

Be afraid. Be very afraid.A Hello Kitty robot is going on sale in November. Equipped with an ultra-sound sensor and camera, the mechanical Kitty can tell if anybody is approaching. It can call a person’s name and start chatting by sorting 20,000 patterns of pre-registered conversations and picking phrases it feels are best suited to the occasion. They hope to sell 2,000 robot cats this year, priced at around 400,000 yen (3,710 dollars), by mainly targeting women in their 30s who are among the cat’s biggest fans. (link via Boing Boing)

In this NY TIMES article about FAMILY GUY’s Seth MacFarlane, he reveals that on September 11, 2001, he was booked on one of the planes that flew into the World Trade Center, but thanks to a dumb travel agent and a hangover, he missed the flight. And here’s a brief bit about SOUTH PARK creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who told Paramount that they’d attend this year’s San Diego Comic Con only if they’re flown to the convention center in a private helicopter, a request to which Paramount has agreed.

Following up on Fred Crippen’s commercial for the Kennedy campaign which I mentioned a couple days ago, here’s a cool photo of Fred and friends at the bowling alley, presumably from election night 1960. Clockwise from top left: Pantomime sales rep Dick Reed, secretary (Fred can’t remember her name), animator/Pantomime co-owner John Marshall (he’s a relative of WB animator Rod Scribner), animator Ed Friedman, Pantomime producer/voice actor Paul Shively and Fred Crippen. Click on the image for a larger version.

If I could be one person in Hollywood history, I think I’d like to be Sammy McKim.Who? Sam McKim! He spent his childhood on the backlots of Republic and Columbia Pictures appearing in two dozen B-Westerns (with Charles Starret, Gene Autry and Ray “Crash” Corrigan) and four serials (including The Lone Ranger and Dick Tracy’s G-Men). After the war he pursued his love of art and became a artist for the Disney studio – mainly as one of the Imagineers, for 32 years (his conceptual paintings are among the most influential, and beautiful, for the Disney theme parks).What a career! Sadly, as Jim Hill notes today, McKim has passed away. I had my one and only chance to meet him earlier this year at Bill Justice’s birthday party. I asked him a lot of questions about making the serials… and what he thought about his boss, Walt Disney. He was in great spirits and I noted that looked like a double for Donald Rumsfeld (photo here)! But what a great guy.

Russell Degnan has a nice REPORT from the Melbourne International Animation Festival with mini-reviews of the films and retrospective programs that he saw at the fest. He’s very thoughtfully divided up his film reviews into categories like “The Entertainers” and “The Bizarre But Brilliant”. Definitely worth a read, especially if you see a lot of short films. And his festival report reminds me, I should probably get around to posting some comments about the Zagreb Animation Festival.