Karl Cohen (president of ASIFA-San Francisco) just sent us his first impressions of Walt and El Grupo the new film by Ted Thomas, which I can’t wait to see myself:

I just saw Ted Thomas’ feature Walt and El Grupo that just had its world premiere at the San Francisco International Film Festival. It is a documentary about Walt and some of his staff on a goodwill tour of South America in 1941 that occurred during the strike at the studio. It provides an excellent account of why the tour happened and what resulted from the adventure. The story is told using interviews of Latin Americans and relatives of the people who went, footage from Disney TV shows about the trip, lots of still photographs, art work created on the trip, 16mm “home movies” shot by the people who went (often hand held footage and probably shot on Kodachrome film so the colors are still excellent), newspaper coverage that sometimes included grim reminders of the coming war on the same page as a photo of Walt, plus lots of modern footage. One nice design element is Ted uses lots of well registered dissolves between modern color and historic b/w photos often set to charming music. John Canemaker and J. B. Kaufman do a valuable job provided historical details/background information. The documentary has some really important material in it, but it does drag at times. I’m not sure of the length, but it seemed like it lasted about 2 hours.

Walt and El Grupo is really is an impressive accomplishment and provides a great deal of information about the trip, plus rarely talked about details about Disney’s studio and Walt before, during and after the strike. The all too brief segment on Mary Blair is one of many excellent highlights. It also has some interesting comments by people in South America about the films that resulted from the trip (mostly favorable, but…). I hope ASIFA-Hollywood can present it with Ted present, and eventually all Cartoon Brew readers can see it soon on a big screen at a film festival. I assume Disney will eventually release it on DVD; Ted’s earlier work includes the important feature length documentary Frank and Ollie.

Tomorrow night in Manhattan is the big event. And there is still time to get tickets and a good seat. And it’s FREE!

Hobnob with the finest animators in New York City, as ASIFA-East Presents The 39th Annual ASIFA-East Animation Festival. The most anticipated local animation event of the year: Awards, films and a glorious reception afterwards (sponsored by Cartoon Network).

Sunday May 4, 2008
6:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Location: Tishman Auditorium at The New School, 66 W. 12th St (bet. 5th/6th Ave.)
Admission: FREE!

This image just makes me smile.

Shirt.woot, a website devoted to offering tee shirts with unique designs, had this doozy up the other day, Finding Technicolor. It was drawn by New Zealand based illustrator David Creighton-Pester, and I love the Terry/Van Beuren feel to it.

On an unrelated T-shirt note, Pen Ward has completed his collection of 12 tee-shirts devoted to his incredible Frederator short Adventure Time. Check them all out here.

(Thanks, Travis Gentry)

PerfectLand is an oddly appealing series of Flash-animated shorts created for MTV by Ben Meinhardt. I’ve embedded the first one below and the other three episodes can be viewed on MTV Overdrive. The shorts have an undeniable “green” theme—peaceful nature-loving creatures are constantly attacked by a heavy polluting, industrial villain—but the concept is saved from typical heavy-handed environmentalism because of Meinhardt’s wildly creative imaginary creatures and his skillful animation, which becomes really impressive whenever the cuddly creatures exact revenge. I’m looking forward to seeing more work from Ben.

The second contestant’s answer on this “Final Jeopardy” question is quite possibly one of the worst answers I’ve ever heard on a gameshow. (via)

Michael Jantze, former art director at ILM and former newspaper cartoonist (The Norm), has started animating cute little films in flash with traditional animation and Adobe After Effects that have a nice UPA feel. At Your Service is the first in a series.

UPDATE: Recieved some further information about the Mr. Lux shorts direct from its lead animator:

My name is Kelly McNutt, lead animator for Jantze Studios.

It’s great to see that Mr. Lux found its way to Cartoon Brew! But allow me a quick note on how we produced the Mr. Lux shorts: we used a combination of traditional animation (scanned inks, no less) and Adobe After Effects, but no Flash. The individual hand-drawn animation segments were assembled and selectively augmented with AE animation for the sake of efficiency due to a very small production team and relatively short production schedule. The goal was to retain a traditional feel as much as possible and to capitalize on AE’s strengths and minimize its weaknesses by designing around them. I would point you to this other short we created using the same method, but with more traditional animation (as it was a far shorter production): Tech Tips with Boy Norm.

Also, we’ve just this week received word that Mr. Lux has been accepted for Cannes Short Film Corner, so we’re feeling rather enthusiastic these days.

(Thanks, Adam Perry)

This note just in from Bill Kroyer:

I think this would be of interest to some of your readers: I’m hosting a public program at the Motion Picture Academy on Friday, May 16th about the changing world of production design.

You might remember I do these programs as a member of the Science & Technology Council. The first two were strictly animation focused: THE ANIMATED PERFORMANCE and ANIMATION INVADES LIVE ACTION.

Talking to Ralph Eggleston I was struck by the similarities in spirit but radical differences in tools when comparing his experience as a designer with the classic guys like Robert Boyle. So we put together a show with all the latest technology and lots of Oscar winners to showcase what’s changing and what’s coming.

The Art, Science and Psychology of Production Design will feature onstage presentations by production designers Alex McDowell (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Minority Report), Doug Chiang (Beowulf, The Polar Express”) and Ralph Eggleston (The Incredibles, Finding Nemo). It will also present a real-time pre-visualization demonstration by pre-visualization director Daniel Gregoire (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Spiderwick Chronicles) and a review of new technologies by art director Daniel Jennings (G-Force, Matchstick Men). The program will also include a brief history of production design under the studio system, featuring an onstage conversation with legendary production designer Robert Boyle.

Tickets are $5 for the general public and $3 for Academy members and students with a valid ID. Doors open at 7 p.m. All seating is unreserved. The Samuel Goldwyn Theater is located at 8949 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. For additional information, visit oscars.org.

Got a postcard from Marv Newland today. He wrote:

The Vancouver Art Gallery is launching a large scale exhibit on May 16th, to run until September 7th. It is called Krazy!, with a tip of the hat to the Kat. Comics, graphic novels, manga, games (computer) and animated films. Tim Johnson of Dreamworks co-curated the film selection and he did a good job!

This installation is tied into co-curator Bruce Grenville’s new book. Art Spiegelman also helped curate the show and will give a talk May 15th (as will Newland, May 20th, on the history of animation in Vancouver). A list of lectures tied into this exhibit is here. If you are in the Northwest, check it out!