Over the past couple years, I’ve mentioned the French animated feature Peur(s) du Noir, which is a collection of black-and-white horror tales. I finally saw the film a few weeks ago, and though I admired the effort to do something different, the overall experience was underwhelming. The themes and ideas made an attempt to be “adult,” but the quality of storytelling was lackluster and didn’t engage an adult’s mind. Part of the problem was that the filmmakers were primarily comic artists whose lack of animation training was evident, and who didn’t seem to grasp the inherent possibilities within animated filmmaking.

The notable exception was the segment directed by illustrator Richard McGuire whose piece was not only the most minimalist, but also the most intense and frightening. Graphic design historian Steven Heller recently interviewed Richard McGuire about his work on the film and it’s a good read.

There’s no word yet of a US release date for the film but here are a few related links: the official film website, a clip from McGuire’s segment, and a blog with a thoughtful review of the film by Ed Howard.

It’s been over a year since we’ve mentioned the innovative video experiments of Oliver Laric, but his latest project, (>’.')>=O____l_*__O=<('.'<), demands a plug. At first glance, it looks like an abstract piece of emoticons, but a bit of squinting reveals much more than appears on the surface. (via Animation Show)

Aaron Higgins of Toonarific has started a new website devoted to cataloging classic coloring books. As an art resource, it’s invaluable as the site is showcasing and preserving coloring book art since the 1930s. Higgins’ RetroReprints site is a guide to what books have been published over the years, and he is slowly adding images under the books themselves for users to download and color. He is also reformatting the images and creating complete ebooks, also available to download.

And in case you were wondering where you could buy vintage coloring books of your favorite characters, Aaron also has over 1000 coloring and activity books for sale here on ebay.

On his blog, Didier Ghez points out an interesting-sounding book that was self-published a few days ago: Working for Disney: 1936-1937, The Ingeborg Willy Scrapbook. This is the description of it:

Reproduction of a 1936 scrapbook made during Ingeborg Willy’s first year working as an inker for the Walt Disney Studios. The scrapbook contains numerous photos of other Disney employees, internal memos, production work sheets, and a large number of original pencil sketches from the first feature-length animated film, Snow White, and other early Disney cartoons.

I’m going to wait to hear more before recommending it though. As is often the case with self-published books like this, the quality of image reproduction and presentation could leave a lot to be desired. The amateurish cover design certainly doesn’t do much to inspire confidence. But it could potentially be a very cool book.

Apparently, all the important causes that a corporation could pretend to care about have already been snatched up, so ice cream manufacturer Haagen-Dazs got stuck with saving honeybees. The operatic CG spot that promotes the campaign was created by Psyop:

The television broadcast premiere of Leslie Iwerks documentary, The Pixar Story, will be on the STARZ cable channel tonight at 10pm EST/PST. It will be preceded by the feature presentations of Cars (6pm ET/PT) and Ratatouille (8pm ET/PT). Also visit starz.com for additional show times and two new Leslie Iwerks mini-docs, Emeryville Studio and the Love Lounge and Pixar University.

Charles Shopsin has posted a January 1941 article from Popular Science about Disney’s pioneering sound processes for Fantasia on his Modern Mechanix blog. It features some unique photos of the sound engineers and audio technicians at work on this groundbreaking achievement.

The 12th Marc Davis Celebration of Animation Drawing on the Future: Mentorship In Animation will feature (above L to R) Pete Docter (Monsters Inc), Eric Goldberg (Pocahontas), James Baxter (Enchanted) and Andreas Deja (Aladdin), in a panel moderated by animation critic Charles Solomon. The panelists will spotlight the mentors who fostered their professional development, as well as provide insights into their individual approaches to their art. The lecture will include clips from the animation that inspired each of the panelists, and from their own work reflecting that inspiration.

The Marc Davis Celebration of Animation will be held on Friday May 9th, 7:30pm, at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, CA (Samuel Goldwyn Theater, 8949 Wilshire Blvd.). Tickets are $5.00 (Students $3) and available online at Oscars.org.