Indie animation’s most eligible bachelor, Bill Plympton, is tying the knot!

News has reached us that animator Bill Plympton will be getting married to artist Sandrine Flament on Friday.

For those who don’t know, Plympton is essentially New York City’s “king of independent animation”; Flament is a Paris-based illustrator who has worked as an assistant on several of Plympton’s films. My personal best-wishes to both of them. Bill can be congratulated in the Comments below.

This 1940s card folded (above left), opens by folding a front piece down to reveal interior image (above right). Click photo above to view enlargement of folded front; Click here to see enlarged full interior image.

(Courtesy the collection of Tim Walker)

I’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid for Tex Avery, for years now. Little did I know Avery actually directed a Kool-Aid TV spot, until I came across one in my collection this past weekend. Credits for such commercials are scarce, so if this isn’t Avery I don’t know what is. Love the politically incorrect native American designs and Thurl Ravenscroft’s narration. “Oh Yeah!”

We are being bombarded with holiday wishes from animators all over the world. We simply can’t post them all, but here’s a sampling of some of our favorites:

First up, from Corrie Francis, an incredible sand animation.

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This is the third music video Billy Polard has made using the Nintendo DSi’s Flipnote animation program:

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Here’s a holiday story from Richard O’Connor, who runs Ace and Son Moving Picture Co. in New York City:

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And finally (for now), from those blokes at Mukpuddy Animation in New Zealand:

Steve Milman was a checker at the Warner Bros. cartoon studio in the 1930s and 40s. (Courtesy the collection of Tim Walker)

Lady Ice is a Disney epic in seven minutes. Liron Pe’er began the film in 2004 as her final performance piece for the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. After graduating, Pe’er continued to work on it and in 2010, 5-and-a-half years later, she completed it. Pe’er is currently a freelance animator in Israel.

(Thanks to Maja Majkić)

I wanted to find out what was the most viewed Tom and Jerry short on YouTube tonight, and it turned out to be Salt Water Tabby with 24.4 million views. But this is no ordinary copy of the short; it has a completely new dialogue track in a Moroccan Arabic dialect by Bouchana Abdelilah. By comparison, the non-Arabic version (i.e. the boring original) of Salt Water Tabby has a mere 346,000 views. Why does a remixed version of a classic short have seventy (yes, 70!) times more viewers than the original? And will an Arabic voice-over make any cartoon funny and popular? In that case, Allen Gregory could’ve used a whole lot of Arabic. I don’t claim to have the answers to such questions, but I’m intrigued by this YouTube anomaly.

Veteran effects animator Dorse Lanpher passed away this past Friday (12/16). His presence will be sorely missed.

I first met Dorse in the period after the Disney rebellion, during the making of The Secret Of Nimh (the United Artists publicity photo above is from 1981) and though I can’t say I knew him well on a personal level, he was always a friendly face to run into a various animation events. I just had a nice conversation with him at last month’s CTN Expo.

Lanpher was one of the industry’s best, having honed his craft at Disney on Sleeping Beauty and 101 Dalmatians. He left the studio during production of The Sword In The Stone to work on industrial films. He directed a handful of religious TV specials in the 1970s (Christmas Is, Easter Is, etc.) then returned to Disney to do effects animation on The Rescuers, Pete’s Dragon and The Black Hole. Joining the Bluth renegades he contributed to Nimh, American Tail, Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace. Lanpher rejoined the Disney fold with Roger Rabbit, then toiled on every significant Disney animated feature, from The Little Mermaid (1989) all the way through to Home on The Range (2004). Last year Lanpher self-published a memoir called Flyin’ Chunks and Other Things to Duck: Memoirs of a Life Spent Doodling for Dollars. The book, and his blog, are well worth reading.

His artist granddaughter, Holly Conrad, sent in this tribute:

“Dorse Lanpher was my hero. He made my artistic career possible with his encouragement and talent, he was like a father to me and his only complaint was that I couldn’t get more famous than him (that would never happen, Grandpa). His animation will live on and so will all that he taught me, even how to play the ukulele. He was proud of me enough to write about me on his blog and in his book and I’m never going to forget to live my life as art, as he always wanted and encouraged me to. And neither should any of us. He lives on in his art and in his words.

He liked like Cherry Pie from Marie Callender’s and Greyhounds. I recommend we all have one in his name, and in the name of those amazing effects that were animated by hand by so many talented artists, my grandpa included, and may they inspire generations of creative people with their magic. They inspired me.”