A simple but effective experiment: Daniel Savage, creator of the iPhone app Gif Shop, wanted to try animating Chris Van Allsburg’s classic children’s book The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. “The potential of e-books is something that fascinates me,” he says. “This video demonstrates what could be done, even without interactivity.”

Vincent Cafarelli, co-founder of NYC animation shop Buzzco Associates, passed away Friday morning. He was 81 years old.

Cafarelli began his career in the 1950s at Paramount’s Famous Studios as an assistant (photo above) but made his name as an animation director at Stars & Stripes Productions Forever in the 1960s and Perpetual Motion Pictures in the 1970s. He began with Buzzco in 1982, becoming its president in 1985.

His longtime partner Candy Kugel reported his passing today on Facebook:

It’s with a very heavy heart that I report the passing of my longtime partner, Vincent Joseph Cafarelli. Vinny was at work last week– overseeing the annual brownie baking, finishing the last roughs on a small job we’re doing, and finally helping to send out our holiday cards last Thursday. He was tired, he went home, went to bed, and never woke up. He will be sorely missed.

For more on Vinnie Cafarelli, I refer you to an excellent tribute on Michael Sporn’s Splog.

For the past two years, SVA grad Ross Bollinger has been animating his own web series, Pencilmation, out of Charlottesville, Virginia. These modest little stick-figure films have gained a following for their humor and simplicity. Here’s a sample:

The Cinefamily’s Animation Breakdown festival (co-sponsored by Cartoon Brew) – going on right now in L.A. at the Silent Movie Theatre on Fairfax – has turned out to be a huge success. Sunday brings Animation Block Party’s Brunch with animators (including Adventure Time’s Tom Herpich premiering the new AT short Thank You, creator Steve Dildarian (The Life and Times of Tim), and a sneak peek of Titmouse’s new Disney show Motorcity), a screening of mind-blowing Polish animated children’s films, and clay-animation genius Bruce Bickford in person.

Tuesday night at 8pm I will be presenting a special program of rare Walt Disney silent films. Direct from The Museum of Modern Art, I’ll be showing brand-new 35mm restorations of previously “lost” Disney Laugh-O-Gram cartoons (his very first series of animated shorts, produced in Kansas City during 1922). These include Jack The Giant Killer, Goldie Locks and The Three Bears, The Four Musicians of Bremen and Little Red Riding Hood. In addition to these early updates/parodies of classic fairy tales, we also have Disney’s original Puss In Boots (1922) and several other 35mm rareties: two of Disney’s live action/animation “Alice Comedies”, one of the rarest “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit” cartoons ever made, and live musical accompaniment to all the films.

Several of these shorts were thought lost for many years, and thanks to animation archaeologists David Gerstein and Cole Johnson, MoMA restored several of these cartoons they had long held in their archives, previously misidentified under alternate titles. For more background information on the discovery of these incredible finds, check David Gerstein’s blog; Tickets to the Laugh-O-Grams screening are available here. Disney fans – this is a must-see!

Two animated features opened quietly in Los Angeles this weekend. Both are well worth seeing in a theater and deserve our support. Both are hand drawn films – one from France, one from Japan – both offering a diversity of style, storytelling and substance not seen in the standard American studio product.

A Cat In Paris opened its Oscar-qualifying run in Los Angeles this weekend at the AMC Burbank Town Center 8 (201 E Magnolia Blvd., Burbank, CA), with shows daily at 4pm and 7:30pm. The film made its international premiere at 2011 Berlinale and has been nominated for a European Film Award in the Best Animated Feature category. It has garnered raves on the US and international festival circuit including appearances at San Francisco Int’l Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival, London International Film Festival, and Annecy International Animated Film Festival.

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Redline opened in limited release in Los Angeles this weekend at the Downtown Independent (The film opens in NYC on January 6th before hitting blu-ray & dvd on January 17). The screenings will alternate between dubbed English and original Japanese (with sub-titles). It’s one of the best anime features I’ve seen in a while – wildly imaginative and occasionally surreal – Speed Racer on acid would sum it up quite nicely. Advance tickets can be purchased here.

Times are tough in Toontown…

Opening tomorrow (12/3) in Winter Garden (near Orlando) Florida is the Theme Park Connection, a pawn shop specializing in buying or selling authentic Walt Disney memorabilia, from costumes from the Haunted Mansion to signs from the Splash Mountain ride. According to Click Orlando:

The store is not affiliated with Disney, but it offers Disney employees the chance to turn in their costumes and collectibles for cash. Mark Pianko, the store owner, told our sister station Local 6, “No one else is doing it. We’re the only place I know that’s offering people cash to bring in Disney theme park items.” People have referred to the Winter Garden store as “the world’s largest Disney pawn shop.”

Click here to see a video of the shop.

I love animated GIFs and the seemingly infinite variations on the form. Comic book artist Kerry Callen has come up with a new twist: animating vintage comic book covers and he pulls it off quite well.

(via Mark Evanier)

It’s December. Holiday gift-giving time. Prepare for several posts in the next few weeks about new books and DVDs you must own – or give to your toon-headed loved ones. But first up, above all else, are these two:

How can you resist any book with Horace Horsecollar on the cover? How many books even have Horace Horsecollar on the cover? This one does. Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Vol. 2: “Trapped on Treasure Island” is the latest edition in a series of magnificently produced hard covers reprinting vintage Mickey Mouse comic strips by Floyd Gottfredson from the 1930s. Specifically from January 1932 through January 1934, this book gloriously reprints six classic continuities (The Great Orphanage Robbery, Mickey Mouse Sails For Treasure Island, Blaggard Castle, Pluto And The Dogcatcher, The Mail Pilot, Mickey Mouse And His Horse Tanglefoot and The Crazy Crime Wave), each strip restored from the best possible archival materials. Uncut, uncensored and politically incorrect – these tales are from an alternate Disney universe, where Mickey is a red-blooded, two-fisted adventurer; they are fun to read and a delight to view. Gottfredson’s comics are as classy, funny and as slick as the Disney shorts from the same period. And as usual, co-editor David Gerstein provides a plethora of “bonus materials”: galleries of rare art and merchandise, character histories, essays about scripter Ted Osborne and collaborators Webb Smith and Merrill De Maris, aided and abetted by noted Mouse historians Alberto Becattini, J.B. Kaufman and Malcom Willits – and over a half-dozen pieces are penned by Gerstein himself! A fine package, a full meal, and a perfect follow-up to volume 1, Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Vol. 2: “Trapped on Treasure Island” fills a gap long-neglected in animation history. Buy it.

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I think I’ve been waiting for this book my entire life. I’ve always enjoyed the artistry and wit of Walt Kelly’s Pogo, but the historian in me always wanted to read the entire thing, strip by strip, from day one. At long last the complete Pogo has been compiled, lovingly, by Fantagraphics Kim Thompson and Kelly’s daughter Carolyn Kelly in the miraculous new hardcover, Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips, Vol. 1: Through the Wild Blue Wonder. Buy this book. It wasn’t the first newspaper comic strip by an former Disney animator, but it’s the best – and the first I’d encountered to have an animators aesthetic in the layouts and character poses. This fascinated me no end as a child. Kelly’s drawings are just magnificent, and his sophisticated writing style was far ahead of its time. Its time has come – and Fantagraphics has gone out of its way to ensure the best possible copies of these rare strips were found, restored and preserved perfectly here for all time (BTW, I’m compelled to point out the reference on the cover to Ward Kimball’s band, The Firehouse Five!). The book includes all the initial dailies and Sundays (in color) from 1949-1950, the earlier NY Star run (from 1948), annotations and essays by R.C Harvey, Mark Evainer, Steve Thompson and a Foreword by legendary newspaperman Jimmy Breslin. A great gift for anyone – especially you. Amazon has it for $26.39 – a steal!