It’s been an Eyvind Earle kind of week. A couple days ago I stumbled onto an obscure post-Sleeping Beauty Chevrolet commercial that he directed and animated. And tonight I found this half-hour documentary that was written and narrated by him shortly before he died in 2000. The film contains lots of personal history, more of his rarely seen commercial and abstract animation, and a generous serving of his personal philosophies about life. Watch the entire program in three parts:

We’ve come a long way since The Reluctant Dragon. Here’s how Disney’s Phineas and Ferb is made. Except for the rap music, it’s a pretty accurate account.

Speaking of color scripts, I have to point out an interesting and visually striking film experiment by Dice Tsutsumi, whose Toy Story 3 color scripts are featured in the new Pixar book.

Dice’s passion project for the past few years has been Sketchtravel, an idea that he hatched with illustrator Gérald Guerlais, and which features the participation of some of the world’s most well known illustrators, comic artists and animators. (We’ve written about it before on Cartoon Brew.) The project has finally come to a conclusion: an auction of the original sketchbook artwork was held last week and raised over $100,000 for charity. A printed version of the book is now available in France, too.

To support the Sketchtravel project, Dice made the following animated short using his color scripting technique:

In an email, he explained the challenge of making an animated film as someone who comes from a painting background:

“Since I’m not an animator, my focus is to carry a story through all the visual staging elements — color, lighting, and composition. I painted every single frame of the film by myself with a little help from friends and a small amount of After Effects movements. It took me six months to complete it while I was preparing for the auction event.”

Amazon’s website is now showing that they have copies of my latest book in stock. That would be The Art of Pixar: The Complete Color Scripts and Select Art from 25 Years of Animation, an important collection of color scripts from Pixar features and shorts. I haven’t seen the book yet, but those who have tell me it’s a handsome looking volume.

My friends at Catsuka inform me that a French language version of the book is also being prepared for release next month. Here’s the French edition cover:

(Book cover photo via The Pixar Blog)

The team at Dallas based Element X Creative animated this 5-minute long sponsor reel for last week’s Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) Southwest Awards show. If one has to sit through dozens of company logos, this is the way to go – weaving the sponsors names into a haunting and beautiful Twilight Zone-like story about a little boy who stops time and sees his home town in a whole new way. It stands on its own as one of the best CG shorts I’ve seen this year.

Complete credits for this piece after the jump.
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Tel Aviv-based animator Zach Cohen posts one new animated GIF loop every week on his Tumblr Ye Animated Git. There aren’t a whole lot of them posted yet, but the ones he has made are creative and fun.

(Thanks for the loan, Mike Van Eaton)

Just in time for Halloween, UK’s A Large Evil Corporation produced this spooky retro-cool puppet-like CG sample piece, The Gawper:

(Thanks, Brian Lonano)