64 Comments »   posted in TV

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Worth checking out: a hi-res version of the Cartoonstitute short 3 Dog Band directed by Paul Rudish (Dexter’s Lab, Star Wars: Clone Wars). I wanted to like this short because there’s a lot to appreciate about it, including funny character movement, moments of visual inventiveness (the dj who flips his turntables into a bike), and a solid track at the end that is probably the best piece of music to ever accompany a Cartoon Network product.

At the same time, the characters have vague unappealing personalities, there’s little chemistry between the leads, and the attempts at humor fall flat (was the ending even supposed to be a joke?). It’s also a shame they couldn’t figure out what to do with the music. The last couple minutes come across as a fetishistic exercise in design and art direction that offers little in the way of entertainment value. By comparison, this is an example of how to properly end a cartoon with a musical sequence that rewards its audience.

In a shorts program, not every cartoon is going to be a homerun, especially when they’re produced in the completely nonsensical manner of allowing each director to only make one short. But when all is said and done, even the weaker shorts that I’ve seen so far from the Cartoonstitute program have their moments, and few appear to be offensively bad as so many TV animation pilots tend to be nowadays.

30 Comments »   posted in Shorts, TV

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Interviews Worth Reading and Hearing

October 22, 2009 9:47 am

Filmmaker Michael Sporn interviews Jennifer and Bert Klein about their ambitious new animated short Pups of Liberty and the lengths they to to finish it:

Jennifer: It is hard to sit down and work after you have worked a full day, but I always remembered something Bert would say, “Even if you just get one drawing done you are one drawing ahead.” So I’d try and get one scene’s worth of layouts done a night, or read a track, or just something, and we’d inch forward until we were done.

The Venture Bros. creator Jackson Publick and voice actor James Urbaniak recently appeared on “The Best Show on WFMU with Tom Scharpling.” The interview lasts a couple hours and there’s a lot of goofiness, but there’s also a lot of good discussion because the host, Scharpling, is a TV writer and producer (Monk, Tom Goes to the Mayor). The interview begins a little after an hour into the September 29 program, which can be listened to at the WFMU website.

5 Comments »   posted in Animators, Shorts, TV

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Meet the new Nicktoon

October 21, 2009 9:30 am

Disney buys Marvel, so it only stands to reason that Nickelodeon would pick up Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

But Nick didn’t just buy the old TV shows and movies, they bought the property in its entirety, including the merchandising rights and the ability to make new series and TV shows.

MTV Networks acquired the global rights to the Turtles from The Mirage Group and 4Kids Entertainment for roughly $60 million dollars. Nickelodeon plans to develop a new CG-animated TMNT television series to premiere in 2012 and, in partnership with Paramount Pictures, a new Ninja Turtles feature film for 2012.

One of the most popular kids’ television programs of the 1980s, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was created in 1984 by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird as an independent comic book. Note, the current network TMNT animated series now running on CW4Kids Saturday morning will continue to air through Aug. 31, 2010.

45 Comments »   posted in TV

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The Mad Magazine TV Special (1974)

October 19, 2009 12:05 am

I admit it, this one has me stumped. Don Martin, Antonio Prohias, Al Jafee, Mort Drucker and Dave Berg – adapted to animation! How did I miss this? Did it ever air? If so, what network?

It was co-directed by Chris Ishii, Jimmy Murakami and Gordon Bellamy. You can hear Allan Swift and Len Maxwell on the soundtrack. There are some New York animation veterans, such as Johnny Gent and Cosmo Anzilotti, as well as many Hollywood freelancers, including Gerard Baldwin and Bud Luckey, listed in the end credits. Perhaps my friends Mark Kausler and David Brain (who are also credited) can send us some info on this in the comments section below.

It’s been uploaded in three parts. Start here:

UPDATE: MAD’s Maddest Writer, Dick DeBartolo wrote to JJ Sedelmaier about the special. Quote: “We had a copy of that show up in the office, but I haven’t seen it in years. It never aired. That was the pilot. Nobody wanted to sponsor a show that made fun of products that were advertised on TV, like car manufacturers.”

(Thanks, Charles Brubaker)

41 Comments »   posted in TV

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