Cartoon Brew

More In This Month's Wired

Another reason to get your hands on the issue of WIRED that Jerry mentions below is that my pal Jon Gibson has a nice piece in there about filmmaker Kyle Cooper, who is among a handful of modern film title designers on a par with Saul Bass and Pablo Ferro. Cooper talks about his new studio Prologue Films, which is an attempt to pull back and focus on fewer and higher quality projects than his previous design shop Imaginary Forces. The article also mentions a recently published monograph about Kyle Cooper (written by Andrea Codrington) which I've been meaning to pick up.

WIRED DOES PIXAR

Does everybody here know about the latest issue of WIRED?

On sale now, the June issue has a major article about PIXAR and Brad Bird.
It's a must read. And it's posted here.

Great quote from Bird: Once Walt died, watching Disney films get made was like "watching master chefs cook hot dogs."

Animation Festival Done Right

The WEBSITE for the Ottawa Animation Festival (September 22-26, 2004) has just posted details for all of their screenings and retrospectives, and it's pretty damn exciting. Kudos to artistic director Chris Robinson for putting together one of the most diverse and daring group of programs I've ever seen for an animation fest. The screenings range all the way from Soviet propaganda films to contemporary French animation, Popeye to Harvey Birdman, and Hayao Miyazaki to Robert Breer. There's also original programming concepts like the "Words in Motion" series. Even the competition jury members are cool folk like Bill Plympton, Gary Baseman and Mo Willems. I'm honored to be the programmer for one of the tributes at this year's Ottawa fest: the Fred Crippen Retrospective. This is the first major retrospective of Fred's work, and if you only know him as the creator of ROGER RAMJET, then be prepared for an eye-opening experience. Fred will also be coming up to Ottawa to partake in the festivities.

Pixar's Growing Pains

Here is a FOLLOW-UP to this STORY from a few days ago about Pixar's plans to expand their Emeryville campus. Unless the Emeryville City Council is mentally deficient, they'll let Pixar keep their fence.

Seonna Hong Show

The talented Seonna Hong, whose BG paintings can be seen on MY LIFE AS A TEENAGE ROBOT and TEACHER'S PET, has a painting show that opens tomorrow evening, May 22, at the sixspace gallery (549 West 23rd Street in downtown LA). Sixspace owner Caryn Coleman writes about the show on her site art.blogging.la.

UPA COMICS

Here are four issues of UPA's first comic book: Dell's "GERALD McBOING BOING AND THE NEAR SIGHTED MR. MAGOO". This series ran five issues in 1952-53 - then Dell published seven more issues of just plain "MR. MAGOO" spread out over the next decade. DC's FOX & CROW outsold the Dell UPA comics no doubt, but for Columbia Pictures, Magoo & McBoing Boing brought more prestige at the box office - and that's what counts!

Click over to Diamond Galleries' Scoop to see the covers enlarged!

TICKET TO JERUSALEM

This may be the oddest film I plug on the Brew:

Next week at the REDCAT they are showing a feature film psuedo documentary called TICKET TO JERUSALEM. Here's the plot: A Palestinian 16mm film collector running a mobile cinema from his old truck throughout the West Bank (mainly showing Heckle & Jeckle cartoons!) tries to get into forbidden Jerusalem to do a special outdoor screening.

It sounds like something I'd like to see. It screens in L.A. next Wednesday night at 9:30pm at the Walt Disney Concert Hall Redcat Theater. The trailer is here.

SHARK TALE TRAILER

Dreamworks Animation trailer for SHARK TALE is here.

ANIMATION PRESERVATION

This upcoming Saturday, May 22nd at 3:00pm, ASIFA-Hollywood presents Part Two of a demonstration and discussion of animated film preservation and restoration, this time focusing on sound films from the late 1920s through
1940s.
UCLA archivist Jere Guldin will lecture and screen rare restored prints of cartoons from the golden age of animation. Topics covered will include sound restoration techniques; early sound formats; recovery of original titles; and comparisons of Technicolor shorts preserved from original successive exposure negatives and sole-surviving nitrate prints.
Preserved films to be shown include the Toby the Pup cartoon, CIRCUS TIME (1930); the Ub Iwerks ComiColor Cartoon, BALLOON LAND (1935), and Flip the Frog short, FLYING FISTS (1931); the Fleischer short subject explaining sound-on-film, FINDING HIS VOICE (1929); and many others.

Saturday May 22nd, 2004 • 3:00pm
THE AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE
TED ASHLEY/WARNER BROS. SCREENING ROOM
2021 N. Western Ave.
Hollywood, CA
ASIFA MEMBERS: FREE! Non-Members: $10.00

PLANE CRAZY

I posted this a while ago on my Cartoon Research site, but since the date is coming up soon, I thought I'd repost this info here on the Brew:

The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra will be performing the score to PLANE CRAZY live, at UCLA's Royce Hall on June 5, 2004, preceeding a screening of Buster Keaton's STEAMBOAT BILL JR.
Alexander Rannie will be reconstructing the music and sound-effects exactly as they were recorded, utilizing rare extant material. Rannie, who has worked on numerous projects in film and television (including THE REN & STIMPY SHOW), has previously composed scores for several of the Alice comedies shown on the Disney Channel.
Rannie says, "As far as I know, this will be the first performance of "Plane Crazy" with the reconstructed original Carl Stalling score."
PLANE CRAZY premiered on May15, 1928 as a silent, but was never widely released. Carl Stalling provided a pastiche of popular and traditional tunes (a compiled score) for the sound version released as a result of the immense popularity of "Steamboat Willie."

The Art Of Silver

With the plethora of sketchbooks being published by animation artists nowadays, it takes a little extra effort to stand out from the pack. Designer Stephen Silver has managed to do just that with his newly published sketchbook THE ART OF SILVER, a ful-color 160-page hardcover book. I'd enjoyed his first sketchbook from a couple years back, which was printed in a far more humble 32-page b-&-w comic book format, but I hardly expected such an ambitious follow-up. This book redefines what it means for an artist to self-publish a collection of their work, with page after page of handsomely printed sketchbook drawings, illustration work and caricatures drawn in an impressive variety of media including gouache, Prismacolor, brush pen and ink. The lush printing gives the reader the added bonus of being able to see Stephen's light blue and red pencil roughs under his clean-ups.

Also included is Stephen's professional work from animated projects he's designed: CLERKS: THE ANIMATED SERIES, DANNY PHANTOM and CRASH NEBULA. His design work from DISNEY'S KIM POSSIBLE is missing, most likely due to legal reasons, and while it would have been nice to see, the huge variety of art already in the book more than makes up for the absence of those designs.

Like many of the most original and creative animation artists, Stephen is predominantly self-taught. He's developed his own distinctive way of drawing, in which he places an emphasis on rhythm and flow, combined with a strong sense of personality, which perhaps owes to his artistic training as a theme park caricaturist where the goal is to capture a person's likeness. Another throwback to his caricature days is his affinity for drawing heads, which he explains is one of his favorite drawing subjects.

Throughout the book, Stephen shares ideas about drawing, such as how he likes to draw multiple characters on a page to see their shape contrasts and his "figure eight" design technique. The greatest insight can be gained though by simply flipping through the pages and studying the impressive range of one artist's work. The binding of the book indicates that this is Volume 1, and hopefully in the future we'll be seeing many more volumes of Stephen Silver's work. THE ART OF SILVER also has a foreword by film director Kevin Smith and a backword by MAD artist Tom Richmond. For ordering info, visit Silvertoons.com.

Seinfeld+Animation=Tonight on NBC

Airing on NBC tonight is THE ADVENTURES OF SEINFELD & SUPERMAN from 8:44-9 pm. The live-action/animated combo will be hawking American Express in this odd sweeps month programming stunt. The special will be comprised of the first Seinfeld/Superman webisode "A Uniform Used To Mean Something," which premiered online a couple months ago, as well as the premiere of the second installment called "Hindsight."

MO WILLEMS UPDATE

Mo Willems (SHEEP IN THE BIG CITY) tells us he will be attending the Chicago BOOKEXPO:

"I'll be at the Disney/Hyperion tables plugging my new kids books THE PIGEON FINDS A HOT DOG! (sequel to the Caldecott honored DON'T LET THE PIGEON DRIVE THE BUS!) and KNUFFLE BUNNY: A CAUTIONARY TALE (which utilizes cartoon characters over black and white photos). I'll be giving the lunch address at the ABC (children's booksellers org) and discuss how I use animation production techniques for books while at BookExpo, where one of my originals will be awarded to an "outstanding" bookseller (the Pannel award).
I'll also be signing for the public at Chicago's printers row on that Saturday."

More info at www.mowillems.com

BOOKEXPO & LICENSING SHOW

Two big industry events are right around the corner - BOOKEXPO AMERICA June 3-6 in Chicago and LICENSING INTERNATIONAL June 8-10 in New York.

These are the two biggies for people in the trade - and its the place to be to see what will appear in bookstores and toystores for the next 12 months. I'm not planning to attend either show this time around, but I've been to each in recent years and they are quite extensive. For example, this year MGM plans to unveil a "Baby Pink Panther" line (see image above right) at the Licensing Show, and Disney licencees will show off their INCREDIBLES tie-in books (see left) at BookExpo.

And here's a clue for loyal BREW readers attending the BookExpo: seek out the Chronicle Books display for information on Amid's upcoming projects... and locate Harper Collins Design for an upcoming top-secret Jerry project.

JACK BRADBURY, R.I.P.

Golden Age Disney animator and prolific "funny animal" comic book artist Jack Bradbury passed away last week at the age of 89. Mark Evanier has a nice look at Bradbury's career HERE.

CANEMAKER IN PRINT

Always happy to post a John Canemaker update:

The current May/June issue of PRINT ("America's Graphic Design Magazine") has two new writings by Canemaker:
a book review of William Moritz's biography of Oskar Fischinger "Optical Poetry"( p. 24+);and a profusely illustrated essay on Andreas Hykade, Germany's controversial independent animator: "Jesus, Elvis and Me" (pp. 70-76).

FOODFIGHT

The following are excerpts from an article, "For This Animated Movie, a Cast of Household Names" By Eric A. Taub published in today's NY TIMES:

Threshold Entertainment, a modestly sized animation and special effects company that has never made a full-length animated film before, hopes to go "Toy Story" one better with "Foodfight!," an animated movie that takes place in a supermarket after the lights go down.

The company has the right to use animated versions of 80 name-brand products and their associated characters, including Charlie the Tuna and the Brawny paper towel man. The movie is not expected to be released until late 2005, at the earliest, and the company does not yet have a deal with a distributor.

"The movie looks wonderful,'' said Mark Mills, president of Motion Picture Magic, a product placement company in Encino, Calif. "Threshold will be considered to be the new and upcoming Pixar.''

Read the whole piece HERE. (Thanks to E. Lurio for the link)

KID BEGS DISNEY TO KEEP 2-D

An eighth grader wrote an editorial in today's New York NEWSDAY, begging Disney not to abandon traditional animation:

During spring break, my family and I took the animation studio tour at MGM Studios in Florida. A man showing us a few sketches and backgrounds from the new Disney movie "Home on the Range," said something startling. He said that Disney plans to stop making animated movies drawn by hand and shift to the newer 3-D computer animation technique, which was used in such hits as "Toy Story" and "Finding Nemo."
When we heard this, almost everyone in the room gasped. How could Disney end all those years of wonderful 2-D animation in favor of a computer?

Read the rest HERE.

Emeryville Turning Into Pixarville

The SAN FRANCISCO GATE has a piece HERE about Pixar's ambitious expansion plans. The studio has a 20-year, $325 million development plan that could result in three new buildings with 544,000 square feet of space. The studio's current space is 218,000 square feet. Also on the drawing board is a six-story 1,801-space parking garage. The best news though is that Pixar believes over the next couple decades they'll be adding 1,350 more jobs to their current 625-person payroll.

Linkin Park's "Breaking the Habit"

Sunday's LA TIMES had a short piece on the new Linkin Park music video "Breaking the Habit" which was supervised (and according to the TIMES, mostly animated by) Kazuto Nakazawa of the Japanese studio Production I.G. Nakazawa was also responsible for the graphic animated sequence in KILL BILL VOLUME 1. The Linkin Park video, which has already debuted in the UK, will start in full rotation on MTV and MTV2 in the US with a "Making of the Video" program premiering on May 24. The video depicts the troubled lives and emotional conflicts of various people living in a gritty, urban apartment high-rise.

The LA TIMES had this interesting quote from MTV's exec VP of music Tom Calderone: "It's anime, always going to be a little edgier. You can't do anime that feels like bubble gum. It's always going to have a dark side." Calderone's quote is telling in that it illustrates what anime has come to represent in the United States. Not merely a look or style of animation, anime is where people turn when they want to produce cartoons featuring mature, edgy and intelligent storytelling. Anime's near monopoly on adult animation however doesn't mean that it's the only style available to filmmakers. Involving, emotionally satisfying stories are possible in myriad visual styles, including fluid Disney-style animation. Sadly though, decades of infantile and incompetent storytelling by the modern Disney studio, Katzenberg, Bluth and others have forced filmmakers to avoid like the plague the lush appealing style of animation pioneered by the Golden Age Disney studio. At least we can be thankful that intelligence has finally found a home in animation, even if it means for now these type of stories are being told exclusively through Japanese animation.
("Breaking the Habit" image from Anime UK News)

SIMPSONS Voice Actors Still Fighting?

The NY DAILY NEWS reports that even though Fox Television announced over a week ago that they'd reached a deal with THE SIMPSONS voice cast, the six actors still haven't signed their new contracts. According to the paper, the actors are "balking at Fox's 11th-hour demand that they help promote SIMPSONS DVDS and other products - for which they won't be paid."

BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE A JOB?

A nicely done black-&-white Fleischer-style anti-Bush cartoon spot. It was written and directed by Tom Neely and Greg Saunders, and animated by Neely.
(Thanks to Harry McCracken for the link)