Cartoon Brew

ANOTHER BAKSHI INTERVIEW

For those who can't get enough of Ralph...

Emru Townsend has posted, on his fine FPS website, a lengthy, exclusive interview with Bakshi here.

BILL MELENDEZ ON LINE

Looney Tunes/UPA/Charlie Brown animation veteran Bill Melendez has a newly redesigned website (using Flash) that's very cool - and loaded with information (and images) from Melendez's fantastic career in Hollywood cartoons.

Check it out: www.billmelendez.tv

BREW AT COMIC CON - Part 1

Here's an early heads up - Jerry Beck will be part of at least three panels/screenings at the San Diego Comic Con July 22-25.

I don't have all the details myself, but here's what I know: I'll be part of a panel/tribute to Bob Clampett with Mark Evanier and other special guests. I'm hoping to show a part of a Bob Clampett documentary that will be included as bonus material on Looney Tunes Golden Collection volume 2. So come by and get a sneak preview.
I will be moderating a spotlight on Sid Jacobson on Friday July 23rd at 1:00pm. Sid was the man behind Harvey Comics from 1954 till 1994 - 40 years of friendly ghosts, devil kids and muscle-bound ducks! Don't miss this!
And I'll be running an all new edition of THE WORST CARTOONS EVER on Saturday night. Will Super President, Mighty Mr. Titan and Johnny Cypher In Dimension Zero return in all new episodes? Find out on Saturday July 24th.

I'll update my activities at Comic Con with exact dates, times and room numbers as we get closer to the event.

UPA ON HELLBOY

Columbia TriStar's upcoming 2-disc HELLBOY dvd will contain four great cartoons from Columbia's UPA archives, including How Now Boing Boing, Gerald McBoing-Boing on Planet Moo and The Tell Tale Heart. Director Guillermo del Toro is a longtime animated cartoon fan who insisted these cartoons be added to the dvd release.

That's really the only way Columbia will release it's cartoons. Similiarly, Ub Iwerks Color Rhapsody SKELETON FROLIC is included on dvd release of THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVERA - because a certain cartoon buff at TriStar insisted it be part of the package.

It's too bad the marketing geniuses at Columbia TriStar Home Video themselves don't understand the bounty of animation classics in their vaults...

POPEYE IN THE HOOD...

...and on the side doors, and in the rear view mirror.

NASCAR drivers Jeremy Mayfield (#19) and Casey Kahne (#9) are driving Popeye 75th Anniversary-themed cars this Saturday night at Daytona. The race is being shown on Fox.

You can see the Popeye car - or buy the toy version - at the NASCAR.COM Superstore.
(Thanks to Tom Giatras for the link).

Peter Lion Pan King Mystery Solved

A few weeks ago, I wondered why Captain Hook from PETER PAN was advertising a new LION KING attraction at Disneyland Paris. As it turns out, it's part of yet another incredibly misguided and stupid advertising campaign by Disney where all the classic characters in the theme park are running away from lions and climbing up onto the park's buildings. You can read more about it at the Laughing Place message board. (Thanks to narkspud for the link)

RACING STRIPES

You hated his QUEST FOR CAMELOT, now you can hate Frederik Du Chau's new live action/CG hybrid... RACING STRIPES.

Fine Weekend Reading

Taylor Jessen points out THIS PIECE that he wrote for the 20th anniversary of the animated feature TWICE UPON A TIME. His much longer piece about the production of the film will appear in the upcoming ANIMATION BLAST #9. The best part of this on-line article is the series of insightful quotes from the production principals - among them Henry Selick, Harley Jessup, John Korty, David Fincher and Chuck Swenson - in which they discuss the lessons they learned from working on the film.

Why CG Humans Look Creepy

Interesting SLATE article that discusses why realistic CG humans often look creepy in video games. What the author is saying could also be applied to a lot of computer animated movies and TV shows being produced nowadays.

Animation Done Well

What did Dominique Monfery, the French director of the short film DESTINO, do after Disney shuttered its French animation studio (Disney de Montreuil) in fall 2003? Monfery and fellow ex-Disney artists opened up their own animation studio outside of Paris called Welldone. The goal of the studio is to produce feature-length animated features. There's a couple tantalizing images of one of their in-development projects in this AnimeLand article. The artwork seems to be a fresh combination of hand drawn and CG techniques. For those that speak French, there's also an interview with Monfery about his plans for the studio. Welldone however isn't the only studio that formed in the aftermath of Disney's French animation collapse. Néomis is another outfit now up and running which is composed of nearly two dozen ex-Disney de Montreuil staffers. There's also an article (in French again) about this studio HERE. Both of these studios are brimming with talent and potential, and now that the artists don't have to work on tripe like THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE and TARZAN, the sky is truly the limit. (Thanks to Gérald for the links).

CONTEST WINNERS

This morning we held a trivia contest in which the first five winners (Marc Crisafulli, Joe Queen, Chad Erekson and Jay Smith and Josh Cooley) got a copy of Shout Factory's new dvd compilation SPIKE & MIKE'S CUTTING EDGE CLASSICS. The question:

What was the name of the first CGI short film from Pixar, directed by John Lasseter?

However, the answer I was looking for, THE ADVENTURES OF ANDRE AND WALLY B (1984), was wrong.

Brew reader Patrick Toifl pointed out to me that ANDRE AND WALLY B. was actually directed by Alvy Ray Smith. John Lasseter did character design and animation. You'd think I'd know that. Patrick will get a special prize for correcting me...

And I'll make it up to you all with another contest real soon.

Set the TIVO

Turner Classic Movies is without contest my favorite cable channel so it's a pity that I rarely have reason to plug them here on Cartoon Brew. During the next few days though they're running a couple of films that may be of interest to readers of this site. First they'll be screening Ernie Pintoff's extremely rare live-action short THE SHOES (1960) starring Buddy Hackett. At the time Pintoff produced this film, he was still heavily involved in animation, running his own TV commercial studio in New York City and producing independent shorts like THE VIOLINIST and THE INTERVIEW. THE SHOES marks the beginning of Pintoff's transition from animation to live-action. He once explained in an interview his reason for switching to live-action: "At that time I was losing interest in animation and was captivated by the prospects of communicating to a broader audience of people through live-action...Cartooning and animation was mostly humor and I had become more interested in drama and serious subjects dealing with adults." These are curious comments considering how Pintoff was one of animation's most distinctive and promising talents in the late-'50s and early-'60s (FLEBUS anybody?) and how his later live-action work never seemed to quite live up to the singular personal voice he brought to his animated films. The other film of interest that TCM is showing is an actual animated feature: THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED. The silent sihouette film, directed by Lotte Reiniger, was released in 1926. The Turner website has some interesting background details on PRINCE ACHMED, including the nugget that Reiniger was only 23 years old when she began working on the feature.

BAKSHI'S SPIDER-MAN

Ralph Bakshi discusses his role with the 1960's SPIDER-MAN TV cartoons in the Toronto Globe and Mail.

CUTTING EDGE CLASSICS

Shout Factory has released a second set of animated shorts from the Spike & Mike Festival archives, SPIKE & MIKE CUTTING EDGE CLASSICS.

This is an outstanding collection of 18 independent shorts - not the "sick & twisted" variety, but interesting, entertaining films by the current crop of leading independent talents - including Adam Elliot, Patrick Smith and Marilyn Zornado. My favorites included in this set are STUBBLE TROUBLE (Calabash Studio), THE SNOWMAN (Lane Nakamura) and MONS THE CAT (Pjotr Sapegin)... this is great stuff - and if you've been putting off buying these short collections, this one is a great starter collection.

Shout Factory wants to encourage BREW readers to take a chance and has offered us five copies to give away. I couldn't resist the oppportunity to allow some of our readers a chance to get this dvd for free... so I guess I'll have to create a contest to give everyone a chance. I'll post a trivia question on Thursday (7/1) at (roughly) 9am Pacific time. First five correct answers will win the CUTTING EDGE CLASSICS dvd.

Arthur De Pins

Here's a name to start watching closely. I mentioned in my Annecy Festival report a few weeks back that De Pins' funny and stylish black-and-white short THE CRAB REVOLUTION had won the Audience Prize at Annecy. Then a couple days ago at the Cartoon Retro forum, somebody posted a link to samples of Arthur's magazine illustrations and Flash animation which made me an even bigger fan of his work. And now, the cherry on top is that I just realized he also made the student film GERALDINE, which I'd rather enjoyed when I first saw it a few years ago. At the Metronomic Productions website, you can watch GERALDINE, THE CRAB REVOLUTION and a third terrific short (produced in Flash) that De Pins recently directed called L'EAU DE ROSES. Click on the "Shorts" category to access the films.

MY LITTLE WORLD Presentation

Tomorrow evening, June 30th, the Animation Co-op will present the program "Mike Nguyen on MY LITTLE WORLD." Animator/director Nguyen will speak about the making of his much anticipated independent animated feature MY LITTLE WORLD, and discuss his interest in hand-drawn animation as a form of expression. The presentation will include clips from the upcoming film as well as a Q-&-A session. Admission is free and the talk will begin at 7:30 pm at the Glendale Central Library. RSVP at the AnimationCoop.org.

SELICK & BURTON ARE BACK

Henry Selick has big plans for Will Vinton Studios. Five films are being developed - but first up, Tim Burton's THE CORPSE BRIDE.

Johnny Depp has been signed to lead voice duties in Bride, along with Helena Bonham Carter, Albert Finney, Christopher Lee, Emily Watson and Joanna Lumley. Danny Elfman will also be returning to work with Selick & Burton when he scores the film.

The 2D Expo: Flash Panel Wrap-up

I was planning to post a summary of the Flash & TV Animation panel that I moderated a few days ago at ASIFA-Hollywood's 2D Expo, but panelists Lili Chin and Eddie Mort beat me to it with this extensive write-up posted on their fwak! blog. Going into the panel, I wasn't sure what sort of a conclusion (if any) we'd reach with the discussion, but the panelists - the aforementioned Chin and Mort, along with Gabe Swarr, Bob Harper and Jorge Gutierrez - went a long way towards convincing me and the audience that Flash is the ideal production system for hand-drawn "cartoony" TV series. The biggest benefit of Flash, constantly stressed by the various panelists, is that it offers animation creators an unprecedented amount of control over their finished product and allows them to see their actual drawings reach the screen. Craig McCracken supported this theory in a recent ANIMATION MAGAZINE interview about his new Flash series for Cartoon Network: "You don't have to worry about stuff being off-model. The animation is all going to look dead on, and you don't have to worry about the layout process."

Another conclusion that we reached is that it's financially feasible to produce a Flash series entirely in the United States. While in the first couple seasons, a Flash production may cost as much as a TV series produced overseas, each subsequent season will decrease in cost as libraries are built up in Flash. This is something that never happens in the traditional TV production process, even on a show like THE SIMPSONS which is now in its umpteenth season. Also, with libraries built up of designs, background art and basic movements, the tedious grunt work is already completed thus allowing the animators to focus on creating interesting performances with the main characters. Even in the scenario that a show is outsourced to other countries, the artists in LA still maintain an advantage because rather than having to go through the laborious process of calling for retakes, Flash animation files can be fixed from any location with a minimum of hassles. For example, MUCHA LUCHA has an in-house animation crew in Los Angeles devoted to tweaking and finessing the animation that comes back from overseas. It remains to be seen how widespread the use of Flash will become in the LA animation industry, but it's undeniable that Flash is responsible for one of the biggest shake-ups in the TV animation industry in recent times and it'll be fascinating to watch how the union of Flash and TV animation will play out over the next few years.

Also I want to briefly mention how excited I was at the results of the 2D Expo, organized by ASIFA-Hollywood board member (and fellow Brew partner) Jerry Beck. I think the results went far and beyond anybody's wildest expectations and I can see this event maturing into something truly special over the coming years. My immediate suggestions for next year are to create a larger exhibitor/networking area and to have more specific how-to panels and talks related to specialized aspects of animation production. All in all though, I thought it was a great success and it seems the majority of people who attended agree that it was a fine event. The most elegant and thoughtful write-up I've read about the event so far is courtesy of animation artist Ronnie del Carmen, who made the trek all the way from Pixar along with fellow filmmaker Jim Capobianco.

ANIMATED IN IOWA

If you live in Iowa, or are planning to drive through it during the next month - check this out:

"From Mickey to the Grinch - Art of the Animated Film" features work by and from the collection of George Nicholas at the Blanden Memorial Art Museum, in Fort Dodge. Nicholas worked with Disney, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Hanna-Barbera and other studios from the 1930s to the 1970s.

FELIX AT THE FAIR

Brew reader Chris Merritt has posted this gallery of vintage Felix the Cat merchandise pictures:

"I've been doing a lot of research on old piers lately - a friend of mine picked up a cache of photos taken by Warner Brothers as possible film locations back in the 30s & 40s - a few of these turned up this odd Felix game!"