Woodpecker Update

Props to Ruben Procopio — who worked at Disney animation for many years, and whose father was a sculptor at Disney for 35 years — who has been doing great sculpts for Tracy Mark Lee and Electric Tiki. The Woody Woodpecker statues he did are particulary great (and I should know, I have ‘em myself).
Speaking of Woody, my friends at StoryMakers Studio tell me that response to our announcement last week about the big Salute to Woody Woodpecker and Walter Lantz at the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood has been tremendous.
Preceeding a screening of 12 Lantz classics, they’ve got a panel with June Foray, Maurice LeMarche and Billy West, who will now be joined by animator Phil Roman and our friend Leonard Maltin — sounds like a fun evening. The panel will be video taped and available online at a later date (to be announced). I’ve been informed there is still a small block of seats available for the live event – which for Cartoon Brew readers is free. To sign up for the event, or to reserve your online viewing pass, click here. If you sign up for the live event or an online viewing pass, you can post questions for the panel.

The Three Robbers

For those who doubt it - Hand drawn animated features are alive and well in Europe. Case in point: Die Drei Rauber (the Three Robbers).
Unfortunetly, as stated here before, this is one of dozens of foreign animated films produced every year that don’t get distributed in North America. Our friend Sinem Sakaoglu writes:
I thought it might interest you to know we’ll soon be premiering (so far only in Germany and France) the feature version of The Three Robbers (based on the book by Tomi Ungerer; Gene Deitch produced a six minute short version for Weston Woods in 1972)
It was a relatively small crew that made it all happen and though I now have a few more gray hairs than when I started the project (I did production management and overseas supervision), it was a fun and rewarding time… Hope it gets over to the other side of the pond.
So do I. It looks cute. See the trailer here.

Where Do You Like To Work?

Every artist has their favorite place to work, but it’s unlikely that any of those places offer the amusing view that animation filmmaker Chris Harding finds in Kansas City. He writes about his inspiring scenery in this blog entry.

More Backgrounds

We’ve plugged the blogs of both Hans Bacher and Rob Richards numerous times recently. Both are putting a spotlight on the unsung work of background painters in animated cartoons. Today, Richards posts a composite of the pan shot showing the three dimensional cave (actually an intricate miniature live action set) in Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad The Sailor. Fleischer artisans clearly put a lot of thought, hard work and artistic know how into these Stereo-Optical “set-backs”. Considering how some of these elaborate shots only appear on screen for several seconds, I encourage Rob to create more composites of these. They certainly deserve a closer look.

Get Well, Mel?

Above and below are two parts of one interesting piece of WB ephemera that that one of our readers (who wishes to remain anonymous) acquired recently. We believe it may have been a first, more informal get well card to Mel Blanc very shortly after his catastrophic auto wreck on Jan. 24, 1961. This would have been before Chuck Jones did his Magnum Opus card - almost 4 feet long that showed all 14 WB characters lying side-by-side in bed with thermometers in their mouths being attended by a doctor and a nurse with the Doc saying “I don’t know what is wrong with them, they have all lost their voice.” The names seem roughly right for 1961. But were Maltese and Scribner there at that point? Perhaps it was created for another?
Can any of our readers, researchers and historians attribute who it was done for, and who drew it???

Music Vids by Shoji Goto and Jamie Mason

These two recent music vid discoveries make me very happy.
• “Umo” is a primarily stop motion video directed by Shoji Goto for the all-female Japanese group OOIOO. The energetic uninhibited filmmaking in this piece is a true delight. Peep it here or download a better quality Quicktime version here (28mb).
• “Frog Dance” is an inspired bit of Flash animation by Jamie Mason (aka Hobo Divine) produced for the Nick Jr. series Yo Gabba Gabba. It’s mighty rare to see anybody today pull off this type of super-limited animation with such charm and vitality

The World Is Your Canvas

Who needs pencil and paper? Italian graffiti artist and painter Blu paints his animation onto the ground and walls. His latest piece, Fantoche (posted below), was created earlier this month during the Fantoche Animation Festival in Switzerland. It is a brilliant and inspiring creative accomplishment, not to mention an obviously staggering amount of work:
lu also creates hand-drawn animation and is the subject of a forthcoming documentary, the trailer for which can be viewed here.