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In the cheap glitter and glow of a fading Coney Island a group of characters live out their sordid, strange lives trying to get somewhere fast—any way they can.

The post ‘Last Days of Coney Island’ by Ralph Bakshi appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

In many ways, Beagle's story -- an artist, taken in by a con artist -- is as classic as his writing.

The post ‘The Last Unicorn’ Scribe Peter S. Beagle Sues His Manager for Elder Abuse And Fraud appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

This week we celebrate the artwork of comics legend Paul Smith! The 600th issue of Uncanny X-Men hit the stands this week and I was very pleased to see that Smith contributed one of the variant covers for this landmark issue. X-Men was really the reason I got into comics as a kid. In fact the very first comic I picked up and read(besides the Bob’s Big Boy comics they used to give away when you ordered a kid’s meal..) was Uncanny X-Men #166 with that glorious Paul Smith cover of The X-Men battling the Brood!

A good friend of mine at the time(probably ’83/’84) had an older brother who collected comics and he had an big, old chest full of them(no bags ‘n boards, mind you..). So, when I’d go over there for a sleep-over, I’d get to rummage through his treasure trove of funny-books and then pull a few out for some late-night sleeping bag reading! Those Paul Smith issues of X-Men were truly magical, and always will be to me. There have been many great artists to work with Chris Claremont on his classic X-Men run, including legends like Dave Cockrum, John Byrne, Terry Austin, Bob Wiacek, John Romita Jr, Barry Windsor Smith, Arthur Adams, Alan Davis, Jim Lee, etc. etc, but for me, my favorite X-Men artist will always be Paul Smith. 

Smith is mostly a self-taught artist. He worked as an animator on Ralph Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings and American Pop before working at Marvel Comics in the early 1980’s. After establishing himself on titles like X-Men, Doctor Strange, and Marvel Fanfare, Smith would go on to do more independent, critically acclaimed series like Leave It To Chance and The Golden Age, both with writer James Robinson. He continues to work in mainstream comics for special projects, and cover illustrations, while also staying very busy with private commission work.

The best place to get updates on what Paul Martin Smith(PMS) is up to and to see more art is on his website here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

The outspoken animation legend speaks with Cartoon Brew about his new film "The Last Days of Coney Island" and other topics.

The renegade animation director will debut the project online on his 77th birthday.

Women don't receive the same opportunities as men do in animation, and they're finally speaking out about it.

These cartoonists stood up against intimidation and fought for their right to freedom of expression. Let us celebrate their victories.

We rarely see "Peace On Earth" alongside more traditionally revered holiday standards like "A Charlie Brown Christmas" or "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"�but we really should.

What can we learn about the animation industry from this photo of the animation crew from "Lord of the Rings"?

Ralph Bakshi pulled himself away from his drawing desk in New Mexico to chat with Cartoon Brew about his legacy, his latest project "The Last Days of Coney Island," which he recently funded on Kickstarter, and what he really thinks about the computer’s role in animation these days.

The taboo-shattering counterculture films of seventy-five-year-old animation legend Ralph Bakshi will be the subject of a retrospective this May in his childhood home of Brooklyn, New York.

Whether it be for lack of budget or a desire to take center stage, series creators lending their own voices to their animated television shows has always been fairly commonplace – Mike Judge (Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill), John Kricfalusi (Ren and Stimpy), Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy) and Trey Parker and Matt Stone (South Park) immediately spring to mind. However, in recent years, more and more feature directors have started getting in on the trend. From throwaway one-liners to continuous roles throughout entire franchises, here is a list of some animation directors and the characters they brought to life in their own films.

1. Eric Goldberg

As the animation director for Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003), Goldberg not only supervised the animation of the WB’s classic characters but he voiced some of them as well. Goldberg recorded the dialogue of Marvin the Martian, Tweety Bird and Speedy Gonzalez.

2. Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud

The distinctive sputters, spurts and high-speed mutterings of The Minions in Despicable Me (2010) and Despicable Me 2 (2013) belong to the films’ co-directors Pierre Coffin (above left) and Chris Renaud. And as the character’s popularity grows, so does their vocal commitment, as the two will reprise their roles in next year’s prequel Minions.

3. Ralph Bakshi

In his debut film Fritz the Cat (1972), director Ralph Bakshi voiced one of the boorish antagonist Pig Cops, who is also referred to as “Ralph” multiple times in his scenes.

4. Brad Bird

Agnes Gooch, Edith Head, Patricia Highsmith, Linda Hunt – when it comes to figuring out who inspired the character of Edna Mode, people love to toss out many names, but in the end, the cutthroat designer of superhero fashion was brought to life by The Incredibles (2004) director Brad Bird.

5. Rich Moore

Rich Moore, director of Wreck-It Ralph (2012) provided the dreary monotone of acidic jawbreaker Sour Bill, the henchman to the bombastic King Candy.

6. Richard Williams

Even to this day, the toon celebrity cameos in Who Framed Roger Rabbit(1988) remain some of the best nods to the golden age of cartoons, especially that of Droopy Dog, who gets his opportunity to best Eddie Valiant with some traditional ‘toon high-jinks as a tricky elevator operator, sluggishly voiced by the film’s animation director Richard Williams.

7. Chris Wedge

What began as the high-strung snivels and snarls of Scrat in Ice Age (2002) has become a second career for director Chris Wedge who has gone on to vocally personify the prehistoric rodent in 3 sequels, 6 short films, 2 video games and in a walk-on role in an episode of Family Guy.

8. Chris Miller

Royal messengers, tower guards, army commanders, friars and penguins, story artist Chris Miller has lent his voice-over skills to numerous animated films, most notably his returning roles as Geppetto and The Magic Mirror in the Shrek franchise, including Shrek the Third (2007), which he co-directed.

9. Mark Dindal

The often ignored and underrated animated film Cats Don’t Dance (1997) features some beautiful hand-drawn work and stellar vocal performances, including that of director Mark Dindal as the tight-lipped bodyguard/butler Max.

10. Joe Ranft

Pixar story artist, the late Joe Ranft, brought a handful of memorable animated characters to life, including Heimlich (A Bug’s Life), Wheezy the Penguin (Toy Story 2) and Jacques the Cleaner Shrimp (Finding Nemo). But it was in Cars (2006), which he co-directed, that he voiced three characters including the semi-truck Jerry Recycled Batteries.

11. Chris Sanders

In Lilo & Stitch (2002) co-director Chris Sanders takes on the nuanced role of Alien Experiment 626, aka “Stitch,” who escapes from an intergalactic prison only to find himself trapped on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

12. Nathan Greno and Byron Howard

Nathan Greno (above right) and Byron Howard not only paired up as co-directors of Tangled (2010) but also doubled as duos of Thugs and Guards in the animated picture.

13. John Lasseter

With five features under his belt, John Lasseter has had plenty of opportunity to throw himself behind the microphone, however upon review of his filmography, you’ll find he has chosen his roles very carefully, as the role of John Lassetire in Cars 2 (2011) and the hilariously bug-zapped Harry the Mosquito in A Bug’s Life (1998).

“Animation is a young man’s game,” Chuck Jones once said. There’s no question that animation is a labor-intensive art that requires mass quantities of energy and time. While it’s true that the majority of animation directors have directed a film by the age of 30, there are also a number of well known directors who started their careers later.

Directors like Pete Docter, John Kricfalusi and Bill Plympton didn’t begin directing films until they were in their 30s. Don Bluth, Winsor McCay and Frederic Back were late bloomers who embarked on directorial careers while in their 40s. Pioneering animator Emile Cohl didn’t make his first animated film, Fantasmagorie (1908), until he was 51 years old. Of course, that wasn’t just Cohl’s first film, but it is also considered by most historians to be the first true animated cartoon that anyone ever made.

Here is a cross-selection of 30 animation directors, past and present, and the age they were when their first professional film was released to the public.

1. Don Hertzfeldt (19 years old)
   Ah, L’Amour

What is the most funded animation campaign currently running on Kickstarter? Is it:

• A short film by animation legend Ralph Bakshi

• An animated game by Oscar-winning Moonbot Studios

• A proof-of-concept film by Celebrity Deathmatch creator Eric Fogel

The answer is none of the above.

The most successful live animation campaign at the moment is Cyanide and Happiness, a long-running webcomic that aims to branch out into a series of long-form animated episodes. In the eleven days since the campaign was launched, over 7,300 backers have contributed $362,000, easily surpassing the project’s original goal of $250,000. It is already the third-highest funded animation campaign in Kickstarter’s history, and could break more records before it’s all over.

The four twenty-something creators of Cyanide and Happiness—Kris Wilson, Rob DenBleyker, Matt Melvin, Dave McElfatrick—are no strangers to animation. Before coming together to make the comic in 2004, they met each other as teenagers doing animation on Newgrounds. In 2009, they began creating brief animated segments based on their comic. Their YouTube channel has amassed neary 200 million pageviews with short-form bits and pieces of animation.

Now, they aim to do something more ambitious: a series of 10-12 minute episodes. Initially, they attempted to negotiate a TV series deal with cable networks. They wrote about the fruitless effort on their blog:

We walked away from the first two [networks] due to rights and creative control issues. We thought that we could settle those issues in the third deal, but things didn’t quite work out as we hoped. We’re starting to realize that TV as an industry just isn’t compatible with what we want to do with our animation: deliver it conveniently to a global audience, something we’ve been doing all along with our comics these past eight years. That’s just the nature of television versus the Internet, I suppose.

Now they’ve turned to Kickstarter to appeal directly to their fanbase:

We firmly believe the entertainment industry is changing, and the Internet will eventually become the only way people watch shows. Especially the people that make up our awesome fanbase. The Internet is already the largest network, available when you think about it. Why go anywhere else? By reading our comics over the years, you folks have given us the careers we dreamed of having as kids, and turned our silly cartoons into something much, much bigger than ourselves. The prospect of doing an uncensored, unaltered Cyanide & Happiness Show and giving it directly to the fans is an incredible opportunity. We’re really excited to see how far we can take things.

Besides the amount of money raised so far, there’s another noteworthy aspect, and that’s that the C&H artists developed their careers entirely online. This is different from many other high-profile animation projects on Kickstarter launched by mainstream artists whose reputations were established in entertainment mediums outside of the Internet.

It still means something to be Ralph Bakshi, John Kricfalusi or Bill Plympton—that is, being the director of numerous theatrical features, the creator of a groundbreaking TV series, or the king of American indie animation has an incalculable advantage over being an upstart. But as the Cyanide & Happiness campaign has shown, lofty reputations from other mediums can’t match the support of a well-established online following.

The C&H Kickstarter already has more backers than the combined totals of the three aforementioned animation legends, and will also achieve a higher pledge dollar amount before the campaign ends. With this success, as well as the success of webcomic campaigns like MS Paint Adventures and Penny Arcade, the once-maligned webcomic is re-emerging as the unlikley foundation of entertainment empires.

It all kicks off on September 27th at New York’s Museum of Art and Design (aka MAD) with a screening of the works of James and John Whitney. This is followed in mid-October every Friday and Saturday with a curated series of screenings dedicated to Ralph Bakshi, The Hubleys, Sally Cruikshank, Martha Colburn, Jim Trainor and Robert Breer. The restrospective is called Adults in the Dark: Avant-Garde Animation at MAD and it runs through mid-November. It’s an important compilation of landmark animated works by some of the true artists in the field. New Yorkers, check it out!

(Thanks, Aaron Anderson)

First staged in 1976, the Ottawa International Animation Festival is no spring chicken. Only the animation festivals in Annecy (France) and Zagreb (Croatia) can claim to be older. Despite its age though, Ottawa is more eclectic and surprising than at any point in its history.

For the past decade-and-a-half, under the artistic direction of Chris Robinson, the Ottawa Animation Festival has burnished its reputation for challenging and unconventional fare. It has also managed to piss off its fair share of filmmakers, including Sylvain Chomet and Aleksandr Petrov — controversies that Robinson has addressed in his writing.

The North American animation festival scene has become much more crowded in recent years, but at the end of the day, Ottawa remains the gold standard with its trifecta of provocative competition selections, intelligent film/lecture programming, and diverse attendees from the global animation community. It continues to grow too — while the festival has always been a hub for the East Coast animation community, it has recently made a concerted effort to invite more guests from the West Coast animation scene. Below, Chris Robinson talks with Cartoon Brew about the continuing evolution of the Ottawa festival and what we can expect at this year’s edition, which begins next Wednesday, September 19.

Cartoon Brew: How much has the Ottawa animation festival changed since you became its artistic director in the mid-90s?

Chris Robinson: Identity. Stability. Fluidity. Community. Foundation.

The biggest change is the OIAF has a pretty solid foundation in place and it has become very communal and team orientated.

Some of the seeding began when I came aboard in 1995. Having no animation background (outside of working for the OIAF since 1992), I couldn’t help but bring a different perspective to both the programming and identity of the OIAF. It was not always pretty or smooth, but it a starting point. The real turning point was in 2000 when Kelly Neall came aboard as Managing Director. We have very different personalities, almost opposites in some ways, and that yin-yang combination was perfect for the OIAF.

Kelly played a central role in giving the OIAF some sense of stability. Through Kelly, we’ve expanded and managed to put together a solid team of people. When I took over in 1995, I was the only regular employee really until about 2000 when Kelly came aboard. Today, we have about 5 full time, 1 part time along with a steady stream of contract staff through a government program. More importantly, people past and present like Maral Mohammadian, Andre Coutu, Jerrett Zaroski, Azarin Sohrabkhani and Dominique Forget play(ed) essential parts in helping shape and re-shape the OIAF structure, identity, programming, and vision.

Cartoon Brew: When I first started attending a decade ago, I don’t recall there being so many commercial/mainstream guests. This year’s line-up includes Hotel Transylvania director Genndy Tartakovsky, ParaNorman co-director Chris Butler, and Fairly OddParents creator Butch Hartman. Is this a good thing?

Chris Robinson: Why wouldn’t it be?

Cartoon Brew: Because Ottawa has always been about promoting unheralded independent filmmakers and industry iconoclasts. I wonder whether this commercial presence shifts the focus away from the creative filmmaking that is the reason many of us attend in the first place. How do you balance it and keep the festival from becoming too commercial?

Chris Robinson: I think the indie/commercial issue is a bit overstated. There’s more mainstream in some areas for those people who want that, but there’s the same amount of indie/experimental events for folks who don’t care about industry/commercial. It’s all perspective. You’ve pulled out a few events that fall into the commercial realm (no more than any other year), but what about the special screenings: Barry Purves, Karen Aqua, Run Wrake, Ralph Bakshi, 3 other thematic programmes (Intersections, Stand-Up Comedians, YouTube) about as removed from commercial as you can get.

Oh… and there are the competition screenings. Would anyone consider Chris Sullivan, Leah Shore, Hisko Hulsing, Theo Ushev, Michaela Pavlatova, Purves, Paul Bush, Michael Langan, Pierre Hebert, Don Hertzfeldt, PES, Steve Subotnick etc… to be icons of the commercial/mainstream? Kinda doubt it. On our post-festival surveys, we’ll get 10% who say programming is fine, 40% who say we’re too arty, 40% who say we’re too commercial. I’d say we’re doing just fine.

Cartoon Brew: You curated a Ralph Bakshi retrospective this year. His work often feels very much of a time and place. Why is he relevant today?

Chris Robinson: I’m not smitten with all of his work, but what I respect is his punk attitude. He does what he wants, the way he wants. He had some quote saying “animation is whatever the fuck you want it to be.” That should be a mantra for every animator.

Bakshi’s work is flawed, raw, genuine, intense, shortsighted, naive, sloppy, arrogant, ugly, poetic, pretentious, uncomfortable, disjointed, violent and urgent. Just the way life is. Just the way we are. His films deal with issues (sex, race, class, identity) in ways that make people uncomfortable – even today. He showed us the sides of society many of us don’t want to see or acknowledge because they might force us to confront some complexities in ourselves.

When I started working on the retrospective part of my goal was to show what animation was missing today… that we don’t have a shitdisturber like Bakshi…. who did all this craziness in a commercial setting. I still believe that ..but an interesting thing happened during the process. I started noticing that we have a chunk of films this years that carry the Bakshi torch in different ways: Chris Sullivan’s Consuming Spirits, Ian Miller’s Cheap Joke, Leah Shore’s amazing film, Old Man (about Charles Manson), Hisko Hulsing’s Junkyard.

Personally, I’ve found that a lot of Bakshi’s words and ideas (however flawed) were really not all that far from what we try to do at the OIAF — especially this notion that animation is whatever the fuck it wants to be. That idea of challenging people’s perceptions and thinking about animation is very close to the spirit of the OIAF.

Cartoon Brew: Tell us about the programs you’re excited about at this year’s festival?

Chris Robinson: That never changes. The competition screenings are always the one I’m most excited about. We make these decisions in relative isolation and in less than ideal situations (ie. choosing 100 films or so out of almost 2400 entries)… so it’s always interesting to see how an audience reacts… and even how you react as a programmer to the film in a cinema context.

There are really a lot of great screenings this year that will appeal to everyone. Barry Purves, Run Wrake, Karen Aqua along with some unique special screenings featuring stand-up comedians, YouTube creations etc… but, yeah, I’m pretty excited about the Bakshi screenings especially the One on One event we’re having with Ralph. Could be some fireworks!

Hell, I’m excited to see what Frenzer and Foreman are going to do this year at the closing ceremonies. Hard to top an improvised Mandarin rap performance.

Cartoon Brew: For an artist reading this, either pro or student, how would you answer the question, Why attend an animation festival, especially when I can see so much animation online nowadays?

Chris Robinson: That’s like saying why have sex when I can jerk off anytime I want to.

Two things we never imagined together courtesy of artist Jeaux Janovsky: Disney’s upcoming film Wreck-It Ralph and Ralph Bakshi make…

Click to enlarge, or go here for more Bakshi.

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Ralph Bakshi, Wreck-it Ralph

If you live in Southern California and ever wanted to meet Ralph Bakshi, this week you have your chance – twice!

First, on Thursday night, Ralph will be appearing in person at LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) to introduce his 1977 fantasy Wizards, a restoration of which will be screened at 7:30pm. For tickets click here.

Second, on Saturday at 6:30pm, Bakshi will do a Q&A session in Room 207 at WonderCon in Anaheim.

For those who cannot get to the west coast, you can enjoy a new interview with Ralph on CraveOnline, in which he talks about why he doesn’t trust the company in charge of the potential DVD release of Coonskin, and gets into the history of Hey Good Lookin‘.

You can also purchase Bakshi’s 35th Anniversary edition of Wizards on blu-ray (which coincidentally goes on sale today). 20th Century Fox Home Video has given Cartoon Brew nine (9) copies of the blu-ray and – surprise! – the first nine of you to correctly answer (in the comments section) the simple trivia question below will win one.

CONTEST NOW OPEN

QUESTION: In Wizards, what is the name of character voiced by Mark Hamill?

Good luck!

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Ralph Bakshi, Wizards

Ralph Bakshi: Surviving In Tough Times (via StephenWorth)

This video comes by way of Cartoon Brew, who point out that today is Ralph Bakshi’s birthday.

But I want to give special attention to the video, in which Bakshi answers a question at 2008’s ComicCon about being an independent creator in the shadow of big studios.

It’s a great pep talk, and while he’s specifically talking about animated films, his advice is relevant to any type of independent creator. Look at the webcomics professionals who are striving in spite of the newspaper syndicates, or the graphic novelists funding themselves through Kickstarter.

Bakshi’s attitude: you have the ability and resources to make and distribute your own things, so why aren’t you doing it?

And to those bemoaning the crumbling of the studio/syndicate/publishing industry? “It’s not crumbling; you’re crumbling.”

Proving Bakshi’s wisdom, Machine of Death — the self-published illustrated short story anthology edited by webcomics’ Ryan North and David Malki — recently reached #1 on Amazon, surpassing the sales of both Glenn Beck and John Grisham. These are creators who beat the system by ignoring the system.

Drawing by Jeaux Janovsky

Happy birthday to animation’s original bad boy, Ralph Bakshi, who turns 72 today! His attitude towards animation remains as inspiring and relevant now as it was forty years ago.

Check out the video below for one of the most inspiring animation pep talks you’ll ever see: