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Titmouse's first feature film project promises strong bloody violence, drugs, nudity, and puckered anuses.

The post Titmouse Reveals Teaser for Adult Feature ‘Nerdland’ appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

The voice cast for the film includes Paul Rudd, Patton Oswalt, Mike Judge, Brendon Small, and Jackson Publick.

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).

I wanted to take a moment and acknowledge that the TV series Beavis and Butt-head premiered twenty years ago today—March 8, 1993—on MTV. The show’s crude production values and even cruder humor look quaint today in a South Park/Adult Swim/Webcartoon world, but it was a bold experiment in its time and cleared a path for much to follow.

The show may be cancelled, but this list of animation rules – “60 and counting” – for artists on Fox’s King Of The Hill is a great read.

Some of this is show policy, some of it is good common sense. All of it gives us insight into how the visual sense of show was achieved – and what the “guidelines for life in Arlen” were like. No “limp wrists”, no “Josey (sic) and The Pussycats” action, and lots of rules for eating and drinking…

Click here to see the whole list.

(Thanks, Kiff Knight)

This new video, directed by Mike Judge and produced by Titmouse, premieres today on CMT. The video, for the Zac Brown Band features a guitar-shredding, big game hunting robot. That’s good enough for me.

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Mike Judge, Titmouse

When it started airing on MTV in 1993, Beavis and Butt-Head was more than just a popular animated series, it was a cultural phenomenon. Its subversive humor centered around two terminally moronic teenagers became a hit with MTV’s viewership, not to mention a lightning rod for controversy and a focal point for discussion on the state of American culture: was the show promoting ignorance or a sly commentary on the inanity of contemporary society? The debate continued throughout the 1990s as Mike Judge’s dimwitted creations rocketed to stardom.

Tonight a new episode of Beavis & Butt-Head will air on MTV for the first time in 14 years. It remains to be seen whether the new incarnation can connect with a snarkier Internet-bred generation, but to mark the occasion, we thought it would be fitting to take a look back at the show’s roots. Cartoon Brew invited the show’s original producer, John Andrews, to write a personal essay recalling his experiences as a key member of the original crew and tell us about the behind-the-scene challenges of producing the show in the early nineties.

Andrews was hired in 1992 to produce MTV’s new series Beavis & Butt-Head and stayed for several years. He co-produced the 1996 feature Beavis & Butt-Head Do America with Abby Terkuhle. After a subsequent 13-year run at Klasky Csupo, he is now at Six Point Harness running 6 Point Media.

HOW BEAVIS SAVED MY LIFE
by John Andrews

I’m a fan of Mike Judge. In all my years working with animation creators, I have met very few others who have known their own creations with the thoroughness and vision Mike had from the very beginning. This is the true story of how Beavis & Butt-Head found me and changed my life.

As a budding animation producer with a few slightly tamer animation projects to my credit, mostly for PBS, I had the opportunity to jump into the job of producing the animated shorts and music video commentaries that MTV had ordered as the first season of Beavis & Butt-Head. For me this led to a five year run producing the series, co-producing the feature and launching a number of other MTV animated projects. But it all started with a leap onto a train that had already left the station, a series that already had an air-date, first scripts on the table and a whole lot of animation ahead with only a few months to make sense of it all and get something on air.

I moved to New York from Providence, Rhode Island, in 1981 with my rock band The Mundanes. The early eighties recession got the best of us and we all moved on. I settled in to a life of producing graphics and animation for TV and trade shows. I even won a few Emmys for the goofy Monty Python-esque animations that partner Todd Ruff and I put together for a business series called Adam Smith’s Money World in the mid to late eighties. But by 1990, life was getting dull.

Then I got the opportunity to produce the animation for a series called The Creative Spirit for PBS, underwritten by IBM. That series gave me the opportunity to sit at Chuck Jones’ feet for a day long interview/shoot and to meet many terrific animators including Alison Snowden and David Fine, Maciek Albrecht, the folks at Buzzco, Joey Ahlbum and several other denizens of the New York scene.

One relationship I gained out of working on that series was with John Canemaker. He created wonderful animations for the series and became a real friend in that period. One night I went to a party with John, a party thrown in honor of some animators from the film board of Canada. As we stood amidst the crowd, I said to John “Who should I

The New York Post reported today that MTV is resurrecting Beavis and Butt-head