Wow! More SMASH wackiness from SMASH Xeth. I was waiting SMASH for this! Thank you! (SMASH!)

Cool. The Mohamed joke was pretty great.

If this is the type of cartoons you guys watch made in flash, no wonder you have such a low opinion of it. Zero redeeming qualities in this one.

Papü Smash!! :-D

It amazes me how most people who comment on this site trash so much animation that’s actually not bad and yet when this crap comes along you hail it. Papu is poorly animated, timed, designed and directed. Not only that but the character Papu has no personality except that he smashes things. The voices aren’t even that strong. I don’t get it. How is that funny? Granted it’s a finished film but the success of being ‘able’ to create a film does not warrant a celebration of it in and of itself. Please understand that my goal is not to bash Xeth Feinberg but really try to understand what on earth you guys grade stuff on! I’d really be curious to see what Amid says about this film as his tastes seem extremely narrow and I’d be surprised if he liked this. But then again you might not even post this so I may never know.

I totally agree with Mike;
Check out THIS!:

http://www2.warnerbros.com/web/cartoon/watch.jsp?id=Property3

Now THAT’S a good Flash cartoon. Good animation, great use of the medium, good voices, funny and campy all rolled up into one package. But I don’t believe I’ve seen anyone comment on any of these cartoons.

The Xeth-directed “Hard Drinkin’ Lincoln” is my favorite internet cartoon.

True, Drinkin’ Lincoln was a good series but it wasn’t written by Xeth was it? Wasn’t it written by Mike Reiss?

Asymetrical, that cartoon is terrible :D It’s John K. and Anime in a flash blender.

“Hard Drinkin’ Lincoln” was the first internet cartoon actually worth the download wait on a 56k modem. I don’t know if history will note that or not.

I admired that it did so much with so little. The layout on that was great. It had to be since there wasn’t much animation.

I LOVE PAPU! it makes me laugh out loud! i love it for the same reasons asymetrical hates it-saying its ‘poorly animated, designed, and directed’ is a matter of personal taste. i think Papu looks funny and awesome-he makes me laugh. and the fact that papu has no personality except smashing things? totally funny to me. voices aren’t that strong? “papu smash!” gets funnier the more he says it! what i think works for papu that so many things lack these days is genuine appeal, charm and personality. that link to ‘the hiros’ cartoon is an example of what i would consider one of the worst, unpersonalized, tired, generic, uninteresting things i’ve ever seen! ‘retro spys’? the word play of ‘hiros/hero’???? who would find that witty or well written? to me it just looks like a really crappy version of those esurance commercials and a total snooze fest.

PAPU SMASH!!!!!

Papu SMASH… Blooblahblahblahblahblahblah… Completely silly!

I’ve known Xeth since before the .COM bubble burst. He survived it because he’s a good guy and talented. If nothing his work is unique and fun but also budget conscious. One of the main reasons the .COM bubble burst in the first place was mismanagement of budgets and schedules. It’s not JUST making the best cartoon you can, but making the best cartoon you can WITHIN schedule and UNDER budget. What’s the point of making the greatest cartoon ever, if you have to celebrate by filing Chapter 11?

Xeth is one guy who knows how to make the most out of a limited internet budget. It’s not easy making short cartoons by yourself in a couple of hours… (Fer Christ’s sake he made the feature length cartoon “Queer Duck” out of his apartment in a few months!)

(BTW “Astro Chimp” was my favorite Xeth cartoon… “Poor little fwella…”)
http://www.mishmashmedia.com/astrochimp.html

Hey, I didn’t say I didn’t have respect for the guy, I am just surprised that everyone likes his stuff here and yet trash soooooooo many other things here instead. A fickle bunch, the animation industry is it not?

“Xeth is one guy who knows how to make the most out of a limited internet budget. It’s not easy making short cartoons by yourself in a couple of hours…”

Hey, it’s interesting to get so many comments, even the negative ones. Thanks for the thoughts. I’ll just say my cartoons aren’t all done “in a couple hours” but, yes, it’s a matter of working efficiently. Frankly, I like ‘limited animation’ for it’s own sake. Trying to do more with less. I also like making whatever idea comes into my head (Papu IS stupid, I’ll do something else next)… rather than going through some corporate market-tested meat grinder just to end up with something as, sorry to say, unoriginal and contrived as that warnerbros.com online cartoon (now THAT’s insulting…)

Gee… I’m commenting again on my own cartoon comments. Lame, right? But on further thought, I felt I should moderate my own angry comments on the Warner Bros. online cartoon above. It’s got good points, obviously made by skilled guys. I can sympathize with creators being pissed about the response or lack thereof their work gets. Why wasn’t this picked up and made into a series… it IS better than a lot of stuff out there… but certainly part of a genre, winking and screaming at the same time. Is it really that different than Papu? Anyway, can’t we all just get along? Lord help us all…

“Unfortunately they cannot show up, as they are residents of Disneyland.” - Does that mean that Tweety will also be called to court for unlawful entry?

I guess Mickey, Donald & Tweety Pie are CHARACTER witnesses in the case!

If you see a giant mouse hopping around the judges chambers, you’ll know it’s a kangaroo court.

CHARACTER witnesses, CLASSIC!!!

And Bill, good point. It probably IS a kangaroo court, knowing what kinds of grave clerical errors come out of it!

They should just have Wayne Allwine and Joe Alaskey come in and do the trial in character, record it, and broadcast it for the world to see.

How the heck did Scooby Doo get left out in a copyright infringement toy company? Totally missed oppurtunity…

I heard about this in the news. That made MY day too.

“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you Walt?” ;-)

XD Haha!! I agree wtih Behonkiss!! Now THAT’D be worth seeing! I bet it’d be filled with hilarity! XD

Some thirty years ago, National Lampoon had an article on Wile E. Coyote’s suit against the ACME corporation for breach of contract, faulty merchandise and bodily injury.

F*ckin’ A! ;-)

OMG That is beautiful.

Yes - completely loverly.

That is SO cool. Somebody should hire this woman to animate the credits on a major motion picture.

Rob T., that’s exactly what I thought. It looked like one of the coolest openings to a movie I’d ever seen. If I was working on a movie I’d hire this girl immediately! I had never heard the song either and I’m immediately looking it up and adding it to my ipod’s playlist!

Thanks for sharing Amid!

Super knockout knice!!! Great song, great type fonts, great graphics, great animation….did I mention this is great?

Super!

I’m feeling good after watching that!

The song is from the 1960’s broadway play “The Roar of the Grease Paint, The Smell of the Crowd”.

Pretty awesome. Bob Winquist would go right to it, and that’s a big compliment.

Whoa! Saul Bass with a Compugraphic!

It’s great, I love it. Here’s some notes.

Get rid of all the unnecessary type and add some god rays and color for some production value.

The tune-in marketing version has to be worked in as well as a web driver and sponsor billboard.

we need to add a talent mondo shot and we must use the package type face.

We have to run it by legal to see what they have to say about it. . .

Well, it’s good. But really not the best I’ve seen out there like how most of you all are goin, ‘AAAAAA OMG!!!! WTF! AWESOME!!!!!!1111……’

It’s ok, I’ve seen better ones…search ‘typography’ on youtube.

That ‘pinstripe drag-race’ in the opening titles has always been a favorite! When I was a kid, I vowed to paint my car like that, when I grew up. But I never did. :(

Great post, Amid. Thanks!

The “Disney Treasures” series won’t be complete until all of Kimball’s stuff is released. What happened to “It’s Tough to Be A Bird”? Didn’t that get an Oscar nod? It should have appeared on the “Rarities” disc.

I saw a little bit of this years and years ago and I was just thinking of it a few days ago. But I had no idea what the title was. Than I log onto Cartoon Brew and there it was! Thanks, Jerry! No wonder I have this site as one of my favorites on both my home and office computer.

I always thought the pinstripe animation was one of the most original and funny things that ever came out of Disney.

I remember seeing this as a little kid. It made me laugh my head off.

Having lived in Burbank for the past 15 years, it was a ‘kick’ to recognize the Burbank/Glendale DMV and the Toluca Lake Car Wash. Little did I know that, as a kid, I was getting ‘glimpses’ of my future home-town!

oh man…I totally remember seeing this when I was llittle. For years I thought I imagined it because you never used to see it anywhere. Had no idea it was Kimball. This just elevates him even higher in my book. Thanks for the post!

Damn, they should’ve put this on the Deathproof dvd as a bonus feature — the origin of Stuntman Mike!

Was that Kimball in the bald wig playing the used car huskster?

The car wash scene was just toooo groovy….

Hahaha, wow! I come to this blog all the time but never thought I’d see anything I’ve uploaded on it!

I saw that in a theater as a youngster and remember being convulsed with laughter. Sheer luck that it was the bottom half of some Disney double bill.

Shouldn’t this have been a special feature on Cars? Or Death Proof? It could be Stuntman Mike’s origin.

That used car huskster was a comic Kimball knew. When I met Kimball, he told me the camera jammed when he was filming the that sequence, and he didn’t have time for retakes. That’s why he made it look like a TV image interrupted by static. Genius.

I sometimes get the feeling that Kimball was a surrealist in a rather conservative company. I’m not saying that he was a bad fit at Disney’s but I can’t help but wonder what he might have done as a director at Warners. Whenever he was given a little leash, he just ran with it without any of the shades of prudery that is sometimes associated with Disney stuff.

There’s a lot of signature touches here like the hairy adult hands and monster faces which remind me of Mad and Famous Monsters Magazine art. Ward never seemed to be stuck in any generation and embraced the crazy side of Baby Boom culture going on around him in this film. The California scene is especially visceral.

A+ for nostalgic thrills.

GREAT! That will be one heckuva show, I posted your announcement, on my blog, http://billfieldtrip.blogspot.com/. I mentioned the Brew’s Schulz thread to you and Stu on your last guest spot, because I think it may be one of the most profound chains of commentary that I’ve read here… I will be listening to my computer tomorrow at 6-8pm central–and congrats for the ASIFA honors you so richly deserve! THANKS, JB

Jeez, I thought there’d be some kind of an answer regarding Muppet Babies and Flashbeagle. I’ll try to call in on the 19th, but no promises. Hopefully you can give us a rundown of upcoming animation DVD releases on the show??

Wow, Barrier is tough. But he’s thoughtful and fair as well. It was brave of him to mention UPA’s association with communism, because that always comes up and the issue always seems to get swept under the rug. In a book focusing on art only, I really don’t care, but this book and the upcoming film seems to be about more, so it’s a fair gripe.

Amid, I applaud you for posting the link. You have guts. That said, is there going to be any kind of rebuttal to Barrier’s comments?

well, in that same blog, not only did the book get Barrier’d, but the UPA documentary, in extension, got Barrier’d as well, and not only was it not a thoughtful and fair comment, but it was downright wrong. Barrier just didn’t do his homework, he wrote, “There’s a list of people who’ve been interviewed for the feature … and I doubt that any of them departed from the orthodoxy in their comments about the studio. If the film’s producer, Tee Bosustow, had also interviewed a noisy iconoclast, someone like john Kricfulusi, I could take this project more seriously”.

I have two responses, first a number of the interviewees have indeed commented on the downside of the studio, talking at length about the Communist problem, financial problems, and such. Secondly, the list is far from complete, and if John K would be willing, I would love to interview him. I’ve been out of town or I would have asked him sooner.

Not only do we (there are others besides myself on the project) want to make the doc a fair and complete look at the studio, but we feel that conflict is frankly a lot more dramatic and entertaining. We certainly are not interested in having a bunch of people sit around saying the same nice things …. booorrrriinnng! In fact, if Barrier himself is interested, we would love to interview him as well.

Fishnet stockings, of course…

Good stuff!

Thanks Amid!!! There’s a preview with with lots of images at:
http://cleancartoonistsdirtydrawings.com
There’s lots of animators in the “Clean Cartoonist’s Dirty Drawings” book: Chuck Jones, Fred Moore, Roy Williams, Grim Natwick along with comic strip and comic book and children’s book cartoonists.

WARNING: If I understand the ratings system i think most of the art in “Clean Cartoonists’ Dirty Drawings” would not get a “PG-13 “but an “R”. Most are a mild “R” as they say (nekid cartoon boobies–oh, my), though a very few of the drawings might be “X”. Just an FYI.

Holy cow, Chuck Jones did dirty drawings? I never knew he had it in him. Craig, you should have featured some from Bakshi. Why am I not surprised that R. Crumb is doing the introduction to this book? That man is the KING of dirty drawings. Fantastic. I also love the “Arf” books. I want this so bad. Here’s hoping that Old Saint Nick isn’t an old prude.

Is it too late to make a “Bob Kane had his ghosts do that too?!?” joke?

joe, actually a friend of mine and comics historian when he saw my new book also commented that the bob kane “dirty drawings” probably were ghosted by an assistant. i think there’s a 50/50 chance. kane WAS pretty good at humor stuff IMHO and a bit of a ladies man i gather, so i can see him doing these (rather nice) drawings…or not.

With ideas like this, the guy would make a great animation development exec.

Felix the Cat look like Ernie the Muppet. That’s hilarious.
Pink Panther and Felix aren’t ducks though.. why?… species confusion?

Anybody got a spork?

That IZZ hilarious!!

Ooookaaayyyy. Boy, are those ugly. Popeye with a duck bill is just hideous. Let alone doing it to Jesus. Besides, “I’ve got Jesus in my bathtub” just sounds wrong no matter how you say it!

Now I’ve TRULY seen everything!!

Free design advice to Mr. Wolfe: If you are going to put a duck’s bill on it, don’t combine it with a human chin!

And why do Max Fleischer characters get the freaky-beaky treatment when others like Pink Panther and Felix get to be themselves?

These are some of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen. I’m still shaking…

Yekk! the chin of Popeye looks like the duck’s BREAST :-(

This guy is actually about a hundred times MORE creative than a typical development exec. Think about it.

Lol, I love these little things, I don’t care what anyone says XD I have the Dr. Frank n Furter one on my desk, and I’m seriously eying the Felix the Cat and Pink Panther ones… Although I may very well settle on the Jesus, given the spirit of the season.

Please Lord, please, please make this less of a popular fad than the Pet Rock, and even less enduring.

These celebri-ducks are the philosopher’s stone, except in vinyl.

UGH! KEEP IT AWAY! KEEP IT AWAY!! :-P

But just think, “Hallelujah, I gots Jesus in me now!” can be a whole new double-entendre!

where’s joe penner when u need him?

Shouldn’t the bridge of Jesus’ nose be orange?

Sorry, I’ve been working on product too long.

The first Betty ain’t so bad… but then, it’s not that big of a conversion. The rest are just terrible! Even Felix, somehow.

Oh sure, they offer Buddha, Moses and Jesus, but where’s the Muhammad duck? COWARDS!

Why oh why was this deemed necessary? Maybe it looked good after downing a bottle of Jaegermeister.

I don’t get why Popeye’s head is ducklike but his body isn’t. It’s troubling.

The Blues Brothers ones are stylin’, along with “The Penguin”! (”The Penguin” is an appropriate ‘duck’, don’cha think? Then again, “Pen-goo-ins is practically chicken…”)

Looking through them all, I must say that the Mae West one is the only one that looks good and something I might purchase.

Felix the Duck obviously had the good sense to hide his beak inside his Magic Bag. Yikes!

You know, the Betty Boop one almost kind of works. Are there any conveniently available pictures of a Fleischer Brothers duck to see how it would have looked if they for some reason wanted to do a Betty Boop As A Duck cartoon?

Hey, that’s great Jerry. Congrats! Make sure the next time you’re interviewed on one of the Warners’ sets we can get a glimpse of that award in the background.

Hard to believe you hadn’t already won an award for “significant and benevolent or charitable impact on the art and industry of animation.” You’ve been doing it for decades. CONGRATS!

The guys who invented Flash?!? Maybe they should get their award when they acknowledge their software is actually used for animation. And then only after they get the damn bugs out. Geez

But congrats to you, sir

Congrats, Jerry!! You’ve done lots of great things: this fine website, lots of good books etc.

As for the other awards, they must have some sort of odd nomination process every year. Shows like South Park are snubbed for shows like Robot Chicken. And don’t get me started on the Voice Acting categories. They seem to favor “name” actors instead of the hard-working VA folk. Hopefully Tom kenny wins.

Congrats Jerry!! The most deserved award of the bunch.

The shorts catagory has me stumped.. The jury sees non-studio work right? I guess I need to see “Mascot Prep” & “Your Friend the Rat”. wow.

Congrats Jerry!

But how does “Bee Movie” get a best animated pic nomination over a “Meet The Robinsons”?
Not like it matters, Ratatouille will win anyways (deservedly)!

Congrats Jerry!

Absolutley fantastic!

well deserved!
congrats!

I’m with Amid- you’ve had this honor coming for years, Jerry. Congratulations!!!

Well desserved honor. Congrats Jerry Man!

PS: The creators of Flash receiving a prize???

What has the world come to!! ;-)

Congratulations, Jerry. Long overdue.

Wow, what a weird year… Don Hertzfeldt versus three Disney shorts!You know who I’ll be rooting for! :)

Congratulations on your June Foray award, Jerry. Frankly, though, from where I stand, you also ought to be getting the Winsor McCay award.
Lifetime achievement, anyone? Let me phrase it like this: only Disney had a Dave Smith in the 1970s. But you’ve repeatedly proven that it’s in *every* corporate owner’s interest — for financial reasons, screw the sentiment! — to have a Dave Smith… to have a person, or persons, working for them with a proper understanding of the corporation’s animation holdings and history.
You’ve even proven it, indirectly (and continue to prove it!), when one or another corporation *didn’t* take your suggestions. Of course, pity that should happen at all, but it’s the exception that proves the rule.

Congratulations, Mr. Beck!

Jerry, congrats - most deserved and about time

Horray for John K.! He’s long overdue for an award.

Congratulations Jerry! That’s great news!

Congratulations Jerry! Richly deserved! This is going to be a good year.

See ya
Steve

Congratulations to all the nominees! Can anyone shed light on why no one was selected for the Production Design Category in Television? That seems really odd.

Well, I’m happy that ‘Kim Possible’ finally gets some recognition, while ‘Avatar’ doesn’t. :)

Congratulations, Jerry!

Like everyone else, congratulations to you, Jerry! You more than deserve it.

As for the other nominees… whoa whoa whoa… just about everyone in the cast of Ratatouille is nominated for best voice acting EXCEPT Peter O’Toole??
He’s the one I’d figure would clean-sweep it this year!!

Congrats Jerry!

The most deserving recipient of the June Foray Award since June Foray!

Congratulations Jerry upon a very well deserved honor.

How nice that you will receive it from June Foray personally.

Your generosity with your time, expertise and contributions as a teacher, ASIFA-Hollywood Director, exhibitor of some of the best, some of the worst, expositor, advocate and blogmeister are appropriately recognized by the June Foray Award.

I’m a bit disappointed in the animated video game category. There are plenty of well-animated games that are not movie or tv-show tie-ins. I’d say that the Rachet and Clank series could probably get at least some recognition in there.

As for John K… if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. So I’ll leave it at that.

Also, congrats on the award, Jerry!

Oh no, more mugshots of Jerry are coming on the Brew!
So tell us, Oh “Mr. Award Winner”, did you ever get your picture on a bubblegum card?

Seriously, congratulations! You deserve it!

Congrats to all the nominees, but seriously– NOBODY deserved a nomination in Television Production Design???? Absolutely nothing on TV was good enough to be merely considered? What a huge insult to a lot of talented people working in TV.

Congratulations, Jerry! :)

Congratulations on that well-deserved Annie, Jerry!

Jerry, congratulations. It’s no understatement to say that you’ve contributed greatly (and continue to do so) in the recognition of animators and animation itself as an (oft times underappreciated) art form. We’ll be wanting to see photos!

Coming from the games industry, I agree w/ Relevan about games category. It’s like that every year really with the Annies. No one seems to look outside of Film or TV tie-ins and into original IP’s.

Prince of Persia, God of War, Ratchet and Clank, Jak and Daxter, Okami, Shadow of the Colossus. Take a good look at these games. They’re producing the best work in the industry!

Look at Team Fortress 2 for heavens sake! The design and animation of those character spots rival some film work!

I agree with anonymous. Something very strange went on with the selections comittee this year. First no production design….and then only one character design nominee?

I know a handful of the people that submitted this year, and there was some truly top quality work. Very insulting.

I agree with the O’Toole and TF2 omits as being a giant faux pas.

The voices that stuck with me as having a great presence were O’Toole and Winstone in Beowulf.

I agree Bobby Pontilla. I kind of felt like crying at the end of Half Life 2: Chapter 2 ;-)

Right now I’m playing Assassin’s Creed and it really feels like directing your own movie.

Congratulations, Jerry - a well-deserved tribute.

And as a personal sidenote to Relevan - here’s another maxim for you:
If you can’t say anything intelligent, don’t say anything at all.

Why no Production design? From Steve Worth on Animation Nation:

“The Annies aren’t “best of the year” awards. They’re presented for general excellence. The nominating committees look over the submissions and can choose up to five nominees. But they aren’t required to choose five. If they don’t feel that there are enough qualified entries, they can choose less, or recommend that the category not be awarded at all.”

What a load of crap. Maybe if they had been Spumco bgs…….

Hokey Smoke, Brewmaster — and Hip-Hip-Foray!!!

Jerry, congrats from me and Dan Hollis, too!

From the nominating period, Casper has revealed that once your name was suggested, no one else stood a ghost of a chance. Y’see, Woody had already pecked your name into the award, letter by letter, and everyone agreed it just looked so right when he was done.

A standard barbarian may take a treasure by force, but you are a noble Hanna-Barberian — whom we all treasure for all you have shared with us over the years.

Congratulations, Jerry! It’s long overdue.

About the Games category:

There’s only one limit on what’s put up there, and that’s what’s submitted in the first place. We’re all wishing the major games publishers would get their games in, but there’s this invisible wall that keeps them from noticing the Annies. Every game you folks have brought up here and many more, and none of them represented. If any of you reading this have any connections/clout in the games industry, please help us get more entries from publishers next year. And for pity’s sake, not just movie tie-ins!

And as for the few folks who may have problems with Flash getting the Ub Iwerks award, talk to me. I’m the one who brought it before the board. Just two things to explain why I did it:

1. You could make a lovely animated short and spend a year going around the world on the festival circuit and schmoozing every producer you can find to get distribution, or you can put it on Newgrounds/YouTube/Google Video and get more hits in a day than that year of struggle will have gotten you. And all of those sites run on Flash. Or if you did the short in Flash in the first place, slap it on your own website and anyone in the world with a PC can watch it. Just for the ability to distribute your work, Flash is a sea change for animation in general and more than deserving of the award. But…

2. If you happen to take note of last year’s Annie nominees for Best TV Production, four out of five were done in Flash. That includes the eventual winner, “Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends.” It’s not quite that heavy this year, but it still holds that some of the best work being done in TV is using the software.

I can certainly understand why some might be non-plussed by the decision. But in the face of just those two things, how could it be ignored?

And certainly well-deserved, Mr. Beck! Congrats and thank you for all that you do!!!

Bravo, Jerry!

Steve G,

1. You could make a lovely animated short and spend a year going around the world on the festival circuit and schmoozing every producer you can find to get distribution, or you can put it on Newgrounds/YouTube/Google Video and get more hits in a day than that year of struggle will have gotten you

Hey, watch your mouth there. Y’know, some of us still believe that animated films belong in movie theaters (gasp!).

If if I ever have to decide whether my movie is seen in front of 5,000 people in movie theaters at film festivals - projected perfectly on a big screen with big sound in front of a hushed audience - I’ll take that any day of the week in lieu of having 500,000 casual couldn’t-care-less internet surfers skim over my movie for 30 seconds while killing time at work, via a pixel filled little box on YouTube.

That’s why everyone generally disrespects Flash. It’s the perfect format for 30 second internet nonsense that nobody has to really care about or pay much attention to. Let’s face it, that’s what 99.9% of web surfers are looking for when they want to watch a net cartoon. They don’t want a life changing, Oscar winning experience. They just want something to momentarily distract them while they surf other sites. So yeah, Flash is great for the internet because 1) higher quality film and digital formats don’t look as good on YouTube because they have to be degraded so much, and 2) the general population is not really seeking quality animation anyway, they want a silly joke and then they want it to go away.

But shame on you for suggesting that is some ideal situation for animators. That’s the worst situation for animators. To be clear: I’m not knocking Flash. I’m knocking this dumb idea that the internet will save us all just because it makes some things easier. Easier is not always better. In fact, most of the time easier makes things a lot worse.

John K. AND Jerry - honored on the same night? Barrier got passed up again? Hmmmm Karma? Jerry really deserves this, in spite of unleashing Cartoon Dump on the world(kiddin’ ya, JB- viva la DUMP!).

Congratulation, Jerry!

For RR: You are clearly confusing Flash (vector animation) with Flash Video (raster video, embeddable into Flash applications) Don’t know if the award is for the former or the latter or both things.

Also. Nobody forces you to use Flash Video with the same crappy compression as youtube. Dailymotion accepts video at 640×480. Vimeo goes up to HD720. FLV is just another container for audio and video, with almost no features (-> less overhead) and the great advantage that the software to reproduce it is already installed into 95% of the machines connected to the Internet.

DeK (somebody who disrespects Flash Video, BTW)

RR - You know you can do both? (internet and festivals).
I do, with a reasonable degree of success.
And I don’t use Flash either.

Congrats, Jerry! (Also, congrats to the Little Einsteins and Backyardigans crews for their noms!)

Congrats on a well deserved honor.

Congrats, Jerry! Well deserved!

Also on a personal sidenote:
Right on, Mike! I’m sick of all the John K bashers!

It’s official Jerry, you’ve outrun your Don Johnson alter-ego and left him in your dust trail. Congrats!

Jerry getting an award? As Katnip would say: “That sounds logical”.

RR espoused like an elitist bastid:

“Hey, watch your mouth there. Y’know, some of us still believe that animated films belong in movie theaters (gasp!).”

There’s nothing that prevents you from still going the theatrical route, but if you want to get a film in front of eyeballs, nothing beats digital distribution. Even with your 99.9% exaggeration, that 0.1% is _still_ more intelligent viewers than you’d get theatrically. Stick contact info at the start and end of the piece, and you can direct them to places where they can see it in better resolution, as well as to more of your work. Most folks just don’t live in cities that have film festivals. Your film may not have the best impact on a small screen, but it beats having no impact at all because nobody but a handful of aficionados in a handful of cities could see it.

“That’s why everyone generally disrespects Flash. It’s the perfect format for 30 second internet nonsense that nobody has to really care about or pay much attention to.”

So you’ve decided to insult every person who’s ever done animation for the Internet, anyone who watches it, _and_ ignore everyone mentioned in No. 2 to boot? Congrats! Hope you remembered to use Desenex, or you’ll give your tonsils toe fungus.

“Easier is not always better. In fact, most of the time easier makes things a lot worse.”

How does reducing the barrier to entry for the independent, student, or just plain poor animator become an anathema? Yes, you will get more junk, but the percentages remain the same, and the wheat separates from the chaff a lot sooner when you have a large enough audience. Should animators stop drawing with pencils because Sam Singer used them? The entire ovure of late 70’s/early 80’s HB TV animation was done with cels, we better cut that out!

DeK, it’s for both. Both have had massive effect for animation in general, and will continue to do so into the future.

Congrats Jerry! Maybe Amid is next in line? :p

I really hope Persepolis wins something…anything. I love Ratatouille, but there is something just special and remarkable about Persepolis. I think people will agree when it comes out in December.

I’m surprised Avatar was only nominated for the game category.

Steve, take a breath there. You can back-pedal all you want, but you clearly implied that the award is being given to the inventors of Flash because they are somehow rescuing animators from movie theaters.

Yes, filmmakers can and definitely should try every avenue they can. But you clearly made it an either-or option. Again I quote you (my emphasis added):

1. You could make a lovely animated short and spend a year going around the world on the festival circuit and schmoozing every producer you can find to get distribution, OR you can put it on Newgrounds/YouTube/Google Video and get more hits in a day than that year of struggle will have gotten you

That’s not a very wise or democratic thing to say, now is it?

“That’s why everyone generally disrespects Flash. It’s the perfect format for 30 second internet nonsense that nobody has to really care about or pay much attention to.”
So you’ve decided to insult every person who’s ever done animation for the Internet, anyone who watches it, _and_ ignore everyone mentioned in No. 2 to boot? Congrats!

No, if you carefully read what I wrote instead of leaping to hysterics you will understand that I am insulting the average internet surfer who browses through webpages in less than 10 seconds and doesn’t pause to actually digest any content (sound like anyone you know?). This is the vast majority of what people do on the internet. They surf, they jump around, they skim. And that’s why the internet will never be a suitable audience for serious film watching or distribution. It’s not like your living room. It’s interactive and people get impatient.

People rarely sit and watch something more than 30 seconds long. Grind your teeth at me all you like but it’s the simple truth. And that is why Flash is so well suited for the internet, it’s cheap and fast and disposable. That says nothing of the people who work with Flash! It just means it’s a tool best suited for quickie jokes that people love to see on the internet in their spare time. And it’s why Flash has so much difficulty being taken seriously.

So calm down mate :)

Is anyone else completely baffled why Kim Possible is in the company of Robot Chicken and Moral Orel and not in the children’s category? That’s just… weird.

And I’m pretty mad at the Video Game category. It all seems like the nominations were submitted just because the developers knew their games were crap and weren’t going to win any other awards. :\ The Annies seriously need to represent more in the game industry, just so all the actually well animated games could get nominated.

As a member of the Board of Directors of ASIFA-Hollywood, and one of the participants in the selection of the creators of Flash for this year’s Ub Iwerks Award, I can speak to why these people are being honored.

Jonathan Gay, Gary Grossman and Robert Tatsumi created a simple program called FutureSplash Animator, which originally was intended to create moving graphics for banner ads. The program was retitled Flash, and has gone on to become a significant tool, not just for internet animation, but for TV production as well. Before the advent of the personal computer and Flash, students did not have an easy way to shoot experimental tests to learn the art of animation. Flash has replaced expensive film based and video pencil test methods, and is in use at just about every animation school. This perfectly meets the criteria of the Ub Iwerks Award, which is designed to honor technological advances that make a positive impact on the art of animation.

This year, we are also honoring John Kricfalusi, who was the first to see the potential of Flash as a tool for producing cartoon animation, and a pioneer in promoting the viability of the internet as a new venue for filmmakers to reach audiences. John created the first Flash animated cartoon series, the Annie Award winning “Goddamn George Liquor Program”, and has gone on to prove that Flash is capable of producing highly skilled, professional quality animation.

I hope this clarifies why the creators of Flash were selected for an Annie Award this year.

you know, i recently read an interview with jonathan gay concerning the history of flash and its development. no where in the interview is john k mentioned as being instrumental to this process. it was not until the last year or so when john k decided to pat himself on the back on his blog claiming this that he became the “flash pioneer”.

I was there, Frank. The first animation John did for Microsoft Network was back when the program was still called Future Splash Animator. It was the Summer of 1996. The only character animation that had been done with the program at that point was a few repurposed sprites of Winnie the Pooh, done for the Disney website by Annmarie Ashkar. She joined Spumco in August or September of 1996 to work on the first two internet cartoon series… Weekend Pussy Hunt for MSN and The Goddamn George Liquor Program for spumco.com

so i guess annmarie ashkar is the real pioneer then.
we should throw her a parade.

Exactly right, Mark. John did the same thing he usually did, and Anne Marie figured out how to make it work in Flash.

Way to pioneer, John!

Uh, fellas… Not to interrupt your little theorizing party, but you’re trying to tell the producer of the series who did what. As I said before, I was there.

yay for hyun-min!

First off, here’s to Jerry for long-overdue recognition among his peers for the extraordinary work he has done to focus attention on the history, art, insanity and delight of animation both within the animation community and - arguably more important - outside the inner circles. With or without the June Foray Award you always have been and always will be a treasure to the industry, Jerry. Congratulations!

And to my friend John Canemaker. There is, perhaps, nobody more deserving of an award named after Winsor McCay than someone who has helped to bring McCay’s work into better and broader focus.

As for the Board’s decision to recognize Mssrs. Gay, Grossman and Tatsumi for their Technical Achievement, Stephen and Steve have provided solid reasoning behind the decision - in spite of conjunctions intentionally being wielded or not, and a volley of gross generalizations to rival a State Department memo.

Speaking as someone who works with young animators and story artists, I believe that any tool that encourages interest and access is a very good thing, indeed. Of course there is solid and passionate reason to praise the theatrical short and the pencils that draw them, as well as embracing and treasuring the inspiration and magic they provide. But today’s younger viewers are more likely to be inspired to commit to animation as a career as a result of something delivered through an entirely different venue than the cineplex, and one usings tools other than what Ub Iwerks used to draft Mickey. It’s one thing to be concerned over a generation of film makers who see “Saw II” and say “Now that’s what I want to get paid to do!”. But what’s so awful about a brilliant kid who sees “Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends” and discovers that she too can bring her dreams to life and share them with others, or a bright and sardonic college freshman who catches a few minutes of “Weekend Pussy Hunt” and realizes that he can satirize contemporary culture in the same medium?

Diversity of approach is critical to keeping the medium alive. That includes making sure that cel animation and stop motion don’t get relegated to the attic, particularly not in training programs. So far I haven’t seen anybody suggest that a young animator NOT learn how to draw. And if that’s not enough to satisfy concerns about praising a pixel or two ahead of any pencils this year, then consider the number of graduating student animators in relation to available jobs. Then look at what real economic opportunities there are for animators to be their own boss. Surely we all share a desire to help people maintain an original voice and find an audience. If given the choice between a closed set of tools that only increases the number of young animators who end up slaving away at ILM or get sequestered away in-betweening under “run of show” contracts at Disney, or a slightly larger set of tools that includes a way to produce their own work and reach a wider audience through new methods of content delivery AND reap the economic rewards, doesn’t it make sense to go with the latter? For cryin’ out loud, if the only thing FLASH animation has done is produce one less unemployed animator stuffing muffins into their pockets at the buffet line of the Guild Christmas party, then I say give the inventors a Nobel Prize!

As for John K. - yes, Stephen is very close to John K. and they admire and respect and defend each other’s work. You, too, can champion your friends and colleagues when you get off your duff and devote your waking and sleeping hours to the Animation Archives project, and bother to sit on the Board AND coordinate a much loved, under-appreciated and not yet appropriately recognized program for honoring your peers. Go for it. Until then, John K has clearly had influence on the industry, some love it, some hate it, and very few are indifferent to it. If he were my pal I’d be pushing for him, too. If that still annoys you, then feel free to take umbrage at the “inside lobbying” for Ollie Johnston, who had Mary Costa championing him year after year after year to the National Council on the Arts until they came to their senses and awarded him the National Medal for the Arts.

At some point in the not too distant future, when some of us have turned to pudding and are little more than a footnote on Google, an animator who has worked almost entirely in FLASH will be considered for and quite possibly receive a Winsor McCay award for Lifetime Achievement. And when they do, folks who have contributed little more than some bitchy posts or bitterly slaved away on job after job without having broken through to a wider audience or been loved and admired by countless number of their peers, will moan about it here (because Jerry and Amid will be heads in jars working from a lab to keep this site going.)

Still, I’ve not yet found a part of the film industry where bitter isn’t part of what keeps things alive.
So, long live animosity, just as long as animation keeps on thriving right alongside.

P.S. – when finished posting about varying degrees of satisfaction over the nominees, go to the ASIFA Hollywood website and make sure to pay your ASIFA dues so that you can vote.

One clarification…

There was no inside lobbying on the Winsors. I didn’t offer any suggestions for Winsors this year. I just listened and cast a vote. After reviewing all the submissions from the membership, each board member wrote down three names of candidates we felt were best qualified. It turned out that we had all picked the same three names. The first draft passed unanimously.

I was the one who submitted the suggestion of Jerry for June Foray Award. Not many people know this, but Jerry has over 20 years of service to ASIFA, both at ASIFA-East and ASIFA-Hollywood. His professional accomplishments are considerable, but his benevolent work on behalf of the art of animation is just as important. Jerry was also chosen unanimously on the first draft (with one obvious abstention).

Can anyone shed light on why only three noms for
Character Animation in a Feature Production?

- Dave Hardin Surf’s Up (Sony Pictures Animation)
- Alan Hawkins Surf’s Up (Sony Pictures Animation)
- Michal Makarewicz Ratatouille (Pixar Animation Studios)

surely two more could have been picked.

and congrats to mr. beck

This is why I love this site so much.

Yourself along with Jerry are true stewards to the art of animation. You guys just don’t touch on the latest of what’s happening in the world of animation, but dig deep to provide us with forgotten gems that made the art form what it is today.

Great stuff thank you very much

I wish I could find more of those classic pencil tests. There’s definately something that gets lost when they make the finished product.

Whoa. I’d never heard of Jack Shnerk before – but it’s such a great moniker!

It instantly joins my short list of favorite cartoonist’s names, (alongside such gems as: Dick Sprang, Jack Schleh, Ding Darling, Dick Huemer, Wayne Boring and Mike Manley!)

You should hold a contest to identify the designers of the spots. I see Tomi Ungerer, Roland & Gahan Wilson, Charles Saxon. . . anyone know the others ??

Woah. People actually took their time on each drawing of a storyboard! :) I don’t ever see storyboards today that have even half of this work into it.

Mike: You forgot the ultimate cartoonist name —T. Hee!

Andrew, to be fair to today’s artists, the same Canemaker book shows some excellent examples from Mulan and Emperor’s New Groove.

The Peet drawings are really amazing though. Look at the wooden bucket Dumbo’s splashing in —drawn in perfect perspective. He drew it a second time, without bothering to trace the first one. It’s perfect again, but slightly different.

Bill Tytla’s range is astonishing. He was known for animating heavies when he lobbied for Dumbo. There’s a fantastic piece on the ASIFA site that tells his story —a must-read!

http://www.animationarchive.org/2006/12/biography-bill-tytla-part-one.html

y’all forgot to mention… cover by world famous cartoonist, mark martin!

Looks interesting. I love these types of book. I had already been hinting around about the Hanna-Barbera Treasury for a Christmas idea, very might well have to add this one on too.

Doing research last night though it looks like none of my local Borders or Waldenbooks carry the Treasury unfortunately.

Sounds like I nice book. However, I don’t understand why Scrappy and Yippy are on the cover since their cartoon were never shown on telvision during the 1990’s.

The first ping of ’90s nostalgia?

(OMG, need to cash in the the ’80s vein before it dies up!)

What annoys me even more about not being able to find a copy of the H-B Treasury around is that all of the bookstores have about 5 copies of the Nicktoons books on their shelves.

> doug holverson says:
>
> The first ping of ’90s nostalgia?

Watch out, the whole Retro-90’s fad could come at any moment!

Pardon my ignorance here but what is the name of the green character on the cover? Thanks

Bladder, the Incontinent Fox

The cover art is by Mark Martin who tried to follow my request to draw cartoony characters that would sort of familar but wouldn’t infringe any copyright.

I am surprised that the Big Bad Wolf dressed as a Jew (from 3 little pigs) didn’t make it onto this list.

Thursday appeared in a series of Mickey Mouse daily strips in 1939.

whoever wrote that is a moron. That stuff’s just ethnic characature! What’s wrong with jive talking crows! None of that stuff is any worse than anything about white people on chapelle’s show, which is also ethnic characature.

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/search?q=political+correctness

Some of the other lists on that page are pretty good, like the one about comic books that shouldn’t be made into movies, including clips of some truly awful animated shows from the 60s and 70s.

Man, How far the never mighty Cracked has fallen!
I didn’t think it was possible but this makes me miss Sylvester P. Smythe.
Oh wait,I get it now…Disney is a racist! ha ha! Wee!

What’s really unfortunate is that the comments posted to that story at CrackedMagazine.com seem much worse than the Disney racism that the article identifies. Don’t you just love the internet?

Someone has wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy too much #*($@^%@ing free time on their hands!

How silly!

The pair from the Chip N’ Dale show really threw me off. I would think that show doesn’t come close in notability to any of the other films and cartoons he included. I assume that this is someone who has not watched Disney when he was younger- I would never have considered Sebastian, the Merchant, or the Indian Chief as being racist at the age I first saw each of these films.

One of the dumbest, most contrived lists ever. People wake up and stop channeling every human activity into world politics, try and lighten up for a change.

Number one was pretty funny. I’ve never read that story, but it looks like one to check out in the future. I’d read about that line in Aladdin, but I haven’t heard it till now. If these are the most “racist” characters Disney has to offer, the author should have no objections to the televising of “Figaro and Cleo” and “Mickey’s Mellerdrammer”.

Even as a “joke” this annoys me. It’s more PC censorship bullshit. If they don’t like it, they shouldn’t see the movies. Whining pussies. FYI They left a major one out, The big bad wolf in “the 3 little pigs” dressed as a very stereotypical Jewish peddler in one scene to try to get in to the pig’s house. ALSO King Louis wasn’t supposed to be “black”. He was voiced by Louis Prima an Italian-American from New Orleans. How racist of them to assume.

Kind of a funny read, but what’s worse is the comments people left for that article…

arrgg, these so called offensive characters are nothing more than stereotypes. people are way too sensitive about these things. no one’s saying that these characters are meant to portray an entire races. and there’s no denying that there’s at least a few people in the world that are like these characters.

stereotypes are useful to to get the point across in the shortest time period. if they weren’t a stereotype, they would have to spend time developing each character. time they cant spend time worrying too much about. stereotypes are fun. get over it people.

come back to me when they start drawing a bunch of squinty eyed Chinese people crashing their cars.

Hilariously awesome list. Poor Floyd Gottfredson, though.

Don’t think of these cartoons as racist. Think of them as additional opportunities for Leonard Maltin to pop up on a DVD release!

Yes, these are uncomfortable, but I think Chuck Jones’ “Angel Puss” (a black boy tries to drown a cat) should win the Oscar for Racial Insensitivity by a Major Animation Studio.

For an extensive collection of awkward moments check out:

http://www.ferris.edu/htmls/news/jimcrow/cartoons/homepage.htm

to Chuck R.: Robert Benchley will be disappointed you forgot about his work in Reluctant Dragon.

“Who’s gonna disappoint them by telling them that Louis Prima was Italian, not black?”

+1

i just left them a comment about it…talk about racially insensitive…mama mía!

Wow… I’d almost forotten about Thursday. There’s a copy of that book at my parent’s house that my mom has had since she as a little kid. She keeps it around to show how evil Disney is or something. It always mortified my sister and me.

I think there’s a HUGE double standard when it comes to classifying something racist.

You can depict a character such as a poor incestuous uneducated white male and it’s perfectly fine in cinema and cartoons. However, if the character is the same, but race is different it’s completely unacceptable and considered racist.

Will there be a point in time in our society where satire is forbidden and we can no longer laugh at ourselves?

I think these people are looking way too much into these cartoons. Walt just wanted to show the streotypes. There are SOME people that are like this in the world. It`s true. If we`re going to get offended because of every little thing, then we’ll spend our whole lives whining.

You know, these stereotypes still hurt peoples’ feelings. Do you animators out there want to create a cartoon that is just out-and-out racist?

I also noticed that Cracked.com didn’t call for these to be censored, they were just pointing this out. I agree with Tamu.

Oh, they could have done a better list than that! I’m sure you could find some real good Sunflower-level racism if you searched better instead of going right to “the crab sings about not working.” The singing blackfish is questionable, but her appearance is so brief you don’t think about it too much. There’s a whole formula of the nature of caricature, role in the story, depiction, and more that adds up to make the most purely racist and offensive characters.

(Someone stating something is racist is not always the same as political correctness. The response is almost always ranting about political correctness and not discussing the how and why and possibly refuting the statement, which bugs me)

What? Only nine? Come on! What’s wrong with a well-rounded number?

I agree with Kelly… what about all the stereotypes in Lady & the Tramp. You could make a whole new list with the characters from that film.

These characters are only a product of their time. We can’t escape or hide these things, they’re part of our history.

& with Song of the South, they should just slap Leonard Maltin with a disclaimer on it & put it out already. If they can do that with Popeye & Sesame Street, why not SotS?

You have to take a lot of that out of context to make it “racist”. What I find really funny is when white people point out the double standards of racism.

The article makes some very interesting points that I think are overlooked, like the crows were depicted a couple years after congress voted down a bill against lynching or that the actor playing Uncle Remus wasn’t even allowed to attend the premiere of the movie. Questionable or not, those characters were steps in the right direction.

Does anyone remember a scene from Lady and the Tramp when the Chihuahua says leeringly and in an exaggerated accent that Tramp should meet his “seeestah?” It clearly was presented like he was a pimp. To make it even worse, the dog had flies around him and he kept scratching himself.

Unless I was hallucinating, the scene was early versions but was excised in later ones. I was only a teenager at the time, but even then I was shocked by this.

Does anyone else remember this?

pointless

Wasn’t ‘cracked’ a magazine that was a bag of arse?

Though far from perfect, the Disney studio was one of the least racist places I ever encountered in the fifties. Probably because artists and musicians have always been more open and tolerant than their non-creative counterparts.

However, the Disney studio still had a lot to learn, as did most of America — and learn they did. This nation went through some troubled times to get where we are today.

Having said that, it’s about damn time the Disney studio releases “Song of the South.” Grow up, already!

I just discovered that the Mickey and Thursday story has been posted online. http://sickopath.com/mmbtp1.html It’s pretty funny.

KatNS: If I rememeber right, the Chihuahua said that the Tramp was already dating his ’seester’: “Maria Conchita Consuela Jospehina…” a whole bunch of names. The character had droopy eyes and “mexican” features…the same way speedy gonzalez did but I don’t remember there being flies around him. Also I think in that scene the ethnic joke was that Latina women have lots of names…which is relatively minor in the grand scheme of things… not that they’re all whores being pimped out by their own brothers.

BUT I could be wrong. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it too.

James Baskett may not have been allowed to attend the Academy Awards, but Walt Disney himself spearheaded a successful effort to get him an Oscar. Baskett did, in Disney’s opinion, the best job of believable acting while working against nothing (the animated characters were added much later) up to that time. His eye contact with moving characters in SotS is flawless. Not even Bob Hoskins could pull it off at Baskett’s level in ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’, forty years later, working with every tech advancement in the book.

Good one Steven!
That was the first thing I thought when I saw King Louis in the article. Louis Prima was actually Sicilian but same thing sort of.

Someone please call me a racist if they think because I loved every one of the character portrails on the list.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IS A TOTAL DESEASE. As an artist, it’s so natural to make observations of various people. Not always because you characterize them for thier appearance are you doing so because of the race of said character. But because of the extreme difference in the appearance and manors from a vast majority of other people that they might be surrounded with at any given time. Why is it always called racist? In order to capture or portray the character an artist or an actor must make some effort to make his appearance recognizable by an audience. If we see someone walking down the street or at a social event it’s natural to notice differences extreme or otherwise. If you see someone dressed in minks or ermine (not socially acceptable nowadays) You notice it. Is that racist? No. If you happen to notice a smelly vagrant (they exist, go to any metropolitan city if you happen into a certain part of town you’ll know what I mean.) If you hear someone who talks loudly, you notice them. If they have a particular accent, you notice that. It’s humanity in all it’s various spectacular differences. Is it racist to create characters in films who have some, or various concoctions of these attributes? I don’t see it as such. It’s just a recognizable characteristic of the many people we see during our lives. How else are you going to have an audience connect with the characters in your film.

I’ve said to much but I think I made my point. I wonder who agrees with me? I’m not looking for a alliance. Just wanted to have my say.

I think the article and the list is merely for publicity. Playing to peoples base feelings. Fanning the flames. The article is more racist than the films they were framing.

RODAN

Good one Steven!
That was the first thing I thought when I saw King Louis in the article. Louis Prima was actually Sicilian but same thing sort of.

Someone please call me a racist if they think because I loved every one of the character portrails on the list.

I think the article and the list is merely for publicity. Playing to peoples base feelings. Fanning the flames. The article is more racist than the films they were framing.

RODAN

On the Refrederator blog last year Emru Townsend was the guest blogger for “Black Comedy Week” and made some cogent comments on why these depictions are demeaning and go beyond fun satire.

http://frederatorblogs.com/refrederator/5

But the crows in Dumbo really don’t deserve being on a “worst” list. If the list maker had done his research he could have found better candidates than that in the very early Disney shorts. “Cannibal Capers” and “Mickeys Man Friday”come to mind.

Disney has some of the most generic and stereotypical white men and women in their films

Yeah, but the stereotype there is just a cliche of an image of The Central Character as white people see it. Of The Hero and The Heroine in the context of a predominantly white world and it’s values. A little bit different than the characters whose identity is defined by their difference from that center, just like the villian and the hapless sidekick.

And I wouldn’t say Dave Chappelle isn’t racist just because he’s black and some random Indian guy who commented on John K’s blog is not necessarily the man with the answer to all our race relation problems.

That said, I do think there should be a point where there is an open season on charicature, that everyone gets the same treatment, but it is dangerous ground. There’s a point where I can laugh about you making fun of how stupid and backwards America is but when that idea turns into something more serious you get my back up, even though you’re still telling jokes. Comedy is dangerous business, I hate South Park mostly for how much people bring up it’s brainless arguments in conversation, arguments that were just a struggle to get a laugh.

That said, I was not really interested in the article. You shouldn’t show kids too many Disney movies anyway, all of the characters foster unrealistic expectations of how people are and should act.

Do like my Mom did and show them Thin Man movies or something. Show them Miyazaki movies, even.

There’s a difference between caricature and racism. Sometimes the line can be a very thin one, but it’s there. Disney’s work is a product of its time - steps in the right direction or not, aspects of it were racist then and still are, and they shouldn’t be ignored because they may have had good intentions. I, too, agree with what Tamu said.

To add to what’s already been said about the stereotypes of white characters, the key point here is that - by and large - white people have not been oppressed as a group based on the colour of their skin. Yes, there was (and still is) lots of racism against plenty of white European immigrants - but they were never institutionally enslaved, and cops don’t profile Italians or Russians (etc.) when they’re looking for people to pull over. It’s a lot easier to take a joke when not a visible minority.

I don’t understand all the screeching about “political correctness.” At its roots, PC is not about stopping caricature or commentary - it’s about making people aware of any number of issues faced by minorities. It can at times be overbearing, but shouting someone down because they’re “PC” almost seems like you’re wishing for the good old days when unveiled racism was acceptable.

the controversy of “Song of the South” is really overblown. If the people at Disney who made that film at the time were truly racist, I doubt the film would’ve been made at all. I think the point is that great moral tales exist in all cultures, whether it’s Uncle Remus or Aesop or Grimm or Mother Goose or the Native Americans. Besides, animation and cartooning in general are based on caricature and exaggeration. Every culture imagineable has been made fun of in animation, and sometimes it hurts feelings. That doesn’t make animation by Disney or anyone else evil. To make a cartoon that offends nobody at all, they’d have to make it entirely with stick figures devoid of unique characteristics. How much fun would THAT be?

All of you animation fans are complaining about the racist imagery, but I’d guess if you were those minorities, you wouldn’t be as eager to defend them.

The stereotypes represent the silliness of the past but they’re not great. They’re interesting, but even back then they were embarassing.

To an abov commenter, Baskett has not been allowed to come to the PREMIERE. Organized by Disney, not the Academy Awards.

If I recall correctly, Cracked Magazine was the (very) poor kid’s idiot half-brother “rival” to Mad Magazine. The principal problem I have with that list is that it wasn’t nearly as funny as it was probably intended to be when they wrote the damn thing! YAWN!

Some of the characters on the list are more offensive than others, but I also think you need to look at these things in context. What were the stereotypes like in other media at the same time as these films were released? I always thought the “Song of the South” argument was the weakest. Uncle Remus is pretty much the only competent and caring adult in that whole film. You really can’t win in this PC era. Someone will always be offended by something. Where is the outrage by the speech impaired hunting community over Elmer Fudd?

I agree with Charlie J. above. It’s ethnic caricature, and ethnic caricature does not equal racism. Nor neccessarily do stereotypes, for that matter (and where do those COME FROM in the first place? Are all stereotypes fully created from whole cloth with no basis in reality?).

What next? Is all CARICATURE going be labeled as HATE? Did Disney hate mice, ducks, cats and dogs? Look at how he STEREOTYPED them in his films! What’s with Tom always chasing Jerry & trying to eat him? And Jerry–always after cheese!

Hanna and Barbera were SPECISTS!

“His eye contact with moving characters in SotS is flawless.”

Yes, the part where him and Brer Frog light their pipes is excellent.

“aspects of it were racist then and still are”

Uh, they aren’t racist just because you say they are. And harping about it forever isn’t going to do any good.

Jim Engle said:(and where do those COME FROM in the first place? Are all stereotypes fully created from whole cloth with no basis in reality?).

I think there’s a lot less basis than we imagine. What do most of us really know about black people in the 1930’s that isn’t originated from white media?

If you take a look at the genuinely black-written, black-produced, black-directed and black-acted cinema of the 1930’s and 40’s (there was such a thing) you won’t see much like the hollywood film stereotypes. They appear as regular human beings, who neither slur their speech nor shuffle their walk. They don’t bulge their eyes out and say things like “Feet don’t fail me now!”. Neither do they braid their hair into spikes that stick straight out of their head. It’s a world completely unlike what Hollywood would show you.

And yet the Hollywood version won, positioning itself as a caricature of reality when it’s really just lame, recycled gags from 100 year old minstrel shows.

Guys, I love this idea we live in a totally color-blind world and that you’d screen these films in their full glory to modern day viewers telling the audience “Those crows and Indians aren’t racist! They’re celebrating our differences!” I’d also recommend screening one of these cartoons.

Ya sillies.

It’s obvious this magazine was not actually calling people to arms, so it’s inappropriate in this case to bemoan political correctness and call them the PC police. Besides, Political Correctness is not something made up by a league of soccer moms who go around saying “you can’t do that,” nor is it listening to EVERY person who takes issue with something in your film. It’s like restraining yourself from cussing. Sometimes you gotta say a foul word, but most of the time you should try to come up with more creative and intelligent ways to get your point across.

The thing about a lot of caricatures that makes them racist is that often a caricature is the same as every other caricature. All of them are the same character. Is it really a caricature or is it just a character pulled from the big book of stereotypes? Consider how some black cartoon characters actually have some variety and thought in their design while most are just the same red rubber tire lipped big eyed character we’ve seen everywhere else. Consider how the old Asian caricature is often the same slant-eyed buck-toothed glasses wearing face wherever you go. It’s a very shallow caricature, really. There’s so much that could go into them (including things to make fun of) that doesn’t because nobody bothers to really look at the people they’re making that caricature of but rather some idea made and perpetuated by people who don’t really know them at all.

Really, how can any of you say these aren’t racist? I remember reading that John K post a while ago, and his opinion just baffles me. He seems to automatically put “racist” with “offensive” like they’re inseperable, and used his indian friend to defend his claim.

Yeah, it might not be offensive (to you or someone else), but clearly, it’s offensive to someone. And even if it’s not offensive, that doesn’t make it less racist. You can call it a caricature all you like, but ethnic stereotypes are, by definition, racist.

I don’t believe the guys at Disney meant for them to be malicious attacks on those races, though. They were just naive.

…Actually, there’s a segment from the old Mickey Mouse Club that should have made the list. Jimmy Dodd tells a parable about how people are judged by the company they keep. The parable involves, IIRC, a white lamb who gets ostracized by hanging around a bunch of do-no-good black crows.

“If I recall correctly, Cracked Magazine was the (very) poor kid’s idiot half-brother “rival” to Mad Magazine.”

…Actually, the better analogy is to compare Cracked to Mad as Fridays to SNL just before the departure of the original cast. At times, Cracked was actually funnier than Mad, but the latter had all the star artists and writers, which allowed it to chug along on sheer inertia. When you compared a riff on a movie or TV show by both mags, what you find is that if Mad did it first, the Cracked version was funnier because they had the chance to see just what didn’t work for the Mad version. The only problem there was that Mad got your money first, and Cracked got the leftovers.

Besides, most of these are just trying to goad a reaction from the public. The Jungle Book one is an example. But si, most of the caricatures aren’t in the best of taste.

What an asshat–I noticed he intentionally “whitened up” the the flesh tones on the picture of Aladdin in order to make his stupid point. (gee the hero is handsome and the villian is ugly–we’ve never seen that before) As for the Indians in Peter Pan- They are not meant to be REAL american natives any more than the pirates were meant to be an accurate portrayal of real pirates. They are presented as childrens fantasy versions of these people, the movie is a dream, don’t you fucking get that? People today are way too literal minded, and way too easily offended.

aweosme! When is the 9 most racist Bakshi list coming?

As an Asian-American, I wouldn’t exactly describe my reaction to the Siamese Cats from Chip and Dale (or the Siamese Cat from The Aristocats for that matter) as “offended”. I think I’m more surprised that these bucktoothed, sneaky, Engrish speaking caricatures were created in Civil Rights era. Hard to write off as “charming” like some people might with lawn jockeys.

But to address this as someone who has experienced real racism, I think these caricatures are more the result of ignorance (willful or not) than actual racism. But I won’t go as far as to say no one should be held accountable. In the end who knows if the cumulative effect of these stereotypes actually increases racism on our society?

John A,

As a Pirate-Neverlandian, I’m actually quite offended at Disney’s ethnic stereotypes within Peter Pan. They made us out to be blithering idiots, and some designer found it funny to give me mutton chops when, in fact, I sport a handlebar mustache.

>>I think these caricatures are more the result of ignorance (willful or not) than actual racism. But I won’t go as far as to say no one should be held accountable. In the end who knows if the cumulative effect of these stereotypes actually increases racism on our society?

I sort of agree with this in that most of those listed have more simplistic characatures than anything truely racist (Like the Japanese in Commando Duck). A lot of them are dated and as a result, sort of resonate an uneasy stigma.

This is stupid.

The fact that they keep bringing this up, and going after relatively harmless stereotypes makes the people who wrote this the real racists, as well as people like Spike Lee who are constantly finding racism where it doesn’t exist.

Most people are conformists within a culture at any given time in history. The cultural climate is more ethnically sensitive now than it was back in the 1930, or around that time. That’s all fine and good. My point is that the moral outrage we feel when we look back on this stuff is partly an illusion. If the same people who now cry “racist” were part of that culture at the time, my guess is that the vast majority wouldn’t have thought anything of it. So rather than feeling superior, you might make a note of how arbitrary it is and how today’s standards will look just as backwards in the future. People are products of their time.

Conversely, there were probably behaviors or social etiquette in those old days that have given way to a much courser society today. Actually, I don’t think there much doubt about that. So, we’re sort of evolved and devolved since then.

In the early days of Hollywood, the vaudeville circuit was still active with all manner of of ethnic caricatures and/or stereotypes. There was so much migration coming in from different parts of the world, especially Europe, and they had fun with it, sometimes with VERY crude results. Those crude renderings, however, don’t necessarily mean they were done with hatred or cruel intent. That’s where people need to get some perspective and preserve the word “racist” for those who actively promote hatred against another race.

I’m waiting for AARP to join the pile-on. Is there a more egregious stereotype than the emasculated geriatrics in Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Tarzan?

Aging patriarchs unite!

A few of those were racist most of them weren’t. If we are going by these standards the Simpsons is the most racist show on TV

Apu: racist towards India
Groundskeeper Willie: racist towards the Scottish
Ned Flanders and Rev. Lovejoy: unfair religious stereotypes
Barney: offensive and insensitive view of alcoholism
Patty and Selma: Lesbian stereotypes
Mr. Burns: age-ist?
Smithers: gay stereotypes.

Need I go on? I’m probably just adding more fuel for people to overeact to something. Its like people are LOOKING for things to be offended by. They WANT to be offended. Pretty soon we won’t be able to have any type of humor because it may be offensive to someone.

To Smee: as a member of the Pirates Union Local 381, it’s my duty to inform you that Pirate Neverlandians are not recognised as actual pirates and are classified as freelance or temp pirates and consequently, freely open to ridicule. On the respect chart, they rank just above Gilbert and Sullivan characters and slightly below guys that steal cable. Also, since pirates generally come from a fairly diverse collection of ethnic backgrounds, identification of any specific minority status or claims of any protection thereof has been universally rendered moot. I don’t even want to get into the fact , Smee, that you’re only a fictional character, and since libel laws only protect those that are actually alive, I’m afraid your beef with the Disney Co. is groundless (unlike ours, which is 100% ground beef) Your case, like some of your peglegged brethren, have naught to stand on.

I was pretty miffed when CBS cancelled the American Creature Comforts midway through the summer. Animation always does poorly during primetime on network TV, but as a summer replacement, was it really killing them to run the last four episodes? They could have just run them all back to back and be done with it in one evening or something.

Thank you.

Thank you for linking to that website. I’m disabled and can tell you from experience that they nailed it on all for TV spots, particularly the third one.

People often do assume that, because my legs don’t work right, that the same goes for my mind-an assumption they find out later was an incorrect one, often to their great disadvantage! May this find you happy and healthy.

why don’t we see more great commercials of this sort in America? There are lots of clever or stylistically beautiful ads done here, but not enough with the kind of heart put into these. Of course, they were done by Aardman; not everybody has that kind of skill.

These are great. I wish they would air them here in the states.

CBS did cancel them but, they treated it quite unfairly
CBS never game the show any scrap of advertising hence forth no one saw it

That’s a brilliant idea for those spots. Good for Aardman.

At least they released US Creature Comforts on DVD…

I thought these were great. They didn’t need to play the little violin to make their point and they didn’t need to shoe horn a lot of jokes in there either. They just kept it kind of simple and charming. Liked it.

Nice spots, too bad they canceled the series before its prime.

I do believe Aardman also does the animation for a new Christmas commercial for a iPhone with gingerbreadmen.

The thing I hated about these commercials?

The short length ;-)

michael barrier can’t draw. he wants to fit in, and be different.

poor michael.

It looks very much like a John K production piece.

He needs to go back to the drawing board and come up with his own distinct style.

Michael Barrier can be kind of an idiot, but what I’ve seen of Wraith did kind of look like someone other than Kricfalusi was bothering to recycle the same tired shtick about ten years after it should have been put to rest. Other than that he seems very talented though and good on him for keeping the indie animation thing going.

When I look at this and certain John K things I keep being reminded of that interview with the makers of Out of Jimmy’s Head in which they say it’s more “animation-y.” I look at the work and I don’t see a cartoon, but rather a blaring statement of “Look! LOOK at how animation-y my animation is! This is animation at its most animation-y, to which all other attempts are inferior!” It leaves me watching the animation very closely, but not feeling all that happy about it. Well, this clip probably isn’t the best representative of it, and I do want to see the rest of it, but I guess I don’t want to enough.

That being said, I’m all for animators doing their own stuff and having the ability to put out stuff in this way. It’s great that he’s able to self produce like this.

John K. is not god, why everyone gets mad when someone do a cartoon that looks like John K.s style?
Even when it really would looks like a John K. cartoon, why the people can’t enjoy it as a cartoon?

John K. is inspired by styles from classic cartoons and put it together. It’s not wrong to be inspired by other artists, it’s actually the reason why you start to draw, but when I look at John’s style and Nick’s - I can see a difference, to me
it’s two different styles! And Nick’s style is GREAT!

I like Nick’s Cartoon! And you see lots of Nick’s style in the new Ren & Stimpies! He is a talented and hard working person, and his cartoons are full of life, fun and exciting to watch!

Ps: Sorry for my bad english!

First of all- Nick Cross worked on most of the John K. productions it’s being compared to, so it’s HIS OWN work in the first place, you can’t rip off your own style! Hmmmmmm- Barrier didn’t point that out…but then he hates John K. and his body of work, taking any chance he has to rip away at the K.-man. Reminds me of the 24 hour boycott of Barrier after his harsh words against John K. and Steve Worth the weekend that Bigshot got the ASIFA award. Barrier trumpetted the boycott as a badge of honor, claiming it was still ongoing weeks later, in an attempt to get sympathetic fans to buy his dust-gathering collection of books from Amazon.com. I encourage everybody to pick up a copy of “Waif”, it’s great, and encourages more selfproductions by animators everywhere.

I bought the DVD months ago, and absolutely love it. I encourage others to plop down the cash and buy it too. Enough of this bull shit bickering about styles. Just enjoy a great independent film by a very talented hard working guy. We should all support animators that make their own films. And totally agree that the only way to keep happy and sane, is work on your own projects when ever you can. I know I have never been happy with the studio projects I have worked on.

i don’t think it looks that much like John K’s stuff. It has similarities, but Cross’s stuff is so much wonkier. Deliciously wonkier, if you ask me. I think he’s great. Mike Barrier has an awful taste anyway.

the Eddie Xmas show, if I remember right - Joe Ranft as Santa and Darrell Van Citters as one of the medics?

That’s Joe Ranft in the screen grab as Santa in one of the big finales. All that gang were genius with those shows.

[There was also a 4th of July extravaganza where a gigantic flag was unfurled that covered the entire side(well, almost)of the animation building.]

Great to see this again.

So, now someone should post “Luau” on YouTube , too .

hi, This book is very cool, I am brasilian and I study to be a designer/animator… thanks for this reference!

That’s an awesome publication!
It’s always great to see various cartooning styles and methods from different time periods.
It really payed off for Bill, he’s a great animator!

Dover Publications reprinted Carlson’s ‘Learn How To Draw Comics’ in 2002 with some of this material. My favorite part? The difference between Noah and Methuselah is a sailor’s cap!

Very cool stuff. Love the design style and it’s still relevant today. The cover art rocks.

Most cartoon depictions of the world used to be grinning and happy-go-lucky, until about August of 1939.

It’s true what they say. Laugh and the world laughs with you. :-)

This is what the book CROSSING THE RUBICON warned about a couple of years ago. Good to see that the general populace is finally catching on.

I hope everyone knows that Peak Oil is a fraud perpetrated by the oil companies to jack up the price of oil…Venezuala has the potential to pump more oil than Iraq…ditto for the oilsands in Alberta. What is the motive behind the Green movement? Carbon Tax? UN resolution aplenty? World government? We need to curb pollution and reign in our consumptive lifestyles, but lets be sure of the facts before we resort to fear-mongering.

If fear mongering will help us curb our oil intake, our pollution, and help the environment, then I’m all for rattling the masses.

The motive behind the Green movement would seem to be not encountering incredible doom, unless you’d like to elaborate on what you’re implying is a more believable motivation behind a group of very concerned people who don’t have much of a voice in the media.

And why should any of us take your word on the idea that peak oil is a fraud. Granted why should anyone take this animation’s word? Or the sites it’s boosting? But I guess at least the animation make you want to learn more, to maybe take the idea seriously.

What’s all the fuss about people!!! RELAX!!! In Belgium people are actually driving on used fried fat!!! IT’S TRUE!!! Dont believe me? Check: http://www.vk.tv/video/5165 ( It’s in Dutch sorry )

The car’s engine needs a small filter and your a go!

So everyone chill out, eat sum fries, and problems solved :)

( don’t hope there will be a diet peak or anything…)

I’ll just discuss the film, not the politics behind it: It’s very well done, though it makes no reference to the huge wars that used up a good deal of oil…

To say nothing of the one in Iraq designed to steal the last major source of oil left on earth, aside from Saudi Arabia. The Alberta oil, btw, is very hard to get out.

I love how everyone thinks driving less reduces oil intake and use so drastically. They forget that oil is used in the production of thousands of products we use every day and not driving to the store will do little to stop the consumption of oil.

Personally, I think we should go ahead and use up all the oil. If we use it all up, we will be FORCED to find and use alternatives. Unless oil is some kind of renewable resource that comes from dead matter buried under the Earth and compressed with heat and pressure over time………………

This film is well animated and the concept is totally brilliant. The accuracy of Hubbert’s curve is excellent…for example, the brief leveling-off in the 1970’s when the two OPEC oil embargos occured. Nice work!

It’s natural to be skeptical of the peak oil “theory,” but there are so many educated and diversified voices speaking out about this issue, it’s getting harder to ignore. It’s showing up in the mainstream media more and even the oil companies are raising the alarm now. Google and read a few of the major studies done over the last couple of years: the Hirscsh report, the GAO report, the more recent Energy Watch Group report…not exactly page turners, but they’ve got the raw data that will a little note-taking can really help to put all this into perspective.

Connect the dots for yourself.

Simple & Powerful. Well done.

And for those of you thinking this is just a baseless hype, Mexico’s one of the biggest oil exporters for the US. And PEMEX (the state-managed oild company) announced this year that our proven reserves will only last 9 years.

9.

years.

After that’s gone, the only oil left will be in the hands of people who don’t think too highly of you.

Bruce - your cartoon is brilliant. At The Oil Drum we have been discussing alternative ways of getting the peak oil message across. And judging by some of the comments up the thread here I’d say we have a mountain to climb.

Red Pill mentions Mexico - you can add Indonesia and UK to the list of former exporters - now importers, faced with plummeting oil production.

Welcome to the real world.

This film is AWESOME. I highly encourage everyone to go see it, not just pixar fanboys.

Bring this film to Mexico… POR FAVOR!!!!

I want to see this!

On a side note, I’ve been staring hypnotically at that Buzz Lightyear drawing for about a minute now. So freaking cool…dang talented people. :P

I’d like to see this when it comes to the UK. Anyone got any idea when it crosses the pond.

Pretty good film. I especially like the way when they’re talking to George Lucas you can actually hear him kicking himself. Seriously he looked like he wanted to cry.

Bill is right…This film is AWESOME! I love it and wish I could go out tomorrow and get it on DVD ha ha.

Awesome! I like how PIXAR uses all that tech to give us stop motion puppets with photo realistic bricks and floor tiles!!! Oh yeah, And a chef with Jafars’ face. Just kidding, I loved Cars.

Might also be a good time to spread the word that Leslie Iwerks’ documentary THE HAND BEHIND THE MOUSE (about her pioneering Grandpa Ub) is due out on DVD in a few days as part of the Oswald Disney Treasures set. This film alone is well worth the price of admission — even without the 13 featured Oswald shorts.

This is a must-see for anyone who has an interest in animation, film making, or technology. It shows how the right people, with the right leadership, can truly cause a sea change. I don’t know how much it may differ from the version I saw at Comic-Con this year, but I’ve no doubt the changes have been minuscule. GO SEE IT.

I went to the screening in SF–the film is a great and thorough account of Pixar’s journey, and especially John Lasseter’s.

Also, at the SF screening they gave out free posters at the reception (The image in this post with Buzz). Maybe they’ll do the same at the Hollywood screening…

See it!

It shouldn’t be missed. Really well done.

oh, how i hate being UNble to attend these things!!

Damn that book looks cool! Nice review, too. I think H-B gets a bad rap for all the junk they did in the ’70s and ’80s. People tend to overlook how charming that early ’60s stuff was (and is). Can’t wait to snag my own copy of the book.

It’s already on my Christmas wishlist for Santa!

B.

Andy said: “I think H-B gets a bad rap for all the junk they did in the ’70s and ’80s. People tend to overlook how charming that early ’60s stuff was (and is).”

H-B in the 50s/60s = Young Rocker Elvis.

H-B in the 70s/80s = Elvis, the Vegas Years.

‘Tis an awesome book. I’m loving my copy.

Wish I could come. I’ll have to time it so that while the signing is going on I’m eating a bowl of Cocoa Pebbles, flipping through my copy, and imagining I am there…

I’m Rapmaster Hans and I’m here to say, I love this book in a major way!

The book looks awesome just from that picture!! Can’t make the signing ,but will certainly add the book to my xmas list this year!!

Sorry I can’t make it to the signing. I’ll be carrying water for my gal who’s training for the AIDS marathon.
I did receive my copy of the Treasury and am awash in joy. It is full of fun stuff neat stuff. Little pockets of happiness from front to back.

Jerry! You need to come to Vancouver, BC for a signing sometime! And maybe you can host an evening of classic cartoons too! I know I’d be there!

Kurtis (and anyone else interested) - I’m available to give lectures, screen classic cartoons and do book signings in any city. I just need a sponsor to pay my way (just as my recent successful road trip to Columbus, Ohio). If you know a college, museum, film society, festival or convention willing to bring me in, I’m there!

Anyone in the animation industry would be willing to travel anywhere and speak about anything, as long as someone out there would pays our way, and tosses in a couple of free meals. Jerry, you’ve just shown what’s left of our industry the future.

Fantastic they`ve released a book like this! Will have to order it.

I just got this book this week from Amazon. It is GORGEOUS! All of the artwork, all of the photos of the the merchandising, and all of the EXTRAS, make this a “have-to-own” for any animation/cartooning fan.

To Jerry: The book looks great! Sorry I showed up at your signing before you did, though.

To Rapmaster Hans: Holy crap, I did the storyboard, models and layouts for that Fruity Pebbles spot you reference, which was directed by Funnybone Films’ Ken Walker. It was one of the very first Pebbles spots (of hundreds) I worked on. I thought I was the only human being still alive who remembers it!

Scott, I remember that Pebbles commercial, too. A classic!! What year was that, anyway?

Awesome book Jerry! Just got mine today.
Love all the artwork and special inserts! I’ve even collected some of those 60’s/70’s comics already…
Hope to have time to read it all when class is put on pause for the holidays!

Jerry, this book is fantastic, I’ve been poring over it all night. But I did notice a misprint in the introduction of my copy. Page 12-13 are repeated on page 16-17 (with a paragraph added). Reading the first paragraph on page 18, it is clear that something is missing. Has anyone else noticed this? What can I do about it? Any suggestion would be appreciated.

Dave Hermary - I’m not sure how many (or if all) copies have that printing error. I have posted the correct text for pages 16 and 17 on my Cartoon Research website:

http://www.cartoonresearch.com/HBPage16.jpg

http://www.cartoonresearch.com/HBPage17.jpg

Thanks Jerry, at least now I can read it. Now I need to print them off in color and get some of that funky tape used for the inserts and tape them in myself!

Wow! That brought back some ancient, dead memories for me. Ha ha! I had nightmares as a kid after seeing that sequence for some reason. Coincidentally, I had nightmares about Beowulf too- bad dreams about piles of money burning in the middle of a sewer.

At some point I feel facinated looking at this. But on the other hand… thinking of Beowulf and this so called “new rage”… *sigh*

Great! Now we can fire all those pesky artists!

curly joe sucks.

So scientific genius Emil Sitka was the culprit who invented Mo Cap. The ‘electronic cartoon’ footage was rotoscoped and hand-inked, but the concept is identical. If Max Fleischer saw this, it probably led to his stroke.

Great work, Carl! Brilliant! Sums up my thoughts on the matter too.

I talked about this film back in January on my blog. The film The Three Stooges In Orbit had a lasting effect on my memory. Of course, rotoscoping involves real hand-drawn animation whereas MoCap does not.

Yeah, electronics are evil and bringing about the destruction of traditional animation. So I guess you guys are stockpiling cel paint and mag track, right?

Paul: They’re all major stockholders at Eberhardt-Faber. ;-)

While I wouldn’t be shocked that the inventors of mo-cap may have seen this movie in their childhood, most of them have stated that the main inspiration for the concept was the holodeck of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

Goddamned Trekkies…

Thank you! That explains so much I had suspected! Brilliant detective work!

Yes, of course it’s rotoscoped for production, but in the film’s story line it works automatically, more like motion capture.

I thought it was created by a team of super intelligent monkeys. NOW I find out.

This isn’t too far off from the truth, yeah?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVUfV0oNKqc

A few steps above Sychro-Vox, you have to admit.

Weren’t they trying to make films like that with Friz Freleng’s involvement? Or am I thinking of something else?

That’s hysterical. And how timely!

AL: Superintelligent? Nah. Meany, Miny and Moe are only about average as these things go.

Time to smash a bird cage over that guy’s head! “Hold hands you Love Birds.”

Pedro, that’s the line I always think of whenever I see or think of Emil Sitka! I can’t explain exactly why it cracks me up but I think most of the credit has to go to Sitka’s delivery.

I like this quote:
“No artist ever touched this. The entire thing was drawn by a machine!”
Sounds like a Zemekis wet dream.

Is calling it MOE-cap just stating the obvious?

I have to give the 3 Stooges some renewed respect for their prophetic vision. I love the way the studio guys (the REAL stooges?) are drooling lustfully over their machine of financial salvation. Cigars for the room!

> Peter says:
>
> I like this quote:
“No artist ever touched this. The entire thing was drawn by a machine!”
Sounds like a Zemekis wet dream.

Funny how things just come back to haunt you! This little joke reminded me of something I saw once on a public access show where a guy showed what he considers the very first rap song ever made, and it was a scene from a Three Stooges short where the guys did a little poem-like tune to advertise their fruit stand biz, but it was so amusing!

The southern financial backer wears a string bow tie. Wealthy people from the south always have the correct neckwear.

I like how normally in a Hollywood film the guy with the invention would be an attractive, love interest character with dignity and a dead center kind of personality and in these clips he just appears like a ridiculous guy with an idea no one making the film has any meaningful sympathy for. He’s just another clown.

Once again Moe was a man thirty years ahead of his time. First, he invented the famous hairstyle with which The Beatles would later change the world, and then he created Moe-cap. Everything I needed to learn in life I learned from Moe.

Everything I have seen from this film so far looks great. I am looking forward to this.

Another CG animated film? Oh, dandy!

This looks totally derivative. Not a single original idea here.

*yawn*

man, look at that gesture. They should ban it. I first took notice of that when Aladdin invited the princess to hop on the magic carpet, and it has been used in every animated feature since then. It’s probably way older than that, though. I can’t stand it anymore…

I’m somewhat bummed at that green alien design. Pretty “blah”. I would see this if the come-ons looked good.

That press release was written by someone not even born when the previous New Line animated features hit the street. Why should these people bother to learn their own business? They’re ready to run the industry further into the ground.

Why does every CG movie have to be considered “a slap in the face” to hand drawn animation? It seems now that every animated film done in hand drawn since the dawn of time has suddenly gotten a whole heaping of respect since the dawn of “Computer Geneterated” films.

Christopher Olson - I don’t consider every CG movie a “slap in the face” to hand drawn animation. You’re reading me wrong.

I’m refering to New Line Cinema’s marketing department’s ignorance of its own history with animation as a “slap in the face”. To promote this new film as its first animated film is an insult to the previous films and filmmakers.

To read the article it seems to be UPI making the claim, based on something they read (and didn’t check) in Hollywood Reporter.

But the movie is coming out in 2009 and they are still looking for celebrities to do voice? That means they have already animated big chunks of it to a scratch voice track, to which the celebrity voices will be made to fit, right? That means the celebrities bring no element of their acting to the film, just their marquee value, right?

Well, you’re certainly right that it undermines New Line’s previous animation efforts by pretending they simply never existed. I feel the same way towards people who call CGI the next step in the evolution of animation, rather than the creation of a new field of animation.

But I’m sort of tired of poeple rolling their eyes at every CGI movie that comes by, as though another adaptation of a video game just got the greenlight.

Jerry: I get the gist of your posting, but if those films were truly “forgettable”, then maybe the filmmakers should accept the “slap in the face”. At any rate, they should realize that New Line is simply trying to cop a second chance at making a first impression. (Good luck with that.)

Wasn’t “Hooray For Betty Boop” a series of scenes from old Boop cartoons redrawn and painted in color with new dialogue? I’d disqualify it from the list on that account alone.

“Nancy B”
“Brett McCoy”
“Junior”
“tom”

‘The Glass Half Empty Club’…come join us!

I sure do love how every animated feature has the same character in it. Lame.

I like adventure, though, so I’m giving this an unbiased shot. That, and the space suit is kind of cool.

But seriously, can we get some interesting looking characters for once?

Christopher Cook - You respond: “Wasn’t “Hooray For Betty Boop” a series of scenes from old Boop cartoons redrawn and painted in color with new dialogue? I’d disqualify it from the list on that account alone.”

Yes, the Betty Boop film was a patische of old clips colorized and compiled into a new feature length storyline (with Tommy Smothers as the voice of Pudgy). I’ve always disqualifed it from my list of animated features, here: http://www.cartoonresearch.com/feature.html

Regardless, it was a full length animated feature given a theatrical release by New Line Cinema. Qualifying it or disqualifying it not the point. The news is reporting Planet 51 is New Line’s first animated feature - and clearly that statement is wrong.

Bobby D- don’t you have a telly to rock somewhere?

Has anyone else noticed that the green aliens in this movie look exactly like “Widget” from the 80’s cartoon of the same name?

the actual press release from Ilion has the correct facts

http://www.ilion.com/home/index.php?p=press

“New Line Cinema has marked its first venture into CG animation by acquiring… “

Why does the alien world have to reflect our contemporary world so closely. What happened to the concept of an “Alien” world. Maybe I’ll just hold my judgments until I see the film

Weird, looks like the aliens are in something of an american 50’s style culture.

Still, it’s got aliens, and I’m sure it will be full of geeky jokes reminiscent of UFO-related lore, so it probably will appeal to my taste :-)

>Christopher Hatfield says:
>
> Why does the alien world have to reflect our contemporary world so closely. What happened to the concept of an “Alien” world. Maybe I’ll just hold my judgments until I see the film

It does seem more like a reverse of what we would’ve seen in a film about an alien on our planet being chased by the feds (like E.T. or the silly Mac & Me), only this time it’s an Earthling on an alien planet being chased by their feds. So it’s a little original, if not something they could’ve done 10 years before.

The aliens do look rather Shrek-like, but I like the look of the robot. The concept looks like it might be fun. I’m willing to withhold judgement until I see the trailer.

Hopefully they’ll throw in a good belch or fart joke - apparently no animated film these days is complete without one. :)

“Hopefully they’ll throw in a good belch or fart joke - apparently no animated film these days is complete without one”

When witty writing is unavailable–toss in the ol’ reliable gastric bubble gag.

I’ll call your nit-picking and raise you! The other three were pick-ups.

Admittedly, UPI said “release” rather than “produce,” but we must filter what we get from the wire services.

Dreamworks is coming out with Monsters vs. Aliens, Pixar is working on John Carter from Mars, and now this… looks like we’ve found our new theme, boys! Let’s all started making sci-fi films!

Every animated feature ever is the first the company has ever released

‘Quest for Camelot’ anyone?

Why won’t anyone admit to having released animated films in the past!?!?!?

When is someone in the USA gonna make an animated feature they’re proud of; that isn’t aimed straight for the bargain bin; that in a few years they will even admit exists at all?

Shrek aside, Joe Stillman is a pretty awesome writer, so I’ll hold judgement til I see more, I think.

> Larry Levine says:
>
> “Hopefully they’ll throw in a good belch or fart joke - apparently no animated film these days is complete without one”
>
> When witty writing is unavailable–toss in the ol’ reliable gastric bubble gag.

How about throw in a ambiguous shower/bath scene for good measure (of course that’s the 10 year old in my talking, but I haven’t seen a good one in a long time)? ^_-

LOL!

I foresee that due to this heinous sacrilege these 2D-loving scoundrels shall forever suffer in the plane of Oblivion… er… I mean Hell, cleaning up Mo-Cap data for the never-completed Halo movie!

MUA-HA-HA-HAAAAAA!

Good fun. I visited their site as a result of this post and actually like their other, earlier short even more.

Cute variation of the fairy tale.

hahaha, this is so badass.

Somebody actually out nerded anime. Well done fellas.

Actually awesome on these guys for sticking with this so long.

I think doing this by hand was a good idea. There are tons of Flash animations out there with this sort of geeky content (cough, cough, Newgrounds.com), but this one is actually funny, and you can tell they cared about what they were doing, and how it looked.

Red Dwarf box set… that’s definitely something I’ve geeked out over. Once a nerd, always a nerd, I guess.

i love this!

great job guys!

Oh my goodness - this is incredible! You can definitely see the love put into this film. Even if the audience wasn’t familiar with the rich tradition of LARPing, the film can still be funny because it’s so over-the-top! But there’s a lot of nice references to animation and geek culture for those of us in the know - did anyone else notice that the “Next Episode” bit at the end was a rip on “Neon Genesis Evangelion?” Not to mention the hysterical ending credits…
Well done, Matt and Ben! Can’t wait for your next film!

I didn’t get most of the roleplay references, nor do I know the original characters - there is some original out there which was parodied, right? But it was nicely done, the hand-drawing was essential to the effect, the voices were great.

And it won me already with that not-so-straight moving spotlight and its little “screech” sound.

Yes, there’s tonnes of great stuff here.
Well done that player.

BWAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAAAHAHA! Great stuff! Long live 2D!!!

hahhahaha. hilarious! i cant believe they did that by hand….insane!

Pretty awesome, I must say.

It took them a year to do this? It’s funny and all, but it’s every bit as limited as most Flash animation. Maybe they only worked on it for a half hour a day… :0)

why is it so insane if done by hand?

If they would lose about two minutes, general audiences would get it without knowledge of the ‘rich tradition of LARPing.’ It is way cool that it was drawn by hand. There is no digital substitute for living characters.

This looks perfectly at home in a VENTURE BROS. episode! And yes, I mean that it a good way! (Maybe Matt & Ben are fans?)

THIS IS AWSOME!!!!! GREAT ANIMATION…..GREAT WRITING……GREAT SOUND DESIGN!!!!

LONG LIVE BEN LEVIN AND HIS DELICIOUS HOG!!!!!!!!!!!!

Did these people see “Eltingville”?

Awesome stuff!! Really nicely animated and funny as sh*t to boot!!!

> Did these people see “Eltingville”?

I thought so too, though I was going to say CN should have greenlit “Welcome to Eltingville” when they had the chance.

…this makes me want to hold my own nativity play of epic proportions!

lol…the guys at my Scifi club loved this…awesome find!

> alexander says:
>
> Somebody actually out nerded anime. Well done fellas.

Am I the only one who thought that tanuki character stuck out like a sore thumb? ^_^

Here in England where Red Dwarf was made, we don’t consider it sci-fi or geeky. Its still on TV almost everyday on UKgold. I can see how in your united states, it may seem quaint or eclectic, but it’s just a quite funny sitcom. This animation is alright, however its only partly hand drawn. It’s like the boring stuff I do, where every corner is cut so to create less drawn frames. Watch it again, looking out for motion graphics supplimenting real animation. I happen to like this style of work, but I wouldn’t tout it as labour intensive hand drawn work unless I was trying to piss people off.

Oh that was a great video. That was awesome. You should also come check out this GREAT Christmas video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKdMZSCpDNQ

Awesome video but it would be pretty grueling to have to listen to that while on a flight. Just hit the throttle and go!

I like the guy with the death metal makeup at the very beginning.

I imagine they were contractually obligated not to show any expression other than relaxed comfort on the poor souls who find themselves needing to strap on oxygen masks or (gulp) don life vests. (”Water landing”. Ha ha ha.)

Cool info-video. I hope the guys at Anomaly get to make something similar when Virgin Galactic is finally launched by 2009…2010?

I’d fly on a plane with you anytime.

This is about 419 times better than the version they play on Virgin Atlantic - a horror of the worst kind of stilted Flash.
It’s also narrated by Vic Reeves which is very strange.

that’s SO NICE!!! You won’t get bored by those safety films, and you feel at ease while watching them.

Good job Virgin!!!

That was pleasing to look at, although a little long. I’m used to the safety speech, even when prerecorded in a movie, being a lot more briskly spoken.
So, the cushions don’t float anymore?

I’m just sad that no percentage of all the video’s I’ve had to sit through on other airlines are even close to being as entertaining as this.

Clever enough so you don’t lose interest
Not too over-the-top to lose the FAA’s approval

I actually spent 4 minutes watching instructions that I usually ignore while I’m on the plane. Good work!

So, the water indicator light on the life vest is supposed to tell you if you’re in water? That’s about as useful as those ‘hill indicator’ lamps on Cadillacs that tell the drivers when they are on a hill.

It works great. I just watched it from beginning to end without being bored one second. The smoking girl has six fingers though.

“This is about 419 times better than the version they play on Virgin Atlantic - a horror of the worst kind of stilted Flash.
It’s also narrated by Vic Reeves which is very strange.”

In the event of a water landing a man named Les will appear from underneath you and can be used as a floatation device. Please endevour to keep Les away from Chives but feel free to encourage a smile with a spirit level.

Awww! I like the TransAtlantic version, the simple Flash is cute and the style snappy and funny. But the sideways fish head in the turtleneck can’t be beat in this version, I must say.

Saw this for the first time on my flight home for Thanksgiving. I flat-out loved it, not just because it was animated and quirky, but because it didn’t talk down to its audience. Way to go, WildBrain!

I saw this a couple times last week on VA flights and thought it worked very well in getting me to pay attention to info that I always tune out. Again, a brilliant example of the power of animation to effectively communicate information that no other medium can.

“So, the water indicator light on the life vest is supposed to tell you if you’re in water? That’s about as useful as those ‘hill indicator’ lamps on Cadillacs that tell the drivers when they are on a hill.”

No, bubbe, the water indicator light is so that the crew and your fellow passengers can find you if the water landing is in the middle of the night or in bad weather. Or did you think aircraft emergencies only happen in daylight? Yeesh.

I found a link with some info about this “Tack” Knight. Interestingly enough, he worked at Disney and Fleischer.

http://lambiek.net/artists/k/knight_tack.htm

So did Walt Disney rip off Tack for his business cards? Or was it the other way around?

Check out the Michigan State University Libraries Reading Room Index to the Comic Art Collection at http://www.lib.msu.edu/comics/rri/krri/knack.htm for their entries on Knight, Tack (Benjamin Thackston)

Benjamin Thackston Knight
Born: Dillsboro, NC. Apr. 4, 1895
Died: San Francisco, Ca. 1977
“Tack” Knight drew the “My Big Brudder”, “Baby Sister” and “Little Folks” comic strips.
He was an assistant on Gene Byrnes’ Reg’lar Fellers from 1924-29.
He also worked at the Disney and Fleischer Studios.
Search this page for “Knight”.

Benjamin Thackston “Tack”Knight was born April 4, 1895 in Dillsboro, North Carolina. By his early 20s he was a cartoonist living in San Francisco. He was working on animated cartoons in the late teens — and likely knew Pinto Colvig who was also animating in town at the time. Tack was honored with The Nation Cartoonists Society’s “Silver T-Square Award” in 1974. He passed away on December 5, 1976 in San Francisco.

Wow, that is old… the plate on “types” would have the ‘politically correct’ crowd all in a tither (Scotchman? Darktown Celebrity?)

Didn’t he work on the first Donald Duck short The Wise Little Hen? A friend has a hand colored model sheet initialled by him.

Because Tack Knight already used the name “Little Folks” in his strip, Charles Schulz had to change the name of his strip to “Peanuts” when it became syndicated.

I got a reproduction copy of this book as a door prize years ago at a cartoonist association meeting I went to. I’ve used bits and pieces of it when I taught cartooning to kids - the style is simple and accessible.

Loved it! Even the politically incorrect stuff tickled me because Tack seems to have been such a good natured guy. A real gem.

I have an original copy given to be by my Grandfather! Thanks Pop.

Actually, a sixth printing from 1923 distributed by Devoe&Raynlds Co.Inc. NY Chicago

I was flipping through Hank Ketcham’s autobiography the other day and he mentions using “Tack” Knight’s Cartoon Tips early on in his career.

I want to download these images in their original size and make them into a PDF, but when I try to download them, I just get a little dot instead of the actual image. This is weird. I can download other images from Flickr with no problem, why can’t I download images from this set?

I love this video. My favorite part is when the fox like character sings along. My friend is a huge Mika fan. I can’t wait for her to see this.

Very reminiscent of Yellow Submarine.

Overproduced? OVERPRODUCED??? Sheesh…EVERYTHING about the Seventies was overproduced! That makes this video so Mary Poppins: practically perfect in every way! Super-catchy Seventies bubblegum pop presented in a way that is visually quite a knockout, it’s the kind of thing MTV was born to show! Too bad they don’t play them anymore…this would be HUGE!

Certainly very promising, I hope to see more of what Bonzom is capable of!

I also enjoyed the animation of the fox like character. It is neat to see something both fluid *and* snappy.

Yes. I thought it was very Yellow Submarine too. I enjoyed this video. It works perfectly with the song. And yes (like Mike said) This would be a great video for MTV. If only they played them. Like the song says: PEACE LOVE AND DON’T TRUST MTV.

I would love to get an animated video for one of my songs.

I wanna know where they got a copy of that song that doesn’t get all overmodulated at the end. I’ve been listening to the CD for months, and this is the first time I’ve ever heard that track not sound like crap.

Anyway, what a fabulous visualization of that song! I hope they overproduce some more.

Wow that was great. I have to echo what Sarah said. I loved the…fox. Or is it a wolf? I assume with the video being a poke at Red Riding Hood its supposed be a wolf. Its cool looking whatever it is.

This actually reminds me of music video for Suburban Harmony which was also done in a sort of “Yellow Submarine” style.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=i32VO0bhdxw

Although it doesn’t have as much animation as “Lollipop” did.

What’s not to like?!!!!! Awesome.

I’m sure this will be aired on MTV a lot: the song has been played countless times on the radio and it’s got quite a following already so this amazing piece of animation will most likely get the attention it deserves. Hell, anyone who thinks 2D animation isn’t what it used to be needs to see this. Beautiful.

This is now officially best thing I’ve seen all week. I’d say all month but “your friend the rat” edged it out. :D

Overproduced is not a bad thing.

This video was fantastic, very little if any repetition, always something new and inventive to look at. It makes you want to watch it over and over.

What a great video! I’ve been a fan of Mika already, and I’m excited this song’s been made into a video of such eye-candy. I have to watch it again to see if I missed anything!

wow. very interesting. very energetic.

I agree on the over-produced part–I felt like I’d seen all of its tricks played out in its first thirty seconds–and stylistically it seems an odd fit with the song. (The earlier-mentioned Suburban Harmony song works better with the style.) But still, impressive.

nit-picky pick pick. That was AWESOME! *hi - five !! *

Very much enjoyed this clip … IMO it suits the artist and the song perfectly.