Here’s a restored 1936 Fleischer Studios drawing wedge (click photo above to see larger image). It’s made of wood and fitted with ball-bearing’d wheels to ease the rotation of the heavy disc. It also has two inventions of the Fleischer’s employed on it:

1. a lever which when pushed down, will slide the drawings off the pegs in an uniform fashion so as to not rip the peg holes in the paper

2. an inkwell tray with a sliding latch which locks the bottles in place. (This was added later on and wouldn’t have been on an animator’s/asst’s disc)

This contraption began its life in the NY studios at 1600 Broadway, then traveled to their new Miami complex for several years, only to return to Manhattan as the property of Famous Studios. It also comes with Marty Taras’ fieldguide. . .

…and it will be part of It All Started Here, the East Coast animation exhibition curated by Howard Beckerman and J. J. Sedelmaier. Presented by ArtsWestchester in partnership with J. J. Sedelmaier Productions, Inc. and Blue Sky Studios, this citywide celebration of New York’s 103 year relationship with the animation industry will have its opening reception on Saturday, Jan 17th, from 5-8pm at The Arts Exchange, 31 Mamaroneck Ave. in White Plains, New York. This is the kick-off for a month of screenings, parties and displays.

For more info regarding all the It All Started Here festivities check the Facebook page. And, to whet your appetite, JJ sent us a very vintage 70s era Wyler’s Lemonade spot by Jan Svochak that will be in the Commercials section of the film program. . .

The Mass Animation project headed by former Sony Pictures Animation exec Yair Landau continues to receive press, most recently in an editorial that ran in yesterday’s LA Times. To summarize the project via the Times:

Through Facebook, Mass Animation invited the public to create scenes for its first short video, “Live Music.” The company supplied the animation software, the story, backgrounds, characters and audio. Animators whose work is chosen will receive $500 per scene. All told, the project will cost about $1 million and take six months to complete, a fraction of the money and time required for a comparable Hollywood project.

The unsigned Times editorial believes that this is “an early sign of things that are certain to come” as “a new class of creators and entrepreneurs is coming to vie for its share of the global entertainment dollar.” We’ve written about the Mass Animation project before on Cartoon Brew here and here. As I argued in one of those posts, unlike previous technologies, the Internet empowers artists so that they no longer have to settle for exploitative compensation models handed down from above.

The LA Times gets it right in predicting that the days of corporate-driven entertainment are drawing to a close, but it won’t be because of shady production models conceived by the likes of Landau. It’ll be due to the burgeoning generation of savvy entrepreneurial artists who understand that the road to creative success and financial security doesn’t run through Hollywood any more. Execs like Landau are dinosaurs within this new digital/online paradigm, and they’re grasping at straws trying to find “innovative” ways of paying artists cheaply on the Internet. Their attempts at doing this will become increasingly desperate and outlandish as more and more artists recognize the uselessness of such people in an entertainment landscape where the means of production, distribution and promotion are accessible to all. That is the true definition of mass animation.

For an even less-flattering perspective on the Mass Animation project, see yesterday’s post by Steve Hulett on the Animation Guild blog.

Thought of the moment: someday in a more enlightened future there will exist a court of law where we can bring to justice the people responsible for animated atrocities like The Velveteen Rabbit. No child should be forced to endure cartoons this ugly and poorly made.

(Thanks, Ryan McCulloch)

This post is slightly OT, as I am discussing print cartoons, not animated cartoons. I received several old issues of Cracked Magazine over the holidays and I couldn’t help noticing how one humor piece, predicting life in the 21st Century, was surprisingly accurate.

“Today’s Swinger is Tomorrow’s Square”, illustrated by John Severin, appeared in the 1974 annual Super Cracked (It was most likely a reprint from a 1970 issue). In it, the writer predicts that young people will embrace the “skinhead” look, home computers (”Electronic Home Teacher”) and even the ipod: as “electronic brain stimulators” and a “musical computers” that young people are hooked on.

It’s not a stretch to think Bill Gates read Cracked, though I’d like to think Steve Jobs was a Mad man. I couldn’t find a Cracked index online - is there a Cracked historian out there who knows what issue this piece originally appeared in? Click the thumbnails below to read the article at full size.

While the Internet has killed off the print animation magazine (or at least the demand for such publications), it hasn’t yet diminished our thirst for print animation books. To the contrary, there are more and better quality animation books being published today than ever before. This new year promises to be no different with a lot of interesting books slated for publication. Here is Cartoon Brew’s look at some of the forthcoming titles.

Let me put this one front and center. The book that I’m most looking forward to in 2009 is, without question, John Canemaker’s dual-biography of Disney story artist Joe Grant and Pixar story artist Joe Ranft. Two Guys Named Joe: Master Animation Storytellers Joe Grant and Joe Ranft will be released in Fall 2009 from Disney Editions. According to the official description, “This book explores the interplay between personal creativity and the craft of animation storytelling, as seen through the lives and art of two of its most inventive and imaginative practitioners, Joe Grant (1908 -2005) and Joe Ranft (1960 - 2005).” It’s a novel setup. Looking at Grant and Ranft through the same prism should shed fresh insights into the common storytelling values that have made classic Disney and Pixar such successful enterprises. Combined with Canemaker’s always infallible research, this book should be a real gem. No online pre-order info available yet but we’ll be posting plenty more about this book in the coming months.

British Animation:The Channel 4 Factor takes a look at the glory years of Britian’s Channel 4 and their dedication to bringing quality animation to television. Since 1982, they’ve aired works such as The Snowman, When the Wind Blows, Street of Crocodiles, Girls Night Out, Feet of Song, The Village, Creature Comforts, Screenplay, Bob’s Birthday, Abductees, City Paradise, Rabbit and Peter and the Wolf. In addition to this amazing line-up of animation, the channel also set up the Animate initiative with the Arts Council of England, and backed the animator-in-residence program hosted by the British Film Institute’s Museum of the Moving Image. The book, which will be published in February by Indiana University Press, should offer plenty of insider details because it’s written by Clare Kitson, who was the commissioning editor at Channel 4 from 1989 until 1999. Channel 4 is one of the bright spots in TV animation history and I’m looking forward to learning more about the people and circumstances that made their artistic approach to TV animation possible.

If you want to get your own animation onto the air, don’t get your hopes up for a supportive forward-thinking broadcaster like Channel 4. But that shouldn’t stop you from trying. David Levy’s Animation Development: From Pitch to Production will guide you through the icky process of getting a TV show produced nowadays. It’ll be out in September from Allworth Press. Levy is an industry veteran, president of ASIFA-East, and proprietor of this fine blog. His first book Your Career in Animation: How to Survive and Thrive is packed with solid common-sense advice from successful artists working in the biz. I know he’s interviewed a lot of people for this new book and I’m sure it’ll be a valuable handbook for anybody who wants to create their own TV shows.

Two Pixar art books are coming out courtesy of Chronicle Books. The Art of Up by Tim Hauser presents all the artwork from Pete Docter’s new film. The Art of Pixar Short Films is by yours truly and it’s scheduled for release later this month. The book, which is a companion piece to this dvd, documents the studio’s shorts going back all the way to the 1980s. Because of its historical nature, there’s more text than the typical Pixar art of book. I haven’t seen the finished item yet but I’m really looking forward to seeing how it turned out. My experience working with the publishing team at Pixar was one of utmost smoothness and efficiency. Everybody went out of their way to make sure it turned out right, and I’m hoping the results reflect everybody’s hard work on the project.

And there’s more ‘art of’ books. Coraline: A Visual Companion is officially released this week though I hear it’s already in some bookstores. The Art of Monsters vs. Aliens is out in February. Also, later in 2009, Disney’s The Princess and the Frog will receive ‘art of’ book treatment from Chronicle Books.

Mickey Mouse, Hitler, and Nazi Germany: How Disney’s Characters Conquered the Third Reich by Carsten Laqua has quite the eye-catching cover. It was originally published in the early-1990s in German. This English translation is eagerly anticipated by Disney book expert Didier Ghez which means that it’s probably worth picking up.

Disney Editions is releasing a bunch of Disney-related art books: A Disney Sketchbook 1928-2008, Disney’s Neglected Prince: The Art of Disney’s Knights in Shining Armor (and Loincloths), Hippo in a Tutu: Dancing in Disney Animation. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting much from any of these books until I saw a recent book by Disney Editions called Disney’s Dogs. It’s a mini-book designed for kids and Disney fans, which means they could have put together a slap-dash collection of cheesy film still artwork, but instead they turned out a wonderful volume packed with carefully chosen and never-before-seen artwork from Disney’s Animation Research Library. If that’s any indication of the new direction Disney Editions is taking with their animation-related books, then all three of the above books should be worth a look.

If Disney is not your bag, then be sure to check out The 100 Greatest Looney Tunes (working title) by fellow Cartoon Brewer Jerry Beck. The book will be out in the fall from Insight Editions. More importantly, the online community is currently helping to choose the titles that’ll appear in the book. Submit your choices for the book on this special Cartoon Brew page.

From University Press of Mississippi comes Iwao Takamoto: My Life with a Thousand Characters, which is the story of the late Hanna-Barbera art director and Disney artist Iwao Takamoto. The text is in his own words, with editorial collaboration from historian Michael Mallory. University Press of Mississippi deserves credit for publishing a number of animation artist bios in recent years though they’ve been a mixed lot; I was disappointed with the depth of research and quality of writing in last year’s Maurice Noble biography but the Martha Sigall memoirs they released a few years back were charming and fun. Here’s to hoping the Takamoto text reaches to the standard of the Sigall book.

Students, get out your credit cards: Focal Press is releasing two volumes of the legendary lecture notes by Disney in-house instructor Walt Stanchfield. Here are the Amazon links to Volume 1 and Volume 2 . Photocopies of these notes have been passed around animation schools for decades. It’ll be nice to have them collected in one place. The series is edited by Disney producer Don Hahn.

The other big how-to book of 2009 is focused on a long-neglected aspect of the animation process. Elemental Magic: The Art of Special Effects Animation by animation veteran Joseph Gilland is also from Focal Press, the publisher of the Stanchfield books. According to fx animation guru Michel Gagné, the book is “fantastic.” Gagné wrote on his blog recently that, “I can assure everyone that this will be a ‘must have’ reference for animation students and those interested in the art. The book will feature step by step demonstrations covering all the main categories: liquids, fire, smoke, explosions, magic, transformations, and spiritual entities. In addition to Joe’s art, the book will display photographs, diagrams and artwork from various artists in the field.” Joe Gilland has also started a blog about the book.

Finally, one comics-related pick that I had to mention: The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics. Kurtzman is one of the few uncontested geniuses of the comic world, and his achievements are impeccable both artistically and editorially. This book draws upon his vast archives and spans everything from his early Hey Look! and EC war comics to Help and Playboy’s “Little Annie Fanny”, as well as including comic layouts, illustrated correspondence, and vintage photos. It’ll be out in April from Abrams and on my bookshelf shortly thereafter.

Leave it to Jeffery. No stone is left unturned in promoting a Dreamworks animated feature. Now comes word that the studio will telecast a 3D trailer for Monsters Vs. Aliens during the Super Bowl on Sunday February 1st.

The special 3D glasses required, which are of the old comic book variety (anaglyph, red and blue), will be distributed in Pespi Cola displays in supermarkets nationwide. I’ve been to the press junkets and have seen over 20 minutes of footage from this film in InTru™ 3D and it looks spectacular. However, for the record, current publicity is painting a picture of 1950s 3D movies which simply isn’t true. The movies released during the 1950s 3D craze (B’wana Devil, House of Wax, Lumberjack Rabbit, etc.) were released in full Technicolor 3D, using polaroid glasses - not using eye-straining red/blue filters.

For your pleasure, some publicity images for 3D films from 1950s:

I have a feeling that 2009 is going to be an awesome year. The new year is only three days old and already amazing opportunities are popping up in my email. Just this morning, musician Nigel emailed me about his cartoon character Surf Rat and he wants ME to animate him! I’m a little busy at the moment so I’m going to make one of our readers’ dream come true by passing along this once-in-a-lifetime deal. Act now before somebody else scoops up this hot item. Here are the details:

whats up my name is nigel i just finished my debut album “Planet earth” you can check out some songs on MySpace. im promoting myself as a hip pop surfer and am having a drawing put together of a surf rat. my debut video is going to be called space beach. i have an amazing concept and marketers who are ready to take this to a huge level if i can create a video of this. i need a cgi or cartoon animator who can turn my surfrat into a music video its only for half of a the video. email me as soon as you get this i would love to see your work. puresource1@hotmail.com thanks a lot, nigel

This is a preview of the song you’ll get to animate:

Too violent, too scary, too depressing and no longer suitable for kids! On Tuesday January 13th, at 8pm I’m returning to the Silent Movie Theatre in Hollywood with a full program of classic cartoons no longer shown on television and not on DVD.

This time the theme is cartoons originally made for children, but no longer deemed appropriate for the small fry, whether it’s because of the violence, cross dressing, smoking, sexism, or just straight-up bizarre ingredients contained within. If your childhood wasn’t already perverted by hours upon hours of unhinged animation, this show will make it up to you. Ultra-rare 16mm and 35mm prints will be screened–bring your kids at your own risk. For more details, check the Silent Movie website.