Hayao Miyazaki’s latest feature, Ponyo On The Cliff, opened yesterday in Japan. It’s one of his gentler films, more along the lines of My Neighbor Totoro - and I’m looking forward to it. Not wild about the theme song on the trailer, but the visuals look terrific.

(via Frames Per Second)

Spline Doctors, the animation education blog run by Pixar animators, offers up a new audio interview with Doug Sweetland, longtime Pixar animator and director of the studio’s latest short Presto. Part 1 is posted here; the second part is coming soon.

There is still a lot of research to be done in documenting the silent era of animation. Leonard Maltin reports, on his Movie Crazy blog, of the screening of a true rarity/oddity at the recent San Francisco Silent Film Festival:

…a 1925 animated cartoon in two-color Technicolor. The Old Family Toothbrush features a character named Kid Noah in “A New Redhead Satire” filmed in Naturecolor, using the Wilson Wetherald Process. It was so startling to see a cartoon of this vintage in color that I picked up my camera and tried to capture a few frames (above)… The short itself is fairly amusing, executed in fairly typical New York cartoon-studio fashion of the period, with impressive personality animation of its leading character. Still, its origins are something of a mystery: the picture wasn’t registered for copyright, and I can find no evidence of it in my usual reference sources.

Do any of our readers have some clues about this mysterious new discovery?

Animation Mentor is hosting a tribute to the life, work and inspiration of Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston at SIGGRAPH 2008. Animation director Tom Sito will lead the panel discussion, with panelists including Disney producer Don Hahn, Dreamworks animator Dave Burgess, Animation Guild president Kevin Koch, and Frank Thomas’ son, Ted, an independent film director, writer and producer. The panel will take place on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 10:30 a.m. –in Petree Hall D of the Los Angeles Convention Center. For more information, click here.

I don’t think I’ve ever been able to exactly pinpoint what it is that I so enjoy about the directing duo Smith & Foulkes (repped by Nexus Productions), but they seemingly turn out more top-notch spots than anybody else in the commercial game. Their latest spot for Coca-Cola, “East Meets West,” is yet another piece of CG that impresses the hell out of me, largely because every element of this piece is carefully considered and designed to work in unison. I especially love how the commercial’s ornate visual detail is contrasted with a limited animation style. This directorial restraint allows for the graphics to read with a crispness and elegance that is uncommon in the world of commercial CG. As far as Coke adverts go, it’s hard to ask for much more.

(via Motionographer)

“White Winter Hymnal,” directed by Sean Pecknold, is a stop motion music video for Seattle-based Fleet Foxes. While I enjoy slickly crafted computer animation as much as the next person, there’s something especially refreshing nowadays about seeing a rough-around-the-edges piece of stop motion in which the artist’s hand can be felt in every frame.

Cartoon Brew went down last night. We’re happily back up and running this morning but still a bit buggy. We hope to be back to normal before day’s end. If the site looks fine, no need to comment, but if you’re experiencing any tech issues with the site, let us know in the comments and we’ll look into them. Thanks!

JibJab’s latest political music video premiered last night on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and it’s another winner. Co-Director Evan Spiridellis tells us:

I think you’ll notice that we significantly upped the production value while trying to remain true to the original thing that made This Land work - funny collage heads. It was also really important to us was not to repeat ourselves so rather than the tit-for-tat that was in This Land we wanted to make this a true character piece and give each player a verse to try and define themselves. (It was a real challenge trying to sum up each candidate with only 5 lines!)

Evan and Gregg have also written a great production blog on the making of this particular film.

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