Cartoon Brew: Year in Review, Year Ahead
Jerry and I tend to view Cartoon Brew as both a complement and antidote to the mainstream media’s coverage of the art form. We aspire to fill in the gaps of MSM coverage by offering historical and independent perspectives on the animation art, and by creating a reliable outlet for sharing the insider views of all the industry artists who are in constant communication with us.
Looking back at our monthly news archives, I personally think this past year was our most successful in fulfilling these aims. I have a feeling that many readers would agree with that assessment, especially because we also experienced a banner year in terms of site traffic. In fact, Cartoon Brew’s traffic more than doubled from the previous year with over 1.6 million unique visits to our homepage in 2006, and well over 2 million uniques across all Cartoon Brew pages. It may be true that the Brew is something of a niche blog, particularly when compared to general interest blogs like BoingBoing or Metafilter, but with these type of numbers, it’s safe to say that animation is a thriving and popular blog niche.
What went on behind the scenes at our humble website was even more exciting. We’ve been hard at work on a major overhaul of the Brew website which will add all types of new functionality including individual entry pages, search functions, and the ability for reader comments. There’s also an even bigger Brew-related project in the works, one that I can’t discuss right now, but which I’m sure many of our readers are already aware of. 2006 was a great year for us, but 2007 promises to be even bigger and better. None of this, of course, would be possible without you, our valued readers, and we hope you’ll continue to come along with us for the ride.
Just for fun, here’s a roundup of some of my most popular/controversial posts from 2006:
Artist reactions to the Disney-Pixar merger
Continuing coverage of Cartoon Network’s abandonment of animation: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Interview with Garrett Gilchrist about his THIEF AND THE COBBLER: RECOBBLED CUT project
Commentary: Is My Animated Short Worth A Penny? and responses
Commentary:To Pitch or Not To Pitch
The year of stupid animation comments, courtesy of Mick LaSalle, James Lipton, Jason Anderson, Jeff Lenburg and George Miller
