The artists behind Tim Burton’s new Alice In Wonderland film will make a one-time appearance for a panel, Q&A and book signing this Saturday afternoon at Alhambra’s Gallery Nucleus . The event will begin at 2pm and run all afternoon, Saturday March 13th. Nucleus will also be the first and only location for you to purchase a copy of the ‘Art of’ book, Alice in Wonderland: A Visual Companion , before its release date... 

Check out this video for musician Sébastien Tellier , directed by French artists Petra Mrzyk & Jean-François Moriceau : (Thanks, Carlo Guillot )  Read More →

Michael Sporn has posted an amazing article about Harvey Kurtzman’s animated work for Sesame Street . There’s a lot of rare artwork in the piece alongside info on how he collaborated with Phil Kimmelman and Associates to make the cartoons. In particular what stood out to me is this unbelievable page of animation drawings by Dante Barbetta . Loose, free and funny animation—it’s what shows like Chowder can only dream of being.... 

How do I love thee, let me count the ways: this isn’t so much a book review, but a book RAVE . Craig Yoe’s massive new tome reprinting the comic book art of Milt Gross (IDW/Yoe Books, 354 color pages, $39.99 or cheaper on Amazon ) is an absolute must-have by everyone reading this blog. Buy it now…  Read More →

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the title Tangled isn’t the only thing being changed about Disney’s production of Rapunzel – it’s repositioning the film to attract a male audience. From the article : The makeover of “Rapunzel” is more than cosmetic. Disney can ill afford a moniker that alienates half the potential audience, young boys, who are needed to make an expensive family film a success. Concluding... 

Quick, watch the first five minutes of this before the Academy removes it from You Tube: (Thanks, Matthew Gaastra)  Read More →

The Oscar winners were announced tonight. UP won two Academy Awards: It won for BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM and Michael Giacchino won an Oscar for its musical score. The winner for BEST ANIMATED SHORT was LOGORAMA . The highlight of the broadcast was a segment featuring lead characters from all five nominated animated films, Coraline, Mr. Fox, Louis the Alligator (from Princess and the Frog ), Ashley (from Kells ) and Carl & Dug from Up... 

Ray Favata (l.) with Jules Feiffer at Terrytoons My pal, Ray Favata, is the subject of a lengthy profile in this week’s Post-Star paper . He started his career at Tempo Productions, one of the early ‘cartoon modern’ studios that was later shuttered because of the blacklist. He went on to design commercials at Academy Pictures, John Sutherland Productions, and Deitch-era Terrytoons (where he boarded an unproduced sequel to Flebus... 

Writer, director, designer and modeler Heiko van der Scherm took three years to produce his CG short film Descendants . Whoopi Goldberg lent her voice to the project, which has been playing film festivals and winning awards all over the world.  Read More →

I don’t know much about the new Pink Panther and Pals series – which premieres this Sunday March 7th on Cartoon Network at 7:30am – except I like the redesigns of the Ant and the Aardvark . The new show features three six-minute cartoons – two featuring a “teenage Pink Panther” and one Ant and Aardvark short in the middle. 26 episodes were produced by MGM Animation. There’s no animation online, but here’s... 

As far as CG spots for salsa go, this one directed by Nicholas Weigel at Laika offers some impressive art direction. An in-depth interview with Weigel and production credits can be found at Motionographer . For a more immersive version of the ad, watch it on Vimeo where it takes over the screen. (Thanks, Mike Johnson)  Read More →

Lou Scheimer tells all . . . like about the time he produced something crappy, or that other time he produced something crappy, or those few decades where he had an impressive streak of producing lots and lots of crap in a row. There’s also an uplifting personal story about the time he vowed to produce something decent, but then realized it was more important to stay true to himself and produce crap. Lou Scheimer: Creating the Filmation... 

Another live action filmmaker tries his hand at directing an animated film. Zack Snyder (Watchmen, 300) brings Kathryn Lasky’s Guardians of Ga’hoole novels to the screen this fall when Warner Bros. releases Legend of the Guardians on September 24th. Animal Logic (Happy Feet) in Australia produced the animation. Here’s the trailer: (Thanks, Iain Robbins)  Read More →

Ambitious new spot for Washington State Lottery. A fine example of PES doing what he does best. This is the one-minute director’s cut; a thirty-second version is airing on TV right now.  Read More →

That’s a clip from Joe Murray’s Frog in a Suit , a new short film that doubles as a pilot. Here’s the set-up: Peete Moss has just moved to Croakville ( a town full of toads) with his family. Croakville is a town on the fast track, with Industrialist Harvey Croak running everyone crazy. Peete Moss tries to fit in, sports a suit, and tries to “run with the bulls”. In this clip, he has a run in with a local coffee shop, and offends...