It gets harder and harder each year to find artwork that you may not have seen before by your favorite artists from the past. Over at his Disney and More blog, Alain Littaye has posted several pieces by Marc Davis. Alain explains that tthe reason these are so rare is that many of them show ideas for the attreaction that were never used. At any rate, they are a great find.
These kinds of videos must take forever to make. There are several videos online of famous figures singing. This is achieved by splicing together bits and pieces from various interviews, speeches, and sound bites until you have all the lyrics you need.
The strange thing is that these songs seem to start to take on a whole new meaning, depending upon who is “singing” them. What do you think about pieces like these? Are they just clever edits done by people with too much time on their hands, or are they something more?-Floyd Bishop
This commercial is a bit odd, but it works well enough. The set up is that babies used to get all of their mother’s attention, due to their soft smooth skin. Fathers have now discovered the Wilkinson Sword razor, allowing them the same smooth soft skin. What will babies due to get back the attention of their mommys? The battle continues at the Fight For Kisses website.
I don’t know how many razors this will sell, but it is an interesting way to promote a product.
Bill Melendez, perhaps best known for his work with Charles Schultz’s “Peanuts” characters has passed away. In his career, he animated on a wide range of projects, including Disney’s “Pinocchio”, UPA’s “Gerald McBoing Boing”, and Ralph Bakshi’s “Cool World”. His work as animator, director, producer, and even as a voice actor, will live on in animation history. Bill Melendez was 91.
-Floyd Bishop
If you are interested in a FLASH of enlightenment, check out these Alan Watts Theater cartoons. They were produced by Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park fame. According to Cold Hard Flash, animators Chris Brion and Todd Benson are the folks who keyframed original recordings of Watts.
For more on Watts, see this website.
On the jump, another Matt and Trey project from the vault, a hysterical video about Universal Studios . [Read more…]
I hate to break it to you, but you missed out on seeing a very cool show at the Natural History Museum in Basel, Switzerland. Oh well, so did I. It was called “Animatus” and it featured the work of Korean artist Hyungkoo Lee, who creates exquisite and intricate skeletons of cartoon characters.
Here’s more of his work from the Arario New York gallery site. Here is some brainy text that explains it.
Thanks to Michael Sporn for alerting me to this work by writing about it on Splog.
After the jump, a video tour of Lee’s work in the Venice Biennale 2007. [Read more…]
Jerry Reed, actor, guitar legend, and Scooby Doo Guest Star has passed away. He was 71.
Aside from his Scooby Doo appearance, most people may remember him from his role as the Snowman (his CB handle) in “Smokey and the Bandit”.
Learning to play guitar at age 8, on a cheap guitar, he later dropped out of high school to go on tour with Ernest Tubb and Faron Young. He mastered the instrument.
He was a great talent in film, television, and music.
He’s one of the musicians I listen to most when I’m animating. He’ll be missed.
Find more videos like this on Channel Frederator RAW
Reading Ann Bernstein’s post about Gene Deitch and his progeny inspired me to go back in my old agency’s archives for one of my favorite pieces, called “Easy Groove.”
Jerry Lieberman was one of the most prolific animation producers in commercial animation in the 1970s, and somehow or other (I think I saw his reel) hooked with with my partner Alan Goodman and me while we were the creative directors at MTV and Nickelodeon in the 1980s. Jerry was great to work with, and ended up making dozens of our 10 second network IDs for almost every cable network we branded, from The Movie Channel to HA! and of course MTV and Nick. Once we got comfortable with each other and he realized we weren’t kidding about creative freedom, he started reaching into the community he was most comfortable with, illustrators with an edge. He introduced [Read more…]
