Channel Frederator Blog

This morning’s New York Times has an article about the Disney “lifestyle brand” which highlights couture clothing, chandeliers, and $1200 fountains pens–with many of the products totally devoid of Disney cartoon characters or even abstract Mickey ears. Dresses are inspired by the colors in Fantasia; pens are modeled after the “window architecture” in Alice in Wonderland.

As a fan of Mid-Century modern design, I do covet some pieces in the Walt Disney Signature Furniture Collection by Drexel, with names like “Storytellers Sofa” and “Scriptwriter Ottoman”. There’s a “Studio Martini Table” perhaps inspired by our hard-drinking animation heroes of the past. I’m not naming names.

After the jump, some Disney-inspired products not officially sanctioned. (Found among the endless listing on a certain crafty online marketplace site.) [Read more…]

In Disney’s 1929 Silly Symphony “The Skeleton Dance”, we see several skeletons dancing around in a graveyard. This cartoon was quite popular, and was the first cartoon to use non-post-sync sound.

The cartoon was so well received that ten years later, Mickey Mouse was trapped in a haunted house, playing music for a group of dancing skeletons.  This cartoon was “Haunted House”. It reused many bits from “The Skeleton Dance”, many of which were the exact same drawings, frame for frame.

-Floyd Bishop

There is a piece on “Sleeping Beauty” over at the Art of Disney Animation blog.  The post includes lots of art from the film’s artistic director Eyvind Earle. [Read more…]

You may not think of the Alliance Française as a place to go watch cartoons, but on November 1st, the New York branch will present Serge Bromberg’s 100 Years of Animation: Treasures from a Chest.

“A collector of more than 20,000 early movies and the artistic force behind Lobster Films, Bromberg has become one of the great champions of silent films and a master at recreating the initial rush audiences felt when first entering the cinema house.

Throughout this exceptional event, Bromberg will present animated shorts that he has discovered and restored, accompanying them with anecdotes and piano music…”

(Serge is also the Artistic Director of the Annecy International Animated Film Festival.)

The program will include Fantasmagorie (Emil Cohl), Cartoon Factory (Fleischer Brothers), The Sinking of the Lusitania (Windsor McKay), Egged On (Charley Bower and H.L. Muller), and George Pal’s Tulips Shall Grow.

Tickets are $10 ($7 for students). Go to this page for ticket information.

By the way, 2008 is the 100th anniversary of Fantasmagorie, one of the earliest examples of a fully-animated film. If you’ve never seen it, do so immediately!

After the jump, a low-res recording of Serge Bromberg’s live performance with Windsor McKay’s Gertie the Dinosaur (at Annecy 2008)…with tuba score! [Read more…]

Thanks to Mark Mayerson for pointing out the presence of two George Pal shorts at Europa Film Treasures, an online archive of important European films. (Mark’s blog Mayerson On Animation is highly recommended, so check it out!)

The first film is “La Grande Revue Philips” (”The Great Philips Revue”). Made to promote the Philips brand of radios, this sassy, stop-motion extravaganza was produced at Dollywood Studio in Holland (where he worked with art director Joop Geesink). (Note: The portrayal of Harlem residents is definitely un-PC.)

Philip funded at least ten Puppetoons. The George Pal Site rounds them up here. (The information on the Pal website leads me to believe that the short on Europa is a combination of footage from “The Little Broadcast” (1935) and “The Big Broadcast of 1938″ (1937). Any experts out there to clear that up?)

Anyway, watch the film here and read more about it on this page.

The other Pal film posted for your viewing pleasure is “Tulips Shall Grow” (1942). It was made for Paramount after Pal fled WWII-era Europe for New York City. The evil Screwballs Army attacks a delightful, cheery, windmill-loving blond couple in a not-so-subtle bit of anti-Nazi animation propaganda. The hardware heavies are ultimately defeated and hardy flowers bloom. YEAH!

Watch it here and learn more on this page.

After the jump, a commercial from post-Pal Dollywood where coffee beans speak in a foreign tongue! [Read more…]

I was always a big fan of the animated web series Murry Wilson: Rock and Roll Dad, created by cartoonist Peter Bagge and comedian Dana Gould. Its production was funded by Icebox, which was one of those famous dot com boom-and-bust concerns that burned through about 15 million dollars in a short amount of time. Well, after the company went under, the name and creative assets were bought at auction in 2001 by five guys from the original team (plus some secret investors).

Imagine my surprise when I found that Icebox still exists as a re-launched website. Seems the company has downsized considerably and is now run out of some guy’s house, but if you go to the site, you can watch all the web series that they used to host in the good(?) old days when everyone had enough money to pay for scores of Aeron chairs and animated webisodes written by real Hollywood writers. It’s free!

Zombie College by Eric Kaplan is my favorite. Queer Duck, Hard Drinkin Lincoln, Starship Regulars, Migrane Boy…they’re all here, including the still controversial Mr. Wong. So enjoy opening up this time capsule from the pre-Web 2.0 days by going to the “shows” page .

After the jump, three more Murry Wilson episodes. (From YouTube, since I can’t embed the vids from the Icebox site!) [Read more…]

On the heels of yesterday’s post about Henry Selick and Coraline, I recently came across a two-part interview on Ward Jenkin’s blog (from last year) about the obscure animated feature Twice Upon a Time, directed by John Korty and Charles Swenson. (Click here for Part One and Part Two.) Selick worked on this way back in 1983 as a “sequence director”. Ward interviews Taylor Jessen, who wrote an article on the subject for Animation Blast #9. (An online version can be found here.)

Twice Upon a Time was created with an animation technique called “lumage”: stop-motion using translucent 2D objects photographed against a backlit background.

Some other interesting people who worked on this: Marshall Efron and Lorenzo Music did voices; director David Fincher (Fight Club) was responsible for “special photographic effects”. Oh yeah, and George Lucas was the producer!

Additional info is available at this site devoted to “the most unusual animated film of the 1980’s”.

Since there are no [Read more…]

Tonight’s airing of “The Simpsons” will mark the start of it’s 20th season on the air. This ties the record held by “Gunsmoke”. The series is still going strong in the eyes of Emmy voters, picking up it’s 10th Emmy for Outstanding Animated Series.

To put the longetivity into perspective, I was in 8th grade when the series started after a run of hilarious short segments on “The Tracey Ullman Show”. I’ll be 33 this year. That’s an impressive run.

Watch America’s favorite yellow family when they start their new season tonight on Fox, 8 ET/PT.

-Floyd Bishop

John Canemaker interviewed Richard Williams Monday night at MOMA. The event was sold out and the place was packed with students, as Willliam’s book The Animator’s Survival Kit is an essential read for animation majors around the world.
Williams is always an entertaining speaker, fond of leaping out of his chair to act out anecdotes. He presented clips from:

• The Little Island (his first short)
• A Christmas Carol (his first Oscar win)
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (more Oscars)
• The Charge of the Light Brigade
• Return of the Pink Panther titles
• Amazing “The Greedy” sequence from Raggedy Ann and Andy (animated by Emery Hawkins)
• Trailer for The Thief and The Cobbler (never released in its proper form)
• Commercial Reel

The night was very much a chance to promote the release of a 16 DVD version of his well-regarded Animation Masterclass. The Animation Survival Kit Animated consists of Williams “performing” the class live at Blue Sky Studios (about ten years ago) intercut with animated examples that illustrate his ideas. Okay, so the set costs over $900, but at least most art schools will buy one.

After the jump, some choice quotes from the evening. Also, the Return of the Pink Panther titles in teeny tiny form on the ubiquitous YouTube… [Read more…]

click on image for full photo

Seven years ago, this was the view from Blue Sky Studios in White Plains, NY. From our office on the 17th floor of 44 South Broadway, we could see the Twin Towers on fire. We were 30 miles to the north of Manhattan, looking down the length of the island. In the photo, you can make out both towers smoking in the distance. The building that looks like it is next to them is the Empire State Building, but it’s actually several blocks away, on 5th Ave and 34th street.

It was a chaotic day, with the radio stations being the first way I learned of the disaster in progress on my way to work. At first, DJs seemed to think it was some kind of joke, or perhaps just a small plane. The second plane hit as I was getting in to the parking garage [Read more…]