RAW Art Today!
November 17th, 2008
Channel Frederator Blog
Archive for the ‘characters’
Disney’s Skeleton Animation Reuse
October 30th, 2008
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.
Kid Robots Love Dust
October 28th, 2008
There’s an interesting lecture coming up at The Society of Illustrators (128 East 63rd Street) on Wednesday, November 5th from 6:30-8:30 PM. It’s called “Character Design, Animation and Toy Design”. The speakers are Paul Budnitz from Kidrobot and Mark Graham from ilovedust.
Kidrobot is famous for manufacturing and distributing high-end collectible toys and other consumer goods. They ‘re also in the animation business; Wild Brain studio in San Francisco now owns a major chunk of the company. Nickelodeon recently announced that they plan to turn Kidrobot properties into a series of feature films that blend animation and live action.
ilovedust is an English “design boutique” that has developed toys for Kidrobot–keeping it all in the family! This Zulu Dunny would fit in among his fellow premium plastic pals in any designer toy collection:
On the jump…how to order tickets…
Squishy Series
October 23rd, 2008
The Cobble Hill Theater, my local go-to cinema, has a great family series called “Big Movies for Little Kids”. On November 3 they will screen episodes of the French animated series Barbapapa. Barbapapa started out as a popular series of books, written and illustrated by Annette Tison and Talus Taylor. They star a shape-shifting blob that finds love and gets married. The bulbous couple then has a colorful brood of seven Barbababies. Barbapapa (barbe à papa) is French for candy floss, or a “father’s beard”. (Gotta say that he looks like a European cousin of the Shmoo from Al Capp’s Li’l Abner.)
Although I was not familiar with the books until now, they have been translated into 30 languages. There were two animated series based upon the books: a French series from the 1970’s (45 episodes, five minutes each), filmed by Polyscope in the Netherlands; and a more recent series (50 episodes, five minutes each), produced by the Japanese firm Kodansha in the late 90’s. The globe-trotting Japanese version was called Barbapapa Sekai Wo Mawaru (Barbapapa Around the World).
Apparently the first series was syndicated in the US in 1981. Does anyone remember seeing it?
You can buy tons of Barbapapa items at this U.K. website. Animation lover Harry McCracken has a photo of the Barbapapa store on his blog here.
So far, I have not been able to find any source of Barbapapa VHS or DVD in the United States. Even the official site is of no help. Too bad, because I think this cuddly cult could be big!
After the jump, a Barbapapa theme song techno remix and a rockin’ montage! [Read more…]
RAW Art Today!
October 6th, 2008
