More background development by Ghostshrimp. Click for embiggening.

– Eric

The reviews are in (well, one is!)

Family Guy Sings! was performed on November 24th and 25th at Carnegie Hall. It featured the core cast of Seth MacFarlane’s animated series, backed by a 40-piece orchestra. The program consisted of an unedited live reading of two episodes, plus a selection of popular songs from the series. An earlier and less elaborate version of the shindig, Family Guy Live, was performed at the “Just For Laughs” festival in Montreal and later traveled to LA, Chicago, and New York City. But the Carnegie Hall night was far more fancy schmancy.

Broadway World has a review and a set of photos of the evening’s entertainment.

Here’s a New York Post article written in advance of the performance, with some Seth Green quotes.

After the jump, one of many YouTube shaky-shaky, from-the-audience clips of a Family Guy Live show. [Read more…]

Here’s another piece of development art for Adventure Time. The look and style of the show is being more and more solidified, but there’s still room for change. This piece of the Candy Kingdom is by Dan James, AKA Ghostshrimp. Please click on the image to take you to the Flickr page where you can get much larger versions (ginormous, really). Stay tuned for a color version.

– Eric

Meet Marsha and her tattoos, from episode #114, “Preschool Prison”.

– Eric (Homan)

Good ol’ Butch Hartman has been nominated for an Annie Award for his Fairly OddParents storyboard work on the episode “Mission: Responsible”. The awards will be handed out January 30, 2009, at UCLA. Bill Gates, Carlos Slim Helu, and Warren Buffet have each assigned teams of accountants to see how they can swing tickets, now on sale.

– Eric

“Mind the Kitty”
Random! Cartoons
Created by Anne Walker
Directed by Anne Walker and Scott O’Brien
Premieres Sunday, December 7, at 1:30 p.m. on Nicktoons Network
Frederator Postcards Series 7.6, mailed December 1, 2008

– Eric

Frederator Postcards Series 1, 1998
Frederator Postcards Series 2, 1999
Frederator Postcards Series 3, 2000
Frederator Postcards Series 4, 2003
Frederator Postcards Series 5, 2004-2005
Frederator Postcards Series 6, 2007-2008
Frederator Postcards Series 7, 2008-2009

If you crave an antidote to the sappier side of the Holiday Season, you can find a daily dose of grotesque greeetings over at the Creepy Christmas site. Beck Underwood heads this online project which will release one new short film every day up until Christmas. The series launched December 1st with Electrifying Holiday Spirit by illustrator David Goldin. Read about how he made this film over at his Drawger blog.

It’s all very low-budget and home-spun (yet high quality!) and I will definitely be checking in each AM to see what daily disturbances are unwrapped.

A full list of the filmmakers can be found at the Glass Eye Pix site. Upcoming creators include Voltaire, Peter Sis, and Mary Haron. (Glass Eye Pix is a production company run by Beck’s husband Larry Fessenden. They are a super creative couple and Beck was the publisher of a great kids magazine from the late 90s called ZuZu. They also used to be my neighbors and really know how to put on a puppet show!)

—Anne D. Bernstein

In case you missed it in the frenzy of holiday happenings, there was a great article about animation in last Wednesday’s New York Times. “Cartoons Without Computers? Silly Animators!” features the “insurgent element” of modern animation. As far as I can tell, that just means interesting animators of an indie bent, though big budget Henry Selick seems to qualify. (Odd title as well, since many of the artist mentioned DO use computers in one way or another.) But anyway…faves Bill Plympton, Don Hertzfeldt, Signe Baumane, and Alex Budovsky are featured.

In case you were wondering how Bill Plympton gets so much animation done (while managing to actually get out of the house and socialize, and also make appearances at all the major cons and conferences) one tip is that he gets up early!

“I do about 100 drawings a day, which is about 10 an hour, and if I can do that times 250 or 300 days, that’s a feature film…I get up at 6, don’t shave or shower, just start drawing. It’s like a ride. I hear that novelists do this too. They’re so focused for a year or whatever that afterwards they just collapse for two or three weeks. Sleep. Or drink.”

—Anne D. Bernstein

Mark Twain was born on this day (November 30th) in 1835. Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens,Mark Twain went on to write and inspire generations of artists.

The above clip is from the 1985 film The Adventures of Mark Twain, created by Will Vinton. Chuck Jones is another of animation’s Mark Twain fans.

Chuck Jones segment on Mark Twain and his inspiration for Wile E Coyote

Perhaps the biggest Mark Twain fan in animation was Walt Disney, who created a steam boat in his honor, which circles Tom Sawyer Island in Disneyland.

-Floyd Bishop

Cracked has posted their list of the 10 most disastrous Saturday morning cartoon adaptations. I pretty much agree with their list, but I would have swapped out The Real Ghostbusters for either Gilligan’s Planet or The Brady Kids.

What do you think?

-Floyd Bishop