Bruce Springsteen song title goes here

Scott Caple's recent post reminded me I have yet to share my trip to the U.S of A



Ah, Sunny California! What a treat after a long Canadian winter!
I stayed with my friend JoJo, he was a great host.
JoJo is the archive assistant, and his friends Alex and Kelsey are loyal volunteers at the Archive, they do great work.

And speaking of the Archive, what is a trip to LA without helping out my ol' buddy Steve?

If you're not into cartoons, then you should at least go there for the music,
Here Steve performs a beautiful rendering to the old folk song "Barnacle Bill the Sailor",
Which can be heard in the classic Fleischer cartoons "Barnacle Bill" (with Betty Boop) and "Beware of Barnacle Bill" (with Popeye), I was first introduced to Fleischer cartoons by Steve when I was 14, and they've been among my favorites since.

Our friend Mike Fontanelli visited often, working passionately on wonderful Al Capp posts.

I was doing image processing and tagging, and donated the book "Rube Goldberg vs. The Machine Age"

As said, Scott Caple was in town, Aside for being a great artist, He's a film and history fan, who appreciates great artwork and craftsmanship, so I invited him to the Archive, He came there with his friend Kevin, and they were both blown away, It was fun!

Foodles from a generous John K. Pizza education session

And of course, when you're on vacation, you should go to the Zoo, It's simply what the doctor prescribed, because there you see everyone's favorite laughter factor: crazy monkeys in swing!

When I came back from the Zoo, JoJo and Alex had finished class, Alex asked me if I've been to the aviary, because there's a Bird there that looks like Tex Avery, I haven't seen it, I wonder if that's why they call it the Aviary.

I'd like to thank Will Finn, Kent Butterworth, Sherm Cohen, Eddie Fitzgerald, Mike Kazalah, Claudio Riba, Sue Kroyer, Joe Haidar, the students at Woodbury University , and JD Mata, it was great to meet you! Looking forward to next time!

Peace.

Influence on cartoons

When I watch films I don't just watch them for fun, I always try to learn from them...Well that's a half lie, because learning from them is also fun!
One of my favorite things to do is "dig in" to cartoon/film history, especially to look into the influence behind my favorites, It's rare, but I'm very pleased when I find it.

John K. has often noted Peter Lorre as one of his favorite actors, The first film I happened to see with him was "The Maltese Falcon", I caught it one night on TCM, and I was hooked from the first minute...That film is totally cut to the chase! They never waste any time! The characters are so strong, and the pace was so tight, it's as if John Huston had me hooked by a fishing rod and pulling me into the TV, I just couldn't sit back in my chair. The scene that most interested me happened in the climax.

When John K. took Steve, kali and I to dinner last summer, we talked about our favorite Film Noir, John's favorite is THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, I mentioned that mine was the MALTESE FALCON...and that I've been meaning to ask him: Near the end of the Film: Peter Lorre snaps at Sydney Greenstreet....and before I could finish my sentence, John completes it: "That's where Ren and Stimpy came from!"

The Maltese Stimpy
Uploaded by toonamir

In his commentary on His favorite cartoon "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery" John notes a hilarious scene in it may as well be influenced by the same wonderful film

Wilmer the piggy
Uploaded by toonamir

I like surfing the internet because I often find material that both inspires me and teaches me, As I was putting together the link list, I found Rosemary Clooney's wonderful performance of the song "Blues in the Night"



This was a great discovery because I often heard references to this song in many of Bob Clampett's Cartoons, Notably the banned and brilliant "Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs"

Coal Black: Blues in the Night
Uploaded by toonamir

If you'd like to see the complete cartoon in it's original release quality visit Steve at the ASIFA-Hollywood Archive


There's still a ton of stuff to discover, and Blogs can help us get there, so I hope folks such as Will Finn and Pete Emslie will continue commenting with "Useless Trivia"!

By the way, do you need a clue to find out which American cartoon the Miyazaki Lupin episode is based on? I'll give you a hint: It's a Fleischer cartoon from the 1940s.

More insturctional art from John

This post is for Hector:



These were drawn in summer 1999. John started each drawing with a quick silhouette using the side of his pencil (you can identify those lines as being wider and lighter) later adding construction and at last, detail. Showing me how simple objects like Jimmy's tie, and more complicated forms Like George's head can be done in construction. The drawings of Jimmy's hair were done to show how breaking forms down to simple construction can help us visualize them in different angles. I love the tangible quality of these drawings.

Time to give a lil' sumpin' back

Sharper scans are up!

Put these up for John who sent me a very thoughtful and generous letter back in 1998. In his recent posts he talks about why its important to construct a drawing, rather than draw straight ahead.

Yay, Vacation!

Got back to Canada from LA this Saturday, I volunteered at the ASIFA-Hollywood archive. It was so much fun to help Steve out, listen to his great stories, see amazing rare artwork, and to hang out with genuinely great people. I learned a lot and also drew a lot:

practice drawings

Sketches from a story about a gal's first gig as a babysitter,
What could possibly go wrong?

Two of my favorite actors caricatured

Mike Fontanelli said this looked like Robert Mitchum merged with the bizzaro superman

Hanging out with John and Kali was fun, I havn't seen John since I was 15. John's got a great sense of humor, Folks at Sheridan are mighty proud of him, but I won't talk for too long, this picture speaks for itself:

the ASIFA-Hollywood Archive RULES!

Steve Worth has asked readers of the ASIFA-Hollywood Archive blog to write about why we think the archive is important.


Why is the Archive necessary to Animation History?
1. Good cartoon material is RARE!

Animation has a curious history. Our medium hasn't been around half as long as music or traditional painting, Film Animation has been around for roughly a hundred years, starting to develop commercially in the 1920's USA, and reaching its artistic peak in the 1950s. By the 1960s The golden age of American cartoons has ended, since then the majority of previously created gems hasn't been available to the public.

Not many golden age cartoons and comics have been re-released in their original unharmed version. some golden age cartoons were made available on VHS and Laserdisc in the late 80s and early 90s, they are now out of print. Many of the cartoons now out on DVD are lesser-versions. Unlike the original cartoons, they consist of wrong colors, censored material and introductions by Whoopi Goldberg.

Comic strips and classic illustration suffer from a similar syndrome: only a fraction of the wonderful material created has been re-published and kept. Our medium keeps progressing technologically and financially...but artistically, too much stuff looks the same. This is a result of limited classic material to study from, we keep re-using recent material.

The archive is important because it can preserve animation history, without learning from our medium's wonderful past, we may never be able to progress artistically, and never capable to do it as well as the old masters did. Animation history is still young, but to our grief, the majority of the first generation animators have passed. Their work is still around and it can be learned from, The archive is being set to make sure classic work does not perish.


2. Steve is the man to run it

Since classic cartoons keep going out of the public's reach, you need to be an expert just to know what to look for, but have no fear, THIS expert wants to make them available to you. Starting an archive is no easy work, it requires strong knowledge, vision and capability.
Of all the people I've met, Steve is the perfect man to run an operation like this. He's not only professional, he is also a real fan of cartoons.

Whatever Steve touches turns into gold, he's been resorting beautiful production cells using home-mixed paints in his Animation art gallery "Vintage Ink and Paint",
He's been designing awesome web pages (at its prime www.Spumco.com) using plain raw HTML,
In fact, Steve was in Ralph Bakshi's "Cool World" for only a brief moment and his acting was better than Brad Pitt and Kim Basinger combined.
Now seriously, just check the Archive blog and see samples of this wonderful restoration project, Steve has kept top quality material putting expensive "restored and digitally remastered" DVD releases to shame, the cartoons in his collection are uncut, as their creators intended them to be seen.

To differ from many other projects in the Animation industry, this is not made for profit! This voluntary project is made with love and respect to culture, heritage and creators.

Thanks to ASIFA Hollywood animation archive, young artists won't have to keep re-inventing the wheel.