June 1998
ANIMATION FLASH IS A REALLY GREAT FREE WEEKLY INTERNET ANIMATION NEWS SERVICE available at no charge from www.awn.com If you want to get the latest news from the industry this is a very worthwhile service to subscribe to. It is more informative than monthly trade publications that appear on paper. Magazines on paper run items many weeks after the press releases are sent out as it takes time to write the publication, print it and get it in the mail. Animation Flash is even more up-to-date than Animation World Magazine which is a monthly published by the same company. Most of the items are in both publications, but I'm finding it more valuable to read Animation Flash each week. I get to think about the news and decide what is important. When I read the monthly magazine I'm looking at a much longer work full of informative articles. That distracts from my getting to the news section of AWM.
Animation Flash covers every facet of the animation scene. They list programs and events around the globe including things happening in the Bay Area. There is festival news (local, national and international), information about job openings, details about what is happening in the commercial marketplace, etc.
Some of the items in recent issues that were of interest to me include news that Comedy Central is about to run Bob and Margaret, a series developed in England by Channel 4 with Alison Snowden and David Fine. The couple did Bobs Birthday and a naughty sequence in Marv Newland's Pink Komkommer.
John Kricfalusi's is doing two Yogi Bear shorts for the Cartoon Network. They are presently being animated in Korea.
The Bolex Brothers (Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb, The Saint Inspector) have completed a commercial in which a skeleton turns into a snowman after having a drink of a cold British Coke product called Nestea. Philip Hunt who did Ah Pook is Here, recently did an ad for Orange, a mobile phone company.
Sony is about to start ANIMAX, an animation channel in Japan that will show Japanese animation 24 hours a day. Sony Wonder, a division of Sony in the USA will acquire Sunbow, the producers of several TV series.
Fox has let go most of the pre-production staff of Planet Ice while they rethink the project. Henson and Hallmark are about to start the Kermit Channel. Series to be shown include Fat Albert, Space Moneys and Archie owned by Hallmark and Muppet Babies owned by Henson.
The Internet service also carries the hot stories including updates on The Simpsons voice actors demanding raises, news of upcoming features, news that there will be second seasons of several shows including Spawn and South Park, and a story about Claster, a production company owned by Hasbro Toys. They are in production on the "Mr. Potato Head Show."
ANIMATO! #39, Spring, 1998 is 104 pages of information for anyone who loves animation. The articles range from a long biography of Willie Ito, who worked for Warner Brothers and Disney, to an interview with Bill Plympton (cover story) and two articles on Phil Tippett. Paul Harrod of Will Vinton Studios is interviewed and almost half of the 5 page article is about their recent Christmas special animated by Ken
Pontac, David Bleiman and friends. Articles about voice actors include 3 pages on Nick Bakay, 2 on Chris Wiggins and Keith Scott writing about "The Mickey Mouse Theatre of the Air" (radio, 1938).
Dewey McGuire, who edited In Toon! has contributed two oustanding articles on Arthur Davis at Warners, and his fine review of Karl Cohen's Forbidden Animation. There is an interview with director Frederik DuChau about his work on Quest for Camelot. The issue reproduces a letter from Bob Clampett about questions asked him in 1972 about his work. Another unusual article is on the references to commercial products in Warner Bros. cartoons from the 1930's and 40's, There is a well researched "Batman, Mask of the Phantasm" article that discusses the history of the character and provides a long detailed analysis. I guess the strangest article is a long humorous vision of what it would be like if studios besides Disney had opened theme parks in the 1950's (Warner Bros. Looneyland, Gerald McBoing Boing's Planet Moo, etc.).
Other films discussed at length in this issue are Redux Riding Hood ("Disney's Forgotten Short") and Anastasia. There are several reviews of new videos from Japan and the USA, and several book reviews. There are news items, letters to the editor, an article about music in animation, and a great a gossip column that includes the item "Trey Parker... explained that he had been trained as a child to always flush the toilet by his mother who warned that if he didn't, 'Mr. Hanky' would come out of the toilet and annoy him forever. 'For a long time after that, I believed that Mr. Hanky would jump out of the toilet and sing to me.' Parker stated."
Any magazine with a South Park item like that is certainly one you should subscribe to. 4 issues are $18 ($26 in Canada and South America). 8 are $30/$52 and 13 are $45/70 from Animato! Magazine, 92 Thayer Road, Monson, MA 01057-9445 In Europe contact Barkers Worldwide (UK) 01111483 - 776141
ANIMATION JOURNAL, SPRING, 1998 contains several important articles that expand our knowledge of world animation. For example all I knew about silhouette animation was the work of Lotte Reiniger and Michele Ocelot before I read "Murder in Raamsdonk: Silhouette Film and Shadow Shows in the Netherland" by Mette Peter. His fine article covers work done primarily in the 1930s by Otto van Neijenhoff and others.
"Animation in the 'Russian Hollywood' of the 1920-1930s" by Boris Pavlov is another valuable article. It is well illustrated and covers the pre-WWII animation industry in the USSR.
Jeanpaul Goergen's "Discovering Paul N. Peroff"
fascinates me as Peroff created Jim and Judy in Teleland, an unsuccessful animated TV series that was being made at the same time that Jay Ward and Alex Anderson created Crusader Rabbit. When I researched Teleland I could find no information on Peroff. Now I know why. He was an American animator who moved to Germany in the 1920s and returned after WWII. He made at least one propaganda cartoon aimed at the USSR for the German government during the war. Perhaps anti-German feelings in the USA after the war prevented him from having much success here. He mainly worked in cut-outs, so it is also possible his work just wasn't competitive with cel productions. In any case this article is an important contribution to my knowledge of this obscure artist.
Gasparcolor was probbly the best color film stock used to make animated shorts and commercials in Europe in the 1930s. It is the subject of an article by Gunnar Strom.
Nikolai Izolov writes about hand-drawn sound in Soviet Russia in the years before WWII. There were actually 3 schools of thought on how to create artificial sound with film!
This exceptional journal also has articles about a film by Estonian Priit Parn and film preservation by Jere Guldin. There is a review of a book in German on Julius Pinschewer, a review of Karl Cohen's Forbidden Animation ("besides being interesting, it represents an important step in documenting a number of controversial subjects in animation history," and more.
Subscriptions are $21.55 in CA ($20 other states) Animation Journal, Maureen Furniss, editor, Chapman Univ. School of Film & TV, 333 N. Glassell, Orange, CA 92866
