NATIONAL NEWS

BEWARE: MONDO PLYMPTON IS COMING Bill Plympton is busy working on two animated features at the same time. The first to be released theatrically, possibly as early as this winter, will be Mondo Plympton, a compilation of his best work with new wrap-around material introducing the program.
Plympton says he has completed about half of I Married A Strange Woman, his all new feature. He plans to have it ready for Cannes and Annecy in 1997.

THE EMMY NOMINATIONS IN ANIMATION ARE: Cow and Chicken in No Smoking, Cartoon Network; Dexter's Laboratory, Cartoon Network; Duckman, USA Network, and A Pinky and the Brain Christmas Special, Warner Brothers.

DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING THAT YOU READ ON THE INTERNET SAY A HANNA-BARBARA V-P IN PR Richard Lewis called to say the item about Bill Hanna retiring was wrong and that Bill and Joe will be with the company forever. The item was found by one of our members on the World Wide Web.
This is the second fake story on the WWW that we have mentioned. The first was the hoax letter on the WWW about the Christian Right boycott of Toy Story. Fortunately a call to Pixar brought news that it was a fake letter, so our article told people the boycott was a hoax. At least two small local papers ran news about the hoax saying it was a real boycott.

GEORGE GRIFFIN DOES A TRAILER FOR FILM FORUM IN NEW YORK CITY The artwork is by Griffin/Metropolis Graphics. The music is by Carter Burwell. Irwin Young, DuArt Digital provide the lab work. Too bad more theatres aren't commissioning independent animators to do cool graphics and animation for them.

DAVID CONNELL
A remembrance by Jeff Hale.

David Connell died recently. He, and several others, conceived and created C.T.W. (Children's TV Workshop) and Sesame Street. David was responsible for sending a continual flow of commissions to Imagination, Inc. (S.F. major animation studio in the late 60's and 1970's. It was headed by Jeff Hale.) providing work and creative opportunities for many of us including John Magnuson, Ernie Fossilius, Bud Lucky, Mitch Rose, Geraldine Clarke, Margaret Hale, Don Hadley, Barbara Bain, Don Albrecht, Katherine Lennahan, Vince Collins to mention only a few. He also encouraged and enabled us to work with great music groups and people like Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane, Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks, Turk Murphy and his band, Donald Bird and his band, the Pointer Sisters and so on.
I shall always be deeply indebted to David for his trust in me and the freedom that he allowed to us all. A great privilege and rare treat.
David Connell was a very special man.

WHO DID THAT? Mark Gustafson of Will Vinton Studios directed a pair of wind-up teeth sitting on a couch
vfor Southwest Bell. While the room looks normal at first, close-ups show the table has backlit dental X rays for a top, the lamp post is actually a chewed-up pencil and the art on the wall depicts partially eaten food.
J.J. Sedelmaier Productions did a Kotax "Laughing" ad using felt-tip markers, watercolors and pen and ink on frosted cels. A second frosted cel was placed over the art to give the image a textured look.

GARRI BARDIN FROM MOSCOW IS IN L.A. He is doing a TV commercial for Acme, the company that also brings you AWN, the on-line animation magazine. Bardin is doing a stop-motion commercial for Coke.

DREAMWORKS SKG IS DOING 4 ANIMATED FEATURES They have two traditional cel features in the works. The first to be completed will be Prince of Egypt. They are also producing Shreck, based on a work by William Steig.
They also have two computer features in the works. PDI in the Bay Area is doing Ants and one of the voices will be done by Woody Allen! He said he would do it if can write his own part. Another computer company is also doing a feature for SKG. It is called El Dorado.

A TALE OF DISPOSABLE DISNEY ART Wanda from Fine Toon Gallery recently told me about a customer who only collects Cinderella and Peter Pan art. She grew up with original cels from both films on her walls. Her mother worked at Disney in ink and paint and was allowed to bring home rejects to use as decorations in the kid's room. The woman doesn't have any of the old cels as every time a new film went into production down went the old cels (and into the circular file) and up went the new.

THE WHOLE TOON CATALOG IS BACK IN BUSINESS UNDER THE OWNERSHIP OF FACETS MULTIMEDIA IN CHICAGO Catalogs will be available soon. Whole Toon was a video, laserdisc and book store in Seattle that sold thousands of items related to animation. They covered foreign animation, Hollywood cartoons, Japanamation, Jan Svankmajer, etc. For further information contact Kathy Foley, 1517 West Fullerton Ave., Chicago, Illinois 60614 or (800)331-6197.

THE ACADEMY OF MOTION PICTURES ARTS AND SCIENCES HONORED FREDERIC BACK WITH AN EXHIBIT OF HIS WORK The exhibit was on display from June 26 to Aug. 25. The work was on loan from Radio Canada Television's animation section, the company Back has worked for since 1968. The exhibit included work from his four Oscar nominated films (two won Oscars) and from other project he has worked on.

ASIFA-HOLLYWOOD HAD A BUSY SUMMER SCHEDULE including an AniFest, cel and collectible sale with celebrity appearances by John Kricfalusi, Lucile Bliss, June Foray, Sam Singer, Maurice Noble, and Norm McCabe. Another event was Tom Sito, president of the animators' union, interviewing Jack Ozark in front of a live audience. Ozark began his career at Fleischer and worked at Hanna-Barbera on Johnny Quest and the Flintstones. They also held a tribute to Norman McLaren.

PLAN TO BE AT THE LOS ANGELES INTERNATIONAL ANIMATION CELEBRATION MARCH 24-30, 1997. The latest publicity for the event makes it sound like something you may not want to miss. There will be a world animation competition, plus tributes, retrospective and other special shows. ASIFA-Hollywood will hold its Animation Opportunities Expo as part of the celebration. There will be seminars presented by ASIFA and Women in Animation, a trade show of new technology, a technology conference, an art exhibit, a celebration of Japanese Anime, parties, tours, receptions, awards, and more.
For more information write the Celebration at 30101 Agoura Court, Suite 110, Agoura, CA 91301 or phone (818) 991-2884.

OTTAWA '96 LOOKS LIKE IT WILL BE A GREAT SHOW Maureen Furniss was on the selection committee and says they selected 81 films for the competition and they will be shown in five 90-minute programs. There will also be two more 90-minute panorama shows (good films that didn't make it into the competition). Furniss had been to Annecy and Zagreb recently and says that only 10 of the 81 films were shown at either European competition so there is a lot of fresh and exciting new work to be seen. She also said some of the best surprises come from the first film category. She thinks one of the first films could go on to win the best-in-show award.
The festival's office is at 2 Daly Ave., Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 6E2 (613) 232-8769.

[back | home | info@awn.com | mail | next]