Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Nina Paley‘s Sita Sings the Blues is getting some well deserved attention.

The NYTimes reported that the film would screen on New York’s PBS station, WNET ch 13, on March 7th. But they didn’t report that the PBS link would also offer the entire film for free on line. You can watch that now and here: Sita Sings the Blues.

The quality is excellent.

However if you’d like to see it projected, and you’re in NY, the film is part of the
NY International Children’s Film Festival. Yes, I did write “Children” in the title. As it turns out, there’s an article now in the NYTimes which offers the thesis that the best children’s films are not, actually, children’s films.

The film will play today, Feb. 28th at IFC – 11am.
It’ll play March 14th at Symphony Space – 1pm.

It’s a hot ticket. Rush.

The sad tale of this film is the music copyright problems. That pushed Nina into some difficult decisions.

To quote a NYTimes article about this:

Because of an exception in the copyright act, public television stations can broadcast music without having to clear individual licenses, and “Sita” will be shown on the New York PBS station WNET on March 7, after which it will be available on the station’s Web site. “My thing,” Ms. Paley said in November, sounding glum, “is that I just want people to see it.”

Recently, though, the licensing fee was negotiated down to approximately $50,000, and “Sita” is close to being sprung from what Ms. Paley calls “copyright jail.” Still, she hopes to release it in a manner as alternative as her film. Using the free software movement — dedicated to spreading information without copyright restrictions — as her model, she has decided to offer “Sita” at no charge online and let the public become her distributor.

Unfortunately, that means it will not qualify for the Oscar next year. It’s certainly better than any feature that was nominated on the most recent Oscarcast. I can pretty well wager that it’ll be better than most of the next year’s product.

If you’re a Facebook fan, check out the “Watch Sita Sings the Blues” page.

If you appreciate/enjoy/love animation, you have no excuse. Watch it for free – on line.

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- There were a couple of excellent pieces on the blogs this week.

. Hans Perk posted an exposure sheet from Steamboat Willie. It looks to be an amalgam of work by both Ub Iwerks and Walt Disney. It’s quite amazing to view, and I couldn’t be more in awe of the medium. You can see that it all was in place back in 1928; all that was necessary was for the artists to figure out how to use it. Of course, these days all that information has been thrown out the window for a vector version. Presumably, that’ll eventually be better.
Hans’ site, A Film LA, is a treasure for those, like me, who have a modest interest in history. (Here‘s an old post I did on Steamboat Willie & Iwerks.)

. Then there’s a wonderful photo on Didier Ghez‘s great blog, Disney History. The photo celebrates Les Clark’s 50th anniversary of working for the Disney studio. There are plenty of photos of those nine old men, as well as people like Ben Sharpsteen or Wilfred Jackson, but here’s a picture that includes Claude Coats, Bill Justice, John Sibley and Xavier Atencio, among others. It’s a good photo with these key animators in their prime.

By the way, scroll down a little on Didier’s site and you’ll see a curious and wonderful photo of Art Babbitt animating.

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- The Oscars are this Sunday and I couldn’t be less interested. Not many of the films were extraordinary this year, and even the animation choices aren’t the best.
The animated feature category is missing a couple of fine films such as Waltz With Bashir, which challenges the medium (ever-so-slightly). Get a three-headed coin and flip.

Wall-E started well and went tedious once we were up in space. Lots of chasing about. I never quite bought the live action humans had turned into cartoon puppet-characters. The film, for the most part, to me, was too much like a Sc-Fi film; its animation tried to equal Jar Jar Blinks as opposed to Pinocchio.
Kung-Fu Panda had some very nice art direction, but much of the animation was too frenetic, lots of pop. Most of the characters moved similarly. If animated cartoons are going to feature a lot of punching and hitting, there’s a good chance they’ll lose me. The audience is the 16 year old boy class.
Bolt started with heightened stupid energy mocking action adventure movies. It settled down, but I never got emotionally invested. There was some nice movement and some nice art direction.

Nothing in any of the three stood out to me as exceptional. Perhaps it’s my bias against the viewmaster style of a lot of these cg film. The first 20 minutes of Wall-E was done well so I’d probably vote for that film.

I’ve already talked about the animated shorts. My favorite was The House of Small Cubes by Kunio Katō (though I wonder why the Japanese short is known in the US as La Maison En Petits Cubes.) I found it the most complex of those nominated and actually felt some emotion the first couple of times I saw it. That’s getting to be a rarity at animation screenings.

I like the film’s art styling which nicely mirrors the subject, and I appreciate the labor that went into the 2D animation and rendering. It’s a well done film and certainly one of my favorite shorts of the year.

My favorite short of the year was Skhizein by Jeremy Clapin. The film took a complex story into a new approach to cg animation combining 2D and 3D elements into a new style. I was a bit impatient watching it a 6th time, recently, but I still recognize its bold achievement. I wish the Academy had recognized it too, but I guess it wasn’t “cartoon” enough.

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- Tonight in LA, Emily Hubley will have two programs.
The first, at 7:30, starts out with her parents’ films Tender Game and Windy Day, then one by her mother and several shorts by Emily. A chat with Jerry Beck will be followed by
a 9pm screening of Emily’s feature, The Toe Tactic.

For a full schedule go here.

There’s also going to be a screening of Hubley shorts on Sunday Feb. 22 at 3PM. It’s part of the Redcat Children’s Film Festival screening at Cal Arts. Included are:
Adventures Of An * (USA, 1957)
Urbanissimo (USA, 1968)
The Hole (USA, 1963)
Date With Dizzy (USA, 1958)
The Hat (USA, 1964)
Tijuana Brass Double Feature (USA, 1966)
Dig – Short Version (USA, 1972)
Tender Game (USA, 1958)

This program will be repeated March 5th at 3PM.

- For those who haven’t seen all the Oscar nominated short films, bothe
animated and live-action, this is your chance.

On Saturday, Feb. 14 (Valentine’ Day) at
12 noon and 4pm. The screenings take place at:
Academy Theater at
Lighthouse International
111 E 59th Street

Tickets are $5 for general public, $3 for students.

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A photo scrapbook of Khitruk through the years.

- The Russian Live Journal site has a display of photos of the opening for a Feodor Khitruk exhibition. Khitruk, at 91, wasn’t able to attend the opening but Yurij Norstein is in attendance (pic #1), as is Edward Nazarov (#2), and Anatolij Solin & Bladimir Zykov (#3).

If you’re a fan of Russian animation, it’s worth a look. All the current masters are there.

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Speaking of Russian animation, a 1999 tv opening by Yurij Norshtein was posted on YouTube. Niffwan, who constructed the video there, writes:

Norshteyn spent a year and a half making this animation for the introduction/conclusion to Good Night, Children (Спокойной ночи, малыши), a popular Russian nightly show for young children to watch before they go to bed. The first part would air before each daily show, the second part after.

The segment accompanied the show for a while in 2000, and was taken off the air in summer of 2001; the show moved to another channel while the copyright for the sequence stayed with the old one.

However, the reactions of Russian audiences were largely negative; program director Valentina Prasolova said: “Norshteyn is a famous artist, but he does not make good opening/closing sequences. We get calls and letters every day about this sequence from people who tell us that it is terrible, that it is dark, that children do not want to watch our program.”

The art direction was done by Valentin Olshvang, rather than by Norshteyn’s wife Franchesca Yarbusova. Olshvang is working on Norshtein’s Overcoat team.

The credits for the piece are as follows:

directed by Yurij Norstein ___written by Yurij Norstein
artist Valentin Olshvang _____animator Yurij Norstein
cameraman M. Granik __music A. Ostrovsky ___ sound V. Ugriumov
produced by Anatoly Prokhorov, Yurij Norstein

Many thanks to Niffiwan at Live Journal for both Russian posts.

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- There’s an excellent article about Run Wracke in Res Magazine.

His film Rabbit was a highlight a couple of years back. The follow up film, The Control Master, wasn’t received with quite the same acclaim, though it was equally adept. You might try visiting his site and viewing some of the shorter spots. They’re all fine.

Go here to read it.

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Emily Hubley‘s film, Toe Tactic, gets a solid and extended series of screenings at the Museum of Modern Art beginning this Wednesday, Jan. 28th and including several shows over this weekend.

The Toe Tactic. 2008. USA.
Directed by Emily Hubley. 85 min.
With the voices of Eli Wallach, Marian Seldes, Andrea Martin, David Cross, and Don Byron.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009,
___6:00 p.m.
Thursday, January 29, 2009,
___8:00 p.m.
Friday, January 30, 2009,
___4:00 p.m.
Saturday, January 31, 2009,
___2:00 p.m.
Sunday, February 1, 2009,
___3:00 p.m.
Monday, February 2, 2009,
___5:00 p.m.

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- Speaking of Emily Hubley, we were on a panel together this past Sunday at the Pelham Picture House in Pelham, NY (a half hour ride out of Grand Central). Other members of the panel included George Griffin, who moderated, Bob Blechman and Jeff Scher.

It was a very different kind of panel and I enjoyed participating in it. We were all New Yorkers (although Emily actually lives in New Jersey), all Independents and all concerned with the “art” and future of animation. From a long and well-established designer/producer to an experimental film maker who has learned how to make a living from his art fwe made a very diverse group. I was certainly honored to take part of it and thank J.J. Sedelmeir for getting me involved and the hard work of Andy Nichols and his team at the theater.

There were about fifty people spread out in the audience, and their questions and comments were quite knowledgeable. Only a small number seemed to have floated there from the city, but it was pleasing to note those who did. The day was cold and crisp, and the trip not a bad one – relatively short.

The program was part of the exhibit, It All Started Here! at the Westchester Arts Council Gallery in White Plains. This exhibit continues through February 28th.

There are also a number of other screenings and programs at the Jacob Burns Center Jan 27, Feb 5, and Feb 23. And a presentation on the History of NY Animation by J.J. Sedelmeir and Howard Beckerman at the NY ComiCon on Saturday Feb 7 at 4pm.

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- A lot of attention was given this past week to the nominees for the Academy Award but not much has been written on the blogs about the nominees for Best Short Animated Film in the BAFTAs. These are:

CODSWALLOP – Greg McLeod, Myles McLeod
VARMINTS – Sue Goffe, Marc Craste
WALLACE AND GROMIT: A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH – Steve Pegram, Nick Park, Bob Baker

Varmints was on the Oscar short list, but didn’t make it to the finals.
The Wallace and Gromit film wasn’t entered or probably might have won. I think it’s now ineligible having been shown on tv in England.
Codswallop is a film I haven’t seen to date. You can view a clip of it here.

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Speaking of symbiosis, I posted an article from 1932 on my site last Sunday and a day later a couple of beautiful photos appear on Mike Barrier ‘s site. Ted Eshbaugh‘s publicity photos live on some 3/4 of a century later. Now that’s a highlight – or maybe it’s just history.

- Today, of course, is the National holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr.

It’s impossible to avoid the paradox that this is also the celebration of our first black President’s inauguration. I’ve watched all I could of Obama this weekend and was delighted with the concert held yesterday at the Lincoln Memorial. It’s interesting that the entertainment didn’t feature any of the blockbuster former Mousketeers: Brittany, Christina, Jason, Jessica. Perhaps pop was out.

I am a bit irritated to have to work during the actual ceremony tomorrow. Thank heaven for on line streaming; I’ll be able to view it from my studio on Hulu. I’ll also watch it repeated, undoubtedly, on real tv later tomorrow nite.

Enjoy the day.

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Today is also the 200th birthday anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe. The celebrations are smaller but considerable.

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- This past Saturday marked the screening/judging in NY of the short listed shorts, both live and animated. There were eight animated shorts totalling about 90 mins of screen time

One-30 min, seven-under 15 min.
Two hand-drawn 2D / six cgi.
One student film, five big budget studio films, two small Independent films.

The nominees will be released on Thursday. Good luck to all of them.

For all but three of the ten live-action shorts death seemed to be the underlying or, in some cases, overriding theme. This made a couple of them wearisome. They were all good, though some were long. There were two or three I might consider exceptional.

The immediate difference between the animated and the live action shorts hit me hard. The live action films felt adult, even the most trite, whereas the animated films seemed cartoonish. They may have had serious themes, but they felt simple in comparison to the adult films. Even my favorite of the animated shorts came across as romantic and somewhat smaller than the best of the live films. It was eye-opening for me. Yet, I’ve often had this experience in watching animated and live action programs back-to-back.

The style of film making is markedly different; the difference is subtle yet obvous, and I haven’t really understood what that difference is. I can think of a couple of animated shorts that felt more complex, like the live films. A good example was Madame Tutli-Putli from last year’s nominees. It was a puppet animated film, and, to me, felt equal if not better than the live action entrants. It was also adult.

This is a theme I’ll have to explore in more depth sometime soon.

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- Roy Iddan wrote to ask me to view his latest animated short, calaled Patriot. “Its the story of a veteran of the German army of WWI, Jewish by origin, who finds himself a prisoner in a Nazi German concentration camp during WWII.” The film was financed with a $37,500 grant from the Israel State Lottery. (First Waltz with Bashir, then $9.99, now we’re seeing shorts financed in Israel. This situation is worth watching.)

Character model sheet from Patriot.

The film is complex and serious. It moves from B&W to sepia tones to muted colors. It flashes back and forth in time from WWI to WWII without any confusion. No mean feat.

Check it out here.

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My friend, Tom Hachtman pointed me in the direction of this two part interview: One on One with Bill Plympton
with Riz Khan on Al Jazera.

Part 1
Part 2

- This video has been around for some time, but it’s new to me so forgive me if it’s old news to you. But here’s a music video I enjoyed – a lot. It was done at Passion Pictures by Laith Bahrani. The song, JCB, is by the band “Nizlopi” and consists of three extremely long scenes. Lots of work. to pull of something that looks so simple. He talks a bit about this video – for a hit song in England – here.

And if you don’t look at the JCB video defintiely look at the Radionhead video Bahrani did for their song “Creep“. One scene, the entire piece. Extraordinary work, in my opinion.

You can scan his site, Monkeehub, if you want more.

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Cartoon Brew pointed to this post on Sherm Cohen’s site, Cartoon Site. It’s a well illustrated piece on the life work of Dan Gordon. From the Florida Fleischers to the Hollywood Hanna-Barbera, Gordon was there, and he hasn’t gotten the attention he’s deserved.

2 Dan Gordon storyboard drawings from the first Flintstones, courtesy of AnimationArtGallery.com

Thanks to Sherm Cohen for writing it and Cartoon Brew for directing me to it.

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- As readers of this site know, I usually agree enthusiastically with much of Mike Barrier‘s thoughts on animation and film. We have similar opinions – usually. His recent comments on The Tale of Despereaux represents a fine example of our disagreeing. The film is not earth-shatteringly good, but it’s certainly one of the two or three best animated features I’ve seen this year. There’s nothing for it to apologize for.

I very much like the design styling. It looks as though it were hand drawn (as much as cgi puppets can be), and took its art direction cues from late Middle Ages French artwork. A lot of careful thought was also given to the lighting and the gentle movements of the characters. (No snappy and tedious pose hits in the movement here.) The voice work and music were also fine. It isn’t a great film, but, to me, it’s miles above many other animated films and blockbusters I’ve seen recently.

To say that it’s too terrifying to children is, to me, ridiculous. Snow White, The Lion King and Bambi were both made for the same audience – the family. All three of those were certainly violent and more damaging than anything presented in Despereaux. As a children’s film maker, I’m tired of hearing people talk about how upsetting these fairy tale themes are to children. Read Andersen’s “The Red Shoes” (wherein the lead girl has her legs chopped off to stop the shoes from dancing) or “The Little Match Girl” (when she dies frozen in the cold.) Read Perrault’s “Cinderella” (where the step-sisters cut off their toes and heel to fit into the glass slippers) or anything from the Grimm Brothers. It’s all more horrific than what the film makers do in these “children’s films” because the words describe images we create in our minds. We can handle what moves across the screen so quickly, but it’s hard to get those “imagined” ideas out of our heads. And why should we? They didn’t damage our parents or grandparents who actually read this material.

Regardless, Despereaux is not a bad film. I’d prefer looking at it than all of the Madagascars and ugly Shreks, and I preferred it significantly more than I did Wall-E. It’s my opinion, and others have theirs. The film has just gotten too many hits for my taste when it actually improves upon what we’ve seen in animation these past few years.

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- Finally, Darrell Van Citters‘ new book discussing, analyzing and honoring Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol will be released in the Fall of ’09. It’ll be nice to see this Abe Levitow film get some well deserved attention. I think it’s one of the best adaptations of Dickens’ novella, and it includes some of Jule Styne’s finest songs. By the way, why hasn’t anyone released an album of the music and songs from this film? It’s a gem of a track.

Of course, we got to see 200 reruns of The Grinch this Christmas but no Magoo! There’s a conspiracy going on.

You can read more about the book on the Abe Levitow site.

Take a note, Amazon, I’m ready to preorder.

Here are some bits I’d like to point out.

- The NYTimes has posted the most recent of Jeff Scher’s monthly videos for them. The piece, entitled You Won’t Remember This Either, is a followup to one he posted a year ago, You Won’t Remember This. The first film was a portrait of his son, Buster, from the first week of life to the time he was a couple of years old. The second film chronicles Oscar, his second son’s toddler life. Both present excellent capsules.

This idea (following the early years of an animator’s child) has been done a number of times – usually with excellent results. I think, immediately, of Al Jarnow ‘s study of the first year in his child’s life. That child, Jesse, is now grown up, is an artist in his own right, and has his own blog which features some of his dad’s films.

I also have to comment that the music for Jeff Scher’s films is by Shay Lynch, and it’s extraordinary. I think I listened to the new piece at least a dozen times for the music alone.

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- In 2001, I did the film Mona Mon Amour with illustrator/designer Patti Stren. Now she has her own blog established with the help of designer Santiago Cohen. There you can see glimpses of many of the books she’s written and illustrated. You can also see the film Mona Mon Amour in its entirety.

While making this film I thought this was very funny material we were animating. I was surprised at the local screenings (of mostly animation-types) who didn’t laugh at all. I shrugged my shoulders and accepted that what I found funny didn’t work with others. Then, years later, it screened at MOMA as part of my retrospective. The audience – of mostly people I didn’t know – laughed loudly enough that it was hard to hear some of the jokes. You never can tell.

This same thing happened with Doctor Desoto. When I finished that film, I was sure it was a gem and people would laugh. A small screening I arranged didn’t bring a smile. I accepted the fact that I’d misgauged the humor. I put the film away from my view and sent it off to some festivals. The first time I saw it on a big screen was at the Toronto Animation Festival (the Ottawa Fest had briefly moved to Toronto). The audience laughed loud and long. The film won a lot of awards. You just can’t tell.

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- A blog I happened to view, this week, was Lorelei Pepi‘s blog about the making of her film, Happy & Gay. There she offers some pencil test, some finished film and a lot of information about the making of. The bits I’ve seen make me interested in seeing the final. It seems to be a bit of The Whoopee Party, with a 2009 bent.

- A film maker whose work I’ve always loved is Karen Aqua. I am always reminded of this whenever I come across one of her films. The joy of the internet comes in tripping across a website like hers – one I happened to thanks to Lorelei’s blog. Karen’s an attractive site which really gives a good view of her film work. I have to say it was a real disappointment at the last couple of festivals I attended when I didn’t see her film. I’m sure she enters them into all of the fests, but there seems to be a limited perspective these days. Anyting that doesn’t wreak of bawdy, childish humor doesn’t make it. This is one of the positives of the ASIFA East festival. Many films you’d not see in other festivals get screened there. That’s the last time I’d seen one of Karen’s films projected, and we had the chance to talk at the after-party.

Speaking of the ASIFA-East festival, there was a time when their festival used to be held on the last Thursday of every January. Many times we had to trudge through snow to get to the screening/party. It was finally decided to move the date to May – usually Mother’s Day – to allow us to have better weather. Unfotunately, I miss that animation party in January. The holidays are over and we’re back to normalcy. For me, there’s a hole left in the end of January.

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GOMotion Magazine is offering a free PDF download of the articles in their first issue.

This is a new animation magazine with lots of material to view and read. The focus is primarily cg animation, but if you’re a Kung Fu Panda fan, there’s lots to read.

There’s also other material to explore on their site. One assumes as they produce more issues the site, alone, will grow. Worth checking out.

Hopefully, they’ll also put a little focus on some Independent animators.

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- Finally, let me direct you to Hans Perk‘s site A Film LA, in case you’ve grown out of the habit of checking it out. Having posted many drafts and documents for us already, Hans is now posting the draft to The Sword In The Stone.

This, to me, is one of the under rated features done in the late-Disney period. There’s a liveliness, an energy racing through the film that is just exciting. Most animation geeks point to the Wizard’s Duel as the highlight, but the opening sequence in which Wart meets Merlin is magical to me, and the squirrel sequence is so wholly original and beautifully animated that it should be on everyone’s study list. The film offers a lot.

Now with the drafts, the study becomes easy. Thanks, Hans.

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.- Here’s the conclusion to the storyboard by Bill Peet that I began yesterday. It’s the Tar Baby sequence from Song of the South.

I first posted this in October 2007, but I hadn’t broken up the board so that it could be enlarged enough. I’ve done that.

Many thanks go to John Canemaker for initially lending this material for me to post.

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This picture comes from the Bill Peet website, worth a visit.

Here are the two remaining original boards:

5
(Click images to enlarge.)

6

And here are the same two boards broken down by rows:

51

52

53

54

55

61a

61b

62a

62b

63a

63b

64a

64b

65a

65b

- After posting my copy of the book, Mr. Bug Goes To Town, Robert Cowan sent me another gem from his unbelievable collection of animation art. This is a background from the film’s start. Hoppity’s just arrived and is trying to separate the cigar from the Honeyhouse.

Do they make them more beautiful than this? You can scrape through many of the current features and come up empty handed in comparison. Of course one expects the wonderfully imagined things about the Fleischer backgrounds – the heart shaped sign stuck with a hat pin, the clothespin reaching from the honeycomb – but the densities in that watercolor. There’s something vulnerable and glorious about good watercolors.

Bob Little OK’d the background. I wonder how much he, personally, contributed to it. I met him briefly at Grim Natwick’s 100th birthday party August, 1990.

(Click on either image to enlarge.)

Robert Little is in the upper right just in front of Bill Littlejohn.

In situations like this party, I tend to become a bit shy and anchor myself in a comfortable place. This, as it turns out, was near Bob Little who I met for the first time. The entire evening was a jaw dropper for animation fans, but meeting Mr. Little was certainly a highlight for me. We talked for at least a good half hour, and I was in animation heaven.

It was also a pleasure to see Tissa in the same room with Grim. She’d assisted him for a couple dozen years, and they were quite close with each other in all the years since they stopped working together. I’ve always felt an odd connection to Grim. He passed everything on to Tissa who took it and ran with it. She passed some of what she knows on to me.

The New York critics gave unanimously favorable reviews to Ari Folman‘s animated feature, Waltz with Bashir.

In his review in the NYTimes, A.O. Scott, wrote:
__“Waltz With Bashir” is a memoir, a
__history lesson, a combat picture,
__a piece of investigative journalism and
__an altogether amazing film.
The Daily News reviewer, Elizabeth Weitzman, giving the film four stars, wrote:
__There happen to be an unusual number
__of movies about war out right now.
__Few, if any, have the power of this __one.
Giving the film 3 1/2 stars, Lou Leminick in the NY Post wrote:
__“Waltz With Bashir” once again demonstrates that animation is not a genre but an
__increasingly artistic way to tell all kinds of stories.
J.Hoberman in the Village Voice wrote:
__Ari Folman’s broodingly original Waltz With Bashir is a documentary that seems only
__possible, not to mention bearable, as an animated feature.

I saw Waltz with Bashir in Ottawa this past September. I did enjoy it – mostly for its story. I wasn’t so enthralled with the artwork or the animation (flash, for the most part), but the presentation was strong enough to keep me from getting bored. There were some inspirational moments and some dull moments as well. It was a strong effort to use animation for something wholly different, and I appreciated that enormously. I guess I would have preferred it about 15 minutes shorter.

I saw The Tale of Despereaux this weekend and thought it was quite good. I thought the story was somewhat convoluted but felt the animation, graphics and, particularly the voice work, was excellent. The film kept me involved, interested and satisfied with the animation work. All of the characters felt attached to their surroundings and didn’t float, as is too often the case in cgi work. Nor did the characters pop form position to position as you see in other successful animated features this year. As a matter of fact, they handled the human ones nicely. Princesses, dragons and the like were certainly superior to anything in the Shrek canon. This film is certainly worth a look. Well done.

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I enjoyed seeing some of the animators’ cards on the various websites.
- Mike Barrier treated us to some of the earliest exchanges among the notables: Tex Avery, Hugh Harman, Rudy Ising, Friz Freleng, and Dave Fleischer’s card to Paul Terry.
- Pete Emslie showcased a number of the many cards Ollie Johnston sent to him over the years.
- Bob Jaques offered a card Eddie Nolan sent out, and he reminds us of the link to the Dick Huemer site where many cards are on display
- The ASIFA H’wood Animation Archive gave us a batch of Disney cards from the late 40′s-early 50′s. (Look for the Peter Pan/Robin Hood card.)
- Steve Hulett Has posted a number of the stunning cards by his father, Ralph Hulett at the Animation Guild Blog.
- And, finally, Thad Komorowski has an early christmas card from Jim Tyer posted. He’s also been posting some vinatage Carl Barks Christmas stories from Donald Duck comics.

(Click on image to enlarge.)

I didn’t post any old christmas cards this year, but would like to display, again, this Top Cel drawing done by Dave Tendlar to honor all the animation artists serving the country during WWII. To my knowledge, the only animator to die in combat was Willard Bowsky.

I originally offered it in Dec. 2006.