Breakfast with Count Chocula at The House of the Seven Gables
Animation Spin celebrates Halloween with the cartoon creepies of the grocery store aisle and records fresh from their cereal boxes, followed by a detour to a dark house in Salem.
“How To Live With A Neurotic Dog”
Here is a never-before published oddment. It’s something that just turned up, my color planning thumbnails for the production of “How To Live With a Neurotic Dog”.
The Many Lives of Duck Dodgers
A survey of Duck Dodgers and Marvin Martian in over 60 years of animation – in all formats.
The Itch For the Unseen, Again…
The 1945 Spanish animated feature “Garbancito de La Mancha” is the first European Cel-animated feature, and bizarre in a more 1930s way than 40s.
Let Me Pick Your Brain! (Part 2)
More spooky, and not-so-spooky, doings this week, as we follow more animated instances of personality flip-flops between some of our favorite characters.
The Tunes Were Still Looney
The Bosko series of Looney Tunes was going on a pace. They have been popular with exhibitors, and they endeavored to plug songs by Warner Brothers’ publishing companies.
Walt Disney Classified: “What Is Propaganda?”
Disney’s studio also created countless wartime posters, pamphlets and insignia for the war effort. Here’s one that uses Donald Duck as its spokesman.
Hanna Barbera’s “Rock Odyssey”
The story behind the “lost” Hanna-Barbera animated feature Rock Odyssey has always been interesting to me. Here’s what I know about it.
The Original Tom & Jerry in “Pots and Pans” (1932)
“Pots and Pans” is a dandy little musical cartoon that is apologetically happy. While not spectacular in any way, it’s a positive and fun short.
Jerry Beck is a writer, animation producer, college professor and author of more than 15 books on animation history. He is a former studio exec with Nickelodeon Movies and Disney, and has written for The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. He has curated cartoons for DVD and Blu-ray compilations and has lent his expertise to dozens of bonus documentaries and audio commentaries on such. Beck is currently on the faculty of CalArts in Valencia, UCLA in Westwood and Woodbury University in Burbank – teaching animation history. More about Jerry Beck [Click Here]
