Teaching full-time has one big perk: A summer of a lot less commitments and time to work a lot more without interruption on all sorts of things. With me, it’s career-related in that I get to work on the Thunderbean stuff in a more full-time way.
Tomorrow I’m off the Columbus Moving Picture Show in Columbus, Ohio. I’ll be there for a handful of days, so if you come to the show, say hi! I love chatting all things animation as well as talking about the stuff in progress for Thunderbean. Information on the event is HERE.
There’s a handful of major projects on the plate here that are making major progress right now while on their way to being an actual finished set. Here is the status of the eight that are most on my mind, daily:
Rainbow Parades, Volume 2: The set is done and will be starting to ship within a month or so. This is one of my favorite projects we’ve ever done, and I’m glad to have given these films the best treatment possible. Here’s the first sneak preview of the cover art by Mike Kazaleh with background by Jesse Smith:
Lantz Studio Treasures: Another upgrade from the DVD we released some years back, with even more things included. This one is waiting for just a few films to get finished.
Cartoons For Victory: This set just rounded another corner right at the end of the school year. There’s a few films left to clean up, several bonus things to upgrade to HD from the previous DVD sets (from 2005 and 2012). The propaganda poster section is something I especially love. I’ve shown it for years in my animation history class at CCS, and have heard from other folks teaching animation history how useful the DVD sets are for an overview of propaganda. My idea is that the sets (and the Blu-ray now) help to fill in the gaps between the Disney and Warners sets. For the Blu-ray, we’ve upgraded across the board in materials, and after working many years off and on in getting it finished, I’m happy that there’s such a broad representation of countries on the set. The material ranges in quality somewhat in the release, from acceptable to spectacular. This one is the closest next to the finish line right now. We’ll have it out over the summer along with others.
The Comi-Color cartoons: *easily* the hardest project here right now. Our hope is to have one of the two sets out at the end of the summer and both by year’s end if we’re able. The work involves scanning all the negatives that exist. Cleanup isn’t as hard since the material is beautiful- newer scanner technology has made all the difference. We have quite a few done already and I’ll be sharing as we get closer on the first set (I’ve been holding the cards close on this one). Everything exists in 35mm, with only a few titles not having their camera negative or black and white separations. It’s been a long road on all the Iwerks stuff to the finish line, but we’re finally getting there. Looking forward to getting a few of the other titles done so this gets first place in production.
A Spooky Cartoony Halloween: This title is finished, just waiting for replication as soon as we’re able. We sent a ‘tide-me-over’ for last Halloween to the folks that pre-ordered this. If you ordered it, I think you’ll like the surprises we’ve included.
American Animated Cartoons, 1929 and American Animated Cartoons, 1930: These two are getting closer to the finish line as well, and have been so much fun to work on. They’re a mix of 35mm and 16mm material, and a pretty fun overview if you want to introduce someone to the early sound era of American animation.
Lou Bunin’s Magic Puppet Animation, Featuring Alice in Wonderland: This is the project most wrapped up in things out of my control but *almost*. Let’s hope they’re back in control soon. There’s some material that we really *need* to utilize to make this set what I really want it to be— and that it *needs* to be. More on that soon. If I walked into a famous building with 5k right now, the whole thing would move forward much faster. Working on that. Also, with all that said, what we do have done looks lovely on this title. Trying to finish by summer’s end, and that’s looking possible.
I’ll give an honorable mention to Toby the Pup, who isn’t properly dressed at the moment, yet.
It’s off to Columbus for me now. Thanks to all for keeping the faith and keeping the lights on for this tiny business. Hopefully it has been and continues to be worth it for everyone.
Have a good week all!
Steve Stanchfield is an animator, educator and film archivist. He runs Thunderbean Animation, an animation studio in Ann Arbor, Michigan and has compiled over a dozen archival animation DVD collections devoted to such subjects at Private Snafu, The Little King and the infamous Cubby Bear. Steve is also a professor at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.
All of these are very worthwhile endeavours, but the one that excites me the most is the Iwerks ComiColor set — “easily the hardest project,” as you say, and hardly the easiest! Long taken for granted as staples of public domain video collections, these quirky cartoons were made by a lot of legendary figures in animation history — Grim Natwick, Shamus Culhane, Berny Wolf, Carl Stalling, and of course Ub Iwerks himself — and they deserve a reappraisal. Wouldn’t I love to see “Balloon Land” or “Summertime” fully restored from the original negatives! I’m sure a lot of fine details will emerge that nobody has noticed in ninety years.
And speaking of summertime, Have a fun and productive one!
My favourite ComiColor Cartoon is “The Three Bears”. I know that one will just sparkle when it gets restored, especially if it’s coming from the original negatives!
Oh man, everything you talk about here are things that I have been eagerly awaiting. It is hard for me to remember what I pre-ordered, but I would assume that I ordered the forthcoming Halloween set. If there is anyway, you could check, because for some reason I cannot, please message me or text me or something because I would definitely not want to miss this forthcoming Halloween compilation. Your previous discs have been wonderful! I look forward to the propaganda volume because I liked the DVDs that you issued. Wayback win, along with the Lance treasures. The DVDs have been incredible and I am sure that the upgrades to Blu-ray will be worth the weight. Good luck to everything you do as always.
Balloon Land used to scare me every time it popped up on TV! I found a VHS copy years ago so I could scare my niece and nephews. This will be a great complement to the Flip the Frog Collection I recently got. Also: the Lou Bunin collection will be good – I remember seeing the rediscovered Alice at the Thalia.
I remember watching “The Toonerville Trolley”,”Felix The Cat” and the other movie cartoons from The Van Beuren studio (I hope to God that I’m spelling the name of this animation studio right?) weekday mornings on WABC TV Ch.7 in NYC as far back as the late 1950’s.
There are a few DVDs and sets that have been pretty tough in terms of getting approval and good prints. For me, by far the most frustrating one is the Felix the Cat set (AAAAARRRGH!!), and then there are the Bunins… and what about the other Betty Boops, etc. now that Max Fleischer’s granddaughter is curating the Fleischer Brothers cartoons? You got lotsa ISSUES, lotsa ISSUES, I say!
i wonder if these sets will be available on dvd or if it’s just blu-ray only. that being said i might check out Rainbow Parades Vol. 2, wonder if all three of the van beuren felix shorts will be on there as well, (only saw uploads of a 35mm IB print scan of bold king cole and a work-in-progress restoration of goose that laid the golden egg on Steve Stanchfield’s youtube channel, didn’t see a restoration of neptune nonsense though.)