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One Day A Lonely Bear…

[We hope you all had a Merry Christmas — and have a safe New Year!]

Bear Story is a short CGI animated film by Gabriel Osorio at Punkrobot Studios in 2014. Since then it has won over 50 international awards in the animation festival circuit. According to an article at The Wrap, the film “…is an ingenious, dazzling piece of 3D animation, the sad story of a lonesome bear who builds an elaborate mechanical diorama in an attempt to remember (and perhaps recover) the life he used to live with his wife and son, before he was ripped from his home and sent to a circus. But audiences in Osorio’s native Chile immediately know that it’s more than that — it’s also an allegory for the way families were torn apart during the murderous Pinochet regime in Chile in the 1970s.” Bear Story has been short-listed for an Academy Award for 2015. You can see a short making-of film and a trailer for it over at the Punkrobot web page.

image c. 2015 Punkrobot

image c. 2015 Punkrobot Studios

… And He Never Spoke

Anyone interested in animation should know about Depatie-Freleng Enterprises, the birthplace and home of one of America’s iconic animated furries, The Pink Panther. Not to mention cartoons like The Ant and the Aardvark, The Cat in the Hat, The Lorax, Doctor Dolittle, The Fantastic Four, Doctor Snuggles, Baggy Pants and The Nitwits, The Barkleys, The Houndcats, The Grump, The Super Six, Super President, Spy Shadow, Hoot Kloot, Blue Racer, Crazylegs Crane, Misterjaw, Tijuana Toads, The Dogfather, The Oddball Couple, and Charlie the Tuna (whew!). Now animation historian Mark Arnold has chronicled the rise of DFE in Think Pink! a new hardcover book of more than 600 pages (!). “In 1963, Warner Bros. closed down their long-running cartoon facility that had produced such memorable merrymakers as the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons. Director/producer Friz Freleng and executive David H. DePatie faced unwanted early retirement. A generous parting gesture from a Warner executive allowed Freleng and DePatie to lease the former Warner cartoons studio on California Street in Burbank, complete with equipment and supplies, for a few dollars each year.” The book is available now — find out more at the Bearmanor Media web site, or just head to Amazon.

image c. 2015 Bearmanor Media

image c. 2015 Bearmanor Media

Another All-Around Animator

… and illustrator, whom we met at the CTN Animation Expo. Christina Halstead is a character designer and, yes, animator who has worked freelance on projects for outfits like Toon Boom and games like Beast’s Fury. Her personal art web site is called Shadowed Brush Creations — there you can find sketches, character paintings, and even short animation samples from her work.

image c. 2015 Christina Halstead

image c. 2015 by Christina Halstead

In Space, No One Can Hear You Clean

Look, we just plain stole the under-title of this book … why?  Because we can’t top it! From Titan Books and well-known SoCal artist Joey Spiotto comes Alien Next Door, “the first official Alien cartoon book!”. Here’s what they say: “See a new, caring side to the legendary science fiction monster as he tends to Jonesy the cat, endeavours to keep his house cleaner than the Nostromo, and searches for his place on a cold, new, alien world: Earth. From facehuggers to feather dusters, discover how the perfect killing machine relaxes after a day of scaring space marines.”. It’s available now in paperback.

image c. 2015 Titan Books

image c. 2015 Titan Books

Are You a Good Wish, or a Bad Wish?

Over at Cartoon Brew there’s an article about Wish Police, the next big film project to come out of Reel FX (home of Free Birds and The Book of Life). “Based on a novella of the same name by Daniel Nayer, Wish Police takes place in a world where children’s bad wishes come to life as mayhem-making villains, and a secret organization called The Wish Police must work full-time to apprehend the evildoers. The Wish Police are led by Saul, an ex-genie determined to atone for centuries of granting his masters’ evil wishes, and Kong, a wise-cracking monkey and royal pain in the leg. In the film, Saul and Kong must break their personal rules and team up with a 12-year-old boy named Randy who has made a particularly bad wish and unleashed the most powerful wish villain ever seen.” The film is to be directed by three young filmmakers from Spain, Adrian Garcia, Alfredo Torres, and Victor Maldonado, “who are collectively known as Headless”. The CGI film is being produced by Kirk Bodyfelt (Cloudy with A Chance of Meatballs 2) and written by some folks who worked on Kung Fu Panda. The film is scheduled for release in late 2017.

image c. 2015 Reel FX

image c. 2015 Reel FX

Worse Than Paparazzi!

Papercutz (home of Geronimo Stilton and family, of course) have a new full-color graphic novel out in trade paperback called Scarlett: Star on the Run. Here, we’ll let them describe it: “Scarlett is a small, harlequin-colored cat and a huge movie star. And what’s more—she talks! However, abused by her producer, she dreams of but one thing: escaping! So, when the occasion presents itself, she runs for her life. In the company of Trotter, a dog who’s escaped the same torment, she is taken in by Mr. Bougnon. But with the noose getting tighter, will they manage to elude their terrible pursuers?” We’ll soon find out! Written and illustrated by Jon Buller and Susan Schade, Scarlett is on the shelves now. Oh, and check out the review over at Kidsreads.com.

image c. 2015 Papercutz

image c. 2015 Papercutz

All Right You Big Ape, Draw!

Fans of comic book art how-to’s would be wise to look up the Pen & Ink series from Boom! Studios, where professional comic book artists go into the details of their creative process in a step-by-step manner. For the next installment, Boom! have tapped the creators of the popular series Six-Gun Gorilla (which we’ve covered here previously). Now artist Jeff Stokely (aided by insights from writer Simon Spurrier) bring us Six-Gun Gorilla: Pen & Ink, which re-creates the first two issues of the comic in a large 11 x 17 inch black & white format with commentary on each panel. You can check it out over at Previews.

image c. 2015 Boom! Studios

image c. 2015 Boom! Studios

Th-Th-That’s a Superhero, Folks!

And how did we miss this bit, Doc? As DC Comics have been the home of the Looney Tunes comic series for a while now, this last November they decided to go completely, yes, looney: More than two dozen of DC’s well-known superhero titles were released last month featuring variant covers where Bugs Bunny and his pals (some well-known, some obscure except to the True Warner Brother Aficionado!) invaded the world of Superman and Batman and their pals. And these covers were created by some of the best and most well-known DC artists working now. Fortunately for those of us who can’t afford to buy that many comics in a month (especially just for the cool covers!), DC has been kind enough to collect all 25 covers on their web site for you to peruse.

image c. 2015 DC Comics

image c. 2015 DC Comics

Small Girl, Big T-Rex

One of comic book great Jack Kirby’s more obscure creations was the Devil Dinosaur and Moon Boy series — obscure, but still popular among comic book collectors. It featured the adventures (on a parallel, savage world) of an ape-like proto-human named “Moon Boy” and his companion, a firey-red tyrannosaurus rex with human-level intelligence.  And now Marvel comics have brought Devil Dinosaur into modern times, literally, with their new series Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur — written by Brandon Montclare and Amy Reeder, with art by Natacha Bustos. This time around “Moon Girl” is a young human (with some “Inhuman” secrets) who just may be a genius inventor in the making. In the midst of one of her experiments though, she accidentally drags Devil Dinosaur into our world and our time. Talk about a pair who just don’t fit in! The first issue is on the shelves now, and i09 has an interview with the creators as well.

image c. 2015 Marvel Comics

image c. 2015 Marvel Comics