Jazzy Cartoons….Last night, we watched Coal Black and the Sebben Dwarves - thanks to Michael for lending us his DVD copy, which also included other politically-incorrect/censored cartoons from the 1940′s – Goldilocks & The Three Jivin’ Bears and Tin Pan Alley Cats. Jazzy, bouncy, swingin’, totally raucous with great music and dance numbers! Also found a list here of Jazz Cartoons … and a directory of insider facts about Looney Tunes cartoons. (I can’t believe someone has gone to all this trouble)

Related Articles: Racism in American Cartoons (article), Coal Black (realvideo) and essay , Is The Animation Industry racist? (discussion thread from the Animation Nation forums)

OLEG GAZENKO and LAIKA THE DOG.
The people at Mongrel Media have recreated in puppet animation (this was a few years ago) the real life story of the Russian scientist who was responsible for training the USSR’s space dogs in 1957.

Listen to the story with sound effects and music:
mp3 download

This part of the show tells the story of Oleg Gazenko, the Soviet scientist who selected and trained space-dog Laika, the first living creature in orbit. In three minutes, visitors follow Gazenko and Laika on an epic journey. They see Gazenko finding Laika in the Moscow streets, training her for space travel, launching her into orbit then mourning the outcome of her voyage. The show uses quotes from Gazenko himself to highlight his feeling’s about Laika’s historic journey. – quoted from the Mongrel Media website

DANCING AND CARTOONS.
One of the things I love most in animation and the movies are dance sequences. Some favorite dance sequences as seen on tv/video: Hairspray (John Waters) the nightclub dances (“The Rich Man’s Frug”, “The Heavyweight” etc) in Sweet Charity. In animation we love Bugs Bunny doing pirhouettes in What’s Opera Doc, Preston Blair’s famous dancin’ dame in Red Hot Riding Hood/Swing Shift Cinderella, The Flinstones’ “Bedrock Twitch”to name a few…

Links about dance crazes on TV: Check out the TV ACRES: Dance & Dancing Section. This one’s more about HOW TO dance: section on dancing, drinking…  But my favorite novelty dance instructor is Dick Blake (author of “Dick Blake’s discotheque dances”) with some tips right here

LIMBO PARTY from our “Lava Palaver” pilot (Super Mahi Tiki)

KAIJU.COM!

For some moonsaultin’ monsters causing mayhem in a steel cage, check out these videoclips! at Kaiju.com. (The bios are also great)

People often ask us- Will there be Mucha Lucha toys and action figures? When will these be available? We wish we knew the answer to this question. In the meantime, you may want to check out our Fwak! Stores for our other characters on T-shirts, mugs and clocks. And I might add that we have some Fwak! character figurines in the making and visitors to this blog will be the first to get a sneak peek.

FREEMASONS

Eddie has always wanted to make a Freemason cartoon. Alien conspiracies meet secret societies of men wearing fezs? It so happens that my dad is a Freemason so we got the full story about freemasons being a charitable, non-religious, society of goodwill and brotherhood… Well, there’s always another side to the story – Masonic Explanation which is a whole lot more interesting. - Lili

NOW SHOWING

KIKKO-MAN! Thanks to Marc who sent this very funny Flash movie to us. (advertisement for Kikkoman – the soy sauce)

WEB TOOL

Palette Man. This is a pretty nifty online tool for picking colors, tweaking and matching them for a design project (e.g., website) if you are into working with a minimal palette. Pick the colors you want, then e-mail to yourself with hex/RGB values etc.

Which Animation Buzzwords do you find irritating?

Here’s an article from Animation Meat! with some of those words. (like animations and tweening…) We can add a few more to this list – how about “tweens” (a term used to describe that 9-14 age group somewhere between kids and teenagers) and “prodco” (production company)? 

Check out the Animation Meat website for more animation-related rants & downloadable classic character models.