Hello,
I subscribe to an online newsletter from Animation magazine that kind of keeps me up to date on any interesting happenings in the animation world. You see, I’ve never outgrown the cartoon faze of my childhood. I love it just as much now as then, however my infatuation of cartoons has changed from loving the simple slapstick comedy to an appreciation of the art form.
Since I’ve been fortunate enough to plop out some animation at my day job, that appreciation has grown considerably. My use of DVR is exemplary of this statement. I love DVR for the main fact that I can slow any animation sequence down to frame by frame and figure out how the big boys made a particular sequence work as well as they did. In a sense, I’m a perpetual student of the art of animation. I watch it regularly and anyone watching with me (which is usually just my cat) will get annoyed due to my constant stopping and scrubbing the cartoon to see “how did they do that?”.
Well, Animation magazine announced a wonderful thing, in my opinion, in their latest newsletter. Disney is going to be producing new Mickey Mouse shorts in the vein of the originals. Awesome! See, I told you I’m a cartoon nerd. I’m a fan of the old Mickey shorts because the animation was so fluid and over the top. It took a lot of cells and man-hours to produce those, but I always felt the end product was worth it. Studios since, including Disney, started to shy away from that time consuming process to minimize costs and the result was rigid cartooning. That sort of animation can work in anime because anime really is more about the story, not so much about animation. Mickey shorts are pure animation, the story is secondary to the animation.
Here is a snippet of what the article had to say about it:
Watch out all you young whippersnapper toons. Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks’s 85-year-old character, Mickey Mouse, is coming back in a new short-form series of 2D cartoons. This new series of 19 cartoon shorts will begin rolling out on Friday, June 28 on Disney Channel, Disney.com and WATCH Disney Channel.
You can read more of the article here. It’s quite interesting.
At any rate, they have a sneak-peek on their website and its well-worth watching if you love Mickey shorts. They definitely kept the imagery within the confines of the classic Mickey shorts with just a tad of updating and the animation is just incredible. I especially love the watercolor-esque backdrops and the title card. I wanted to share it here, so please enjoy.
http://video.disney.com/watch/disneychannel-croissant-de-triomphe-4d7b3aae690a98650d776d97
Till next time…
David (Cali Dingo)