In keeping with the Paramount cartoon theme, in today’s cartoon a turtle has to deal with Wolfie. I wish someone would give this poor wolf some food…

But first, life here, Thunderbean and related:

Yesterday was an incredibly busy and exhausting day here with the Senior Studio students at CCS all showing their final projects. It’s also a farewell or sorts, after spending four years knowing them and helping them through their college years. Some of the students graduating have helped more recently on Thunderbean projects, including digital restoration and cleanup for the things we’re doing for MeTV as well as a little animation for titles on the Blu-rays.

We’re nearly done sending a batch of eight special discs, and I’m working on preparing the next batch to go out hopefully within the month. I’m also helping Tommy Stathes finish off his excellent Dinky Doodle Blu-ray, a project with many years and many hours invested in it. It’s been one of my favorites to work on, as was the recent Back to the Inkwell Blu-ray/DVD set.

As I wait for several things to get back from replication, I’ve been putting the Cartoons for Victory set to the forefront after it was on a sort of holding pattern for a while. We were waiting for the four “Hook” cartoons from the Naval film archive. Sadly, we were recently informed that their prints of all four films are deteriorating, as were the prints that were scanned many years back. We’ve decided to no longer have the set in a holding pattern and are working on getting this Blu-ray upgrade together with the best material we have. We have the Hooks from the master tape we have and a partial print of one of the shorts. There’s so many great things on the set, and, as the other in progress titles, we’ll be glad to have this one out.

And – onto The Old Shell Game (1948)

I know a lot of you folks are enjoying the new Famous Studios Champions set from Cartoon Logic. It’s so nice to see these films from their master materials- a great improvement over previous available copies. Thad Komorowski did a beautiful job in cleanup/restoration of the shorts. If you haven’t gotten this set yet and like the Famous Studio cartoons, it’s a must.

Thunderbean did a DVD set of Noveltoons back in 2012. It was some of the first scans we did in HD, and cleaning them up with very primitive software back then was a real chore. We were so happy to get a good amount of the films in 35mm Technicolor prints. When we finally ported the set to Blu-ray, Thad was instrumental in cleaning up many of the films as well as providing a few commentary tracks. The set has been out of print for a while, and a few months back we decided to reissue it, re-cleaning up some of the films with the better, newer restoration software and replacing some of the prints. It will be out with the next batch of discs sent from Thunderbean within the next month or so.

Finding vintage 35mm prints in good shape on Famous Studio’s cartoons was always hard, but the collectors have been incredibly generous in lending things for so many of the Thunderbean projects. I’m glad there’s people that are involved in collecting that are generous enough to lend their rare prints. It’s not everyone of course, and some of the things we *really* want have been scuttled away for many years. Hopefully we’ll be able to borrow some of the those in the future.

Jerry Beck lent us this print of The Old Shell Game when we were producing the Blu-ray. It was pretty beat up and missing a little piece of footage near the end, but looked great in Technicolor otherwise. We’ve done a little more cleanup to the short now, removing many of the lines as best as we could. It’s still probably the most worn film on the set, but still a pretty fun watch.

I like the Famous Studios cartoons, and I always wonder how many of the stories came about in the 40s. It’s such a varied group of films in terms of themes and direction, with so many of them being really entertaining.

Let us know your thoughts on this one- especially if you have never seen it before (I bet most of you have though!).

Have a good week everyone!

It’s a Famous Studios sort of week– thanks to Cartoon Logic’s excellent new release, Famous Studios – The Champion Collection. I just got my copy and its a beautiful as I thought it would be (I was lucky enough to see a little progress along the way). Thad Komorowski has done a huge service to these cartoons and film history in this release – these films looking as good (or better) than they were meant to be seen. Support his efforts and get a copy if you haven’t already! [Click Here].

So, as a tribute of sorts to the set, here’s an unrestored Famous Studios cartoon from 1949: Spring Song!

But first, as usual, in Thunderbean land:

Shipping, shipping, shipping. We’re still getting out a batch of special discs with another following it, and then almost immediately following those we’ll be starting to ship the Rainbow Parades, Volume 2 disc. We’ll have an article about that set as it gets back here. The Thunderbean Noveltoons disc is just about to get back from being re-replicated as well, so we’ll be shipping those soon too.

It’s the last weeks of school here at CCS, where I teach animation. Even though I enjoy the job a lot, I’m especially excited for the summer this year and so happy to have a break. Having the extra time makes all the difference in being able to accomplish big things each summer- and this one is packed. I’ll be taking a trip out west to get a bunch of films to scan, then headed east to scan a bunch of other things too! Since there’s a lot of projects wrapping up, and as each wraps up it frees me to work toward the finish of another. Four are close right now, so those will be the first out the door. I’m already trying to figure out when to rest

Enough of that! Back to today’s cartoon!!

The Screen Songs are definitely not at the top of the list of best cartoons from the studio- but that said, they’re still full of quality work. The drawing and animation is appealing throughout this short, and the design and layout is well done. This is a Myron Waldman directed one, and I can recognize some of his layout in the early scenes. I especially love the illustrations during the song in this one, and can recognize some of the layout of those stills are also by Myron. Larry Silverman is also credited, and I’m sure a good amount of the usual team in the unit is on this film. I wish I had talked to Myron more about the Screen Songs. They’re such an afterthought in the history of the studio since they’re so simple, and sort of half-length in terms of actual animation footage.

The Jerry Colonna-baby bird is an especially strange moment in this film. Super fun to watch frame by frame or slow if you’re interested in a few extra laughs.

We were able to get some color back into this old NTA print that had faded, but yellows don’t pop the way I’d like them to. Still, it’s nice to see at least some color on this particular title.

Have a good week all!