TVSquad

Sometime ago I had a brief e-mail confab with Amid Amidi, a cartoon historian and writer who also worked for Spumco, John K's animation studio. We talked about a book he was working on titled Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in Fifties Animation. That book is now available for purchase, and I recommend it to anyone interested in this particular era of animation and design. The book is filled with wonderful production stills and sketches from the television age, and Amidi goes into great details about the production studios (Hanna Barbera, Terrytoons, etc.) as well as all the great artists of that era who took a new direction from the animated images of the 30s and 40s and introduced a brand new modern aesthetic: Tom Oreb, Maurice Nobel, and the recently deceased Ed Benedict, who was able to create distinct characters for Hanna Barbera on a low budget that are still admired today. Amidi also has a Web site called Cartoon Modern, and he runs the Cartoon Brew site with fellow animation buff Jerry Beck.