TVSquad

Cartoon expert extraordinarie Amid Amidi mentioned a short film in his book Cartoon Modern called "A Date with Dizzy," a funny stab at the TV ad biz that featured animation from John and Faith Hubley. I had plans to try and find it online, but soon forgot about it until today when I saw Amid had posted it on Cartoon Brew. You can watch the ten-minute short after the jump, which features a TV ad fella trying to get Dizzy Gillespie and his quintet to perform a song for a commercial for "Instant Rope Ladder." It's rather amusing.

John Hubley himself worked at Disney painting layouts and backgrounds for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Bambi, Pinocchio, Fantasia and Dumbo before moving on to UPA where he developed the character of Mr. Magoo. He later founded his own studio with his wife, Faith, called Storyboard. The animation featured in this short were all created when Storyboard was based in Los Angeles (he later moved the studio to New York). The commissioned projects he did through Storyboard were done anonymously, as Hubley was blacklisted by the HUAC at this time for alleged Communist leanings.

Since I'm always looking out for my fellow animation buffs, I thought you would enjoy these storyboards Ren and Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi donated to the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive last year. In fact, he donated all of Spumco's archives to the project. The storyboards, drawn by Bob Camp who later went on to work on the feature film Looney Tunes: Back in Action, are for the episode "Stimpy's Invention." The "invention" being a helmet that makes Ren perpetually happy. Also included are several notes from John K. It's worth checking out to see how an animated episode evolves, especially one that's led by an animation snob such as John K. And I use the word "snob" affectionately.