TVSquad

Earlier this week, I was watching the CBS Evening News while I was at the keyboard. That means I wasn't really watching the TV screen; I was listening to the tube while working on the Mac. Therefore, I didn't even notice that Katie Couric had a new haircut. Then, from the other room, my husband called to me and asked what I thought. "Thought about what?" I answered.

That was how I heard the "big" news that CBS anchor Katie Couric has a new look. Really, what does it matter? Why should it matter? She's presenting the news, not selling hair gel or mousse, right?

The Style Network is taking on obesity issues with its newest reality series. The channel behind reality shows like Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane just ordered episodes of a new series called Ruby. Ruby will tell the story of Ruby Gettinger, an obese woman from Georgia, as she attempts to lose weight. Gettinger weighs five hundred pounds and is under doctor's orders to lose a significant amount of weight.

Actress Brittany Daniel, a personal friend of Gettinger's, will act as the show's consulting executive producer. She is also going to appear on the show occasionally. Style has ordered nine episodes of Ruby, a one-hour premiere and eight half-hour episodes. The reality series will air this fall.

I don't cook much, choosing to eat all of my food frozen, but I like the idea of Pantry Raid, a new series on the Style network debuting August 29 at 9:00 p.m.

Chef Michael Schulson will go into a person's house and try to whip up a meal using only food found in that person's pantry. As a bachelor who is slowly but surely learning how to make meals that don't require reading instructions on the back of a box, I find the idea appealing. Can you make something out of applesauce, hominy, pumpkin pie filling and rat poison? Because that's pretty much what's in my pantry.

Queer Eye For The Straight Guy, the once hugely popular makeover show on Bravo, has been canceled by the network. The series will have one last season coming up (titled Queer Eye: The Final Season). Design guru Thom Felicia gets his own show on the Style Network later this year.

This isn't a big surprise. Not only had ratings been dropping the last couple of years but the "buzz" that this show once had vanished completely. Personally, I got sick of all the "theme" blocks of episodes they did, like when the went to other areas of the country or did weddings. Nothing bores me more than planning a wedding, which I'm sure will thrill my fiancee in the future.

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.

When a character is created for an animated series, it usually goes through several changes. Like any work of art, it takes several drafts before something is created that really works. In animation this is especially true, since the character most not only look good, but also be drawn in a way that allows optimum movement and flexibility. Sometimes characters actually change right before our eyes. The Bugs Bunny we recognize today looks nothing like he did when the character that would eventually evolve into him first appeared in the late 1930s. When Porky Pig first appeared in 1935's "I Haven't Got A Hat" he was positively gargantuan and rather grotesque compared to his thinner future self.

Animator Jeff Pidgeon wrote on his blog about working on Tiny Toons and coming up with the design of Hampton Pig. Apparently no one could come up with a design that executive producer Steven Spielberg liked, so a contest was held and Pidgeon's design found favor with Spielberg. However, his fellow animators didn't like the design because Hampton's body was too squat and difficult to pose and animate.