A is for Atom is a 1952 (released in 1953) educational cartoon explaining the wonders and mysteries of atomic power, sponsored by General Electric and directed by Carl Urbano (who later went on to work for Hanna & Barbara).

Like the more well known and widely distributed Our Friend the Atom, a longer, part live action, part animated, 1957 film from Disney, this was basically an indoctrination for school children as to why atomic power was a Good Idea. As part of an overall campaign to promote acceptance of that idea, they were quite successful.

Both films, Disney’s explicitly, this film implicitly, treat atomic power as an obedient genie, ready to grant our wishes for nuclear powered cruise ships and airplanes, saving lives with isotope based medicine, and, of course, providing the clean, efficient and oh-so-advanced Energy of the Future to power our cities.

In the course of their ad for atomic power, the two films actually manage to teach some basic principles of atomic physics.

A is for Atom in particular is charming and efficient in this. I especially like portrayal of “Element Town” (about 5 minutes in) and the wonderful building representing “Science”.

Though A is for Atom opens with a (somewhat mild) representation of a mushroom cloud; as you might expect, it conveniently dismisses with a few nods to “shadow of the atom bomb” and “men of good will” the fact that hundreds of thousands had died in the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki only 7 years earlier. (For a sobering counterpoint, see my post on Barefoot Gen.)

This was the dawn of the “Atomic Age”, a time of postwar prosperity with the promise of atomic power balanced against the cold war insanity in which school children were drilled to cower under their desks or line up in the halls with their hands over their heads, and enterprising, forward-thinking families were building backyard bomb shelters. (Ah! The shining promise of the future!)

Films like A is for Atom illustrate again the power that cartoons and animation have to explain and educate (and influence), with the strong appeal of moving drawings.

I’m convinced there was more before the beginning scene, which seems abrupt and more like the end of a sentence than an opening statement, but I haven’t found anything to indicate that is the case.

[Link via BoingBoing]

“Greatest” and “best” lists always elicit responses of varying degrees of disagreement, as they are meant to do, from “Well, maybe…” to “You’ve got to be kidding!”, and this list, Time Out’s 50 greatest animated films, with added commentary by Terry Gilliam, is no exception.

That’s the fun of it, of course, you’re prompted to fire up your own list, and run through your favorites with a mind to comparison and debate.

This one certainly gave me plenty of occasions to say “You’ve got to be kidding!”, but on the whole it was enjoyably thought provoking; and I have to say I was actually surprised at how often I agreed, even in the selection of the #1 animated film.

The interesting angle here, of course, is the added commentary by ex-Python and celebrated director of cinematic weirdness, Terry Gilliam, himself no stranger to animation, which livens up the proceedings (and produces it’s share of “Huh?” moments as well).

There aren’t a lot of images, but each film is illustrated with at least one image, and if your curiosity if piqued, you gan crank up Google Image Search to look for more.

At the very least, it’s a list to investigate for interesting and often terrific animated films you may not have seen.

(Images above: My Neighbor Totoro, directed by Hayao Miyazaki; Walt Disney’s Fantasia, (multiple directors); Akira, directed by Katsuhiro Otomo; and The Iron Giant, directed by Brad Bird.)

Televolution is an animated short by Malcolm McNeil, who I have written about previously here and here.

Originally shown in Japan in 1990, when some of the the tech he suggests was almost prophetic, the animation is meant to salute the birthday of Charles Darwin (an event that just passed again recently).

McNeill traces the course of evolution in a few whimsical steps, and suggests how things might go from here.

Pandore (Pandora) is a superb animated short by Marion Stinghe, Meryl Franck, Benoît Guillaumot, Nicolas Caffarel and Elen Le Tannou, students in their third year as Animation majors at Gobelins, l’école de l’image, a visual communications school in Paris.

Unlike the introductory shorts done by Gobelins students for the Annecy Film Festival each year, this one makes use of CGI, though wonderfully handled. And unlike many of the animated films coming out of Hollywood these days, it has an entertaining and original story (in the space of two and a half minutes). Pandore takes the Pandora legend and gives it a nice twist.

[Via Animation Blog]

Now that the U.S. animation studios have largely abandoned cell animation in favor of the hyper-kinetic slickness of computer graphics, we must look elsewhere for the joys to be found in hand-drawn animation.

The most prominent of those delights is the obvious and simple visual charm of drawings that move; a charm that is most powerful when the drawings are left to look like drawings, with attention paid to the presence and quality of line.

For a delightful (in it’s true sense, full of delights) example of that we turn not to Japan, as many of you may been expecting me to say, but to France, the third largest producer of animation in the world (see my posts about the yearly introductions to the Annecy Film Festival by students a the Gobelins School).

The Triplets of Belleville (original title Les Triplettes de Belleville, also called Belleville Rendez-Vous in the UK) is a feature length tour-du-force of hand drawn animation, in which the Tour de France plays an integral part. It was written and directed by Sylvain Chomet, co-produced by companies in France, Belgium, the UK and Canada, and released in 2003.

A champion bicycle rider had been kidnapped, you see, and his astonishingly indefatigable grandmother must find him, against odds, but with the assistance of wonderful oddballs.

As much as I rail about the unimaginative formulas in American animated features (Pixar notwithstanding), the story is really not the point here. It’s basically an extended version of the kind of quirky little story you get in animated film festivals. Like many of those films, Triplets is essentially without dialog, but the timing, sound artistry and skillful visual storytelling make that a moot (mute?) point. The essence of the film is the settings and characters, and, of course, the moving painted drawings, rich with line and artfully applied color.

The film has the character of the kind of wonderful concept art drawing that is usually lost in the translation to film, but in this case is retained and brought to life.

Even where they have used bits of computer animation to aid in things that are difficult and highly time consuming to portray in hand drawn animation, they have retained the essence of the drawn line and blended it well with the rest of the scene (for the most part, there are some awkward moments, but insignificant in the grand whole).

The scenes range from rural france to the metropolis of Belleville, a thinly veiled mash-up of New York and Paris in the early part of the 20th Century. The harsh caricature of obese, rude and unkind Americans is balanced by the equally unflattering portrayal of the French gangsters and wine merchants. The settings, however, are lavished with affection.

The Sony Pictures official site is unfortunately flawed (of course, it’s Sony, a corporation that seems to be devoted to doing things wrong in so many ways). The Flash interface has a lazily programmed Flash detection that tells Mac users they don’t have the plug-in (you do, click on the bottom link); and the interface navigation, despite the designers’ attempt to capture some of the visual charm of the film, is cramped and requires slow scrolling to access anything. Worst of all, they cut corners and linked to the trailer on the Apple trailers site instead of hosting it on their own site; and, of course, it’s no longer available there. You can see a rather grainy (from being up-sized) version of it on YouTube.

The original French web site fares much better and has a better trailer (fourth knob over on the TV set).

The Triplets of Belleville is quite unlike anything from animation studios in either the U.S. or Japan. If you like being charmed by drawings that move, The Triplets of Belleville will do that nicely.

One of animated films that I discovered through Irene Gallo’s Saturday Morning Cartoons listing (see my previous post) delighted me in particular, Kunstbar, by Steve Whitehouse and a group of associates that call themselves The Petrie Lounge. The group includes Denis Gonzalez, John Halfpenny, Chris Labonte and Paul Teglas.

“Kunst” is the word for “art” in German, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish and Estonain. The Kunstbar we encounter is apparently on a side street off one of Giorgio DeChirico’s perspective defying plazas, and is frequented by artistes whose taste in drinks is, um… interesting.

The menu consists of drinks named after artists, a common enough practice, but here the Petrie Lounge crew has taken that idea literally and the drinks are in the spirit of the artist in more than name. Our intrepid protagonist, apparently a dedicated art lover, tries several, much to his detriment and our amusement.

This stylish animated short is a delight for lovers of art and animation alike, so stop by the Kunstbar for a short one.

Oh, and don’t order the Bosch.

In addition to her own terrific blog, The Art Department (required reading for anyone interested in science fiction and fantasy illustration), her contributions to the Tor.com blog, and of course her ongoing work in bringing the best and brightest lights in the field to print in her role as art director at Tor Books, Irene Gallo (see my posts about Irene Gallo and Tor Books) brings her sharp eye to bear in another way we benefit from.

Each Saturday she makes another astute selection of two short animated films worthy of our attention and posts them to her Saturday Morning Cartoon Index on the Tor site.

These shorts are from a variety of creators and sources (though many are sponsored by the national Film Board of Canada), and traverse the spectrum of subject matter, style, emotional tone, animation technique and cinematic direction.

They share one characteristic, they are all terrific examples of short form animation, and a treat to watch.

Gallo keeps the stew well stirred, mixing style and approaches from week to week and selection to selection. Sometimes the two choices for a given week share some common theme or characteristic, as in her matchup of Pyrats and The Tale of How (see my posts on The Tale of How).

There are many weeks of selections already posted, enough to keep you animated and amused for a number of weekdays, as well as looking forward to future Saturday mornings.

(Images at left, Tyger, Pyrats, Syrinx and Strange Invaders, see the Tor page for credits and details)

A friend of mine recently reminded me of the amazing Fleischer Studios Betty Boop cartoons from the 1930’s (see my posts on Max Fleisher and the Max Fleischer Superman cartoons).

Betty Boop, in her original incarnation, was sexy, surreal (in the accurate sense of that word), imaginative, beautifully done and entertaining on several levels.

These were cartoons done when animation as an art form and entertainment medium, while no longer in its infancy, was in its wide-eyed childhood, exploratory and robust with the heady enthusiasm of youth. Animators were delighting in the possibilities animated drawings presented, particularly in freedom from the restraints of physical laws and the conventions of formal narrative.

People, objects and animals bend, morph, disintegrate and reintegrate. The laws of physics are rescinded. The artists indulge in dream-like displays of the bizarre and wonderful. Characters, and logic, assume pretzel-like configurations.

All of this is done with wit, style, imagination and wonderfully snappy drawing. The backgrounds, at times surprisingly dark and strange, are filled with wonderful details that are easy to miss on first viewing.

This example, Betty Boop: Snow White, is one of the best. Directed by Dave Fleischer and animated by Roland C. Crandall, this 7 minute masterpiece takes our darling Betty (created by animator Grim Natwick) through the Snow White story.

But if Disney’s Snow White is a symphony (and it’s a wonderful milestone of animation), this is an improvisational jazz piece by players at the top of their form for inventiveness, exploration and animation “chops”.

The piece, in fact, makes extensive use of the music of the great band leader Cab Calloway, often an integral feature of the Betty Boop cartoons, in this case a smashing rendition of St. James Infirmary Blues, to which all manner of bizzare imagery is set.

You can view it on the Animation Archive, where you can find a treasure trove of early animation (a good place to start is the Film Chest Vintage Cartoons collection).

There is also a site devoted to the Betty Boop cartoons in general that makes them easier to browse (something the Archive is not the best for) and links to them both on the Archive and YouTube.

[Suggestion courtesy of Susan Casper]

Over a period of four months, teams of students in the animation division of the extraordinary Gobelins, l’école de l’image (Goeblins School of Communications) in Paris develop short (60-90 second) animated films that serve as introductions to the events of each day of that years Festival International du Film d’Animation d’Annecy (Annecy Animation Festival).

As I’ve mentioned before, these films are usually clever, witty, well drawn and well animated. Each year they give me great hope that the traditions of hand drawn animation are alive and well in the face of the tidal wave of CGI (both good and bad) from Hollywood.

This year there are five films (I think the official festival events are one day shorter this year), and the films are stunningly beautiful and well executed, even by past standards of extraordinary work from Gobelins students.

The Gobelins Student Work 2009 page lists the animations, along with credits, and has links (”Découvrir ce film”) for viewing the animations. (Non-French speakers can also view the page using Google Translate.) The films themselves are largely wordless so language is not a barrier.

One of the best ways to preview the animations before watching them, view large stills and a brief description, is by way of Michael Hirsh’s Articles & Texticles; which is what I do every year.

Form more, see my past articles on Gobelins Annecy Animations, which includes a list of links to previous years’ animations.

I’ve written before about The Tale of How, a short, wonderfully original animation by The Blackheart Gang, featuring the artwork of Ree Treweek.

I’ve also talked about Shy the Sun, a commercial production company featuring members of the Blackheart Gang, including Treweek and Jannes Hendrikz, which has been producing marvelously eccentric ads for companies like United Airlines and Bakers Precious Biscuits.

Art from The Tale of How, which is planned as part of a larger ongoing project called The Household, has now been published as a coffee table art book, in a deluxe slipcase version that includes a DVD with the animation and reproductions of a print series.

The book is available directly from the Blackheart Gang web site, I don’t know if it will be available in other distribution channels. There are additional images from the book here.

The print series will also be made available for purchase on their site (”soon”).

The original Tale of How animation is visible here, and there is now a short Making of the Tale of How video on the site.

For more on Ree Treweek and The Blackheart Gang, see my previous posts listed below.