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Digital
Media FX News Archives
Saturday
- June 2, 2001
- Hank Ketcham Passes Away
at 81
- Cartoon Tiger,
Animated Dragon
- Cats and Dogs: The Auction
(B5 Too)
- News Link of the Day
- Executives Fight Over Credit for Pearl Harbor
 Hank
Ketcham Passes Away at 81
(by digitalmediafx.com) The creator of Dennis the Menace, Hank
Ketcham, has passed away at the age of 81 after a battle with
cancer and heart disease.
Ketcham, whose
full name is Henry King Ketcham, was inspired early on by the
work of Lantz and Walt Disney. In the mid 1980's, Ketcham turned
over the Sunday strip to cartoonist Ron Ferdinand. In 1994 he
also retired from the daily cartoons, turning those duties over
to Marcus Hamilton. In both cases, Ketcham maintained strict supervision
over the quality and process.
Ketcham spent
two years as an animator with Walt Disney studios where he worked
on films like Pinocchio and Fantasia. That changed,
however, on December 7, 1941 when the attack on Pearl Harbor drew
America into the war. Ketcham's talent was then applied to creating
cartoons, animated commercials, etc. for war bonds and posters
for the Navy.
Ketcham's
work after the war was regularly picked up by high-profile publications
like The Saturday Evening Post and The New Yorker.
In 1951,
Ketcham gained inspiration for a new one panel comic strip through
watching his son, who was four years old at the time. It started
when his wife was upset that their son, Dennis, had torn apart
his room when he was suppose to be taking a nap. She called the
boy a "menace." Dennis The Menace was born.
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Cartoon
Tiger, Animated Dragon
(by digitalmediafx.com)
The movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon may soon become
an animated TV series if a company in China has its way. According
to Daily Variety, "Taipei-based SMEC Media and Entertainment
has acquired the rights to produce an animated series adapted
from Wang Du-Lu's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'' book
series...SMEC is now shopping the series around Hollywood."
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Cats and
Dogs: The Auction (B5 Too)
(by digitalmediafx.com) Movie studios have discovered a new
gold mine - online auctions. While the process of movie studios
auctioning off items has been around for over a year, it is just
beginning to gain in popularity.
Yesterday,
Warner Bros. announced that it will be auctioning off several
items from its FX-filled family movie, Cats & Dogs,
which opens in theaters nationally on July 4, 2001. Some of the
things being put up for auction include a trip for four to Los
Angeles to attend the Cats & Dogs premiere, an animatronic
beagle puppy complete with spy gear and autographed copies of
the script, movie posters and sketches from the production.
In addition
to Cats & Dogs, Warner Bros. is also auctioning off
several Babylon 5 items.
You can access
the eBay auctions (from now until June 11, 2001) by clicking
here.
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News Link
of the Day - Executives Fight Over Credit for Pearl Harbor
According to MSNBC:
"The
process of making movies is a hugely collaborative one, with some
pictures taking more than a thousand people to produce. But in
almost every case, the initial idea comes from just one person.
In the case
of Pearl Harbor, which last weekend raked in $75 million
at the box office, the person who had the idea was a production
executive at Disney named Todd Garner…"
Click
here for the full story.
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