As usual, things have been pretty busy here— but I bet your lives are too! It’s the second to last week of the semester at the art college, and I’m really enjoying a lot of the work the students are producing. Covid had a big effect on the overall work at the college, from students already in the program and from important developmental years in high school. This year we’re seeing a great improvement in both overall output and excitement in making some really cool projects.

In Thunderbean News: The beginning of summer always means I’ll have more time to devote to sets, and this year I’m working especially hard on catching up the projects that are near the finish line, and bowling down a whole bunch of the special sets. We’re started dubbing a pretty big batch of them— nine titles, and we’ll be sending these in the coming weeks. We’re also waiting for Mid Century Modern 3 to come back from replication. When it ships I’ll be wiring about it here as well.

In October of last year, I went out to Lightbox, an animation expo held every year in Pasadena. While I was out, I didn’t get the chance to visit as many friends as I wanted to, but did get to see a few. I visited my good friends Mark Kausler and Cathy Hill, saw some lovely drawings (by both Mark and Cathy) and was even treated to some cartoons I had never seen! A big surprise was, near the end of the visit, Mark handed me a reel labeled ‘Geesink’. I couldn’t wait to scan them, and finally got a chance a week and a half ago.

It turns out it was almost all Joop Geesink’s “Dollywood” shorts — commercials I had never seen before. The reel appears to be a reduction from excellent 35mm prints of the shorts, all adverts for Philips. The first on the reel is live action, with the rest being all stop motion animation. Dollywood shorts are sometimes pretty simple, other times really, really extravagant. The sets are often astonishing and beautiful. The two shorts involving outer space are my favorites on this reel.

Here’s that reel, courtesy of Mark and the scan I just did. They’re cute little shorts that need no additional introduction. If you enjoyed them, please leave a comment — I always love hearing what everyone thinks. What are your favorites, and what did you find especially interesting as you watched?

Enjoy them and have a good week all!