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In Williamsburg, Brooklyn, there’s no shortage of businesses offering unique artisanal goods, which makes it an ideal location for Dream Factory Animation, the new full-service boutique animation studio fronted by alt-cartoonist M.Wartella.

While Wartella formed his company on 12/12/12, the doors to his new studio on Humboldt Street officially opened in May of this year. An underground illustrator who has dominated the pages of alternative publications for the last two decades and animated on various music videos and television shows, he has spent the last three years animating nearly 300 shorts for Cartoon Network’s animated sketch comedy program MAD.

While discussing with Cartoon Brew the transference of his print aesthetic to the studio’s signature style, Wartella cannot help but extol the quality of animation talent that has found their way to his studio. “All the animators here are great artists in their own right; we only hire people who can draw exceptionally well.” Wartella is so concerned about only attracting top-flight talent that he has chosen to eschew the industry standard of utilizing unpaid interns in his productions, as stated in a recent press release: “Everyone gets paid for their contributions. In fact, we operate a unique profit-sharing system whereby our animators share in part of the studio’s profits at the end of the year.”

However, his talented crew and high-profile, lowbrow background are not the only qualities that make his studio special. Wartella enthusiastically touts the development of a personalized production system for creating his animated shorts. A proprietary blend, of sorts, that enables his crew to produce “anything” in the studio’s signature style, quickly and efficiently. “Using my secret formula, we can produce super-high-quality cartoons in a time frame that would be virtually impossible for any other animation studio to rival,” he says. “We can turn out a fully animated 30-second spot from top to bottom in one business day if we have to. This brings traditional animation within reach for almost any commercial business that wants to get noticed.”

And while Wartella hints at a few yet-to-be-announced projects, (one involving Punk Magazine cartoonist/writer John Holmstrom and another that will revive “a classic cartoon character” for Warner Bros.) the only one he speaks openly about is a new webseries being made alongside @Radical.Media for Conde Nast Entertainment called WIRED: Mr. Know-It-All.

A series of ongoing shorts, WIRED: Mr. Know-It-All, based on the WIRED magazine articles of the same name, is a digital age advice column providing answers to a wide assortment of modern questions from Facebook etiquette to child rearing in the information age. It is produced in the style of illustrator Christoph Niemann and conceived, developed and animated by Wartella’s team. “I don’t think there is any other studio in New York or the world that can crank out animation as efficiently as we can,” he says. “We have a solid formula and a great team!”

Now this is really neat.  There’s a series called BOOKD through THINKR (apparently E’s are considered gauche these days) that will take a topic and really go into it with a panel of experts.  In this particular case the question is whether or not you should re-read Charlotte’s Web.  Author Bruce Coville and teacher/blogger/author Monica Edinger (amongst others) give their two cents.  Really nicely edited and shot, don’t you think?

In other news, I had no idea that the Royal Shakespeare Company had created a staged adaptation of The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban.  Hoban died just last year in 2012.  I feel a bit miffed that he didn’t get to see this.  Maybe he got a sneaky peak in some way.  At any rate, it look fantastic (love the ending on the second video).  I just wonder how they pulled off The Caws of Art.  I’ve two videos here for the same production.  Love them both for very different reasons.

Thanks to Stefan for the links!

Sometimes I like to step into an alternate universe where I grew up in the USSR and watched television like this version of The Hobbit.  Instead I grew up on the old Rankin & Bass version.  Which was better?  Um . . .

Thanks to Educating Alice for the link!

And kudos to The New York Times for this lovely Christoph Neimann illustrated video of an interview Sendak conducted with NPR.

When I die, let’s do that.  That would be fun.  Make a note of it.

And finally, for the off-topic part, gold gold goldy gold.  I don’t even know if you could label it “Off-Topic” since it involves a child reading.  Or rather, a three-year-old child “reading”.  I know it’s three minutes but I seriously sat down and watched the whole thing because it’s a fascinating case study in what words kids pick up on when they hear stories.  The “but then” particularly amuses.

Many thanks to Stephany Aulenback for sharing that.

New packaging and identity for Nuts.com (formerly “Nuts Online”) …designed by Pentagram partner Michael Bierut… [with a] logo and type based on his own hand-drawn alphabet, digitized by Jeremy Mickel. The identity is complemented with nut character illustrations by Christoph Niemann. (via Brand New: Nuts.fun)

The kidlitosphere was hopping this weekend with news, reviews, and commentary.  Here are some of the gems we uncovered while reading through our blogroll:

• Lee Wind at I’m Here, I’m Queer.  What the Hell Do I Read? went to the SCBWI Conference in Los Angeles and shared some of his favorite quotes.  I loved this one from Donna Jo Napoli: “Any civilization is built on empathy. If dreadful things happen to you, you learn empathy. …And for the protected child …the safest way for them to develop empathy is through a book.”  Yes.
• Oh, Roger.  We adore you.  Thanks so much for sharing your criticisms thoughts on the strike-through trend.
• Sarah’s YA Movie News posts on her blog GreenBeanTeenQueen are some of my favorites!  She mentions the Hunger Games movie stills many of us have seen – I’m not a fan, I have to admit.  Katniss and Peeta are fighting for their lives so why do they look so pretty and stagnant?  And what do you make of the upcoming Snow White movies?
• Chicken Spaghetti shares a great list of picture books about New York.  I’d also love to add SUBWAY by Christoph Niemann, which is one of my recent favorites that captures the energy and vitality of New York’s iconic subway system.
• Kiersten White’s blog is one of my favorite things – she is just completely charming and hilarious and silly.  Sure, her book PARANORMALCY just got a director…but what Kiersten is really excited about is Saved by the Bell’s Mr. Belding tweeting about it!  I would be too.  I mean, it’s Saved by the Bell!
• It’s been all over the web but, just in case you haven’t seen it, these minimalist posters of children’s stories from Flavorwire are a must-see.  Do you have a favorite?  This is mine:

My husband Matt pairs well with me for a number of reasons.  Amongst them is our mutual inclination to collect things we love.  As such, Matt has systematically been holding onto all his issues of The New Yorker ever since he got his subscription in college.  Over the years these issues have piled up piled up piled up.  I was a Serials Manager before I got my library degree and one of the perks of the job was getting lots of lovely magazine holders. For years these holders graced the tops of our bookshelves and even came along with us when we moved into our current apartment a year ago.  Yet with the arrival of our puir wee bairn, we decided to do the unthinkable.

Yes.  We ripped off all their covers.

Well, most anyway.  We have the complete run of New Yorker text on CD-ROM anyway, and anything published after the CD-ROM’s release would be online anyway.  Thus does the internet discourage hoarding.

In the meantime, we now are the proud owners of only three boxes worth of New Yorker covers.  They’re very fun to look at.  I once had the desire to wallpaper my bathroom in such covers, but that dream will have to wait (as much as I love New York apartments and all . . .).  For now, it’s just fun to flip through the covers themselves and, in flipping, I discovered something.  Sure, I knew that the overlap between illustrators of children’s books and illustrators of New Yorkers was frequent.  I just didn’t know how frequent it was.  Here then is a quickie encapsulation of some of the folks I discovered in the course of my cover removal.

Istan Banyai

Zoom and Re-Zoom continue to circulate heavily in my library, all thanks to Banyai.  I had a patron the other day ask if we had anything else that was similar but aside from Barbara Lehman all I could think of was Wiesner’s Flotsam.  Banyai is well known in a different way for New Yorker covers, including this controversial one.  As I recall, a bit of a kerfuffle happened when it was published back in the day.

Harry Bliss

Author and illustrator of many many picture books, it’s little wonder that the Art Editor of The New Yorker, Ms. Francoise Mouly, managed to get the man to do a TOON Book (Luke on the Loose) as well.  And when it comes to his covers, this is the one I always think of first.

When you work with the real Winnie-the-Pooh you have a tendency to get complacent. “Oh sure,” you think.  ” I know everything about that bear.  Absolutely everything.”  So it’s nice when the universe gives you a swift kick in the pants to remind you that you are not always up on your Pooh knowledge.  Or at least not as up on it as you might think.  For example, I completely missed the fact that they just reissued The Winnie-the-Pooh Cookbook by Virginia H. Ellison (amusingly my library’s gift shop has known for quite some time has stocked several copies accordingly).  I found this out when a reporter from the Associated Press wanted to interview me (or anyone else who worked with the silly old bear) about Pooh and food.  The final piece, Counting pots of honey? Pooh’s recipes for them consists of me desperately trying to think of ways to describe Pooh and food.  You will probably enjoy it more for the cute honey gingerbread cookie recipe at the end.

• The article in Tablet Magazine (“A New Read on Jewish Life”) is entitled The Others: Several new books for children and young adults ask us to see the world through Palestinian kids’ eyes.  Its author is Marjorie Ingall, one of my favorite children’s book reviewers, most recently seen heaping praise upon A Tale Dark & Grimm in the last New York Times children’s book supplement, as is right.  The article in Tablet gives great insight into books like Where the Streets Had a Name (which I reviewed myself) as well as Sarah Glidden’s How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less, which I have on order with my library.  For this article, Marjorie is lambasted in her comment section.  Some of the comments are thoughtful, but a great many show why this issue is so rarely discussed in children’s literature today.

• I suppose it’s old news, but more Best Book lists of 2010 are up and running!  First you have the Kirkus list, which contain more than a couple non-fiction titles that I would like to get my hands on.  It also features my beloved Departure Time, a fact that makes me inordinately happy.  Another list that came out last week was the School Library Journal picks.  Split into different parts, you can read the somewhat truncated non-fiction list here, the picture book list here ( 10 Comments on Fusenews: A small smackerel of news, last added: 11/23/2010