Cartoon Modern

One of last year's best books was Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in 1950s Animation. It's a lot like Art Out of Time, perfect for endless browsing. And I'm happy to see that Amad Amidi has put up a blog for the book that is full of cool development art.

I really hope that Cartoon Modern (both the book and website) leads to DVD collections of the animation it tantalizingly describes, just like Art out of Time seems to be encouraging collections of its obscure comics, like as the Fletcher Platt book Rick reviewed a while ago and Fantagraphics' collection of Gene Deitch' Terrible Thompson newspaper strip.

Check out United Productions Of America's Academy Award-winning Gerald McBoing-Boing (1951) for an example of the "modern" style.