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Guido Manuli (2012)

A clever 2D cutout animation parodying Disney’s classic Silly Symphony style of cartoons in an absurd and humorous way. Enjoy! Thanks for watching HMC:)

Guido Manuli is an Italian screenwriter, film director, and animator. Born in Cervia in 1939, he started his career in Milan as an illustrator. In 1960 he began collaboration with Bruno Bozzetto, assuming various roles from animator and illustrator to director.

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Norman McLaren (1950)

This 1949 animation by Canadian filmmaker Norman McLaren is a moving vision of jazz activity. Featuring a soundtrack by the Oscar Peterson Trio the film ebbs and flows in unison with the energy of the performers. This is the explosion of color you’ve been waiting to hear.

Norman McLaren was a Scottish Canadian animator, director and producer known for his work for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). He was a pioneer in a number of areas of animation and filmmaking, including hand-drawn animation, drawn-on-film animation, visual music, abstract film, pixilation and graphical sound.

His awards included an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject in 1952 for Neighbours, a Silver Bear for best short documentary at the 1956 Berlin International Film Festival for Rythmetic and a 1969 BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film for Pas de deux.

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Richard Williams (2015)

Richard Williams was a Canadian–British animator, voice actor, director, and writer, best known for serving as animation director on Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, for which he won two Academy Awards, and for his unfinished feature film The Thief and the Cobbler.

In 2015 his short film Prologue received both an Oscar nomination and a BAFTA nomination in the category of best animated short. Prologue is actually the first 6 minutes of his hand-drawn feature film Lysistrata, based on the ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes, which Williams joked should be sub-titled “Will I Live to Finish It?” Williams described Prologue as “the only thing so far in my career that I’ve ever really been pleased with.” In 2013 Williams told The Guardian, “All I need is some time and five or six assistants who can draw like hell.” The film was intended to be “grim but funny and salacious and sexy”. Like The Thief and the Cobbler, Prologue would never be completed. But, as Williams put it: “it’s the doing of it that matters. Do it for the love of it. That’s all there is”.

To see more work by Richard Williams follow the links below…

The Thief and the Cobbler
Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure
Jessica Rabbit: Why Don’t You Do Right?
A Christmas Carol

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Alan Becker (2006)

Alan Becker is an American online animator, YouTube personality, and artist, best known for creating the Animator vs. Animation web series, its shorts, and its spin-offs Animation vs. Minecraft, Animation vs. YouTube, Animation vs. League of Legends, Animation vs. Pokémon, and Animation vs. Super Mario Bros. on both Newgrounds and YouTube.

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Ub Iwerks (1931)

Flip the Frog is an animated cartoon character created by American animator Ub Iwerks. He starred in a series of cartoons produced by Celebrity Pictures and distributed through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1930 to 1933. The series had many recurring characters besides Flip; including Flip’s dog, the mule Orace, and a dizzy neighborhood spinster.

Flip was created by Ub Iwerks, animator for the Walt Disney Studios and a personal friend of Walt Disney in 1930, at the Iwerks Studios. After a series of disputes between the two, Iwerks left Disney and went on to accept an offer from Pat Powers to open a cartoon studio of his own and receive a salary of $300 a week, an offer that Disney was unable to match at the time. Iwerks was to produce new cartoons under Powers’ Celebrity Pictures auspices and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The first series he was to produce was to feature a character called Tony the Frog, but Iwerks disliked the name and it was subsequently changed to Flip.

Iwerks’ studio quickly began accumulating new talent, such as animators Fred Kopietz, Irv Spence, Grim Natwick, and Chuck Jones. After the first two cartoons, the appearance of Flip the Frog gradually became less froglike. This was done under the encouragement of MGM, who thought that the series would sell better if the character were more humanized. Flip’s major redesign is attributed to Grim Natwick, who made a name for himself at Fleischer Studios with the creation of Betty Boop. Natwick also had a hand in changing Flip’s girlfriend. In earlier films, she was consistently a cat, but Natwick made Flip’s new girlfriend, Fifi, a human who shared distinct similarities with Betty.

The frog’s personality also began to develop. As the series progressed, Flip became more of a down-and-out, Chaplin-esque character who always found himself in everyday conflicts surrounding the poverty-stricken atmosphere of the Great Depression. Owing to the influx of New York City animators to Iwerks’s studio, the shorts became increasingly risqué.

The character eventually wore out his welcome at MGM. His final short was Soda Squirt, released in 1933. Subsequently, Iwerks replaced the series with a new one starring an imaginative liar named Willie Whopper. Flip became largely forgotten by the public in the ensuing years. However, the character would make a small comeback when animation enthusiasts and historians began digging up the old Iwerks shorts.

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Felix Colgrave (2020)

A little story about the backyard critters you might see in Tasmania, and the things they might be doing. https://www.patreon.com/felixcolgrave/

Felix Colgrave is an Australian director, animator, cartoonist, filmmaker, artist, and musician. Distribution of Colgrave’s work has, to date, been focused on YouTube where his channel has 1.38 million subscribers. Colgrave mainly uses Adobe After Effects for his animations.

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Felix Colgrave (2014)

A film made by Felix Colgrave with elephants in it, and a bunch of other things too. This was his third year film at RMIT University, Bachelor of Animation and Interactive Media, and the winner of Best Australian Film at MIAF 2014.

Felix Colgrave is an Australian director, animator, cartoonist, filmmaker, artist, and musician. Distribution of Colgrave’s work has, to date, been focused on YouTube where his channel has 1.38 million subscribers. Colgrave mainly uses Adobe After Effects for his animations.