Once Upon a Wintertime

 

We got snow this morning and it's also Walt Disney's 124th birthday today, so that's great. I admire the older Disney movies and there's a great scene from Melody Time (1948), Once Upon A Wintertime. The colors are absoutely pleasent and it's also very simple yet cute.

Thought I would show some screencaps. 

This short film is so stylish but I mean that in a good way. There's no slapstick, no damsel in distress, it's just great animation and passion.

The color styling is very memorable and inspiring. Often using two-tone color palettes. I had to look into more research with this short. It has had recognition over the years, re-releasing the animated film in September of 1954 and a wondefully illustrated Little Golden book. Dennis West explains the short more clearly than I do but I would definitely check out the video of this particular short on his channel, West Of Neverland. It's great.

Here's a little clip of the actual short. 

New Drawings

 

After Thanksgiving was over, I think it was a good time to get into the holiday spirit, listening to old Christmas music, making the tree, and of course drew this.

Here's a random but fun drawing I made of a wild jungle boy laughing.

I sometimes use drafts for the poses. Also, I had to draw my own fist in order to make this sketch work. 

I'm sure in previous drawing posts you've seen this character before. This is Eduardo Gmidgets.

Above is some Wise Ol' Owl drawings, a character I enjoy drawing nowadays, and below is another character I enjoy drawing is Cauliflower.

I've been watching the first few episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force lately. It's fine but I always liked the distinctive designs of the three main characters. I would've imagined what would happen if this trio was aimed at a suitable audience. There would be more of that likeable action and mystery involved. 

I liked this Bugs Bunny drawing I made.

I was designing dogs lately and one of the dogs would've worked perfectly as a parody of 12 Angry Men called 12 Angry Dogs. I really liked the original 1957 movie, so this was fun and inventive to create.

I actually had to look into more of the characters, because it's funny that they don't have real names mentioned in the film.

Credits to Medium.

Here's more of my Donald Duck drawings in a vintage commercial art style. It's inspired by my favorite version of the character from a 1954 cartoon Donald's Diary. Also no hard feelings to Donald Duck's original actors but I seemingly like him in a more sophisticated voice.

Alright, this is the last drawing for now. Have nothing to say, just a guy. 

Now We're Getting Somewhere! - Snow Bear Animated Film

 

At this time in age, we have basically fallen into a world filled with artificial intelligence spreading social media and desirable quantities and costs for a single sequel, remake or tame 3D film releasing to either theaters or streaming services. Just recently, on Aaron's Blaise's official YouTube channel, posted a new animated short film titled Snow Bear. A hand-drawn animated film. Now it previously was shown in various film festivals. It took a span of three years to fully create this 10 minutes of beauty.

I first saw the trailer back in February of 2025, and immediately was interested in watching the whole thing, finally it posted just over 9 months later. I was impressed.

This film is everything I like about short films, not just using the traditional 2D animation, but has an emotional and well-crafted pace, memorable and lively visuals and full of passion and creativity. 

Aaron Blaise if you didn't know, also directed Brother Bear (2003) a very overlooked Disney film that similarly has a unique and beautiful style to it. What's more pleasent about this short though is it's pleasurable elements to it. It doesn't have any dialogue, yet it tells a very heartwarming and tear-jerking story. It's absolutely enjoyable and cineamtic stuff. To be honest, I almost kinda cried at the ending scene it was just done so carefully and I admired it. 

That's how I feel about other short films like Chuck Jones's Feed The Kitty and The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse.

I have the link so you can watch the short film yourself!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xOXolSQcEb4

The Band Wagon (1953) + Other Movies

 

Well, it's that time of month, Happy Holidays everyone! 

Anyways, I want to start fairly normal right now. It's officially been a year since I did a series of posts that were ideas for an Artmania Christmas Special and to be honest, I'm not exactly sure about the whole thing. I changed my style a little more and became less keen on movies without a coherent plot whatsoever.

Recently I went on [FILMGRAB] and was inspired by pictures online, they felt like the best bits from the actual movies. 

It's been exactly 5 months since I last watched The Band Wagon (1953), it's still mostly phenomenal work to this day despite some of the characters. 

MGM musicals. While there isn't too much structure, their Technicolor movies are beautiful and have the best songs in cinema, that's why I easily like them especially when they create novelty sequences most of the time. 

This movie is well-known for the third act. It's like nothing you'd ever see in older movies, so much effort and creativity, yet it moves at an equitable pace. Look at the red staircases and the camera angle. It's satisfying.

 

Here's another example from The 39 Steps, I bought it on DVD and it did not look like the scenes above mostly because I bought it at the flea market and expected it to be somewhat decent. 

This movie has great cinematography. However what suffers it is it's wonky premise and bland characters.

I was slightly disappointed after watching the movie because I expected something more cruel, and frightening. It was just badly paced and characters spoke TOO fast. 

Now am I judging or criticizing these films harshly? No. These were products at the time, and it's fair for me to express my opinions on a certain film. I have not once ever watched a film that ruined me ever, none of the films I watched wasted my time because why is that a considerably good thing to say? Nothing is a waste of time, it's part of learning and knowing your perspective.

I honestly like experiencing new things almost all the time. I would never know whenever I like a film or not. Here's another B&W movie, Winter Light (1963). It's a better paced film than The 39 Steps (1935). Realistic dialogue, a story that expresses real situations and events and more focus. It's a great film with a mix of Christian imagery.

Now if you mixed Winter Light and The Band Wagon simultaneously, it's something I would equally be interested in creating the most.

The Band Wagon (1953) has magnificent color schemes while Winter Light (1963) has phenomenal acting and pacing.

I don't remember everything from The Band Wagon, but this reminds me of Fantasia (1940) I have no idea if this was supposed to be animated, not gonna lie I doubt it but I could imagine it like that. The two-tone colors are incredible, it could give a more abstract meaning on what's behind the situation or thought just like with Gene Kelly's fantasies with films like An American In Paris, and Anchor's Aweigh.

I wouldn't change everything with my Christmas posts from last year. I felt like some of the concepts would work perfectly.

Dredd The Moose at the start would come along and sing White Christmas to homeless men. 

https://sngexplorationblog.blogspot.com/2024/12/artmania-christmas-special-other.html?m=1

Donald's Crime (1945)

 

I still think the Jack King Donald Duck cartoons are watchable to this day, even though I don't watch a ton of short films back to back anymore, these always influenced me. An underrated film titled Donald's Crime (1945) has this one-minute scene of playing out as a criminal with very unique backgrounds and great action scenes. 

I love these colors, I also the enjoy walk cycles.

Reminds me of a "good" old hollywood movie when they use those medium close-up shots. You might expect another movie related post coming soon.

I could just imagine more slick and cooler music to go with these scenes instead of the usual whimsy style coming from Edward Plumb. I could imagine the chorus to Michael Jackson's Speed Demon in the background with these scenes. 

Love that priceless facial expression! 

We get some more interesting poses and still shots from this one scene. The layouts are absoutely incredible in this cartoon, it adds alot of personality to the environment.

It's crazy to me that this eighty year old cartoon is sorta what interests me the most in cinema and art in particular. 

The dark and mysterious but pleasent tone, a narrator voice, shocking expressions, and running from danger. That sounds like my type of vibe.

These shots below are impressive.

Donald's Crime is more than just your standard cartoon with silly shenanigans, this reminds me of the Tex Avery cartoons mixed with Disney's best movies like The Great Mouse Detective and The Headless Horseman from Legend Of Sleepy Hollow, it's filled with unexpected possibilities, velocity, and unlimited animation techniques like for example Donald reaching for the piggy bank, or the picture above of the light following him in stretchy cartoony movements. It's good alright. 

Wanna experience it yourself?

https://www.toontales.net/short/donalds-crime/

Happy Thanksgiving! (2025)

Happy Thanksgiving from The Art-Mania family! God bless to all whom woke up today, can breathe and be thankful for what life has brought us. Family, loved ones especially from heaven, food, having talents, nature and mostly importantly our all loving God! 

I hope you all have a comforting and peaceful Thanksgiving. My characters included are all proud to be here in one image hoping that you have a decent day as always! 

My Story-Telling Perspective

 

Previously, I was talking about characters and specific designs I enjoy handling and studying the most. I want to talk about my love for the stories and emotions from my favorite films. 

In my opinion, animation seems to have more original and conceptual ideas to their films, since you could do anything with it. It's your imagination. The Tex Avery cartoons were well-known for their vivid motion and sharp slapstick and gags, and while I still love those cartoons to this day, they didn't have a deep and motivational premise, it was all for comedy and jokes.

I felt like I could understand more mature and appealing concepts when watching non-animation films, it was difficult to manage but I could finally see why they were impactful and iconic. I didn't like Casablanca at first, but re-visiting a few moments and knowing a more relatable and serious story makes it more intriguing and heartwarming. 

My favorite films of all time are mostly focusing on a structured plot and deep emotion. A few mentions are The Great Piggy Bank Robbery, Heavenly Puss, and Pluto's Judgement Day. 

Pluto's Judgement Day has a ton of eerie and haunting imagery. Usually the Mickey Mouse characters tend to be tame, but in scenarios like this I can live for. I could imagine these characters actually feeling frightened in these horrifying situations, and for it's mild runtime it actually works. 

I'm not only influenced by stories from animation obviously, which is why I tend to collect books. Little Golden Books. If you were going to tell my all-time favorite story it would be Matilda. I loved the Roald Dahl stuff when I was younger, not all of it but I do like James and The Giant Peach as well, but Matilda in particular interested me more than any other story, the movie is one of my all-time favorites as well. 

Same with Bambi, instead I haven't read the original story at all, but there's an undeniably dark and sometimes cruel element to the movie. It focuses on a good protagonist followed by real-life situations. Animal vs Man, and it is that character to be challenged and take responsibilities. 

Something like Fantasia, and An Optical Poem has a great abstract sense to it, but it barely shows depth and structure, they have great animation but that's it. Take more character-oriented films like The Secret of NIMH, Pinocchio, and The Goddess of Spring and add those elements but not for too long, that way we can focus on the character's actions as well, they don't need alot of dialogue or zany energy they can just connect to the environment. 

Sometimes a movie can take on another level of story-telling, take It's A Wonderful Life, the ultimate movie.

What makes this movie incredible in particular is how extremely real it handles life as a whole, you don't know what could happen, yet you have to be careful, and be prepared and honest whatever the situation may be. That's what I love about George Bailey. The scene with the guardian angel was just tear-jearking and so beautiful. The acting was just impeccable, as well as the message.

I could kinda see animation having human emotion and deep understanding like those movies. It just doesn't happen in short films it's more in movies and that's kind of a shocker. 

Animators like Rod Scribner, I truly love not because it's funny drawings, but those drawings actually show off human acting and alot more distinctive expression, and with short films like The Great Piggy Bank Robbery I could live with. It's mostly chaotic but it's well-thought out, there's a ton of imagination and unexpected possibilities, and the color schemes were unique. 

I love looking into different variants of illustrated art. I love alot of vintage paintings and magazines. My favorites are the two-tone colorized illustrations and paintings by Edward Hopper, Maxfield Parrish, Claude Monet and Albert Bierstadt. 

I could just imagine an animated film with this sorta style and having traditional 2D animation, with a serious but interesting story and I would've loved it. 

I felt like story-telling being simple and novel was the best. I don't really enjoy movie franchises, or TV shows as much as other people, I tend to like a short journey onto the next, it's more fun that way in my opinion. Some exceptions are The Backyardigans, my favorite episodes were some of my younger childhood experiences like International Super Spy, A Giant Problem but also liked episodes recently like Who Goes There, Fly Girl, and Escape From Fairytale Village, even with title names like that, you would be invested in them.

Now I definitely know that people have different interests and they prefer more complex stories, and that is totally fine, like what you like, I don't force people to enjoy what's best for me. 

I do think what I'm interested in feels unique and interesting in my tastes. I find myself liking these dark, sometimes cynical but positive outlooks of life. 

When creating something myself, I don't revert to past experiments, I tend to love the old stuff, but since quality has evolved over the years, I want to use those inspirations for a modern approach. 

The older Disney movies for example. 1937 to about 1953, had some excellent and wholesome energy to them, but they weren't always flawless. I do tend to count some moments I didn't specifically like in those movies like the War-Time era movies mostly being package shorts, the songs can sometimes come off as silly, or one long overdue scene, but those happen rarely and I'm happy for that.

If you want to know what Disney era was best, it was the Dark Age. Yeah, no kidding. 

The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh, The Great Mouse Detective, The Rescuers, Robin Hood, heck even The Black Cauldron, an extreme guilty pleasure of mine are all classics, and guess what? (gasp) No sign of Disney princesses! No silly prince! The one unexceptional film from that era was The Aristocats, but even then that's ok. What I loved about those movies was that the story-telling and characters were at their absolute finest, they had more darker imagery, and interesting villains. 

Anyways, I feel like I'm fine with what I've talked about today. If you want to check out my previous post of focusing on cartoon characters, feel free to check that out.