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ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive

The Animation Archive is a project of International Animated Film Society: ASIFA-Hollywood, a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational organization. We are building a museum, library and digital archive for the benefit of animation professionals, cartoonists, designers, students and the general public. Our database of images, biographic info and films contains thousands of entries- animated cartoons, artwork, and filmographies. Contributions and volunteers are needed to make the dream a reality.

Coraline Mystery Boxes!November 28

The crew of Coraline has been sending out special boxes as gifts to the bloggers they follow. We opened our own mysterious Coraline box tonight! Archive volunteers Michael and Brittany Woodside, Glenn Han and Danny Young (all wearing Coraline t-shirts they got as swag at Siggraph) were on hand to witness the event and capture it on video. Did we stay up till all hours preparing the photographs and unboxing video for you folks? Heck no. We headed off to the Coral(ine) Cafe for dinner. We'll post the results later, so check back. It's worth the wait!

...our mysterious suitcase,
number Thirty-Seven!

In the meantime, HERE is a link to the trailer (hint: the present inside our mystery box is in this video!) and click through these links and take a gander at the contents of th

Happy Thanksgiving!November 27

Biography: Clair Weeks' Goodbye Book 1952November 26

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 4 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great biographies of important artists.


Today, we had a visit from the family of Clair Weeks. They brought along several portfolios full of beautiful drawings, mostly from Bambi. Over the next few weeks, they will be allowing the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive to digitize the material for inclusion in our database. They also promise to write a Biopedia Page for Weeks. Here is the "Readers' Digest version" of Weeks' career...

A missionary's son, Clair Weeks was born in 1912 in India. He lived there until the early 1930s, when he relocated to America. In 1936, he joined the staff of the Walt Disney Studio and set to work as an assistant on Snow White. He went on to assist Marc Davis on Bambi, CInderella and Peter Pan, taking a brief break from animation to serve in the milita

Illustration: Uncle Remus Stories 1949November 25

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 3 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great posts about 50s children's book illustrators.


On Saturday archive volunteer, Eric Graf brought by another treasure for us to digitize... a 1949 edition of the Disney Giant Golden Book, "Uncle Remus Stories". It features a spectacular cover by Mary Blair and many beautiful interior illustrations by Al Dempster and Bill Justice.

This book is interesting, not just for its relationship to the rarely seen Disney film, Song of the South, but for the material that doesn't appear in the film. Along with the familiar stories about the Tar Baby and Brer Rabbit's Laffin' Place, the book illustrates a dozen other stories like "De Great Rabbit Terrapin Race", "Brer Fox and de Stolen Goobers" and "Why de Cri

Interview: Bob Givens-Walt And The WarNovember 22

UPDATE: Nearly two hours of this interview have now been made available exclusively to members of ASIFA-Hollywood. Members, please check your email for downloading instructions.


Here is the second part of our interview with the legendary layout man, Bob Givens. Will Finn, Mike Fontanelli, JoJo Baptista, Michael Woodside and I were treated to nearly three hours of fabulous stories relating to his six decades in the animation business, and we are sharing his great stories with you here on the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive blog.

You'll notice that the kinds of stories that Bob relates here are quite different from what you might have read. When I first met Bob, I asked him if he had read any of the books written on the subject of animation history. He was blunt. "A lot of it is bologna. Those books are written by people who weren't there... people who have never set foot in an animation studio." This is a sentiment that I've heard expressed by a lot of the "old timers" I've had the privilege of being able to speak to. But