Nostalgia leads to great discoveries (sometimes)

Nostalgia can be a cruel ship to sail. You have these fond memories of something, only for them to be completely destroyed when you see it again only to discover, well...it wasn't as great as you remember. Sometimes though, you see something again that has been hidden away in the back of your mind for years that you barely remember, and you can't help but love it all over again. Case in point, the following videos.

This is only a chunk (about one third) of the whole film, but I loved this video as a wee lad. I believe I also had the record. The song has recently cropped up out of no where in a Thomas Cook commercial on telly, but seeing the animation again as linked to by Cartoon Brew recently is even better. It's all rather cutesy but whatever, the abstract bit is brilliant and I recall that owl creeping me out back in the day (well it was in the ending which isn't in this clip). Rupert always was a bit of a wuss of a character: if he lived in toon town he would probably get the snot kicked out of him by Dennis the Menace, but he beats the modern Winnie the Pooh knock off they use now. Not that he has much importance in this film anyway, it's all about the frogs. You can actually get the whole thing on this DVD.

The stuff that follows that I found in the related videos is even better still. I remember these being at the end of the video Rupert and the Frog Song was on, and boy what a departure it was! First up: Seaside Woman, which was apparently made around 1980.

Wow! Just look at it, it's beautiful! I haven't found out who animated this yet, but it's some pretty ahead of it's time stuff. The angular look of everything, with a little hint of 1930's cartoons in there, I especially love the black and white sequence with the inverted half's of the screen, and I adore the design of that cat! Oh, and look at the waves! That part suggest to me that thsi and the Frog Song's abstract part are by the same people, but i could be wrong.

Finally there was this, 'The Oriental Nightfish'. How did this end up on the same video as the cute frogs? Blimey, I watched some crazy shit as a tike but I feel it was stuff like this that put it in my head to become an animator one day (though I didn't attempt to make things move on film until I was about 10). This film dates back to about 1977-78 and is by Ian Emes, who's something of a legend in British animation (how I didn't know of him until now is a mystery, I don't do enough research I guess) who also did animation for Pink Floyd's dark Side of the Moon tour.

Not content with dragging all these memories flooding back, Cartoon Brew have also informed me that a Ian Emes event is happening in London next Thursday, where he will be there for a chat, his films will be screened and artwork from the films will be displayed. It starts at 7pm in Bloomsbury and the tickets are £10 to buy from here. I may just well go to this!