I'd never really been a big fan of Thomas Kinkade, who recently passed away at the young age of 54, with the exception of some of his paintings of the Disney parks and of course those Glade collector's candles.I'd kind of dismissed a lot of the illustrative work he managed to turn into a commercial art empire as highbrow as "Dogs Playing Poker."
But it turns out that Kinkade was a student of the great Ralph Bakshi alongside the equally talented James Gurney (Dinotopia). His background work can be seen in the cult film Fire and Ice mainly, which in a sense makes Kinkade the Tim Burton of the alternative animation scene.
In a recent email to fans, Bakshi stated that critics "missed the true brilliance that is Kinkade."
Bakshi continued to praise his work saying "Tom Kinkade was a great, a good friend of mine and I will miss him. As an artist he nailed it -- and that's rare."
Fire and Ice was a collaboration with Bakshi and fantasy artist Frank Frazetta, which was released in 1983 by Twentieth Century Fox and was a minor success with critics and audiences. Like Lord of the Rings it heavily relied on the process of rotoscoping.
It is currently available on Blu-ray from Blue Underground here.
