THE DEMON DUCK OF DOOM ( or '3D' for short)

2012-01-22T10:29:00.000-05:00

Happy Year of the Dragon!

Oh yeah, then there's this.

2012-01-04T18:54:00.002-05:00

The second edition of PREPARE TO BOARD will be published this year. There's a lot of new artwork in it...and I've revised or rewritten about a third of the book. So anyone who wants to buy it will not feel that it has merely received a cosmetic makeover. I think that it is very much improved, not that the original is junk, you understand; but I write better now, and have fixed some parts that I found needed fixing. Here's the new cover, once again featuring cover girl Gizmo.

The Moon Never Sets on the British Empire

2012-01-04T18:48:00.002-05:00

A friend of mine is doing some writing for this new version of Sherlock Holmes...and since I was curious, but still don't have a television, we watched an episode or two in a coffee shop in an undisclosed location. The infamous "Scandal in Belgravia" episode had aired the night before, and when I saw the 'sheets to the wind' scene I had the idea that it could have been staged more like this. I guess I'll never get my Canadian citizenship now.

I have Been a Naughty Person

2012-01-04T18:42:00.002-05:00

Well, it's that time of year when we make new year's resolutions, and mine is: to start keeping this blog in some kind of shape again. You just never know who is going to read it.

Here's what has been sort of going on here: thanks to this blog (yes), two of my caricatures are going to appear in the NATIONAL POST on Saturday, January 7. The first one is the "Potato Head Ford" cartoon that appeared here in 2010. The other one is...this.

Yes, Mr. Ford's cuts are being implemented as we speak. Subway/streetcar fare is going up. Garbage pickup has been 'privatized' (and surprise: there were no bids on it; it was awarded to a company that is doubtless in someone's good graces.) Libraries, the arts, everything that makes Toronto pleasant, is being cut back. As I said to the journalist who spoke with me last week...the only thing not being cut back in Toronto is...the mayor.

He's certainly good copy, and very easy to caricature.

I drew this thing while waiting to hear whether Gizmo had survived her latest bout with surgery. Unfortunately this charming cat has been prey to some alarming illnesses for the past two years, and is probably down to her last one or two lives. I get the biopsy result tomorrow. The article will be in the TORONTO section of the paper in an article called "Ford as Muse."

High School Confidential

2011-01-19T19:18:00.002-05:00

Well I just wrote a lovely post about my visit to the Etobicoke School of Art, but right now I am as mad as Gizmo (who spent the entire day locked in the animation studio, having slipped in under the desk and hidden when I closed the door.) She came out MRAWRING loudly and then deliberately, angrily flushed the toilet!
I feel about the same way, since the entire post was deleted by blogger. (Wordpress is calling, y'all.)

Here's my second try. Today I was at the Etobicoke School of Art. It's a fine little 'magnet' school in a town about 25 miles to the east of Oakville. My hostess described it as the "New Jersey of Canada" and it did indeed resemble my childhood home of West New York, except that it was a lot cleaner.

The school is bright, cheery, covered with student artwork of great sensitivity, and filled with motivated students. Many of them piled into the library to see me lecture. I showed representative samples of Sheridan films in CGI, hand drawn, and stop motion; one group project; a lot of last semester's Leica reels; two rare Disney films I storyboarded; and some examples of the exercises done by the Taiwanese students last summer.
I think it was a success.

I just have to explain it to the cat.

Gizmo is in the Movies

2011-01-17T20:57:00.004-05:00

I bought a Flip Camera this weekend and shot this movie of Gizmo. Animators should all have pets (when they have money to take care of them, that is). Gizzy is quite inspirational...she has appeared in two of my books, modeled for most of my holiday cards since 2005, and she wakes me up every morning, meowing loudly for me to get up and play this game with her. We did this shoot at 3:45 AM recently. Seriously, I don't mind it...since Gizzy is nearly ten years old and is a loyal and extremely loving friend. I don't take her for granted since she very nearly didn't live to this year. Giz was diagnosed with malignant lymphoma last year and lost most of her large intestine in a very complicated operation...which saved her life. It's hard to believe she was even sick when you watch this footage.

Gizmo was given away by her previous owners; I got her when she was four, and she was very sick then too. I've pulled her out of the grave on two occasions. She was worth the expense.

Gizmo is a little clown (harlequin cats are all known as extroverted 'clown cats'). She is extremely fond of people, loves being photographed, enjoys watching this video, and is a huge fan of Nora the Piano Playing Cat. And she has a gravelly, deep voice, which sounds very funny coming out of such a tiny cat.

Who could deny such a charming creature the simple pleasures of a mink tail on a shoelace?

I never tire of watching her.

Cat toys are mostly dangerous and badly made, so I made this Minky for Gizmo; the tail was purchased from a furrier, and the shoelace is a leather, industrial model attached to a wooden dowel. She loves it...as you can see.

Indie Animation and The Future

2011-01-15T19:32:00.003-05:00

First the good news: It's now possible to make an animated feature film by yourself without losing your shirt. In fact it has been for some time now, as Bill Plympton could tell you.
Bill has been joined by Nina Paley and Paul and Sandra Fierlinger. Each artist works in a different medium; Plympton draws on paper, the Fierlingers draw on the computer, and Paley is a master of Flash animation.
The films are doing well. Bill Plympton's IDIOTS AND ANGELS, which I feel is the best of his features, is playing in roadshow engagements. Nina Paley's SITA SINGS THE BLUES is getting rave reviews and is doing well in theatrical and digital distribution. The Fierlinger's MY DOG TULIP, though only in 'platform' release, is also getting good press.
The big-budget-by-European-standards THE ILLUSIONIST by Sylvain Chomet is nearly certain to have an Oscar nomination this year, as Tomm Moore's THE SECRET OF KELLS did last year.
All in all, this is a good thing, and I hope that more artists join the ranks of independent feature/featurette producers in the coming year.
Of the big budget films out this year, I rate DreamWorks' HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON highest. I enjoyed it immensely, it was beautifully directed and designed, the dragons were fantastic, and if the world was just, it would be nominated for best cinematography along with the live action pictures. I haven't seen chiaroscuro like that since PINOCCHIO. It's also the only 3D film I've seen that really used that medium well.
Will the modestly budgeted indie features indicate a new direction to the big producers? A film's quality doesn't necessarily correspond to its cost. Animated features with overblown budgets fail at the boxoffice not because they aren't popular, but because they don't make enough to cover their negative cost (which if you don't know, is double the production cost.) Some are grotesquely overproduced. Lower budgeted productions with good stories and interesting design would entertain audiences and make a good profit--IF the right people were in charge. The example of the independent animators can help the lions of animation as well as the mice.

Sarah Palin

2011-01-02T00:02:00.001-05:00

I had a notion to draw the most notorious woman I know of.

Mr. Potato Head

2011-01-01T15:22:00.002-05:00

As long as I'm at it, here's a caricature I did of Toronto's new mayor, Rob Ford, who spends his time answering telephones and worrying about five cent charges for plastic bags while putting the city 60 million dollars in the financial hole on his FIRST day in office. (This must be the world record, but I'm not sure whether Bush did anything like this as well.). I swear, he LOOKS like an angry potato.

Woman Vs. Art

2011-01-01T09:20:00.001-05:00

Raul Aguirre, Jr. was kind enough to interview me and post the podcast on MAN VS. ART this past evening.

You can enjoy other interviews with animators here too.

http://manvsart.com/

Happy 2011 to you all!

Happy Holidays

2010-12-04T07:06:00.002-05:00

As always, I've made a card for the New Year, since that applies to all men, women (and cats), and isn't restricted to one religious denomination. (Some time differences may apply.)

Here is this years' card; it features our late family dog Peaches, who died in 1982, and my current friend Gizmo, who nearly died this year of cancer but somehow beat the odds, and is still here.

I hope that all of us can make the same statement (at least the beating the odds bit and still being here) in the New Year.

The new Year celebration does not only mark the passing of chronological time. Several of my friends died this year (not all of them members of the animation community) and they will be remembered at this time, as they are on a daily basis.

Happy Holidays.

I've been a neglectful poster...

2010-12-04T06:52:00.002-05:00

...and both of my remaining readers may be mildly upset at this. It's been a really fast semester, and a busy one, at Sheridan...and I do seem to be on Facebook a lot more than here. I like the interactivity, and the ability to learn about artists in all media that you might not have met otherwise.

The truly remarkable thing about Facebook is that it allows you to post your work, portfolio, and credentials online in a venue that 'overshoots' the usual studio watchdogs. In other words, it's a fulltime, permanent animation jobfest and you can show your work to just about anyone, anytime and anywhere. Small wonder that studios are starting to recruit on Facebook for talent. DreamWorks has just created a Facebook page for 'top animation students' (hope I got the name right.)

It would be really nice to have a Facebook page for the Sheridan animation program; I've even offered to administer it. There is plenty of student material on Youtube to link to; the page would simply serve as a focus and updates to the program (such as visiting lecturers, festival wins, etc.) could be posted there.

In the meantime we are coming down the wire to the end of fall semester. It seemed to go remarkably quickly this time. Possibly because I had an additional class to take care of (first year story lecture). Possibly because I am a bit more used to teaching the other class now, though you never really teach the class the same way twice. Student years appear to have their own 'cultures' and some vary dramatically from section to section.

So a quick update: The book may or may not be doing well; it at least has received good reviews. I did another podcast for "Sam" Heer on November 18, the day before I flew to L.A. to participate in the second Creative Talent Network Expo on the 19th and 20th. Sheridan may have a booth or table at this event next year. (That would be very good, since the event is an excellent networking opportunity and lots of potential students were talking to me at my half-table setup.) Due to the intricacies of California and Canadian tax laws, I wasn't able to sell any books! C'est la vie. I had a few on display, and gave copies to Glen Vilppu and the Walt Disney Studio, where I did a short presentation along with former student and current Disney animator Jamaal Bradley.

Gizmo is still alive.

I guess that covers most of it.

Again, my apologies for the absence of posts...it really has been that kind of year.
cheers!

Animated Performance is finally shipping in the USA.

2010-09-18T19:06:00.002-04:00

Amazon.com actually is listing it as 'in stock'.
Amazon.ca still doesn't do this; and is asking people whether they want to cancel the order.
I am disappointed that this should be happening, but the book will, I hope stand or fall on its merits, and not be overly affected by distribution problems.

A disappointing 'festival'

2010-09-07T16:59:00.002-04:00

Last year I waited for four hours in line for Toronto International Film Festival tickets to Don Hahn's WAKING SLEEPING BEAUTY. The only reason I stuck it out that long was because of that film.
The festival booth was inconveniently located, poorly run, and very slow.
This year, the TIFF allegedly had online and telephone ordering.
Neither system works.

I couldn't have stood in line, not even for a few minutes, this past week even if I had wanted to; there were school meetings and preparation for the new school year to attend and attend to.

So now, it seems that the TIFF have taken the sales for ILLUSIONIST 'Off sale'. I don't know if that means it sold out, or if they can't make their Byzantine and very stupidly designed ordering system work. So the hell with it, and with them. I will see the ILLUSIONIST either on a studio screener, or in a theatrical release. And I'm really quite serious about never bothering with TIFF again.

New book and so on

2010-09-05T06:29:00.003-04:00

Hello all,
Well, I have been spending so much time on facebook that I really am not 'here' much any more...but I have had an interesting summer, and so here I am again. I apologize for the long absence. Maybe someone still reads this, maybe not.

At any rate, I spent two weeks in Taiwan at a university, helping judge a number of scholarship applications; and this was such a pleasant experience for both parties (other than the climate, which was hellaciously hot) that I will be invited back again next year, so they tell me.

And my new book is published. There are already copies being received in Britain and Asia; LaSalle University in Singapore is the first animation program to adopt it as a required textbook. Thank you!

My friend Elliot Cowan made a small commercial for me; we got the artwork and the film done in precisely 2 days or less and it perhaps shows, but it is something. Elliot updates his SANDWICHBAG blog far more often than I update mine; and his emailed 'discussion' with a monumentally rude and untalented 'artist' is well worth a read, particularly when you see how Elliot saves his denunciation for the last retort. I just hope he blocked the man after sending it.

Sheridan starts again on Tuesday and though my classes aren't beginning til Wednesday, I'll be there to hand out copies of ANIMATED PERFORMANCE to four Sheridan students who contritubed artwork to the book. Thank you all!

It's a handsome volume. Also a handfull; it weighs nearly two pounds.
But it will make an impression, especially if you drop it on your foot.

Facebook

2010-05-19T22:33:00.003-04:00

I see now that many people are quitting Facebook at the end of this month because of the constant 'data mining' done on the site.

I find Facebook an excellent way to stay in contact with people whom I may have not seen for years, and I've made a lot of new friends there--but the accusations, which are not unfounded, have me very worried.

Of course I post nothing there that I would not want the whole world to see. The question is, are my friends at risk when the list is acquired by a bot or other party?

In addition I do not like the news that Facebook is owned by people with a political agenda.
So I haven't made up my mind whether to quit or not. Any thoughts?

Exit Through the Gift Shop: An Important Film for Artists

2010-05-10T11:09:00.008-04:00

What is art? This question has been asked for millennia. Art is a profoundly subjective experience. It is real, yet unreal, speaking directly to the viewer's emotions. Historically it has been the expression of an idea. Art has been used for propaganda purposes by kings, religious leaders, and social movements. Human lives were shaped by images before humans were generally literate; they are being shaped by images again as literacy declines.
The Surrealists changed the meaning of images; Dali's lobster telephone and Duchamp's urinal in the art gallery took objects out of context and turned them into something else. Andy Warhol repeated images endlessly until they became meaningless.
Graffiti became street art in the 1980s, largely due to the efforts of Keith Haring whose crawling men appeared on street signs and subway stations near my New York apartment during that decade (I disliked his work then and dislike it now.)
Then there were other artists such as Shepard Fairey who stuck stickers with the face of Andre the Giant all over the world (he is allegedly still doing this.) The new generation of graffiti artists printed or screened their work, which was redubbed Street Art, and used it in ironic context. Warhol's influence seemed to be strong, since many of Fairey's icons lose all meaning by repetition. (It sort of makes me wonder about the real meaning of this poster that he made for an 'obscure Senator' two years ago.)
The greatest of the street artists, and the most subtle in my opinion, is the artist who goes by the name of Banksy. Originally working only in England, Banksy has placed his artwork in hotspots such as the Wall in Gaza; Disneyland; and in a Paris Hilton Album.
But no one has (allegedly) seen Banksy' face. EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP is a feature film that is being sold as a documentary about Banksy. At the risk of spoilers, it is no such thing. It is a prank on the audience that asks my first questions...what is art? Who is an artist? and then adds more.... Is art meant to be free to the public? Is art a commodity to be sold? Is an artist who uses a team to assemble art pieces fair when he/she receives all credit for the work? Can art that is created by another artist be used fairly to create a new composition? (Nina Paley, creator of SITA SINGS THE BLUES, maintains that all creative work is derivative.) All artists build on what has gone before. If so, when do you stop?
The tag line for this film "In a world without rules, he broke them all", is absolutely true.
There is speculation that Banksy and Shepard Fairey are pulling the wool over our eyes with this film, that it is too contrived and convoluted to be true. It has been my experience that some of the weirdest and most contrived situations in life are real.
So I was rather disturbed by the material included on this artist. I can't say more without revealing too much about this terrific film which I will certainly recommend to all, and which I will definitely see again.
I'm not sure whether Banksy is just one person, but the onscreen Banksy definitely can be identified, sans hoodie, if you pay attention to two important hints (one visual, one textual) that are provided in the film. Animators will find it very easy.
I also choose to regard the success of this artist as part of the show. Otherwise, I and all the rest of us went into the wrong business. See for yourself. Seeing is believing. Or is it?

Late Post, My apologies,a week in Toronto

2010-05-10T07:31:00.003-04:00

I've become quite the Facebook junkie and need to apologize for not updating the blog more often.
My blog is really a substitute for letters and mass emails that I sent to friends; this was and is a more economical way of doing it.
It's always wise to edit your material online. Facebook has me worried since I have read that it is owned by a major corporation controlled by people who have certain political views....and that they are constantly attempting to control the users' emails and contacts.
This may be a little paranoid since it is very easy to opt out of the 'sharing' as long as you adjust your settings so that you have maximum privacy.
In any case, never put anything online that you would not want the whole world to see.
This week was notable for a visit from Nina Haley, a friend from L.A. who had not been to Toronto before. I also started my character design and maquette workshop in the same week. Gizmo kept Nina amused while I was at work, and we toured Toronto when I was not at work. The weather cooperated until the very last day, when we had torrential rains followed by a drop to zero degrees C (32 F) at night. My nice new basil plant died on the patio, but the indestructable chives and Sage survived.
Gizmo, who has NOT died, was the reason for Nina's trip. Gizmo was supposed to be either dead or dying by now and Nina, who loves cats, was going to get me through the mourning period.
Since Gizmo is doing fine and was actually showing off by roaring loudly at four A.M. for playtime, tearing apart a roll of paper towels, and constantly rolling around in paper bags that were liberally scattered for her benefit in the living room, Nina's visit became a pleasure trip. I did a few brief updates on Facebook about it and took a few pictures around town. We saw nearly all of Toronto's First Nation galleries including the Dominion Bank gallery of Inuit art, the Museum of Inuit art on the Queens' Quay, and the Native Canadian Centre on Spadina Avenue. The Toronto Comic Art Festival also coincided with the visit and I was pleasantly surprised to find the work of Stephanie Yue, whose Tai Ch'i mice were one of the highlights of the show. You can find the mice at her site in the "Children's" Section. Yue told me she studied illustration at Pratt in New York but did not study animation, and this is definitely so if you view the entire site. I think the mice are the most original and interesting part of it and I hope that Ms. Yue does more with these characters.
I am preparing for the publication of Animated Performance in July. It is available for preorder on amazon.com and I'm planning to go to the second annual Creative Talent Network Animated Expo for the weekend in November, where I will have a table and will do a presentation.
So that's what has been going on...
School year's ended, school meetings continue.
I promise to update more often...thank you for reading, all three of you!

Reverse Predictions and More Subtexts

2010-01-30T09:42:00.005-05:00

I see that AVATAR is now the most successful movie in history, passing TITANIC earlier this month (I won't use the obvious sinking metaphor.) Since this movie cost a half a billion dollars, movie economics dictates that it didn't start to earn a profit until it earned a billion dollars at the box office. It's just done this, but half that sum came from outside the USA. Why? Is it just due to the effects, or something more?
AVATAR has done spectacularly well in China and other Asian nations, so well that the Chinese yanked the 2D version from the theatres to prevent piracy.
Which leads me to suspect that AVATAR'S popularity is due to another subtext that appears in this movie. It's about the end of colonial empire, specifically an American colonial empire. There are some different races in this movie (Cameron makes sure to show some mixed-race troops cheering Colonel Quaritch's peptalk before the last great invasion.) It's an American corporation ordering the invasion in a cynicical partnership with the military and the scientists who were almost certainly sponsored by the military. A good portion of scientific research is now underwritten by military funding in the USA so this is no future fantasy.
I've seen a cartoon posted by Darryl Cagle showing Indian and Asian people holding hands with a ten foot high blue avatar figure. That is not coincidental.
But when I visited Zagreb many years ago a Serbian animator told me "We make fun of America in our (animated) films because we cannot make fun of our own governments."
Perhaps some of the approval for AVATAR comes from people in similar situations.
Which would make AVATAR one of the most subversive movies ever made, in that it questions the corporate culture that enabled the film to be produced in the first place.

Women are Just No Good. with Spoilers

2010-01-03T06:54:00.106-05:00

This post will probably be full of a lot of stuff people don't want to hear, but here goes. Point One: Beautiful animation won't save a weak story and neither will state of the art special effects. Point Two: Story is usually the weak spot in film, whether it be animated or live. Most of us would agree on these two points.
Point Three is the kicker. I'm noticing disturbing subtexts in some films. Subtexts that marginalize or actually despise the female characters--sometimes, women in general.
I'll discuss three of them here: AVATAR, UP, and UP IN THE AIR.
AVATAR, in addition to being the most overproduced and overrated film I saw this year, was the worst subtextual offender.
We are asked to believe that an uneducated, ignorant Marine can outwit both the 'science pukes' and professional Marines and lead an alien population better than its chosen tribal leaders. It's possible that a grunt might be brighter than his commanding officer, but...
Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) is a tough woman scientist who will not survive this movie. We know this because she is not deferential to men and she smokes cigarettes. She has taught the Na'vi English, which is very convenient for the film --but let that pass. She knows the culture and the people. Yet none of the Na'vi listen to her, though they presumably know and trust her. They listen to Jake, even though he is a total screwup and knows nothing of their ways. (All right, he presumably is taught by Pocahontas--um, Neytiri, during his dubiously-earned three month training period, during which time he somehow forgets to explain to her that he must negotiate their move from the Tree so that no violence will occur. He waits until the very last minute when the bulldozers arrive to mention this minor problem. Since she is fluent in English, why does he not tell her earlier? Jake is not, to put it mildly, an efficient or organized person.) But Neytiri falls in love with him anyway. She rejects him when her Tree and half her family are killed as a result of his stupidity, but...falls in love with him AGAIN anyway almost immediately. Women are so fickle!
Dr. Augustine and Trudy Chacon the helicopter gunship pilot Die Heroically, or Heroinically, in this film. You know Trudy will die when she claims she didn't sign up for 'martyrdom'. Ask and ye shall receive. Every story point in this movie is written in crayon.
Heroic Deaths in some older films were often assigned to African-American characters; how nice that women have now achieved this dubious distinction. (Trudy is a Latina, which makes her Even More Heroic.)
So the girls can play, but they can't win. Dr. Augustine dies but unlike Jake, can't be reincarnated in her Avatar since she is 'too weak'. Telling words. I guess it would be too inconvenient having a strong woman around, enjoying life on a new planet with a cute Na'vi male.
You know that Jake is going to get the top post in the clan because he is boinking the Chief's daughter. This sort of thing appears to be common on Pandora as well as on Earth. Chief Daddy is conveniently killed, and Neytiri's Mom (who is supposed to share power with Daddy) is reduced to leading New Age chants and Waves beneath a glowing neon tree which presumably was invisible to all those warships and choppers casing the planet from the air. Tsu'Tey, Neytiri's chosen mate and Chief-in-waiting, is conveniently killed, almost as an afterthought, while attacking gunships. But he's already delegated authority to Jake so his death is unimportant.
The other men in the experiment, Norm Spellman and Dr. Max Patel, are just there to Be Jake's Friends (and conveniently get him information, etc. when he needs it.) Spellman is nerdy looking and Patel is fat and nerdy looking. Both are deferential to Jake even though Spellman can handle a gun as well as a scientist's viewscreen. But he is also a nerdy looking Na'vi. (How did they clone his baseball cap?)
So our untrained, ignorant Marine gets the Chief's daughter and gets to lead the clan, all without cracking a book or being the least bit prepared for the job (though he remembers his Marine training well.) This gives an even more disturbing subtext to this movie: Military might is right and good, when you break the rules. And pretty girls can stick around--but it's the man who is the boss and has the brains. (I mean, couldn't NATIRI discover how to ride the Big Red Flying Dragon? She's lived on that planet all her life.)

I've gone on long enough about this movie but I just have one more small question to ask. Some of the humans are invited to stay on Pandora when the others go home. It's a bit of a blur for me, but was anyone wearing those facemasks with Earth atmosphere that prevent humans from dying in a few minutes' time? How were they to survive without them, or when the juice ran out?
And I wondered if the Na'vi would die afterward in their millions through exposure to Earth bacilli and viruses introduced by the invaders, the way actual Native Americans did.
*******************************************************************************
UP can be handled in far less time, since it's mainly concerned with the bonding of old Karl and young Russell. Russell was easily the best character in the film but he had a backstory that really bothered me. His parents are apparently divorced and his father doesn't have time for him any more since he has a new wife or something. Okay, point taken. But did they really have to marginalize his mother at the end of the film? She is sitting in the audience and not onstage with her son when he gets his final Merit Badge. Old Karl is standing on that stage with her son because...because, dammit, he's a MAN and she's not.
Mom does not count.
She is useless.
She allows her son to accept his award with a total stranger because he IS a Man. She couldn't even be on the stage with the two of them. It would have been so simple to put her there.
You know, I thought we went through a lot of protesting and lawsuits in the Seventies to eliminate this sort of attitude. Guess I was just wrong.
Some of my female students were sure that the dull looking vapid woman was a stepmother or something. Nope. She's Russell's Mom. Check the film's wiki if you don't believe me.
UP's subtext is that the most important relationship in life is between a boy and his father, or the nearest male equivalent. Women stay at home and are either useless or dead.
This attitude appears in other Pixar and Disney films as well and I think it's time to retire it once and for all.
***********************************************************************
UP IN THE AIR, my other nominee for most-overrated film of 2009, asks us to believe that Ryan Bingham is a basically lonely man who is deserving of our pity because he cannot settle down with his woman of choice, even though he looks and acts like George Clooney. He makes his living as a parasite, flying in and out of cities, as a subcontractor to various companies who are firing their people. Ryan pulls the trigger, but does it with a nice smile.
You are supposed to sympathize with this guy. Now, George Clooney is a likable actor. He is also so handsome that he could snap his fingers and have ten women salivating like Pavlov's dogs in that instant. I'd say he is seriously miscast as Ryan Bingham, though he is charming and affable and easy on the eyes.
But his character is a parasite doing a miserable job that should not be done.
What horrified me most about this movie was that it wasn't all 'actors'. There are scenes of (what I thought was) brilliant acting by the fired people, describing how they felt about their jobs and lives. The scenes are in fact actual fired people. They are not acting.
This is schadenfreude on a horrific scale. (an untranslatable German word that means 'joy in another's suffering.') The film is described as a COMEDY, but it includes this incredibly sad footage. I'd say it was a gesture-- in the worst possible taste. How can you feel 'sorry' for a fictional character when there are real life tragedies in the film?
The female characters are ambivalent. Clooney's character Ryan Bingham meets Alex Goran, a woman friend-with-benefits who proves to even more amoral than he is. But it is the young, go-get-em girl geek Natalie Keener (note the name) that I wish to discuss here.
At one point in the film this annoying little person thanks the older woman 'for all that you've (feminists) done for me'. She then proceeds to justify her selfish, geeky little life. But she redeems herself by quitting her hellacious job --which she only took because she followed a man, who dumped her--and doing what she really wants to do.
I haven't met anyone as vapid and unreal as Russell's mother (and have obviously never met a Na'vi) but I've met girls like Natalie. They sometimes say they are post-feminist. (Hint: You don't get an Avatar body, so you had better get used to being 'feminist' for the duration). Some of these girls are appallingly ignorant about how bad it used to be for women in the workforce. As late as 1961, a woman could be fired from her job if a man wanted it.
Simply because he WAS a man and she was a mere woman. It was assumed that she had a husband who was working the REAL job and she wasn't serious about hers.
Significantly, Natalie leaves and Ryan keeps his job in this movie. In the real modern world, Natalie would be retained because she is cheaper, and Ryan would take early retirement.
But UP IN THE AIR is a romantic comedy, isn't it? I call it a fantasy.
*************************************************************************
The strongest female characters in 2009 films were African American. PRECIOUS is a jolting, horrific story that features stunning performances from Gabourey Sidibe as Precious Jones, and Mo'nique as her monstrous mother Mary. Both performances deserve the highest praise, and neither character was one-dimensional. Sadly, I can say that I have met women like Mary and Precious.
THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG's Tiana was virtuous, hard working, and far more intelligent than the useless playboy Prince Naveen. For this, some reviewers called her 'dull' but I think she could have easily carried more of the film, with less reliance on sidekicks. PRINCESS is also commendable in that it introduces its (young-skewing) audience to early Jazz.
And so (as the rabbit said) Dat's De End. Happy New Year, all.

The Year of Animation

2010-01-03T06:38:00.004-05:00

Happy New Year, everyone. I have been busy, as have we all, but do plan to post a bit more regularly on this blog, if anyone is still reading.
Facebook is more useful for short updates and connections with friends. (Yes, 'real' ones post there too.)
It's been a banner year for animation. In addition to the now-to-be expected annual CGI releases there were stop motion puppet films (CORALINE, FANTASTIC MR. FOX), hand drawn films (THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG, THE SECRET OF KELLS) and clay animation (MARY AND MAX). Most encouragingly there were several small studios and independents producing films that go head to head with the big studios for awards and audiences. Bill Plympton had IDIOTS AND ANGELS playing theatrically (I think it's his best film). Nina Paley's SITA SINGS THE BLUES had an amazing breakout --Paley distributed the film herself --for free--with notable success and in December the film received a favorable New York Times review. Now, you have to understand that this is a Big Deal if you are in New York...you have officially Made It if it's in the Times.
The Internet is becoming more and more important as a distribution aid; you can download the entire feature SITA SINGS THE BLUES here, and Paley's blog describes how she managed to turn a drawback (copyrighted music on the soundtrack prevented her from officially 'selling the film') into an advantage. Animation plays better on the Web than live action, at least for now; and the animators, I predict, will be self-distributing more features in future. It really is possible now to make a feature film in a small room by yourself (I predicted this sometime in the last century, but Nina Paley and Bill Plympton and a few others have actually done it. There will be more, never fear.)
Simon Tofield's SIMON'S CAT was HUGE on the Web; he now has books, I-phone animation, and hilarious and simple animated stories that are eagerly awaited by millions of viewers.
So whatever else 2009 was, I would call it the YEAR OF ANIMATION.

The power of the internet

2009-12-04T20:01:00.005-05:00

I made this little commercial as part of my MFA project at RIT. It's now on Facebook and here. Focal Press are also going to put it on their website.

The contrast with the original venue is pretty dramatic. It was originally on a website that I was required to have for graduation purposes--which no one visited. The video may now go viral (feel free to repost or link to it) and reach an entirely new audience of readers.

It's amazing to see how rapidly the dissemination of information has changed in the past few years. I consider it a great opportunity for independent animators; distributors are a thing of the past. You have only to upload your film to a website to reach a potential audience of millions of people.

The blog hasn't been updated for a while, due to a few forseen and a few unforseen developments. Gizmo had major surgery in mid November for her teeth and is doing well. I developed a laryngeal infection about the same time. Now that won't stop me from typing (it's not as if I have to dictate this) but it will make me rest up and not spend as much time online as I usually do.

There was also a last minute of legal flurries as I received and forwarded the contract for the Disney illustrations to my publisher in England. This had to be done in hard copy; legal documents have not yet reached the digital world, though they may do so eventually.

At any rate, ANIMATED PERFORMANCE will contain thumbnail drawings by myself and Ellen Woodbury that were done for three feature films. I thank Don Hahn and Maggie Gisel, his assistant, for valuable assistance facilitating the contact with Disney Publications. The artwork should look good since the book will be a larger format than PREPARE TO BOARD.

We are on track and on schedule--I'm awaiting the layouts.

At work, we are near the end of the fall semester, which went pretty smoothly I think.
I'll try to post more regularly and put up a few more images from the book. Who knows, I might make another commercial.

2009-12-04T19:49:00.002-05:00

A Knee UP, or Down

2009-10-13T18:21:00.004-04:00

I realize that I haven't even mentioned that the last artwork for ANIMATED PERFORMANCE, barring the cover, was completed on September 1. I literally went down to the wire on it, finishing just before school started. A serious knee injury made it difficult for me to sit for long periods in front of the computer for some time, and only when I started seeing a physical therapist (the doctor said it was just a 'sprain' but you can go to a phys therapist in Canada on your own) did I find out that I wrenched open the old accident wound from my car crash when I tried to climb the impossible stairs to the GO train on July 21. I guess the knee was giving me a ten year anniversary present. Anyway, the physical therapist has been wonderful; but my exercise program abruptly stopped in July. I wondered if the book would also have to stop, since I couldn't hit my deadlines.
Enter some wonderful friends I met on Facebook, though I'd met one of them previously, and another was familiar through his films. Elliot Cowan, who created The Stressful Adventures of Boxhead and Roundhead, kindly offered to do some drawings, and there are five of his funny sketches in the book as a result. Elliot is what we would call a mensch, and his animation is actually hand drawn and finished in After Effects--the Boxhead Roundhead series shows that you can get some great effects with simpler programs than Maya if you have imagination and talent. Other folk from Facebook either donated artwork or recommended someone whose work would suit (there are some fine surprises in the illustration.)
So I am waiting for two things: the legal paperwork from a well known studio (which is being reviewed at this time, I am informed...cross fingers...) and the layout for the cover so that I can slot my artwork into it.
And the layouts for the book of course. I am really crossing fingers, holding thumbs, and breath as well for this last one. Nuff said for now.
But anyway, the knee injury, though better, will only relapse if I cannot exercise. Winter is rapidly approaching here. I have been okayed for aquatic exercise and bicycling. These aren't easy to do in the dead of the Canadian winter.
The Oakville Club's pool is outdoor, and closed for the season; and the club itself is down a steep hill that is very dangerous for me to attempt in the dead of winter; since the sidewalks can be very icy here. (There are no problems with cars. They shovel the roads but do not take as much care with the sidewalks.)
So regretfully I have had to resign from the club and join the local Y, which is accessible by bus, which has two lovely pools and the finest workout room I've ever seen. There is also a cute little cafe and a bright, cheery design to the entire building. It's cheaper, but not THAT much cheaper than the club. The main advantage is: I can actually use the facilities. And I intend to do so. I want the knee to get better and I want to keep my health up...I will be less likely to get sick in winter if I exercise.
Or maybe this will all turn into another sick joke like my first exercise experience did. I was doing really well til that damn knee went out in the middle of Union Station.
The good news is that I have two years to come back to the Oakville Club without penalty. Lots can happen between now and then, but it's nice to know. I enjoyed being there, but really I couldn't do anything after the accident.
Knee injuries are the worst. I want to get this over with, for once and for all.
Wish me luck.

Apologies

2009-10-13T09:55:00.002-04:00

I realize that both my readers have probably decamped for Facebook fields. I've been shockingly lax in posting lately. This doesn't mean there hasn't been some news...quite the opposite.
The school year has of course begun, and I've been pretty busy with that.
I invited Don Hahn of Disney to the Sheridan campus and he graciously lectured for nearly two and a half hours, screened the rare short LORENZO, and provided the Sheridan students with a wonderful glimpse of how the legendary teacher Walt Stanchfield conducted his classes-at one time Stanchfield modeled for a 'leggy' woman to show her the pose he wanted!
In that same week (the second week of term), Mark Mayerson invited two other animators to lecture the same students. One was my former Disney colleague Joe Haidar, who had produced a short film of his own (the Animated American). The other was independent animator Paul Fierlinger, who described how he managed to work in his own style for fifty years. A regular smorgasbord of techniques, everything from major studios to one man (and woman) operations, was discussed during that time. I know this did the students a world of good and we hope to have more speakers in future.
Now we're nearly at midterm already (where did the time go?) and just past Canadian thanksgiving, which was a lot of fun. I invited Rose Keefe, writer of THE STARKER, the biography of Big Jack Zelig. This "Jewish Robin Hood" was the terror of the lower East Side of Manhattan in 1912. Rose is a near neighbour and she was great company. Gizmo the cat fell in love with her (possibly because Rose also owns ferrets--Gizmo likes people who have other pets). And we discussed famous early Twentieth Century murders at the dinner table...which I find a whole lot more interesting than football.
Other guests included a fellow professor from Sheridan (she and her family were originally from China); one Chinese graduate from Sheridan, and one Russian friend who arrived a bit later. So all of us, other than Rose, were immigrants.
Gizmo was so excited she kept inviting herself to sit at the table and had to be removed four times. She really just wants to sit and be part of the conversation (made no motion toward the food) but since I refuse to be a Crazy Cat Lady, she gets to eat on the floor out of a cat food bowl. Really.
So anyway that brings me sort of up to date except that I plan to take a little trip during our midterm break. More about that later, if anyone is still reading.
again, my apologies for the long hiatus. Check me out on Facebook...I'm there pretty often, throwing pies.

Sailing, Sailing

2009-08-23T21:14:00.002-04:00

Today was a D. O. B. --Day Off from Book--as I went sailing on the tall ship KAJAMA down at Queen's Quay in Toronto. It was a far nicer day than usual, with the lowering storm clouds parting to reveal a clearer picture of Toronto than I've ever seen; a strong breeze carried the huge ship along at a good pace after we motored out from the harbour.
The group I went with were friendly and welcoming and it was a generally nice day for me. Gizmo was eager to play with her mouse when I returned, and I'm getting ready for some meetings on Tuesday...but Monday brings more cartoon drawings for the book.

I met several contributors on Facebook, and so this is truly a twenty first century collaboration. The home stretch appears vaguely in the distance...I want to get all the illustrations done before classes start on the 8th. This can be done, but I also want to do them well...a few may be reworked before they are all mailed off to the editor in England.

Book 'Em

2009-08-20T07:55:00.002-04:00

I would like to sincerely apologize to the occasional readers of this blog for the absence of posts. Truth is, I have been busier than a one armed paperhanger on my new book (one of my illustrations for Chapter Six is reproduced here.)

ANIMATED PERFORMANCE is now written and the last few illustrations are being cranked out just before I start teaching storyboard for the fall term at Sheridan. I will be doing the cover last, and fortunately there is time in my schedule to do this and other changes after first taking care of my classes. Having a book published is a little like being pregnant...at least according to my sister's account, since I have never been. The difference is that you can go back and do some genetic engineering and recombination on a book while it is in development.

I have also finally gotten onto Facebook, which turned out to be an astounding contact source for literally hundreds of animators. I'm on some of the 'professional business' sites too, but Facebook is much more immediate and effective. I admire the designer of the Facebook engine. What a brilliant idea it is to have a way to communicate with others without the need to remember individual, oft-changing changing emails! You can meet new people whom you may not know in pserons, but can still 'friend'. The graphics and linking facilities are also superb.

Several other artists, including Elliot Cowan, Simon Ward-Horner and Barbara Dale, allowed me to use some of their artwork as illustrations. I'd heard of all three, but could not speak with them as well outside of Facebook.

And I am notorious for throwing food at people there. Lily Dell, in New Zealand, got me involved in Food Fling!. I love the idea of throwing messy food without actually wasting anything.

Since animators do most of their networking socially, this site is a gold mine for us. There is even a small studio, Pink Slip, that announces all its meetings and openings on Facebook.

Of course a number of my students are also on Facebook, so I would no more consider discussing work issues there than I would here. But some students prefer Facebook to the email. Production groups also set up pages so that they can easily communicate with their classmates on project issues.

Anyway, to return to the old-style medium of the book....ANIMATED PERORMANCE is going to be a very nice looking book, and so far, we are ahead of schedule on production. I feel that a book is a very useful thing for a professor to have, especially since the environmentally-conscious province and college would like us to distribute fewer paper handouts. The book helps codify the lessons and it's a lot harder or at least more expensive to leave lying around in the classroom.

Most of ANIMATED PERFORMANCE was written during the June-August summer break. I got my contract in February and fell ill in March, and had to put the project aside entirely, since my limited energies had to be used for my day job.

It will be published in July, 2010, and I want it to be good. We'll see if others agree.

Yvette Kaplan did a yeoman (or yeowoman) job as professional reviewer; her suggestions were outstanding and made this book a lot better than it otherwise would have been. Positive criticism, even strong requests for change, are never to be taken personally, and I did not do so. I asked Yvette to do this because i knew she would not view the project through rose coloured glasses but would tell me precisely what she thought of it.

Of course the readers will probably do the same.

Anyway, I'm coming down the home stretch, and will be posting here more often, if anyone is still reading.

And yes, this essay will be mirrored on facebook...

the 21st century has its good bits, so far.

BILL PLYMPTON Masterclass at the ROM

2009-06-20T12:13:00.003-04:00

“I get up at 6 A.M and start drawing. I stop at 6 P.M.”
“Isn’t that hard work?” the interviewer said.
“No,” said Bill Plympton. “It’s a pleasure”.
So began the Bill Plympton Masterclass at the Royal Ontario Museum that was held as part of the Worldwide Short Film Festival. I’d actually heard that Bill was coming to Toronto at the very last minute, courtesy of that new social calendar-cum-bush telegraph known as Facebook. Bill courteously invited me to attend his masterclass and so here we were in the bowels of the ROM building, surrounded by neatly mounted animal skeletons. It seemed appropriate to have permanently grinning skulls as part of the audience. Bill’s humour is not soft and fuzzy and there is a cheerfully macabre tone to his work.

ADULT CARTOONS
“Cartoons have power. They can change the way people think. I like sex and violence in my animation; I don’t really think about children’s topics. I think about adult ones: jealousy, ambition, sex, and love.”

FEATURE FILMS
“HAIR HIGH I thought would be a hit. We had David Carradine and all these famous voice actors. It did not take off like I thought it would. After that I said, F**k it, I’m making one for myself—really LOW tech, all in pencil.”
“IDIOTS AND ANGELS (his latest feature) was a huge success. I did about 25,000 drawings for it. I did the color for the (short film) GUARD DOG on paper, but IDIOTS was colored on computer. I spent a year on storyboards and character designs and one year on the animation, drawing 100 drawings a day. We spent 6 to nine months in post (the sound, color, music, and editing.) The fact that it had no dialogue made it easier. All age groups love this movie. My mother likes it! It has a mystical, religious quality, a feeling of transcendence. Maybe that explains its popularity.”
“If you do music for your film be sure to get the rights first.”
“I’m not out to get rich. I like making films I like to make, and doing good work.”
“My short films have an average production time of 2 to 3 months.”
People think that short films are only an entrée. You can make a living at it.

Here is PLYMPTON’S DOGMA, three points for successful short film productions:

· SHORT. The film should be five minutes long at the maximum. It’s harder to sell a 15 or 20 minute film.
· CHEAP. Digital production and Flash make production costs reasonable. My average is $1000.00 per minute; HOT DOG cost $5,000.00 per minute.”
· FUNNY. Audiences want a laugh. It’s easier to sell. Here’s my idea of the perfect animated film….BAMBI MEETS GODZILLA. (a film by Marv Newland.) This film took one weekend to make. It has only 12 drawings and is one and a half minutes long. To date it has earned $100,000.00. It’s the DEEP THROAT of animation.”

SELLING YOUR FILM
“Now after you’ve made a short film, what do you do with it? I do the festival circuit. Nickelodeon gets too much stuff. They go to film festivals so that they can see the good stuff with the crappy stuff screened out. I first realized that you could make it in short films at the Annecy festival. Distributors heard the audience applause for YOUR FACE (1987). I made another short film with the profits from the sales.”
“Sell your films to:
1. THEATRICAL. (Tournee of animation, the Animation Show)
2. NON THEATRICAL (Libraries, museums, airlines, corporations and schools. This is a shrinking market.)
3. THE INTERNET (Itoons, Atomfilms, Ipods.) My new film was immediately sold to Ipod…I make a lot of money on the Internet. It is a growing market and becoming more important. But I can’t sell a film to others if it is free on the Net. I take it down if someone rips me off. Possibly the exposure pays—it’s a lot of publicity.”
4. MERCHANDISE. I sell drawings, sketches, DVDS, books, and posters. There’s nothing new about this; Disney’s been doing it for 80 years.
5. COMMISSIONED WORK: Trailers, commercials, and films—but it’s another shrinking market.
6. APPEARANCES: I appear at schools and festivals.
So there are many ways to make money with short films.”

“I like getting up in the morning and making my own crazy films the way I want to make them. I do a feature every 3 years. I’m working on a new feature with a more exaggerated style of animation—taking reality just that little bit further.
Once a year I’ll do a short…I did three this year.. SANTA, THE FASCIST YEARS was done in a week (the animation was completed over the Thanksgiving long holiday weekend), HORN DOG was done in two weeks. MEXICAN STANDOFF took 3 weeks.”
“I do 3 key poses on the dog and put slobber in between them. Disney films use 20, 24 drawings per second. I don’t have the time, the money, or the patience, to do this so I cheat. I use pans, zooms, and only a few drawings, sometimes animating on 4’s. The audience doesn’t care; they only want to see the humour. I do garage-band animation.”

CHARACTER DESIGN
“The Dog is simple—a box with legs. Design a character and keep it SIMPLE! You have to draw it thousands of times.”

STORY INSPIRATION
“I saw a dog in Madison Square Park barking at a bird…I wondered why? I went inside his brain and imagined that the dog thought he was protecting his master from harmless animals that were really vicious assassins. I did 15 ideas for this film and tested them (I believe in testing!) and narrowed it down to 8 ideas.
In France they thought the Dog was a parody of George Bush because everything he did turned out so badly. But he’s just a funny dog, looking for love…and he fails.”

PRODUCTION
“I do all the drawings. It’s faster than hiring someone. My producer scans them in and colors them. I love drawing. I use straight ahead animation and spend 5 to 10 minutes on each drawing for the final tie-downs. I get in a ‘zone’ like a writer where it just flows…it feels like I’m on autopilot. It just happens. And the more mistakes in the drawing, the better. Finger marks and erasures add texture and substance that you can’t get in digital media. I don’t throw out drawings; I fix them and make them better. Cintiqs may be okay for some people but they’re not for me. I am old-fashioned; I prefer paper.”

TOPICAL MATERIAL
“I used to be a political cartoonist, but they date. Animation is timeless. I choose films about romance.”

CONFIDENCE
“I’m only confident when I hear audience applause. Then I know it is a success.
You have to believe that what you’re making is the best film ever made. It rarely is, but you need the strength and courage to commit all this time and money to it. Don’t do animation to get rich and famous. Do it because it makes you happy.
The process is what is fun. DRAW all the time. That’s the way to be an artist.”

Back Agayne

2009-06-15T12:06:00.003-04:00

Here are some shots from the sailboat race to FIFTY POINT, a former 'malarial swamp' and current nature preserve/boat marina. My hosts, Jim and Rolly, were sailing the catboat BOO KNOWS whose sail and 'wishbone' you see here. Catboats allow the skipper to sit in the rear of the boat and control the sail with ropes, rather like a marionette string but not exactly. My function was to stay out of the way and avoid falling overboard.

It's been a very exciting couple of weeks, but the upshot of the deal is that there was a visit from an old friend, a visit from another one is taking place tomorrow, and I got approved for the Canadian equivalent of a green card! And oh yes, Gizmo had her first bath. All of these events except the bath were enjoyable--even though Gizmo now smells a bit more perfumed than usual. I will try to update this site a bit more regularly now that I'm going fulltime onto the book in two weeks' time...so thank you, gentle reader (all one of you) and enjoy the pictures!

Words and Pictures

2009-05-22T06:09:00.013-04:00

Here's a little bit of colour from the neighbourhood
to amuse the readers since I've been a little lax in updating the blog recently. This is due to the combined duties at the college (TLA, or Teaching and Learning Academy, is required for probational faculty for two years. This is the second session and so far, so good.)
I've been working hard on writing the book, which I want to have largely finished by the end of summer. In retrospect it does seem a bit daft to be writing a new book, but I wanted to get the animation methods I learned from my teachers and my own experiences (both in industry and in teaching) down on paper while I still had the time and ability to do so. It's hard to see the forest for the trees when you are writing a textbook so professional critiques are required by the publisher. PREPARE TO BOARD! benefited from Mark Mayerson's input. The new one has Yvette Kaplan's critiques, which have hugely improved ANIMATED PERFORMANCE. (Thanks, Yvette!) I'm a little apprehensive about some of the illustrations since the copyright holders must be contacted. AVA is doing that this time around. Most of the illustrations are mine but there will be some input from Sheridan students and also from my former RIT students including Brittney Lee, whose storyboard were prominently featured in PREPARE TO BOARD! and Ignacio Barrios, who is currently rigging and animating characters at Blue Sky. Ignacio kindly allowed me to use his CGI character developed for his RIT MFA film under my supervision, and so ANIMATED PERFORMANCE will have some examples of CGI animation based on hand drawn thumbnails. I think that this may make it unique, but Ignacio is a busy man so I'm not leaning on him too hard for illustrations.
Several other artists including Nina Haley and Simon Ward-Horner have also given me permission to use their sketches. As a matter of fact, I'm currently working on Chapter Four, where Nina's will be used (Animal Acts, or animating mammalian, avian, and reptilian characters). Simon's work will appear in that chapter and the one on human/animal combinations.
Chapter Three went like greased lightning mainly because of a marvelous interview with Art Babbitt that I got in 1979 when I was still a student at Cal Arts. I was in Hollywood getting some color film developed and my friend Enrique May dared me to go up to Dick Williams' studio. I called them, and (this being a long time before the age of security checks and lockdowns) they readily agreed to let me visit. After viewing my reel, Dick pointed out that Art Babbitt was in the room and that both he and Mr. B. liked my work. My immediate reaction was to invite Art to Cal Arts as a lecturer, but the political situation at the time made this impossible. So he and Dick agreed to let me do an interview at the Williams studio a week later, which I did. And I thank my younger self for asking the right questions. Babbitt was a marvelous teacher. Nothing in the interview duplicates anything in Richard Williams' book and I think that chapter 3 is going to be hard to top.
I've had a lot of fun drawing the illustrations. Most of them are thumbnails, which I think are underutilized in some animation books. Thumbnails are necessary to clarify your thought processes and get your acting strategies straight so that you don't later have to redo hundreds of drawings when animating a scene. But I also have a fair share of illustrations that are still pictures conveying a type of character. There are even a few caricatures. I love drawing caricatures and once wanted to be a theatrical cartoonist. A book is a bully pulpit for putting your fond fancies in print, as long as your editor agrees that the illustrations are appropriate. So I have drawn two caricatures so far and will probably do more before this is over. Editor Georgia Kennedy is a pleasure to work with and the rather odd delivery system--I write in Ontario, send it to Yvette in L.A. via email for proofing and suggestions, she sends it back to me, I rewrite, then send it to Georgia with the illustrations to the FTP server in Brighton, England--is a very Twenty First Century way of working. Yvette and Georgia have never met. I have never met Georgia. Yet we are able to work together on this project through the miracle of fast Internet connections. Curiously enough I've learned that Canadian copyright law is quite different than American copyright law...I wonder whose law applies when I'm publishing a book in Europe that will have editions in other parts of the world?

COMIC ARTS FESTIVAL IN TORONTO

2009-05-11T06:37:00.023-04:00

The Toronto Comic Arts Festival is just six years old, but the event has proven incredibly successful. It is held every two years at

Toronto's Central Library, which I visited last November when Lynn Johnston was awarded the Doug Wright Award for cartooning.

This Sunday was Mother's Day, and one of my Sheridan students was at the comic fair with her mom (I like the idea!) and one former student was selling a book she wrote. (Yes, I bought it.)

The photograph is of Patricia Storms, independent cartoonist/illustrator and member of the Canadian Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society and, if rumour holds true, our future President. She's drawing a Pirate for "Owlkids", a group that gets kids interested in cartooning. The children came up with some excellent stories in a pitch session, too. Good on ya, Owlkids. Good on ya, Patricia.

I was particularly interested in the panels on Newspapers, Comics and the Internet and Comics and Animation. It was not difficult to attend both events though the rooms were crowded. The newspaper panel featured editors from comic syndicates, comic artists, and writers on the comic book culture. Here are the panelists as described in the event schedule:

On the panel is R. Stevens, the creator of the webcomic Diesel Sweeties. He
entered into a deal with United Features Syndicate to distribute his comic in
newspapers, and ultimately left that deal to concentrate on his web efforts.
Joining him will be: Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics and the
controversial futurist text Reinventing Comics; Stuart Immonen, an accomplished
“mainstream” comics artist on Marvel’s Ultimate Spider-Man, and also a
self-publisher who prints his own books and comics, and serializes work online;
Brendan Buford, Comics Editor for King Features Syndicate, and a cartoonist,
publisher, and someone who works with mainstream book publishers; and John
Martz, co-creator of Drawn.ca and Chair of the Canadian Chapter of The National
Cartoonist Society. The panel will be moderated by Steven Murray, writer,
illustrator, self-publisher, webcomics artist, and cartoonist and journalist for
Canada’s National Post newspaper.

Brendan Buford and Scott McCloud did most of the talking, but all the panelists were of the opinion that newspapers weren't going completely away. Nor was syndication dead. What was going to disappear was the mass-market audience; the future of cartooning was more in niche markets. "It's not a train wreck. It's more like a steamroller. We are all going to be flattened for a while", said Mr. Buford. King Features was doing very well--ironically enough, through licensing for Betty Boop and Popeye.

"Local markets will be critical, it's a 'wild West' environment."

He confirmed that comics syndicates 'trolled the Web' looking for suitable comics to syndicate but that 'personality' mattered as well; some past 'young sensations' were temperamentally unsuited to the rigours of creating a daily strip.

Scott McCloud mentioned Microsoft's new Infinite Canvas which allows you to put camera moves and animation levels into comic strips. (I feel that technology will never replace good storytelling, a sentiment I and most of the panelists share with the late Will Eisner, --no relation to Michael--who said that "Content (story) drives the art form." Thank you, Mr. Eisner, for not calling it a 'business'!)

"Paper is technology too," Stuart Immonen said. "It's portable and can be infinitely formatted!"

I asked what would become of the gorgeously produced books at this comic fair (one of which was the size of a small table) if everyone read comics digitally.

No problem. It appears that a book purchased at a fair like this is 'a handshake (with the creator) that you can take home' and that the indies were making a living selling books and merchandise. Books were MORE special in the digital age since they were 'hand crafted'.

Mass-marketed comics were going to lose a guaranteed distribution channel--the daily paper--but comics would survive on a smaller scale. "Comics were never that popular."

A woman in the audience disagreed at once. "Comics are everywhere! They are more popular than ever!" I certainly agreed with her. I could only wish that 'hand crafted' animation would make a similar comeback.

The next panel wasn't about animation. Most of the strip cartoonists I've known were trying desperately to get into animation as more and more newspapers folded. But this group consisted of former or present animation people who were going into comics to get out of being what they described as a 'cog in the machine'.

The panelists for COMIC ARTISTS WHO ANIMATE were Graham Annable, Faith Erin Hicks, Brian Envinou, Paul Rivoche and one additional artist whose name I have missed. The panel was moderated by Jim Zubkavich, who works in animation and teaches animation at Seneca College. Four of the panelists were Sheridan Animation graduates. Faith Erin Hicks was the most recent alumnus (2004.) She was approached about working in comics after she'd been in animation for a while. "Comics paid almost a living wage if I gave up eating," she said.

It quickly became apparent that these artists craved more control than is commonly provided to the bulk of animation artists. "Even if I designed a nuclear reactor (for an animated film) it had to fit the script. I couldn't go crazy with it," one artist said. Animation artists were frequently likened to 'cogs in a machine'.

After the panel ended I suggested to some of the speakers that 'cog' was not necessarily an accurate description of an animation crew. "Animators are more like members of an orchestra, or ensemble musicians," I said. "It takes several animators (and in the case of a feature, sometimes a hundred or more) to create the work. Comic strip artists who do everything themselves are soloists." Like syndicated cartooning, studio work is not for anyone, and these artists enjoyed their independence.

"I have absolute control over everything! Awesome!" Ms. Hicks crowed.

The comic art/animation panel agreed that animation training was the best preparation they could have had for their new careers. An animation background provides a comic strip artist with timing, the ability to create strong poses in silhouette, good body language and staging (layout). "Going to school helped me" was the general consensus.

One artist also mentioned that working in animation for 'a boss that will kill you if you get it wrong," was also excellent training. The independent 'soloists' need only please themselves and their audience...while the ensemble players must please the conductor, director, --AND the audience.

The day ended with my purchase of a few more books and lunch out with Mark Mayerson, who will also be writing the event up on his blog.

Comics never really appealed to me as a profession, but I respect people who can do a daily story for years on end or publish their own books successfully. It really is a great and pleasant way of making a living. Maybe I'll try a small comic entry for an anthology after the new book is finished.

Continuing Education

2009-05-09T08:41:00.002-04:00

I start something called TLA next week, which is a required training program here. One of my assignments will be drawings for a class that is held at the same time I attend a meeting of the department.

The book is coming along pretty well; about 1/3 of it is finished, complete with illustrations. It's quite amazing to think that I've never actually met my editor Georgia Kennedy. I send all the materials to her in Brighton, England via FTP after Yvette Kaplan gives the 'professional critique' on the writing in L.A. The Internet is little short of miraculous...we can literally turn around changes in a day, while working in three different regions of the planet.

Yvette and I have known each other for years, and she's a very direct and straightforward critic. That's good for me since I need another pair of eyes to tell me if this is working or not.
And I wanted someone who would tell me. The worst reviewer never tells you what can be improved as well as what works.

Luckily since I don't really have any issues about corrections to the writing, I have used all of Yvette's suggestions and the book has become much better as a result. I made a few other tweaks after her changes were implemented....then fixed an illustration or two...

Of course I have to eventually kiss it goodbye and get it into production. I was tweaking some of the paragraphs and reworked one illustration and finally had to say, Enough. Chapter's due in Brighton. Deadlines matter in publishing as well as in animation. So I'll get it as good as I can get it in the time that I have, and get it finished on time. This is the same instruction I give to my students for their assignments. Time management is a useful skill.
Artists who work for themselves can take as long as they like, but if you work for someone else, they will want the material by a certain date, and that's why we are called 'commercial' rather than 'fine' artists. Our skills may be the same, but our clients aren't.

In other developments, the Sheridan Industry Day was a week or so ago, and Mark Mayerson wrote it up on his blog and since I could not attend the whole thing I won't duplicate things here. The animation department puts on a very fine show for the visiting studios; it's very impressive to see each student's display on their own individual monitor in a huge library space, with print samples of their work and sometimes even copies of the animation reel available.

There is a comic art show in Toronto today and tomorrow. I'll head in on Sunday and write it up for the next entry, possibly with some photos. The new camera is working very well.

The Mast and the Tugboat

2009-05-03T21:03:00.003-04:00

These tugboats are in Oakville harbour putting masts on the small sailing boats that didn't get their masts last week (more on that later.)

Most of the boats got their masts from the same huge crane that put them in the water. I should have some shots of this next week (they were taken on film with the old Contarex.)

Anyway, here are some shots I got today with the Lumix. You can see why I chose to live in this neighbourhood. It's lovely being near the lake and seeing all the boats in the harbour...and sailing day isn't far off!

The Oakville Club

2009-05-03T20:58:00.002-04:00

I am a member of the Oakville Club, which is located just near my apartment building. This wonderful building in the top photo dates from 1908 (though the largest wing was added later.) The badminton court features a remarkable roof that was originally an airplane hanger for Sopwith Camels (it dates from the First World War.) The dining room is in an 1848 building that was once a grain warehouse. The Lumix camera takes a great flash photo!

It's Good To Be The Queen

2009-05-03T16:18:00.001-04:00

My dear friend Gizmo will be eight years old sometime this year. I usually 'celebrate' on August 1.

But then again, every day is the cat's birthday.

What the Contarex can Do

2009-05-02T07:36:00.003-04:00

I was asked how the Contarex did with prints.

Here are some that I posted when I went across Canada on THE CANADIAN three, no four (!) years ago. I got these processed in a good shop in Vancouver.

The pictures were taken from a moving train, shooting through a dirty window. Train speed was about 60 miles an hour.

No, I don't think the Lumix could have gotten these.

Hello, Sailor

2009-04-29T18:35:00.000-04:00

This gentleman was putting up his

sails 'while the weather was nice'.

The harbour was empty of boats this

morning, and the boats were mastless

on dry land.

What a difference a few hours can make.

I also think I am going to like the Lumix.

Lumix Again in Oakville Harbour

2009-04-29T18:32:00.001-04:00

Here's the harbour in late afternoon, with the Lumix.

The Contarex's pictures were taken in the morning

and should be available sometime early next week.

It will be fun to compare the two.

First Pictures with the Lumix

2009-04-29T18:23:00.000-04:00

Ain't this sweet?

Witt's Daughter: A Disney Artist makes a Live Action Movie

2009-04-29T14:33:00.009-04:00

"I was going to remodel my kitchen, but decided to make a movie instead."--Carole Holliday

Disney animator and story woman Carole Holliday has made her first live action short film,
Witt's Daughter.

Now, while a forty minute live action short film may sound like a big jump for someone who designed Roxanne for A GOOFY MOVIE (and animated in my unit in Paris), storyboarded on DreamWorks' PRINCE OF EGYPT and did character designs for JOHN HENRY (Disney) it really isn't that different. Live action has been using storyboards ever since Alfred Hitchcock's time (Hitch drew his own boards and also worked with animator Saul Bass on the shower scene for PSYCHO). The new movie and editing software and high powered computers means that you really can edit and mix an entire film on a Mac or PC yourself and achieve professional results if you know what you are doing.

Carole wrote the screenplay, produced, directed, designed the costumes, and did the sound editing. She had a large crew working in other capacities, and Alia Margaret, a truly amazing little four year old star of the show.

Here's a blog Carole made about the process. You can see her laughing and joking with the crew in one of the clips.

WITT'S DAUGHTER is the tale of Witt Stringfield, a Korean War veteran who returns home to his family after three years overseas to find that his four year old daughter does not remember him. She also does not care to know him. She is afraid of him. Instead, little Catherine is friendly with all the other male characters who obviously have come to her home during Dad's absence... her rakish Uncle Gus and his poker playing buddies all receive the attention that Dad desperately craves.

The film's atmosphere is well researched, which is what I expect from a writer/director who is also an experienced story and development artist. You feel that you are in the period from the first frame. Even the actress playing Mama (Mandy Henderson) has a period look to her face; she's not fashionably emaciated. The camerawork has a golden look to it that tells us that this is 'a past time'. We are, and yet are not, there with the characters since manners have changed as much as the cars, clothing, and home furnishings. The past literally is another country.

The film takes place in a time when people did not talk about sex in public (my father insists that no one talked about it anywhere) but there is an undercurrent there just the same. Witt and May rush into one another's arms but not right into the bedroom. (Catherine is present; they must behave.) Every other family in the film has five or six children. May has agreed to babysit a friend's brood of five when Child Number Six falls seriously ill. Witt demands that he is more important, that the wife's place is home with him. This, too is 'period' (depressingly so.) But the urgency of the friend's need (and Witt's selfishly not informing May that he was returning home) takes precedence.

Witt not only connects with his daughter, he learns that his own wishes are not necessarily the most important.

Witt's Daughter is an enjoyable, nice film about a father reconnecting not only with his daughter, but with his family and himself. It is a positive, optimistic film. Carole plans to make more. Good on ya!

Here is some more information about the film.

Congratulations, Carole!

The Lumix

2009-04-29T14:31:00.003-04:00

This is the Lumix. It is a very elegant litle

camera. Note the Leica lens.

I don't know how well it works yet, but it is

lovely out today and so I will try it out in the

harbour and compare it with the earlier

shots taken with the Contarex today.

The Old German Camera: Best in the World (1958 version)

2009-04-29T14:25:00.002-04:00

This is the Contarex. It's been in our family

since 1964. I've owned it since 1985.

Nicknames: Snoopy (the case resembles

his nose)

Other nickname: Monstro the Camera

(when fully loaded, it weighs over six pounds)

It's a gorgeous work of art, not just a

photographic device. All three lenses and

all the filters are hand ground.

They literally don't make them like this

any more. They didn't make them like that THEN.

But it is, as mentioned earlier, VERY heavy.

The New Camera

2009-04-29T14:22:00.001-04:00

Hello all,

I bought my first digital camera today. It's a Panasonic Lumix, with a touch screen. Quite futuristic really.

Ironically enough I had to use my 1958 Contarex this morning to shoot the boats being lowered into the water at the Oakville marina by a huge crane. I'd promised Larry the harbourmaster that I'd do this, and the Contarex was not only the only camera I had available...it was the only camera there, period. The crane swung each boat out in a sling, for all the world like a giant playing in the bath with some very expensive toys. Everyone else was told that the crane crew would start at nine...I was told they started at seven, and so I was the only one there at the proper time.

I shot three rolls of film with the gorgeous (still functional, and extremely heavy) old German camera, then took them to the local camera store and bought the Lumix.

I'm about to try the new one out. It also takes movies, so let's see if I can get it to work!

By The Rapids: First Nation Animation

2009-03-25T06:03:00.004-04:00

Yesterday I visited Big Soul Productions, a First Nations owned live action and animation production facility located in downtown Toronto.
(First Nations is the Canadian equivalent of "Native American")

My friend Jean Pilotte is animation supervisor of an animated series called BY THE RAPIDS. The show was created and written by Joseph Tekaroniake Lazare, who also directs the show. Lazare based the town of "By the Rapids" on his hometown of Kahnawake, Quebec, and the characters on people who lived there. The main character, Cory Littlehorn, is a modern teenager whose parents are successful lawyers. The Littlehorn family return to the parents' community in By The Rapids to live, and each episode deals with...well, highly unexpected things. I won't describe the plot of the episode Jean showed us here, but the writing was really outstanding and nothing about the program's plot was predictable. The gags were funny, if sometimes highly unconventional (all right, I'll tell you about one of them: all the dogs in the town smoke cigarettes.) The show is highly original and entertaining. The animation is limited but the characters still worked.
The show is produced in English and Mohawk languages and airs on APTN , the Aboriginal People's Television Network. This network covers all of Canada but I am not sure whether it reaches the USA.
Perhaps some American network would air this interesting show.
Big Soul Productions is located in a wonderful arts building just off Spadina Street in Toronto. I amused myself by looking at the bookstore (where I didn't buy anything) and the musical 'museum' store (where I bought a small rattle that reminded me a little bit of a cartoon mouse.) Afterward, a friend took me to a well known Polish/Eastern European supermarket where I amused myself by recognizing the Frosch (frog) brand cleaners that I used to use in Germany.

So I'd call this a nice, multicultural day out!
Oh, and we had a nice Sheridan senior student with us on the tour. I thought that since Bernice's film involved Raven and the Moon (a Northwest Coast legend) she might be interested in hearing about By the Rapids. Not only was the young lady overjoyed to be there, she obviously made an impression on some of the staffers, and a copy of her film will be shown to the producers when they return from a trip to New York.

Perhaps BY THE RAPIDS will air on PBS. That would be nice.

A New Disney Documentary and some Books

2009-03-17T06:35:00.003-04:00

I spoke with Frank Thomas' son Ted yesterday. Ted's company 'Theodore Thomas Productions' produced the delightful documentary FRANK AND OLLIE and has just completed work on a fascinating new one about the Disney studio artists' trip to South America in 1942.
Apparently new, raw footage has been found and this, along with some animation from SALUDOS AMIGOS, is used in the film.
I'll write more when I hear about the distribution and release dates.

Work continues on the book, which is dedicated to Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, and Shamus Culhane. I chose these three dedicatees because of their writing--not their animation! Frank and Ollie's book THE ILLUSION OF LIFE is the first important study of character animation, and Shamus Culhane's ANIMATION FROM SCRIPT TO SCREEN was the first important animation textbook. All three men were my friends, and I hope the new book won't be too shabby. Lynn Johnston has agreed to write the Foreword, or Backward as it will probably turn out.

Speaking of books, I've just provided a blurb for the updated TIMING FOR ANIMATION by John Halas; Tom Sito wrote some excellent additions bringing the book into the digital age. (Hey, we still time the same way; a second is a second, whatever program or technique you use to measure it!) There will also be illustrations from some CGI and Flash sources in addition to the originals, which may be difficult to view today. This update is one that everyone should get...I recommend it highly.

I've ordered the two Walt Stanchfield drawing books and will write a review when they arrive. I studied with Stanchfield and Glen Vilppu at Disney's and actually preferred Stanchfield as a teacher, though both were of course excellent.

So that's all the news that I'm allowed to print. I have more, but can't print it!

A bit of bother and a new film

2009-03-14T07:32:00.006-04:00

I apologize for the long hiatus between posts, but a combination of family emergencies and a lengthy attack of bronchitis has slowed me down a bit.
There is some interesting news on the animation front: the Russian feature THE TALE OF THE SOLDIER FEDOT (Fedot Strelets) made by the Melnitsa Animation Studio was posted on YouTube for a few days. Note: someone took it down, which is probably what I would have done in their place. I did get to see it beforehand. I hope that it is made available on dvd; in the meantime, the website for the film is still up, and the trailer can be viewed there. I am told that the film did make a respectable amount of money by Russian standards, and it was either loved or disliked in equal measure by the audiences.
The film is beautifully art directed; the artwork resembles lacquer paintings on Russian boxes. It is done in digital cutout animation, apparently the first Russian feature to use this technique (though short films have done this for some time). Some characters' heads turn; others are flat.
The animation is stylized and never boring.
The poem it is based on probably sounds better in Russian. My friend Alexey Kobelev sent me a link to an English translation last year, and it is this translation that is used in the film's subtitles.
I was surprised and a little repulsed by one episode near the end, which contains a grotesque racist caricature. The character is described in repulsive terms in the original poem, but the visuals take the stereotyping to the limit. The episode could be edited out of the film if anyone wanted to show it in the West. (The Tsar is trying to marry his daughter off to just about anyone...and there were many more candidates in the original poem.)
Take a look. It's worth it. I wish Studio Melnitsa luck in their future productions.

Thanks, Mike

2009-03-01T01:35:00.005-05:00

Mike Sporn called me out on the last post, so here's an amended version: Nina Paley is the first person to singlehandedly produce an animated film in FLASH. She is possibly the fourth person to ever animate an entire film by herself (Neither Bill Plympton nor Lotte Reiniger did EVERYTHING on their films themselves. Reiniger's husband was her cameraman and Plympton works with renderers and probably cameramen/women.)

But while researching the Polish feature ADAM 2 that Mike mentions (which is unavailable on YouTube) I found two films that I saw in junior high school that I have (a) had nightmares about and (b) been searching for ever since. I'm serious. I haven't forgotten the first film in forty years, though I thought it was French because its title is French....RENAISSANCE by Walerian Borowczyk is a stunning allegory of war. I remember being fascinated by the stop motion animation, which has never, in my opinion, been used to greater horrific effect than it is here.

LES JEUX DE ANGES, also by Borowczyk, is an even more harrowing depiction of life--if you can call it that-- in a death camp. Stay with it. The slowness is part of the horror. I remember that I and one other Jewish student were the only ones to understand this film in the entire class. Perhaps it was better for the other students that they did not understand it. Borowczyk ended his career making porn movies and I can't say I blame him for seeking some kind of escape, any kind of life affirmation, as the antidote to these memories.

So thanks, Mike, for inadvertently getting me on the right track to find these two films. Maybe I should have just asked Jules Engel about them at Cal Arts. It never occurred to me to do so so it's taken me a bit longer to find these films than I had hoped...but they are worth the wait.

SITA SINGS THE BLUES can now be seen online

2009-02-28T06:40:00.003-05:00

Animator NINA PALEY is one of a small group of people (of whom Bill Plympton is best known) who have created a full length, sound, feature animated film singlehanded. Nina did literally everything on this project except write and record the music, which is provided by Twenties singing star Annette Hanshaw.
SITA SINGS THE BLUES was held up from release by copyright issues that have now been resolved.
The entire feature can be viewed here.
Congratulations, Nina!

THIRD EDITION of Prepare to Board

2009-02-27T05:24:00.004-05:00

I've just been informed that PREPARE TO BOARD! will have a third English edition. This is being published only six months or so after the second edition.

I'm of course delighted, but it helps to put things in perspective; the second edition was less than half the size of the first edition, and the third edition will be about the same size as the second.

The only difference between the second and third editions is that the rear cover will now state that I teach at Sheridan College rather than at RIT.

The Slumdog Oscars

2009-02-23T06:31:00.005-05:00

I think that yesterday's Oscars proved that films with good stories can win out over 'high concept' films.

Not only did SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE win in all categories in which it was nominated--beating 'sure things' like THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON--but the beautiful Japanese hand drawn film LA MAISON EN PETIT CUBES won the Best Animated Short Film award, rather than CGI entries PRESTO and OKTAPODI.

Sean Penn won a well-deserved Oscar for his portrayal of Harvey Milk in MILK. I voted for him but didn't think he'd make it. Good job.

Every now and then people remember that story is what brings us in to the theatre, not special effects and explosions. Well, some of us anyway.

A Succesful Fantasy Director Speaks Out

2009-02-11T06:36:00.007-05:00

PAN'S LABYRINTH was my favorite film of 2006. Like CORALINE and SPIRITED AWAY, it is about a young girl who rescues (or attempts to rescue) a family member from a sinister fantasy world. But the first two films have more resonance than CORALINE because they contain symbolism that works according to the laws of their particular universes. While their 'myths' are in fact original, they are easily understood by the viewer. The Miyazaki film's themes and symbols make reference to contemporary environmental consciousness and also to Japanese mythology. This gives it an interesting design flavour, particularly in the bathhouse sequences. PAN'S LABYRINTH's universe is firmly grounded in European fairy tales and symbolism. The labyrinth of the title literally affects the main characters' lives, as this wonderful about.com interview with Del Toro proves:

“The labyrinth is a very, very powerful sign,”
explained del Toro. “It’s a primordial, almost iconic symbol. It can mean so
many things, culturally, depending on where you do it. But the main thing for me
is that, unlike a maze, a labyrinth is actually a constant transit of finding,
not getting lost. It’s about finding, not losing, your way...
...I can ascribe two concrete meanings of the labyrinth in the movie. One is
the transit of the girl towards her own center, and towards her own, inside
reality, which is real. I think that Western cultures make a difference about
inner and outer reality, with one having more weight than the other...The other transit I can say is the transit that Spain goes
through, from a princess that forgot who she was and where she came from, to a
generation that will never know the name of the fascist. And, the other one is
the Captain being dropped in his own historical labyrinth. Those are things I
put in. But then, as I said, the labyrinth is something else. Each culture will
ascribe a different weight to it.”
Guillermo del Toro on Fairy Tales and Inspiration: ...Even
when I was a kid, funny enough, I used to be able to find those fairy tales that
felt preachy and pro-establishment, and I hated them. I hated the ones that were
about, ‘Don’t go out at night.’ There are fairy tales that are created to
instill fear in children, and there are fairy tales that are created to instill
hope and magic in children. I like those. I like the anarchic ones. I like the
crazy ones. And, I think that all of them have a huge quotient of
darkness because the one thing that alchemy understands, and fairy tale lore understands, is that you need the vile matter for magic to flourish. You need lead to turn it into gold. You need the two things for the process. So when people sanitize fairy tales and homogenize them, they become completely uninteresting for me."

Other Miyazaki films such as PRINCESS MONONOKE are grounded in what could be cultural memory or traditional fairy tale, but is in fact original 'myth' created for the film.
Both SPIRITED AWAY and PAN'S LABYRINTH are picaresque adventures unified by 'original' -mythic structure. Both of these are far better films than CORALINE. The latter film is a collection of technical marvels with no underlying mythic theme to unify them. The characters have no real resonance in either of the film's two worlds.

All Frosting, No Cake

2009-02-09T05:16:00.021-05:00

Many years ago my sister made her first cake. My father was so happy about his daughter's first baking effort that he decided to make genuine homemade whipped cream, the kind his father put on top of the five cent banana splits sold in the family restaurant during the Depression, in my sister's cake's honor.

Dad bought a pint of whipping cream and some caster sugar and whipped it up until there was nearly four inches of the stuff...but my poor sister's poor cake was a lamentable effort, only about an inch high. Nevertheless, Dad insisted on putting ALL the whipped cream on the thing.
The frosting completely swamped and drowned the main event. "Where's the cake?" I exclaimed as I went prospecting through the gargantuan whipped cream topping.
We ate it and all got sick afterward from the superabundance of fat and cholesterol.

This deadly dessert is, to me, symbolic ofModern animated features, where technique is the whipped cream and story is the cake.

I was going to write some criticism of two animated features I saw recently, but found that someone else wrote a much better one years before feature animation was a glimmer in Lotte Reiniger's or Walt Disney's eye.

So here are some wonderful excerpts from Mark Twain's essay, FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENSES, written in 1895 (the official birth year of motion pictures!) It is amazing how much these arguments apply to film stories. I am editing the word "Deerslayer" and a few points out so that Twain's argument may be applied to animation in particular. Here goes:

1. The rules (of literary construction state that)...A tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the "_________" tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in air.

2. They require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as the "__________" tale is not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to develop.

3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in the "__________" tale.

4. They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. But this detail also has been overlooked in the "___________" tale.

5. The require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say. But this requirement has been ignored from the beginning of the "_________" tale to the end of it.

6. They require that when the author describes the character of a personage in the tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description. But this law gets little or no attention in the "___________" tale, as ____________'s case will amply prove.

9. They require that the personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable. But these rules are not respected in the "___________" tale.

10. They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the (viewer) of the "___________" tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together.

11. They require that the characters in a tale shall be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency. But in the "_______" tale, this rule is vacated.

I will venture to add one point to Twain's wonderful list. Characters in an animated film should have some discernable design relationship to one another and be from the same design universe unless the story calls for it. If a film (CORALINE) has grotesques for neighbours in both the 'real world' and 'other world' while she and her parents and one friend are designed and animated in a completely different style, how do you differentiate the Other World from the Real World? You are piling frosting on top of frosting until you have completely hidden the cake.
THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX is three or four cakes...I waited an hour for the story to start. Was it about a mouse, a rat, or soup? (I didn't wait long enough to find out if it was about a princess.)
CORALINE'S cake makes little sense and collapses like a fallen souffle the minute you try to puzzle out character relationships, motivation, or meaning.
But the frosting is little short of miraculous.
That may be enough for some people, but I somehow doubt that either film is going to do very well. Story remains undeveloped in these features while technique soars to magical levels. But it's all just putting more whipped cream on top of the same sad cake.
All the audience really wants is a good, understandable story, with characters that we are interested in, that is well told. Walt Disney knew that, and his heirs at Pixar know that. Give us more cake and less topping.

I'll let Mr. Twain have the last word.

A work of art? ______ has no invention; it has no order, system, sequence, or result; it has no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of reality; its characters are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and words they prove that they are not the sort of people the author claims that they are...Counting these out, what is left is Art. I think we must all admit that.

MY NEW BOOK

2009-02-02T05:08:00.008-05:00

It's official.

I'm writing a second book.

It's taken longer than I thought it would to get it going, but I'm very pleased to say that ANIMATED PERFORMANCE will be published in June, 2010 by AVA Publishing.

This is the same company that produced DRAWING FOR ANIMATION, by Paul Wells and Joanna Quinn. (see below.) AVA's books are beautifully produced, and they have decided to give my release the 'large format' which means that the illustrations will also be large and clear.

So why write yet another book on animation? Hasn't the topic been exhaustively covered?

Nope. Not even close.

I'm going to cover stuff that most other books leave out. I will show how to ACT in animation, not merely produce animation exercises. And no, it won't involve setting up a video camera...how can you possibly do this if your character is part fish, or is a tiny machine, or is a group of quarrelling octopi? The only other book on 'animated acting' wasn't written by an animator. I aim to correct this omission. The cover mockup gives you some idea of my subject matter: chapter headings include 'Animal Acts', 'Moving the Furniture' and so on. I will discuss how to animate groups of characters, creatures made of straw or wood, fantasy animals and monsters, and female, male, young and old human characters. Yes, there is a difference in movement, even in ways of speech. There will be a lot of information on dialogue animation that doesn't duplicate material in Dick Williams' or Eric Goldberg's books.

There will also be interviews with Ellen Woodbury (animator of PEGASUS and ZAZU for Disney), and my former SCAD student Jamaal Bradley, who was lead animator on the House in Sony's MONSTER HOUSE and is currently directing cut scenes for Valve Entertainment. We will speak about games animation as well as theatrical/television style acting.

I also will use my wonderful 1979 interview with Art Babbitt that has never been published until now. None of the material in the interview is duplicated in Richard Williams' book. I plan to scatter all interview segments throughout the book, rather than group them in the Appendixes, as I did with PREPARE TO BOARD!

So you might say that ANIMATED PERFORMANCE will fill in the chinks in the literature of animation.

Most of the drawings will be mine, but I have one very important additional contributor: my former RIT student Ignacio Barrios, who is currently a rigger at Blue Sky Studios, has agreed to use his beautifully modeled and rigged ape character from his master's thesis to illustrate some of my points. So ANIMATED PERFORMANCE will demonstrate the same exercises modeled by hand drawn and CGI characters, which can be useful to the reader, since about 90 per cent of current animation is done in CGI.

Sheridan College, unlike RIT, is extremely supportive of faculty who publish, and is even having a special 'author's day' today for its faculty members who have had books published recently. I will make the first (non Internet) official announcement of ANIMATED PERFORMANCE at this show. I plan to ask some of my current Sheridan students for permission to use a few of their drawings, and Professor Mark Thurman has given me permission to use his hilarious caricature of the 'flour sack' as well.

But you heard it here first!

Patrick McGoohan

2009-01-14T20:33:00.004-05:00

Patrick McGoohan died in Los Angeles on January 13, aged 80.
I had the pleasure of working with Mr. McGoohan on TREASURE PLANET. He was the voice of Billy Bones, the dying, pathetic alien character I'd been assigned.
As was usual with Disney recording sessions, the supervising animator was invited to hear the actor record the lines.
I'd last seen Mr. McGoohan as King Edward Longshanks in BRAVEHEART, but also recalled his scary television show THE PRISONER whose simple, yet terrifying, balloonlike Rovers frightened and fascinated me as a child.
I was apprehensive about meeting Mr. McGoohan since I'd heard he could be 'difficult' to work with. Actors are sometimes temperamental, or so I was told.
It turned out that Mr. McGoohan and I were the first people to arrive at the studio. I could think of nothing else to do but show him some of the sketches of Billy Bones-- a twisted, tortoiselike creature in high cocked hat and cloak with glowing eyes that I carefully designed to 'read' even in black and white sketches.
No, it wasn't a caricature of Mr. McGoohan, nor did I use any pictures of him as reference for the design. But it occurred to me that he might think that I had. He definitely had aged quite a bit since his PRISONER days. Would he be insulted by the drawings?
I needn't have worried.
"But these are excellent!" Mr. McGoohan said. "And", he added, scrutinizing me carefully, "I've seen you before."
I explained that other than a few documentaries on Disney DVDs, it was unlikely that Mr. McGoohan could have seen me on film since I was usually behind the camera; there was a slight possibility that he could have seen me visiting my friend who lived in Pacific Palisades, where his home was. He continued to insist that he'd seen me. I didn't contest the point. In Hollywood, actors go everywhere, possibly even where animators go.

We then had a very friendly conversation that I have to paraphrase, though I have never forgotten the main points Mr. McGoohan made.
"I am a journalist," he said. "I wrote for Irish papers...acting was not my main interest. The best thing acting ever did for me was to introduce me to my wife."
"I got tired of the 5 a.m. shoots and decided to concentrate on producing rather than acting." (His performance as Longshanks in BRAVEHEART was done as a favor to filmmaker Mel Gibson.)
"I was also offered the part of James Bond, I was the first actor they asked. I turned it down. It would have destroyed me."

He had no regrets for doing this. How many people would have done the same thing?

We met again for pickup sessions on Bones in early 2000, which was after my auto accident. While Mr. McGoohan had been on a cane for the first session, I was using one for the second, and he was horrified.

I would like to offer my small tribute to this kindhearted and highly intelligent actor.
He was quite the looker as a young man but there was a brain behind the good looks. Apparently Mr. McGoohan wrote and produced many COLUMBO shows for his friend Peter Falk, and he also created THE PRISONER and wrote some of the more disturbing episodes of that series.

Patrick McGoohan was also one of the few successful actors who remained faithful to their first wives for their entire working lives!

Farewell, Mr. McGoohan, and thank you for your kindness and your wonderful acting.
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2009/01/rip-patrick-mcg.html

On Storytelling

2009-01-06T06:08:00.031-05:00

Break's over! at least for me. I have a lot of work to do on the next class assignment--which I've done before, though never with so many students.
There was time for a post New Year's party with friends...and we wound up watching, not the latest Hollywood blockbuster, but a few short films and cartoons, some of whic were made over eighty years ago.
The first was Harold Lloyd's NEVER WEAKEN from 1921, a truly terrifying film (although it is nominally a comedy.) The terror comes from seeing Harold Lloyd hanging off girders on an unfinished skyscraper. Even though we modern viewers know he lived to be an old man, and that there is a safety net off-camera, the staging and timing of this film is still riveting today. You can see Harold wearing those 'piano key' gloves in this still; the glove on the right hand had a prosthetic device to camouflage the fact that Harold had had two fingers blown off that hand by a bomb during the previous year. He also nearly lost his vision at the time and had facial scars that might have ruined his career. Bravely, Lloyd vowed he'd be a director instead of an actor. The scars healed and he didn't tell anyone about the injured hand until after his career ended. He was afraid no one would laugh at him if they knew. (Those silent comedians were a hardy lot.)
Speaking of Hardy, we also ran one of my favorite Laurel and Hardy short films, HELPMATES. It was very appropriate on this particular day since it is about Stan "helping" Ollie clean up the house after a very messy party and ruining Ollie's life, including burning down the house at the end! (Just kidding. My party was nice.) The third film in the series was Buster Keaton's wonderfully surreal 1920 film (his first), ONE WEEK, about a newly married couple receiving an unassembled pre-fab house that goes entirely wrong. ONE WEEK was just inducted into the National Film Registry (about time too). And for dessert, there was the charming Disney cartoon, DONALD'S BETTER SELF.
Now, there's one thing that these films have in common besides comedy: they are meticulously constructed from believable premises and they build to inevitable comic climaxes--whether disasters in the the Keaton and Laurel/Hardy films, or triumphs (?) in the Lloyd and Disney ones) while never letting a gag go 'untopped'. This is a skill that is sadly lacking in nearly all the modern live action comedies I've seen. (The last modern film that I saw that really knew how to top gags in the old way was THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY.)
Harold Lloyd was a master of the 'topper'; the longest sustained sequence of this kind was in his amazing film SAFETY LAST, which is the one where he does this.
But the 'clock' scene is only part of the sequence; while climbing up that building Harold runs into every conceivable distraction and danger. incidental to the location. A mouse runs up his trouser leg. Someone throws a net out the window. Pigeons land on his head. The topper comes when Harold DOES get to the top of the building. That rotating device in the picture smacks him in the head and knocks him silly so that he does a drunk walk on the ledge. And Lloyd and his crew even top that gag. But I won't spoil it. Go see for yourself what they do.
Buster Keaton was also brilliant at topping and 'twisting' gags. He rarely telegraphs things, and never gives you what you quite expected to see. The rotating house in ONE WEEK is topped by having it actually melt in the rain--then it has to be moved to another lot....but his best topper in this film is the shot where the house appears to be stuck on the tracks in the path of an oncoming train. There appears to be a problem in the shot--a telegraph pole is prominently featured...but when you watch the clip, it is obvious that Keaton, who also directed the film, and his cameramen staged the shot from the most perfect angle available. It's a brilliant 'topper'.
Laurel and Hardy's HELPMATES is an escalating series of disasters taking place inside a few rooms in Hardy's house. Its timing is precise and things proceed with tragic inevitability. (The line between tragedy and comedy is mainly one of timing: if you play tragedy too fast, it becomes funny.) Or, as it is said: "Comedy is what happens to you. Tragedy is what happens to me."
Laurel and Hardy are unusual in that they normally telegraph their failures so the audience knows what is going to happen to them and laughs anyway. HELPMATES does have some telegraphing, but there are also some brilliant toppers in which insult is added to --insult --to --insult...Ollie first is hit by water, then by coal dust, and finally by flour in the course of one or two minutes in one scene. The water was telegraphed, the other indignities are 'twists' that make his predicament worse--and all because he will insist on taking charge and make Stan do the work. Because of his bossiness and selfishness Hardy loses, in inevitable progression, his best suits, his kitchen, his furniture, his marriage, and finally the entire house.
The Donald Duck cartoon is more conventional in its storytelling (good literally triumphs over evil) but it is so sincere, and charming, and the relationship between Donald and his angel and devil 'selves' is so believable--that it ranks as one of my top favorite cartoons. Donald is younger here than he was 'played' in later years; I prefer the naughty child to the malicious adult he became. Here, too, gags are 'topped'--with a literal kick at the end. The animators learned their comic craft from watching Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, and Laurel and Hardy, and the influence shows.
I won't editorialize since the films can do the 'talking'. None of them are self-aware, smugly calling attention to technique or special effects, or belittling their heroes. (Laurel and Hardy belittle themselves.) They do not, above all else, patronize the audience.
So that's why I love running the old films.

When I was a student at Cal Arts I brought my 16mm prints--one of which was more expensive than an entire set of DVDs of Keaton or Chaplin films--to the campus, and would do action analysis sessions as best I could in the dorm after classes. Some of the guys teased me about this once.

"I'll bet you wish you were around in the '20s!" one of them said laughingly.

Sure, I replied.
"And so do you. You could have gotten in on the ground floor with a guy named Walt Disney!"

I was never teased again.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-02T07:12:00.003-05:00

A friend living in Qatar sent me the most beautiful New Year greeting I've received.
He wished me good health, happiness, prosperity--and safety in the new Year. I would like to forward these good thoughts to anyone reading this blog (I think there are at least two of you.)

I spent New Year's Eve at the local club which had excellent food, some nice Danish people who knew my Sheridan colleague Kaj Pindal, and a band that was both good and loud. When the loud upstaged the good (I think it was when they started playing disco) I went home, and spent the midnight hour celebrating with little Gizmo, who is in good health and happy in her new home.

On New Year's Day I had a friend over to visit (not the tall dark man of Scottish 'first foot' superstition, but a tall blond Canadian woman--oh well, nobody's perfect. And anyway, we are not in Scotland.)
I asked her which of the Academy screeners she wanted to see and she chose THE DARK KNIGHT, which I had not seen. (I talked her out of viewing the Bond picture, since I thought that the Batman film was supposed to be better.)

I was appalled by this movie. It is an overly loud, overly long, paranoid fantasy. Maybe it's just me, but I found it nearly unwatchable and if my friend had not been there, I would have turned it off after the requisite half-hour.
Is it just me? How did this film get such stellar reviews? There is a lot of noise, very little plot...It just goes on and on...and the claustrophobic feel it generates is not negated by the widescreen effects. Cameras go round and round until you are dizzy.
I felt that I was being forced to listen to someone raving endlessly about tinfoil hats.

The movie has one thing to recommend it--Heath Ledger's Joker is an outstanding portrayal of madness --but there is no motivation for any of the characters--they just are. Please don't tell me I had to read the comics or see the other movies. I read Batman comics as a kid and don't recognize much here. But let that pass.
I was puzzled to see Robin missing, but liked Michael Caine's Alfred. Maggie Gyllenhall and Aaron Eckhardt were simply colorless; I couldn't believe that this woman would make that man do those things.

And although I like Gary Oldman very much, I thought he was miscast and his hairdo , glasses, and moustache made me think of Ned Flanders from THE SIMPSONS. I kept expecting him to say "Hi-diddly-ho, neighbour!"

THE DARK KNIGHT and THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON (a much better movie, though also too long) have subtexts that seem to represent two versions of the American Zeitgeist. (Spirit of the times, for those of you who don't want to follow the link.)
THE DARK KNIGHT, in my opinion, reflects the paranoia in the American political system that dates not from 9/11 as some think, but from the Red scares in the 1950s. It has not been as bad as in the Fifties (there is no blacklist--yet) but it's definitely not a country that I recognize--fear is the watchword! Franklin Roosevelt was wrong--we have to fear everything, not fear itself! The Enemy Is Out There! Which one? Take your pick. End of political rant.
BENJAMIN BUTTON has nothing in common with the original F. Scott Fitzgerald story than the title and the concept. Fitzgerald's story is: A man is born old in 1860 and lives backward in time and becomes a real nuisance to his descendants. The subtext: their parents' generation has nothing to say to the Lost Generation of the 1920s. (The story was written in 1922.)
BENJAMIN BUTTON the movie begins in 1918 and ends in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina for a reason. The movie version's subtext appears to be the decline and fall of the United States. Death and loss feature in every scene. The entire city is dying at the end of the movie. Things fall apart. The future cannot hold.
I liked the movie, but wonder at the self-pity that is also manifest in its subtext.

I wanted to be a film critic when I was younger, and I could never have held the job. But anyway, there's my two cents for two films. Don't get me started on THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX. I turned that one off after one hour's viewing, when the film still hadn't developed a plot....
May your New Year bring you good films as well as good news!

I'm having a small party on Saturday for those folks who are back in town or recovering from the holidays. No movies will be shown, unless I absolutely have to...

May 2009 be a good year for you all. Yes, both of you.
cheers!

Nancy

The Rich are Different from You and Me...

2008-12-25T13:29:00.019-05:00

This is a stupid Christmas present for all of you who, like me, are piddling around on the Internet on Christmas day instead of doing something more constructive with your time.
The source: Neiman-Marcus' Christmas Book. Not the new one, which still features wretched excess, if this article from the Telegraph can be believed (and I feel that it can). The page featured here is from the 1974 catalogue, a spectacularly rare, mint-conditioned piece of ephemera that I picked up from the fine Rochester shop Utter Clutter--Dames Don't Care, one of the best secondhand stores in Western New York.
Here's the craziest part. I remember receiving this catalogue when it was new. We moved into our Cranford, N. J. house in 1968, and the Neiman Marcus catalogues, which were addressed to the previous owners of the house, kept coming every Christmas even though my family wasn't remotely capable of affording the cheapest gift in its pages let alone the Faberge Egg (a real one, not a copy) that it advertised for a bargain price of 25 thousand bucks ($116,500.00 in today's money, a relatively stable price for the object when inflation is taken into account ...a "world time computer" advertised in the same catalogue that gave you "readout of any time in the world, plus consistent monitoring of your time...at the touch of a button" would, by contrast, set you back by $4,750.00 in 1974 dollars or $19,965.00 in 2008 dollars, and the PONG computer game for your home would cost $2,311.74 in today's dollars). We also got yearly packages of lovely oranges and apples intended for the same family from Harry and David's fruit company for many years after they had moved...my father innocently and honestly, and perhaps stupidly, returned the first package and the Post Office guys just ate the fruit. In the following year we came to our senses and ate the oranges and apples ourselves--(thank you, Mr. And Mrs. Wolfram!)
But to return to the catalogue. Every year the Neiman Marcus Christmas Book would feature a one off gift idea that gave rich people something that the rest of us couldn't afford if we wanted to and wouldn't buy if we could.
But there was a recession in 1974, and conspicuous consumption was...slightly out of style. So they scaled down from the solid gold diamondstudded electric swizzle sticks that i remember from another Christmas catalogue...to this.
It's a mouse ranch.
Yes, I am not making this up.
The text is so stupid that it could only have been written by someone who thought they were being clever. "Imagine the thrill of sitting around the campfire (or fireplace) singing songs of the prairie under the full moon (or lamp) with your own herd lowing softly (squeaking gently?) beyond the light of the fire. Picture the thrill of rodeo time: roping, dogging, barrel racing, prize stock exhibitions and sales. The N-bar M ranch is a controlled and utopian environment created in clear acrylic." (The italics are mine.)
What I want to know, all these years later, is this:
Did anyone actually buy this idiotic thing? For crying out loud, it cost over $3500.00, or about $15,000.00 in today's dollars! All for a few pieces of Plexiglas.
Somehow, I can picture George W. Bush doing it.
Addendum: Here is excess that makes the Neiman Marcus excess look restrained. Some people just have too much money.
Merry Christmas all.

Incredible Russian Animation

2008-12-18T14:45:00.003-05:00

This is a trailer from THE TALE OF FEDOT THE STRELETS, a new Russian animated feature based on the 1985 book by the Russian playwright and actor Leonid Feotov.

The feature film is being released in Russia today, and this trailer was sent to me by my Moscow-based animation friend Alexey Kobelev. An English translation of the poem can be found here.

I'm extremely impressed with the animation, which is done with cut-paper stop motion technique (possibly in After Effects?)

Deniseletter, a regular reader, directed me to the main website for this film. It's worth a visit just to see the incredible face of the actor who does Baba Yaga's voice! There is a high resolution version of the trailer available there, also some wonderful stills from the film. I really want to see this movie!

The art direction is based on Russian folk characters; I recognized Baba Yaga the witch even without the notes in the wikipedia article.

I am very interested in seeing the entire film and finding out how well it does in theatrical release. One thing for sure, it isn't really a kiddie movie!

Oh Noels

2008-12-16T06:28:00.004-05:00

This is my ridiculous card for the year. Normally I try to do a funny New Year's card. 2009 is looking so dire from the perspective of the scary 2008 that it took me a long time to get a theme this year, and even though I love the Lolcats at I can has Cheezburger? even they couldn't get me in a cheery enough mood. The faces on the cats, particularly the one on the right, were very critical. I redrew Tiger Cat twice and still am not happy with the drawing.

2008 was a memorable year for me in many respects: I got to move to Canada, get a new job at Sheridan that is a much better fit for me than the last one, and had my book published in Chinese. The second year student Leicas were in many cases of very high quality and the students were kind enough to inform me of this. The only thing that would top this news is getting my second book accepted by a publisher, or getting hitched, and I'm working on the first one. That one at least has a chance.

So that's the good news. You know the rest of the news, it's on every major news source. Might as well draw cartoons and have a few laughs.

Happy Holidays.

STORY by Disney

2008-12-15T10:56:00.006-05:00

I've just received a copy of STORY the first new edition in the Walt Disney Studio Archives Series. This is a heavy, impressive looking book. It was so heavy, in fact, that copies that reached a noted Canadian fantasy and comic bookstore were damaged in shipment--so my copy is a bit bumped in the corners. Since I don't mind a little cosmetic damage, I got it a bit cheaper and well in advance of the web bookstores that appear to have it on backorder.

STORY is just that. There is no 'finished' artwork here. What you see are the bare bones of storyboard. The artwork has no captions except for the names of the films. The storyboards are the main attraction here, and the artwork is presented exactly the way it survived...punch holes, erasures, and all. Story is the most dyamic and interesting part of animation in my estimation.

So it is very instructive to see how the drawing style on the Disney boards changes over the years. The early drawings from the Thirties shorts are well staged but the character designs sometimes are a bit primitive. Check out the drawings of Claribelle Cow and Clara Cluck from MICKEY'S AMATEURS (1936) to see how the art lessons at Disney started to affect the artists. The drawings of Clara are solid, with an excellent line, but the character is distinctly dated.
Similarly the boards for some of the Goofy shorts look like they might have come from a different studio than the one producing the exquisite Bambi and Pinocchio storyboards done at the same time period. Disney's studio had different expectations from the short and feature film units, and it shows.

My one complaint about this book is that the artists' names are printed in an appendix at the back of the book, rather than on the same page as their illustrations. The book is huge and heavy, and if you want to find out who did what, you have to flip from the front to the back. Perhaps this can be remedied in future editions--there is more than enough room on each page for the artists' credits.
I was genuinely surprised that the CLOCK CLEANERS layouts were listed as 'artist unknown'--they were done by Ken O'Connor, and he mentioned this in the interview I got with him that is printed in the appendix of PREPARE TO BOARD!

Much of this material has not been printed before, although some of it was on DVD releases of the films.

I was puzzled at some of the choices of illustration: the surviving ROUSTABOUTS sequence boards from DUMBO include a splendid scene of lightning illuminating a camel that is represented with two alternating boards on the DUMBO disc, yet only one of the two boards has been published here, eliminating the illusion and feeling of motion. Some Disney pictures are not included in the book or are underrepresented. THE JUNGLE BOOK has relatively little artwork, there is nothing from THE RESCUERS, ROBIN HOOD, THE ARISTOCATS, THE SWORD IN THE STONE, HERCULES, or TREASURE PLANET; and some of the selections are open to question. I'd far rather see Eric Goldberg's boards for the flamingo ballet in FANTASIA 2000 than the FIREBIRD drawings.

But this is an important and beautiful book that would be of interest to anyone who wants to work in animation story.

NATIONAL CARTOONISTS SOCIETY student scholarships

2008-12-06T06:04:00.006-05:00

Hello all,

The holiday season has started! and the semester is ending! so I'll be posting far more regularly.
I am pleased with how the first semester 'shook down' and will duplicate the timetable for assignments in the second one. I like the fact that my colleagues and I schedule our assignments so that they are not all due at the same time. We're also working 'cross platform' as it were. For example, students use the storyboards drawn in my course in Layout class when they do workbook and layouts. This is precisely the way things happen on a professional production. I'll be working closely on converging assignments with Peter Emslie (character design) and Mark Mayerson (animation) in the coming semester.
And I'm currently waiting for some news on the second book proposal, so watch this space...there should be an update sometime next week.
Now to the meat of the matter: there's a great new scholarship out there from the NATIONAL CARTOONISTS SOCIETY that is open to any college student in the USA, Canada or Mexico who will be a Junior or Senior in the 2009-2010 school year.
(I had to rephrase this as 'third or fourth year' to translate this into Canadian English) The student does not have to be an art major, though it certainly helps.
The NCS is a great group. I've been a member since 1980 and was once the general membership chairman. Al Jaffee of MAD magazine nominated me for the post when I was only 25 years old. As I was basking in the glory, he said, "Don't get a swelled head. I only nominated you because you show up to all the meetings!" Despite this I think I managed to do a good job.
The NCS was once only a New York phenomenon but it is now really an international organization; they even once had a foreign President (Lynn Johnston moved the cartoon 'capitol' to Toronto during her Presidency and was the first female President as well.)
The Milt Gross Fund was originally established as an emergency fund for cartoonists' widows. It has changed over the years to become a last-resort fund for cartoonists in economic difficulty. For years I and the rest of the New York chapter drew caricatures at the Bank of New York (long gone) and the telephone company offices on 42nd street (still there) in exchange for donations to the Fund.
The Fund was named for the famous cartoonist, who was also one of the earliest members of the NCS.
Well, the Milt Gross Fund received very generous grants from King Features in memory of the late syndicate editor Jay Kennedy and donations from prominent cartoonists that you can read about here; The Jay Kennedy Award college scholarship was awarded for the first time in 2008 and won by this student from the Rhode Island School of Design.
The current contest closes in February, 2009 so I have notified all of my Second Year Storyboard students about it, and I'm now posting the information here. Try your luck, you won't regret it. The winner gets to go to the Reuben Awards Ceremony (The cartoon Oscars), which will be held this year in Los Angeles; and there is a financial component too. Best of all, the NCS judges may award more than one scholarship at their discretion, so it's definitely worth trying for.

A Festive Weekend

2008-12-01T06:35:00.004-05:00

I spent Friday night in Toronto after visiting the One of a Kind Festival with Lynn Johnston, who drove down with a friend to visit that show and another involving diamonds at a museum. There was so much to do in the city that weekend that I wished I were twins...we missed the National Cartoonists Society Christmas party on Friday evening. Never rains but it pours.

On Saturday I went to the Canadian Aboriginal Festival, one of the best powwows I've ever attended. Some of the dancers looked like, and probably were, royalty. Their regalia was stunning. (This photo was taken last year; most of the dancers were even more splendidly turned out than this woman.) These photos give an idea of the scale of the Rogers Centre, the big sports arena. The roof was closed for the event, of course, though one speaker mentioned that once, it was opened by mistake during the event, which must have been something to see.
The best part of the Grand Entry was seeing Canadian Mounties, with hair in braids, doing the Grass Dance with the others in full regalia. One young petty officer carried the Eagle Staff Flag and also did the dance, in full uniform. (Again, this photo is from last year.) I was charmed by the Northwest Coast dancers who opened the show with a Wolf Dance.

Buffy Sainte-Marie was a special guest of honor (she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement awards in the music festival held on Friday night) and performed two songs, then signed her new album, RUNNING FOR THE DRUM, at her own booth. She is a tiny woman, but her energy projected all the way across that huge floor and up into the highest seats in the bleachers.

So all in all, I had a wonderful weekend.

JOANNA QUINN WRITES A BOOK!

2008-11-23T05:10:00.005-05:00

Joanna Quinn, one of my favorite animators, has just co-authored a book called DRAWING FOR ANIMATION with Paul Wells and Les Mills!

http://www.avabooks.ch/index.php/ava/bookdetails/978-2-940373-70-3

It will be released on December 9 in the USA, and I can't think of any animation book I'd be more eager to read this Christmas. Quinn is a stunning draftsman and animator whose only other book (that I know of) was illustrating a tie-in book for her charming Charmin' toilet paper commercials (you know, the ones with the bear in the woods). Mills is co-producer of her films (made in Wales at BERYL PRODUCTIONS) and a fine draftsman in his own right, and Wells is a professor and the author of several other books on animation.

I am going to talk this up to the Sheridan life drawing and animation teachers...what a wonderful looking book this is.

It discusses more graphic drawing styles along with Quinn's magnificent caricatures of human anatomy, so it should appeal to all students in advanced animation and character design courses.

And by a remarkable coincidence, my previous editor has shifted companies and is now with this publisher. I am going to see if I can contact them about my new idea for a book.

45 Years Ago Today

2008-11-22T19:28:00.003-05:00

I was in the first grade. The public address system came on at approximately two o'clock; we were told that school was dismissed since President Kennedy had been shot.
I walked home (can you imagine a six year old girl walking eight or so blocks to her home, all alone, from school? This was indeed a long time ago.) Some teenagers I met en route were crying. They told me that I should put my head down and cry too, so I did. I did not know what was going on.
As I reached the front steps of the house my mother yanked me in by the arm and slammed the door behind me as if the outside world was no longer a safe place for me. She was probably right.
The television stayed on for the next four days, and we stayed in front of it for most of that time. I don't remember sleeping or eating though I suppose we must have done both.
We did go out once. We had to get our best clothing on for Saturday for a special service at the synagogue where the rabbi led us in the prayer for the dead (Kaddish) for the soul of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. My spring coat was too small. I can still feel the scratchy crinoline and too-tight gloves. I scuffed my feet in the dead leaves as we walked home and back to the television.

YouTube has riveting, uncut footage of several hours of CBS News' coverage of the assassination. It starts with a soap opera, and several commercials actually air after the first announcement of shots is made. Then it switches entirely to the CBS newsroom alternating with shots of the Market Hall in Dallas, where a black waiter is seen crying and wiping his eyes with a table napkin. Few other people in that crowd appear to be affected as strongly. It is amazing to watch Walter Cronkite's reaction to the news as it develops--he is a consummate newsman, but there is a catch in his voice well before the official announcement comes (Dan Rather breaks the news of Kennedy's death ten minutes before official confirmation arrives). Cronkite repeatedly takes his glasses off and puts them on again and there are beads of sweat on his forehead.

We are a good deal more cynical and distrustful of politicians now than we were then, but the Kennedy assassination was mourned in heartfelt fashion by men and women of all races and creeds, all over the world. The miracle of the Internet brings the horror of that day back in black and white--and also in uncensored film of the horrific assassination. It is riveting and sickening stuff.

Unfortunately

2008-11-18T20:12:00.003-05:00

I had a bittersweet Hand Drawn Animation Day...it appears that Focal is publishing a book by another author on the same subject I wanted to write about.
They were nice about it, and said they would like to hear about different book ideas I can come up with.
The thing is this. This is the book I want to write. I am confident that it handles the subject in a completely different fashion from the one they plan to publish. I am sure that it will be useful to a variety of artists, and can be a better 'seller' than PREPARE TO BOARD. It's all business, of course, and I shouldn't take it personally, but I am not happy that this is happening. I liked working with Focal.
And since I want to write this book, and not some other, I'm looking for another publisher, much against my preferences...but it's like working for a different studio; there are other ones out there. The trick is to find a nice one.

HAND DRAWN ANIMATION DAY

2008-11-17T17:03:00.004-05:00

Friend and master animator Tahsin Ozgur has sent this request from Istanbul, Turkey, where he's currently teaching animation. International Hand Drawn Animation day originated in Turkey, and they would like to make it a worldwide celebration. So view a Bugs Bunny or Mickey Mouse or Joanna Quinn or Sylvain Chomet or other hand drawn cartoon of your choice tomorrow and think of pencils rather than pixels...as for me, I'm going to run the documentary "Frank and Ollie" and think of old friends still with us through their wonderful animated performances.

As in previous years we at Anadolu University and Maltepe University are observing Nov. 18th, anniversary of the release of Steamboat Willie, as a day to celebrate traditional hand-drawn animation.This year our
special theme will be Frank and Ollie, since Ollie johnston passed away since our last celebration.
Please join us in our celebration.
Tahsin ("Tash") and Lale Ozgur

Chinese PREPARE TO BOARD Book Cover

2008-11-14T07:15:00.001-05:00

The Chinese Edition

2008-11-14T07:09:00.001-05:00

I've just gone for my medical exam that is necessary for the Canadian Permanent Residency application, which I'm told is going along very well. Maybe they will give me one as a Christmas present, but it's safer to bet that this will occur in the new Year.

In the meantime, I have just received the Chinese edition of PREPARE TO BOARD!; and the edition appears to be sold in China only.

They took great liberties with the layout, and some of the artwork is now really too small to see; but by and large it appears to be the same book. I'll ask a Chinese student to read a bit and let me know if it is a fair translation.

There's No one as Irish as Barack Obama

2008-11-09T17:53:00.004-05:00

This song is absolutely wonderful, even if you didn't vote for him....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EADUQWKoVek

Here's the original version by a group called (ahem) Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys....

Hope for change

2008-11-09T13:06:00.001-05:00

Good Luck, Mr. President-Elect. You're going to need it.

But I liked what I heard on the radio this morning, so here is my first drawing of Mr. Obama.

Steve Bell

2008-11-09T11:27:00.004-05:00

Steve Bell (cartoonist for Britain's THE GUARDIAN) is one of the best political cartoonists out there.
He's not polite.
Political cartooning, particularly in Britain, has never been pretty, polite, or respectful of politicians, and this is a refreshing contrast to the 'funny' school of American political cartooning that started during the Reagan administration.

Here is one of his best recent caricatures:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cartoon/2008/nov/03/sarah-palin-bribery

Bell also has a highly original caricature of Barack Obama here, though I think he missed on John McCain:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/cartoon/2008/nov/04/uselections2008-johnmccain

I wonder what sort of caricatures people will be doing of President Obama in six month's time? Right now, the cartoonists are definitely giving him a 'honeymoon period'

"If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." --President Harry S. Truman

Second Edition of PREPARE TO BOARD!

2008-11-07T06:38:00.002-05:00

I've just received two copies of the second edition of PREPARE TO BOARD! from Focal Press. It has several corrections (all but one are new illustrations).

In the first edition, I inadvertently credited Bruce Block's book to his brother Dave. This error has been remedied.

There are new illustrations from SITA SINGS THE BLUES to replace the very low-resolution images that were in the first edition; and a better one of Bill Robinson's "Suzette" character.

So you don't have to run out and buy this...unless you absolutely HAVE to, of course.

Now this is a bit nutty, but I've got a new proposal in with Focal right now, and should hear from the editors in the coming weeks whether it's something they would like to consider publishing.
Since PREPARE TO BOARD is doing very well (thank you all!) it may have a chance. Watch this space and you may see...
of course, it also means I go into serious work overdrive for the next year, but I think I can write it during the winter and summer break here. The new book will be much different in that most of the illustrations will be animation drawings done by me. Oddly enough that makes it easier to do, since I won't have to track down different styles, etc. though a few friends might contribute a few.

The topic is one that has been lightly covered in the literature, although it's crucial to the creation of good animation.

More anon...

Butt-Ugly Politics

2008-11-06T06:28:00.006-05:00

Hi all.

Congratulations, fellow US citizens, on your new President.

Now, I've known cartoonists to deliberately vote for the wrong candidate because it was easier to caricature them. Fortunately this practice was abandoned last Tuesday.

But there is no question that the losing side was a lot easier to draw than the winners. I am probably going to post a nice caricature of Mr. Obama in the next few days, but in the meantime, I'm posting drawing that some readers may find offensive. But, in my opinion, so was their campaign. I was worried to see political candidates actively appealing to racists and neo-Nazis in a way that I have not seen since the bad old days of governors Lester Maddox and George Wallace in the segregationist Sixties South. (Update: The Secret Service has just weighed in on this subject--and curiously enough the article is in a British paper.)

Most of my friends found it hilarious, and so I'm putting it here as a farewell to a truly bizarre political 'team', one half of which won't be caricatured again for...at least four years...

Those of you familiar with the French satirical magazine L'Assiette au Beurre will recognize the source of the imagery--a 1901 caricature of English king, Edward VII.

Corny Cole Fundraiser

2008-10-27T07:23:00.004-04:00

Tina Price of the Creative Talent Network informed me in an email that the fund drive for Cornelius 'Corny' Cole has raised over ten thousand dollars. Update: the total from the CTN was $12,500. Way to go!

It's a small token of our appreciation.

I read a snide comment on another blog that Corny 'didn't deserve any more consideration than anyone else who lost houses in that fire.'

Well, he's an animator--and animators take care of their own. It's no surprise that they're the only cartoonists with a union. We don't work alone, we network and we have a strong sense of community. That community is worldwide, not just regional. It also extends through time and space; animators send messages to the future in the films that sometimes survive the makers. More about that later.

Another commenter on that same blog mentioned that Corny had thousands of 'brothers and sisters' in animation. Couldn't have said it better myself.

New Books and News

2008-10-25T06:16:00.006-04:00

We have come to the end of reading week, an interesting Sheridan custom of allowing students a break from classes at mid-semester. So Week Eight of classes is actually in Week Nine (at least that is the way I reckon things to keep my class plans straight.) Faculty continue to work during the break of course; I spent the week working on new presentations and attended two faculty meetings. I do lectures in three different classes in the coming weeks, and have been determining what to do and where.
The power boats are now out of the harbour, sitting on the bank for all the world like a child's toys newly removed from the bath. A huge crane with bands like the ones they use to lift horses, got the boats there. I hope to get a picture.
The sailboats are often winterized in Bronte harbour, but some are still here in the water. It remains to be seen how many will winter in the club's parking lot. I saw the huge crane nearby so the decision must be taken soon.
I've gotten a fitness assessment at the club and will be exercising there this winter to try to keep some sort of activity going when there is no chance of riding a bike or walking around--the bad weather is just around the corner. There was snow a bit to the north of us and I even saw some flurries on campus.
Winter preps are nearly done; I've got the right coat, hat and hopefully boots for the year and all the summer clothing has been mothballed, and winter clothes taken out.
Two interesting books have arrived: THE ALCHEMY OF ANIMATION: Making an Animated Film in the Modern Age by Don Hahn and DIRECTING THE STORY by Francis Glebas.
Don Hahn's book is a very reasonably priced, easy-to-read guide to how feature animation is produced. It's beautifully illustrated too. Hahn explains the differences between the production of stopmotion, hand drawn, and CGI feature films with succinct and well written text and illustrates it with preproduction artwork that in many cases has not been published before. The layout is generally good (some pictures might have been larger but all are clear and printing quality is high.) This book is highly recommended for students considering animation studies who might want to know more about the different techniques.
Here's a heads-up: I helped get Francis Glebas' DIRECTING THE STORY published and worked as a copy editor on the text. So I'm pleased to see such a handsome book resulting; but I haven't had time to read the finished version as of this writing.But, as Boss Tweed said, I can look at the pictures.
And guess what? They are all rough boards! Yes, that's the way story artists do it--and DIRECTING THE STORY will be an eye opener to people who try to do presentation boards on the first pass. Glebas' illustrations are rough, but they tell the story--and since boards are reworked, and reworked, and changed again and again...it makes sense to keep it rough until the story is straight.
Francis has mucho story experience on a raft of Disney features and has directed one feature for Disney and a sequence from another, so he knows what he is talking about. This book is best suited for a more advanced student (and it probably helps to read my book first, since the two volumes complement each other. End of commercial plug.)
For it makes no difference if you work in CGI, stop mo, or hand drawn animation...the storyboard is always the starting point. If you do not have the story set when you start animation production, the picture can flounder, run over budget, and join all the animated feature shipwrecks that have struck the reefs of poor planning.
Check out the chart on Page 38 of THE ALCHEMY OF ANIMATION to see how long storyboard changes go on (hint: they run from the near-beginning to the near-end of the picture, longer than any other department's input)
Also received: Volume 6 of the Looney Tunes GOLDEN COLLECTION. This one is more for collectors than the casual animation fan (who else but an animation collector would know, or care, about BOSKO and FOXY, the original Warner Brothers animated 'stars'?)
The Warner shorts were the birth of the music video, since they were created solely to plug music that played in the feature films that these shorts originally preceded. SHUFFLE OFF TO BUFFALO, SMILE DARN YA SMILE, are the titles of the music and the cartoons themselves; they consist of vignettes, characters singing the lyrics, rather than solid stories.
But collectors will have a field day. Hear the original 'trombone gobble' in YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOIN'! And I just hope they put in the 1931 cartoon that features--I kid you not--a chorus line of Donald Ducks rowing boats across a stage! Yep, I got the date right at least, and this cartoon is three years older than THE WISE LITTLE HEN. Now I just have to find out if a fellow named Freddy Spencer worked at Warners in 1931. (Ken O'Connor told me that this was the man who designed the Duck at Disney's.)
Some very rare cartoons are on this disc, including the disturbing FRESH AIREDALE. Listen to Greg Ford's commentary to find out why Chuck Jones made such a bitter cartoon.
But the biggest treat on Volume Six is the Leon Schlesinger Christmas Party, with 'sole survivor' Martha Sigall telling us who those people all are! Meet the Warner Nuts and see how they were just as crazy as their cartoons...the spirit of that long gone studio is beautifully caught in this ridiculous footage, in which management actually gets into the act satirizing themselves!
(I can't imagine that sort of thing happening now, at any studio, anywhere. Tell me if I am wrong.)
RUSSIAN RHAPSODY and HERR MEETS HARE, two wartime cartoons that at one time were relegated to the 'do not show' bin, are also included along with one of my favorites, Bob Clampett's HORTON HATCHES THE EGG and the first Tex Avery Warner cartoon, PAGE MISS GLORY. (the only period cartoon designed in the then-contemporary Art Deco style).
But I will wait in vain for the wonderful Road Runner/Coyote cartoon WILD ABOUT HURRY. It is not included here, and there will be no more compilations. But at least we have the six sets to play with. Thank you, all who made the sets available to all of us who love the Warner cartoons.
I'll have an update on the Corny Cole fundraiser sometime soon...the Creative Talent Network's fundraiser ended on Friday. Thank you to all who helped spread the news and to those who contributed to the fund. May we all be there for each other in times of trouble.

It's raining here today so the planned trip to Niagara on the Lake will keep til next week.

Corny Cole design

2008-10-16T22:33:00.000-04:00

BABETTE from RAGGEDY ANN, design by Cornelius (Corny) Cole

A Tragedy that You Can Help Remedy

2008-10-16T22:21:00.005-04:00

I have just received the shocking news that animator Corny Cole, a fifty-year veteran of the Disney, Warner, and Dick Williams studios who currently teaches at Cal Arts, lost his home and everything in it in the Marek brush fires currently burning north of Los Angeles.
Corny's entire life work was burned beyond recognition. He also lost all of his feline and canine friends, who apparently could not be evacuated with him. This, to Corny, was the greatest tragedy.

The CREATIVE TALENT NETWORK is running a fundraiser for Corny. His entire earthly posessions are now contained within his office at Cal Arts. Please give what you can, here:
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=485564
Thank you for helping a brother animator in his hour of need. My sympathies go out to Corny for the loss of his home, possessions, and friends.

THE NEVER NEVER by Old Man Pie

2008-10-11T08:12:00.002-04:00

I really love this song. Old Man Pie is a group from England that writes songs of social significance and satire.

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/nevernever

An Outing on the Lake

2008-10-05T06:13:00.006-04:00

The weather was cold and overcast without a hint of wind on Saturday, but THE DUCHESS, captained by Jock Macrae and his son, departed at 2 PM as scheduled, for a sail on Lake Ontario. And they took me along.
The sail had been arranged by the Oakville Club's dockmaster, who is very kind.
(Yes, I'm going to join the club within a week or so. It's worth it.)
Once we motored out a bit further from the shore the wind came up, actually rather briskly. I'd wondered whether the heavy leather jacket and hat I was wearing would be necessary. They were. The chill was palpable, but not intolerable. "This is the last sail of the season," Mr. Macrae said. Winter comes early here and the boats have to go into dry dock very soon. They will spend the winter in the club's storage lot. A wooden boat has to 'breathe' and have air around it when in dry dock, but THE DUCHESS was fiberglass unlike its sister ship the ANITRA, so she'll be bundled up like a silkworm to shield her from the snow and wind.
Once we were on the lake the view of the Oakville waterfront became much clearer. Immense mansions line the shore of the lake. The hoi polloi (that's me) can walk along the lakefront with frequent detours to the street, to avoid the estates. Others have large walls divorcing their property from the public way below, rendering them invisible or (apparently) smaller than their actual size. From the water their true dimensions were obvious. The sheer scale of some of these places boggled the mind. At least one of them had a small outbuilding which Mr. Macrae said was a chapel. (They get tax breaks for having a church on their property. One of the mansions has a statue of Buddha). One monster mansion, built by the CEO of a famous brewing company, in the Dutch style, was nearly the size of Buckingham Palace (I am not exaggerating here.) The minute it was finished, the company terminated the man's contract since they thought the house a bit on the ostentatious side.
Another mansion is so large that a seven year old girl and her servants live in one side of it, and her parents have a separate wing, like royalty. I asked how normal the child could be with this sort of upbringing. No one really knows. The parents have willed the house to the state in the coming time, to keep their taxes down.
There were a few older, smaller houses there as well, but they will probably be bought up and knocked down (if the Canadian market doesn't follow the American one) for more mansions. One of the mansions that is less than a decade old is going to be razed for a larger one.
The DUCHESS had two red and two green ribbons on opposite sides of her mainsail to indicate starboard and port and to keep her into the wind. You handled the wheel so that all four ribbons lay in a straight line, and that meant you were sailing properly. I'd never seen anything so simple yet practical. The younger Macrae told me that night sailing was much better than in the day. I asked how he saw the ribbons then; it appears that there are lights, and moonlight would also give them some indication of a view.
I took the wheel for a short while but since the wind was shifting rapidly, I thought it was better that the pros handled it. Gusts kept springing up from all quarters and we even saw a probable waterspout off the starboard bow --at a safe distance, thankfully.
A 'turkey race' was in progress on the lake. Numerous sailboats were cruising for the reward of a large Thanksgiving turkey. I don't know who won.
The sail lasted a little over two hours. It was very generous of these kind people to take a total stranger out, and we parted friends.
Afterward, I went to Toronto to the NUIT BLANCHE, but did not get very far. The turnout for this event, where hundreds of artists had projects viewed for free, was immense. Toronto was jammed and every venue had lines going around the block.
I got to one large artists' loft in the Queen West district, but couldn't see any of the shows. (all right, so I don't like crowds.) I bought a handmade hat by a well known hatmaker. It's shearling, very well designed and warm, covers my ears and neck, and looks very feminine. At first I balked at the price but when I consider that one of my colleagues at work is already coughing, and that other folk are suffering from flu (and it's only early October!) I considered this money very well spent.
So now I'm set for the winter with warm coat and hat. I think the boots will last for another year and the gloves and winter clothes are fine.

A Wonderful Trip to the Back Yard

2008-10-03T16:44:00.004-04:00

Last week the Greater Toronto Area (which includes Oakville at the extreme west) had an Open Door celebration where various historic buildings allowed people in for free tours.
I'd been busy in the morning and --after nearly deciding not to go--I decided that well, I'd take in a few of the Oakville attractions.
I began at the home of Oakville's first mayor; it's now Canadian Sound Systems. No, they don't work in film. They design home sound systems. And the inside of the house wasn't open at all, negating the promise of the Open Door. O well. I looked at the map and was pleased to see that the next nearest tour location wasn't a house at all. It was a boat called the ANITRA, quite naturally docked in the harbour nearby. So I walked down to it and sat in the back with a group of good natured people, listening to the story of the ship. She was built in the Twenties for the wonderfully named Montye Macrae, who had already built two other ships called ADANAC (Canada spelled backwards.) Someone suggested that he name the new ship ANITRA after the Egyptian dancing girl character in PEER GYNT, since "she had lines like an Egyptian dancer and was very exotic." So he did.
The ship has been in the Macrae family ever since. She has won racing prizes and also was clearly designed as a party boat--a trip below decks showed brilliantly designed spaces (there are eight berths down there, a kitchen, a head, a closet, and an icebox, all neatly framed in teak.)
I walked over to a small dock to see the ANITRA from the water. Some of the ladies who had been on the ANITRA with me were getting into a small launch. "Do you want to go over to the club?" the man at the helm asked, indicating the Oakville Club across the way. I assumed that it was also open for the Open House Day. I said I did not want to be any trouble, but he replied that it would be a very long walk for me up to the bridge and over, so I might just come along with them. So I got into the little motor launch.
The man, whose name was Larry, asked us if we were in a hurry to get over. "Does anyone want to take a trip up the creek?" he asked."There are hawks and herons there in the water."
No one objected, and so up the creek we went.
What a change. My apartment building, which was about 100 feet from the creek, was invisible. A few townhouses associated with the building across the street were barely visible. A whole new world opened up on that creek: reeds, weeping willows, pristine water (they caught a 5 pound pike there the other day, Larry told us) and best of all, wonderful little private patios and ladders from the big houses on the other side of the creek. Yachts were also parked along the eastern side.
The western side did not reveal herons, but the family of hawks was out hunting. "The water is two feet lower than usual," Larry said. "The Quebecers take it."
He took the launch up the creek for what seemed like a mile, then headed back, saying he'd better go since he'd be missed. He is the Dockmaster for the Oakville club.

Well, what can I say about the club itself? We had the tour, and I am determined to join. It won't be immediately since my finances at this stage are not yet recovered from the move, but it will be this year. They have a gym, a restaurant, social events, and best of all a feeling of community. I certainly could use a bit of that right now.

Larry was generous enough to arrange for me to go out on a boat with one of the club members; it turns out that the gentleman is a relative of the man who owns the ANITRA. So tomorrow I am going to go out on Lake Ontario with some very kind people who will--so I'm told--put me to work doing something on the boat.

And there is a Nuit Blanche in Toronto that same evening, with hundreds of artists showing projects for free all over downtown. I also get together with a new friend on Sunday. It should be a fun weekend.

So I'll stop writing now and come back when I have something to say about these events.
Happy weekend, all.

THE STARKER

2008-09-27T21:16:00.004-04:00

I drew this caricature of the
infamous Jewish gangster, BIG JACK ZELIG, for author Rose Keefe. Her new book THE STARKER is the biography of this very unusual gangster--and it conclusively solves a famous early 20th century murder case. (The Rosenthal-Becker case was the second biggest news story of 1912.) Ms. Keefe was kind enough to send me a signed copy of THE STARKER, and this is my way of paying her back...

2008-09-26T21:13:00.000-04:00

Learning Something New

2008-09-26T21:03:00.007-04:00

Sheridan College hosted a group of First Nations artists, storytellers, and elders for its first-ever outreach to the Native people of Canada.

I only wish that I could have attended more events; I was at the opening dedication and then, after class, went to hear a Meti woman speak about her culture.

The Metis are the descendants of Native women and French trappers. They have been in Canada for several hundred years, but were generally 'neither fish nor fowl' in census. The culture remained undocumented, the speaker said.

For it was a separate culture. The Metis wore specially woven sashes, played spoons and special fiddles (made partially of birchbark) and danced to an unusual asymmetrical beat.

"Have you any time after your talk? I think that there is an animated film that is about your people," I said. The lady acquiesced and we walked to the library, where a print of Frederic Back's CRAC! was easily obtained.

Sure enough, the film is about the Metis. "He's got the Hudson's Bay blanket right! and there is the sash! and there is the whiskey jug next to the musicians!" the lady exclaimed joyously, while wondering at the work that went into Back's beautiful Oscar winning film.

So, the film that I thought was about French Canadians, was in fact about a particular kind of Canadian--most of whom lived in Ontario; though a few went West.

I wondered if Back himself was a Meti. No, it turns out he is not. He was a European immigrant to Canada. In which case CRAC! is a meticulously researched film.

It is about a culture that is forgotten and relegated to a museum, or so I thought.

Not so, my guest said. It is about the disappearance of the family.

I think that we are both right.

Another Environmental Film

2008-09-26T06:46:00.001-04:00

Here's a film from the excellent Steve Whitehouse, link courtesy of Dermot O'Connor (whose idleworm.com site features some of the best flash gaming around as well as trenchant commentary on Things as they Are)

http://www.whitehouseanimationinc.com/commonscents.htm

All Better Now

2008-09-25T09:20:00.003-04:00

Hello all you well wishers,
My film THE OTHER EDEN is now on Channel 4 and Aardman's new beta-site, 4mations.

I have watched a few of the films and while they are a mixed bag there is great potential here: a Youtube type site aimed solely at animators.

I wish them well, after the early fracas... and the film is getting some good reviews. This is really an interesting development. I've always thought that the internet was the animators' best friend since it enables us to get our films out before the public without dealing with predatory distributors (as I and some other animators have had to in the past) or dismissive festival programmers. We can put up the film, people can watch it, and the middleman is eliminated. I'm all for that.

So try 4mations. See what you get.

THE OTHER EDEN

2008-09-23T21:35:00.003-04:00

I made this film at RIT to gain the last six credits I needed to graduate.

Since I had only ten weeks to complete it, I used after effects. THE OTHER EDEN is my first paperless movie; and I thank Professor Chris Jackson for helping me learn this excellent program.

I wanted to do something like Frederic Back's CRAC! which was rendered beautifully in pencil, and I think that the shot with the polar bears comes closest to the look. I can only wish that I could do a film that is as amazing as Back's work, but this is sufficient for what turned out to be eight weeks' work. The "pencil" rendering was actually done with the program's 'hair' filters, put in 3D, rotating at high speed in different directions. And I used Photoshop to create all the original artwork. Though it is flat artwork most of it is actually working in the third dimension.

Chris Jackson said that I was using the program in a manner that hadn't been originally intended, and that this was a good thing.

So here it is.

Ottawa Animation Festival or part of it anyway.

2008-09-22T16:25:00.025-04:00

Well, folks, since I was only at Ottawa for the weekend, I really can't report on the entire festval. I can only report on what, and who, I saw. So here goes. And it's a bit of a stretch since the humungus traffic jam that closed off the entire highway just outside of nowhere, kept us sitting in the traffic for three hours. I got in at 1:30 this morning and taught two classes today without falling asleep once. (snore) But now i'm awake. I have never loved trains more than I did this morning...but if I'd taken my train back, I'd have not been able to attend Eric Goldberg's seminar on characters on Sunday afternoon. And that would have been a bad thing.

So on to the show...
I got to Ottawa by train on Friday the 19th with no trouble, met a nice lady on the way going to a writer's convention in the same city, and chatted for most of the trip. We shared a taxi to our respective hotels, and I had my passport waiting on the dresser, so I dropped the baggage off and attended Skip Battaglia's reception first. There I met Tom Gasek, Jeremy Galante, and a few RIT students who'd made the trip. Nice times.

The reception at the local Ami Cafe later on featured animator chow (heavy on the convenience food) and some good hummus, and better art. There were original drawings by Brian Larkin and some interesting robots made of metal found objects (I love stuff made of found objects.) After a while I wilted and went to bed.
There in the hotel were my roommates Marion Kulyk, an assistant director at Nelvana Studios, and a young animator named Nelson, who is designing a video game. Marion had brought cheese and berries and enough food for a small army, from a trip to nearby Quebec. And they found a balloon that said "Happy Birthday" floating in the parking lot, so they tied it to my bedroom door. Thoughtful and fun, and very pleasant roommates. We hit it off very well at once.

We were in a centrally located hotel that had a small cafe, but for my birthday on the 20th I went over to the Chateau Laurier, a fantastic French confection built in 1912 by Charles M. Hayes, president of the Canadian National Railroad and one of the more prominent victims of the Titanic sinking --he did not live to see this fine hotel open. I ordered French toast for breakfast and the hotel gave me a lovely mess of seasonal berries as a birthday present.
I heard people talking animation nearby and was recognized after a bit by Chuck Gammage, owner of the eponymous studio that turns out a very nice reel (go to the site and view the reel to see what I mean.)
After breakfast I went out to the Teletoons Animation Scholarships to see how the Sheridan reels competed with the other student films from Canadian schools. Well, it was really obvious that the Sheridan animators were doing some wonderful films. I thought some of the ones that did not win, place or show, were worthy of attention, but I don't think the Teletoons people wanted to give all the awards to one school! I was particularly impressed with Vladimir Kooperman's C BLOCK, but I also liked the very nice and understated ROMANCE IN GRAPHITE by Melissa Maduro.
Jeremy Galante, formerly of RIT and now teaching at Edinboro, took me out to lunch for my birthday, and I then went to what Lily Tomlin used to call the 'piece of resistance'- IDIOTS AND ANGELS, by Bill Plympton. Dang, this guy just keeps getting better and better. A subtitle to this film could have been BAD LUCK WHITEY...there's actually a reference to Tex Avery's BAD LUCK BLACKIE short brilliantly woven into this animated noir story about a horrible man who learns to be a mensch, courtesy of a pair of beautiful white wings that inexplicably grow out of his back. Watch the Avery cartoon and then the Plympton and see if you can catch the reference: to me it was loud and clear. Hint: It involves paint.
Charlie Chaplin was working on a film called THE FREAK toward the end of his life. It, too, was a story of a human who grows wings and is not understood by other humans. But the nameless protagonist of IDIOTS AND ANGELS not only isn't understood by others...he doesn't understand his own metamorphosis and is ridiculed by the grubby inhabitants of the sordid, grey and brown bar he seems to spend nearly all his free time in. (The art direction of this film is unlike that of any other Plympton picture: it seems marinated in cigarette smoke and auto exhaust.) Even the pretty butterfly that evolves, significantly, from a worm that lands on the man's head, is only a pale yellow and not a brilliant burst of color. The symbolism is there, but the man is dead to all beauty and finer things, and soon after that, so is the butterfly.
The subject matter is not the stuff of the usual American animated film--a man dueling with his own soul --but Plympton gets his message across with a few dashes of his trademark sexual humor. It's all in full service to the story, which is told entirely without dialogue.
Charlie Chaplin would have loved this.
I went to Barrymore's for the allegedly famous party. Got there after traversing a minefield of a street, to be hailed by Mike Sporn, who was here for a retrospective of his work, and Candy Kugel, up visiting the festival after winning an Emmy for writing PBS's BETWEEN THE LIONS. Congratulations to both!
After a while we realized that we seemed to be the only people in the line who were over the age of twenty (ahem, I was celebrating my twenty-first birthday), and so Candy announced that she was heading back to the hotel. I walked with her, and we had an interesting hike down and up a mess of stairs, past the fortresslike American Embassy that people kept teasing me about all weekend, and eventually I got to the Ami Cafe again (Candy stopping at her hotel.) There I met some of the Sheridan third year students and talked their ears off. But they did not seem to mind.
I got lost getting back to the hotel, which was actually around the corner... and after a one hour walk through the very safe and clean streets I got back to more or less where I started.
On Sunday I had some of the excellent cheese Marion brought, and went to the National Gallery where Eric Goldberg was doing a seminar on Putting Life Into Your Characters.
Eric showed some early tests from ALADDIN and a surprising amount of work on Phil from HERCULES in his very entertaining lecture. The book is very good--I think he's replaced Preston Blair's, and also John Halas' TIMING FOR ANIMATION. Not bad.
There was no time to do any book signings, so all of us left around then. I did meet up with Luc Chamberland, whom I hadn't seen since 1988, and whom I reminded of a famous incident with the story reels for a film called WE'RE BACK. You know what I mean, Luc. It's funny but I won't write it here!

And so now I'm back at Sheridan, with a good presentation today and more tomorrow and the rest of the week.

I had a good time. I'd like to see more but I always believe you should leave your audience 'wanting more'. It was a nice birthday weekend, filled with new and old friends and good films and the pretty city of Ottawa--pretty, until it snows, that is!

Ottawa Trip

2008-09-18T19:35:00.003-04:00

I'm leaving tomorrow for a weekend in Ottawa. This will be my first time at the famous Film Festival there; I have never attended, not even when YOUR FEET'S TOO BIG played there about 25 years ago. Freelancing meant you could never take time off, ever!
There will be lots of people there whom I know, and I'll have a report when I get back on Sunday night.
I literally have to run out the door at the end of tomorrow's class to catch a bus to the station, then transfer from the GO train to the "Via Rail" that should take a few hours to get there. I look forward to the trip; Via Rail is a very civilized railroad, as I know from past experience.
The super and his wife will look after Gizmo, so that is one less thing to worry about.
So stay tooned, as the cliche goes: more anon.

David Celsi's Blog

2008-09-15T05:52:00.003-04:00

David Celsi (also known as David Chelsea) has just started a wonderful new blog that can be viewed here.

David's book, PERSPECTIVE! FOR COMIC BOOK ARTISTS, is the last word on the subject. Hey, the man draws like Winsor McCay!

I look forward to frequently visiting David's blog and can recommend it to all animators and cartoonists who appreciate good drawing.

ADVENTURE TIME AND STORY TIME

2008-09-14T06:30:00.012-04:00

I've just been reading the posts of my new colleague Peter Emslie on his blog,
The Cartoon Cave. One recent post discussed a Cartoon Network show based on a short film called ADVENTURE TIME, which some other blogs have praised and which Peter dislikes.
At first I couldn't watch this for more than ten seconds...the style was unappealing in the extreme. Then I remembered what my dear teacher and friend Ken O'Connor (a 50-year veteran of the Disney Studio) thought about THE SIMPSONS...Ken was hostile to the show because of its style, even when I argued that a more conventional cartoon style would be detrimental to the writing and absurd characters that made the show well worth watching.
So I tried to give ADVENTURE TIME another chance. I still couldn't watch more than three minutes. I lost interest almost immediately in the characters and their inexplicable transformations. And it wasn't because it was a 'non Disney' design. (I dislike imitation "Milt Kahl" style as much as poorly designed shows like this one.) No, there was a basic problem: ADVENTURE TIME was simply not appealing to me in any way--design, animation, and especially story.
I'm discussing linear and nonlinear storytelling in my lectures, and I'll be showing examples of both types of films for the remainder of term. I have always taught that there is no 'one way' to animate, design characters, or (certainly) to tell a story. But this film fails me on a very basic level: it does not entertain me, or make me interested in what any of the characters are doing. That, in the end, is all that a story should do: keep viewers interested in seeing what happens next.
ADVENTURE TIME is all over the place. It doesn't have the unifying elements that are found in the very first Terry Gilliam short film, STORY TIME; in "Doug the Cockroach" Gilliam parodies a linear story and has secondary characters run away with the film when the hero proves to be completely uninteresting, with no conflicts in his story. The second half of the film, "THE ALBERT EINSTEIN STORY" does have a structure to its nonlinear madness. The words 'Hands', 'Foot' and 'Dance' lead the action in an unconventional, but weirdly logical, direction.
The Christmas cards at the end are unified by subject (Christmas) and develop their own logic from the shapes and characters found in the standard card designs. A church steeple looks a little bit like a missile, therefore it becomes one. The Wise Men follow the star, so the star 'leads'--though not very well. A chickadee killed in one card falls into another card's scene, where it is suddenly violently out of scale. There is a highly entertaining logic in these unexpected developments that puts Terry Gilliam's work head and shoulders above ADVENTURE TIME, even though it may be no better animated in the 'classical' sense.
All films have structure, even the so-called 'experimental' ones. There is a development and variation, whether in color, music, or pacing, that serves to unify the film.
And I agree that Simon's Cat (which has a new example up, in addition to the two older, even more hilarious films) would be a far more appealing cartoon series than ADVENTURE TIME. I love these simple, well made little shorts and find them hugely entertaining.
But that's just me. And a few million others, from the number of hits on SIMON'S CAT'S videos.
De gustibus est non disputandum, but some things just are intrinsically better than other things. The artist 'becomes' an artist by learning the difference between mediocrity and quality. It's a good thing to aspire to in other aspects of life, as well. And no, it has nothing to do with budget, the number of drawings, or the number of big stars (animated or live) attached to the project. There are all sorts of big budget animated turkeys that don't have the charm and appeal of SIMON'S CAT.

Hans Bacher's Back!

2008-09-12T21:46:00.004-04:00

If you look at the top link to the right, you'll see Hans Bacher's new art direction blog, ANIMATION TREASURES, at ONE1MORE2TIME3, !

Welcome back, Hans! This new blog is a must-see for all students of animation art direction.

A Beaver on the North Bay Carousel

2008-09-08T20:19:00.003-04:00

As promised, I am printing a picture of one of the charming Canadian animals on the North Bay Carousel, taken during my recent trip to the area. The other animals (moose, lynx, loon, deer) are also charming, and I really loved the gorgeous gondola framed by two carved loons, done in finest Art Nouveau style. This is the less publicized of the two carousels on the North Bay waterfront.
I'm now into the second week of classes, and it's been a very interesting experience. My slide shows--a new feature of my lectures-- have to be shoehorned a bit to fit precisely in the 45-minute class time slot. The lecture is one hour on Mondays, and I have five two-hour studio storyboard classes during the rest of the week with the five sections of students in the second year.

In two weeks' time I will be visiting the Ottawa animation festival for the weekend. I've never been able to go before, and hope that I can manage it now without getting too overloaded! Fortunately there are cat sitters available, I can grade assignments on the following day, and there is a room to share in the city that isn't too dear. So the adventures continue.

I'll have a complete writeup on what I saw in Ottawa after I get back. Postings will be a little slow til then, due to the time spent on classwork and presentations.

cheers!

I makes a Lolcat

2008-09-08T20:18:00.000-04:00

It r silly.

Getting Ready

2008-08-26T05:54:00.004-04:00

Work starts in earnest on the second, when term begins; but there is a lot going on this week at the college. Today I am at a departmental meeting that then breaks up 'by year' so that we can discuss things that need discussing. I've got to pick up a laptop computer and give my lesson plans to my second year colleagues Mark Mayerson, Michael Hitchcox, and Scott Caple. And I got my OHIP Canadian insurance card, which means I'm fully 'covered' in the new country's medical plan as of September 1. Which is good news...I'll probably need it. Some kind of sinus attack is making me unhappy every morning and I need a few minor tuneups before school starts. It's nice to get all your ducks in a row before the real excitement begins.
Yesterday I went on a pleasant walking tour of parts of downtown Toronto with NCS member and fellow cartoonist Patricia Storms, whom I met at the Doug Wright awards a while back. We found a good used bookstore right on Spadina avenue that had some unusual and rare Canadian cartoon books. "Mine!" Patricia said, rushing for one small book and then explaining to me that the interesting cartoons featuring a bear character were very well known in Canada. I'd never seen it so I'm afraid I can't remember the artist's name or the title of the panel cartoon. (Thanks to the readers of the blog, of whom I have at least two, for informing me about J. M. Simpkins' JASPER THE BEAR. Is this the first cartoon character to have a public park named after him? Take that, Yogi.) Not much else to say except that I'll be spending the rest of the week on my first presentation, which will be done in-class rather than in the lecture hall due to the cancellation of Monday's class for Labor Day. The big classroom goes into operation in Week 2. I was able to plan the remaining lectures around Canadian Thanksgiving, which also falls on a Monday; (October 13). It's a lot easier to do this midway through the course.
The weather has turned sharply cooler and this is in some ways a Good Thing; but I'll probably be forced to take the herb garden indoors within a week or so.

Canadian Exhibitions

2008-08-22T15:39:00.005-04:00

It's been a busy week or two...most of it was spent getting ready for school in September, but the weekends have been spent exploring more of my new country's attractions. On the 16th and 17th I was honored to be one of the invitees to Lynn Johnston's 'farewell and hello' party for FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE, in Cottage Country.
A word about Cottages: These correspond to the USA's "cabins in the country". Everyone here in Oakville seems to 'go to the Cottage' on a weekend. So I was thrilled to be able to go to one, myself.
Lynn actually doesn't live in a cottage; it's a full sized, very nicely laid-out house on a pretty lake. Other small houses nearby correspond more to the 'cottage' description than her very comfortable home. Many are located on nearby Lake Nipissing, (pronounced with the accent on the first syllable, thankyouverymuch.) Lynn's friend went into hysterics when I got it wrong.
She kindly drove me up to Lynn's house; and we toured the city of North Bay after the party.
The area is lovely in summer, but in the spring a lot of the dreaded Black Fly and No-See-Ums are about. These legendarily bloodthirsty things bite and generally make life extremely unpleasant in May and June. There's always a catch to a beautiful area...
The North Bay waterfront had two wonderful carousels that Lynn and her husband helped create. This one,
http://www.northbaycarousel.com/
is a loving recreation of the great turn of the 20th century carousels; each handcarved horse is sponsored by a local business or resident. Many artists contributed to this gorgeous work of kinetic art. Lynn's characters are painted on two of the central panels and she sponsored one horse as well. (I wasn't able to ride on it but sat next to it on a horse named "Pearl". All the horses can be seen on the carousel's website.)
Next to this fine carousel was an extremely amusing one that featured Canadian animals. I rode on one of the carriages and photographed the beavers, moose, and other folk-art styled carvings and will try to post some of them in the next blog entry when the pictures are back. It takes a while to get film developed nowadays! but it will be worth the wait.
On Wednesday I went to the Canadian National Exhibition. Blog regulars might remember the ghastly 'cookbook' illustrations I printed from a 1956 CNE handout a while back. Well, the CNE had many more wholesome historical items on display in a special show, right next to the "Quilt of Belonging", which has a square representing every nation on the planet (as of 2003, when the quilt was finished). *Most remarkably, the quilt also has squares representing the First Nations of Canada (called Native Americans in the USA.) The work is superb and the quilt is a very pretty sight.
I took in a Gypsy Horse show performance at the Ricoh Stadium that featured trick riding by a young pair of pigtailed, blonde sisters in addition to some excellent acrobatic work by their elders.
There was also a Farm complete with live pigs, cows, ostriches, horses and chickens; the wonderfully named "Horse Palace", an artist' display, a surprisingly neat midway (Canada seems to have very little litter, which is a good thing) and guest performers including, of all people, Mickey Rooney.
I didn't stay long enough to catch his show but admire his spirit.
My one criticism of the event was that the "Sitting Pretty" exhibit on the history of the toilet was a bit too subdued. If you are going to do a history of the toilet, hyperbole should be the order of the day, not modest, half-hidden little cubicles. Something like the Mr. Rooter Marching Toilets...or the infamous marching toilets complete with the Toilet Bowl Queen from Pasadena's 1998 DOO DAH PARADE, which I had the honor of participating in. But I was marching that year with the Howl-a Lujah Chorus of bassett hounds, walking two of Ron Clements' pets on red ribbons--I was certainly not elected Toilet Bowl Queen!
I will post pictures of the carousel, etc. when I have them back. Meanwhile, another trip is planned for tomorrow...more anon!

FJORG at Siggraph

2008-08-13T06:02:00.006-04:00

SIGGRAPH, the biggest computer graphics and animation show in the world, has just concluded its second FJORG competition in which sixteen teams consisting of three animators each has completed a short animated film to a pre-set story (with pre modeled and rendered characters and supplied dialogue) in just 32 hours.

The contest ended on the 12th and judging is today.

The FJORGERS must create the story, plan the scenes, animate them, and render the finished film with final track while dealing with 'distractions' such as fire eaters, belly dancers and visiting animators (thanks to Tom Sito for the heads-up about the contest ending!)

Two of the teams are comprised of RIT students, all of whom were in at least one of my animation and drawing courses; it'll be fun to see what they do and how they do.

Here are the RIT teams:

Team Rocketpants: Neil Bonsteel, Brianne Francisco, Riannon Delanoy

The Re-Animators: Wes Storhoff, Ignacio Barrios, Brian Monroe

Their topic this year was THE SADDEST STORY EVER TOLD.

Last year's competition was won by this outstanding film from Ohio. (The team was from Bowling Green University.) It's economically told, uses the provided characters and simple elements (no time wasted on modeling new materials) covers the subject matter ("An Impossible Escape") and is very well directed. And it's also very funny.

Watch this space for the names of the winning animators, either today or tomorrow!

Update: You can view each of the films by clicking on the "Animation" link underneath the team name on the left side of this page. http://old.siggraph.org/s2008/attendees/fjorg/

LYNN JOHNSTON SPEAKS

2008-08-10T09:26:00.027-04:00

The fourth Doug Wright Awards ceremony was held at the Toronto Reference library on Friday, August 8. The winners are listed in the link; I particularly liked THE MAGICAL ADVENTURES OF LONG TACK SAM, the first 'graphic novel' adapted from a motion picture made by the same artist!
The Doug Wright award is named for Doug Wright, whose strip NIPPER (also known as Doug Wright's Family) ran for over three decades in Canadian papers. It had one strong advantage over most comics of the day--it was entirely without dialogue, an advantage in a bilingual country. And it was beautifully drawn.
There was also a special award called THE GIANTS OF THE NORTH. Lynn Johnston was the seventh inductee to this special panorama.
The logo for the award (and the awards themselves) were beautifully designed by Seth, who is also the book designer for the COMPLETE PEANUTS books published by Fantagraphics Books and a famous cartoonist in his own right. Seth looked rather like he could play Hildy Johnson in THE FRONT PAGE without any costume change; he dresses rather like a newsman of the Thirties complete with snappy fedora and tailored suit.
Lynn Johnston took the stage and looked at the GIANTS OF THE NORTH logo, which features three bearded men flanked by two Castor Canadiensis.
"I wonder which one of these characters is female?" Lynn enquired. There was a general intake of breath.
("The beavers, of course!" I whispered to the man in the next seat, who did not react. Canadians are generally very polite. I'm not acclimatized yet.)

Lynn then proceeded to give an amazing lecture on comics, comic artists, and the future of FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE. The last comic of this famous strip will run on August 31, but that is not the end of the story. Here's a brief summation paraphrasing what she said. Lynn has graciously given me permission to print some exciting news. Any errors in the report are mine.

The Hardest Story

"Story comes from within you. I had a personal connection to most storylines...they were based on people I knew...The hardest story I ever wrote--the best story I ever wrote--was when Lawrence (Michael Patterson's high school friend--n.b) 'came out'.
...I remember the anguish of a small-town editor in the Southern states. He was harrassed. He had to drop the strip...he liked it, but he wrote me 'My kids were harrassed at school, the dog was spraypainted...I have to drop the strip.'"

(The 1992 landmark series where a teenager tells his best friend that he is gay resulted in many American papers dropping FBOFW, but "for every one that dropped it, two more signed on!" There was laughter and applause as Lynn stated this. Here's some of the criticism she received.)

Lynn: "There is a 'code of ethics' for comics. My strip was seen as 'family friendly' but the syndicate approved the story line. Nowadays, they would probably be less upset..."

"...Gary Trudeau (Doonesbury) got away with it...I was nailed to the wall! There were 7000 letters. We made three piles: "Yes" (approve), "No" (rational) and "No" (inflexible). Very few of the 'noes' were rational--most were inflexible..."

"...April (the younger daughter) has been accepted at Guelph University!" (laughter from audience and applause) "You'll have to read about this on the last day."

(The story wraps up on August 31--n.b.)

"...The drawings were becoming stiff. I couldn't move. And I couldn't make jokes about little kids any more. Michael has children...but I have no grandchildren...and I couldn't really see it any more. It's better to end it when it's time. It all comes full circle."

For Better or For Worse: The Sequel

(The Universal Press Syndicate suggested that the strips be rerun, starting from the beginning.)

Lynn: "New material drawn in the old style will be added when the strips repeat. I want to go back and fix things! I draw so differently now...but you do the best that you can possibly do."

"...The comic strip page is called 'real estate'. Other syndicates are going after my papers! (There is only a certain amount of space on the comics page, and every new strip displaces an older one. --n.b.)
"The clouds are gathering! If it is going to run again, it's going to be the best I can make it."

Killing Farley

"...He's coming back. He'll be coming into the strip again, soon....All comics are written eight weeks before publication. Farley died on the same day that Timothy McVeigh blew up the Murragh building in Oklahoma City. You can't judge what the reaction would be...(Lynn told me that she received more negative mail when Farley died than when the grandmother died; she knows now that this was a reaction to the current events, not a mistake in priorities.--n.b.)

"...Farley is appearing in a new children's book, FARLEY FOLLOWS HIS NOSE. There will be a stuffed Farley toy. And a group of Ontario veterniarians licensed him for the FARLEY FOUNDATION, which pays the bills for sick pets when the owners cannot afford to."

"...The Twin Towers came down at the same time as Michael and Deanna's wedding. Deanna's dress designer said, 'You can't have them get married!' But the strips are already in the works, they can't be changed. The response was: "We're glad you didn't stop the wedding...we needed to see something funny."

"...The characters grew as my own children grew. The setup naturally mirrored that. My usual response to a gag is "And then what happened?" It's easier (to amplify the situation) than write a gag-a-day. That will drive you crazy. I developed the characters, but they were fantasy. Real life is BORING! There are times when you think you are brilliant, but how often does that happen? Everything (in the strip) was scripted. The characters developed as individuals; they weren't my own family."

On legacy strips:

Lynn worked with a staff of two other artists; she penciled and inked the main characters herself, one staff artist inked the backgrounds and the other did the color work. This will not be the case when the strip is reissued.

Lynn: "I can do it all myself now. The early style is much simpler....I tried to make it a legacy strip, I contacted an animator and spoke with him about his taking it over. You need to be an animator, have an animator's sense of perspective and body movement...we decided it would not work. 'It's your dream, he said..."

On newspapers and Web cartoons:

"...The newspapers are in trouble. It's not like it used to be. There was more space. There's now talk about the Web. Anyone who wants to test their mettle can put their mistakes on the Web and get feedback...(comic strips) are a little play. Anyone who doesn't work for an audience isn't going to make it. (The Web) is great for comic strip artists and animators."

On the difficulty of drawing cartoons:

"Someone young might not have the determination to do this for 25 years. They drop out."

(Audience member: "Why? Don't they drink as much?")

Lynn: "Six weeks dailies, 8 weeks Sundays. Six weeks dailies, 8 weeks Sundays. Jim Davis (Garfield) wants to put this on a shirt! (You must have strips ready this far ahead of publication--n.b.)
"...A lot of young people will shine for two or three years and then they just can't take it. It's a different era. I'm thrilled they can't make it!" (laughter from audience) I'm extremely competitive."

"...(Cartoonists are) the most generous, kind, warmhearted group of people. There aren't that many of us. We are very supportive, very strong. But it's a hard, competitive job."

On Fame and Cartooning

"...I'd like to take what I've done and do something good with it. The stupid thing about being famous is it's just crap. It's the sugarcoating on the M&M--and the good stuff is inside. It's really not good for you, not good for your family..."

"...I would like to do something for the betterment of society, rather than retire or disappear. Take whatever I've got and push forward....I don't know what I'm going to be doing, but I'm on my way!"

The Giants of the North--and the Giantess

2008-08-10T09:25:00.001-04:00

And why not a few more photos?

2008-08-04T05:31:00.001-04:00

Erchless (pronounced IRK-less) was the home of Oakville's founder, Mr. Chisolm. The mansion is now a museum. The gardes on Centre Island reminded me of Charlottenberg in Berlin. The Toronto Islands are really lovely, at least in the summer. In winter, they get the gales from the lake. There is also nowhere to buy food on the entire island, but the ferryboats go directly to the quay, and there is a small airport. The cottages are owned by artists who fought the city for years for the right to stay in their homes; a compromise was reached where they stay, and we get to meander all over the islands. The shot of the dog in the bike surrey was taken in front of the island's club. Most of the houses are delightful and very well kept up.

Some pictures of The Toronto Islands.

2008-08-04T05:29:00.002-04:00