MY NEW BOOK

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

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

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!

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

The Chinese Edition

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

A Tragedy that You Can Help Remedy

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

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

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

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

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...

Learning Something New

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

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

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

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.