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?
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
Exit Through the Gift Shop: An Important Film for Artists
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?
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
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!
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!
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Reverse Predictions and More Subtexts
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.
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.
Sunday, January 03, 2010
Women are Just No Good. with Spoilers
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.
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
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.
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.
Friday, December 04, 2009
The power of the internet
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
A Knee UP, or Down
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.
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
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.
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.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Sailing, Sailing
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.
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.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Book 'Em
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.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
BILL PLYMPTON Masterclass at the ROM
.JPG)
“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.”
“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.”
Monday, June 15, 2009
Back Agayne
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!
Friday, May 22, 2009
Words and Pictures
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?
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?Monday, May 11, 2009
COMIC ARTS FESTIVAL IN TORONTO
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.
Saturday, May 09, 2009
Continuing Education
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 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.
Sunday, May 03, 2009
The Mast and the Tugboat
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
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
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)