Festival Notes - 1989

My least favorite thing, perhaps, is scanning.

Here's how much I care for you, anonymous reader -moreover how much I respect and admire Maciek Albrecht. I scanned this whole thing.

This is a festival notebook Maciek drew in 1989 after attending the 3rd Animation Celebration in Los Angeles.

The End of The World (click to enlarge)

calculating how long it all took to animate

don't forget the inbetweeners

view of Los Angeles

each spread has a nation - were the Soviets really bunnies?

showing off the Steinberg influence

L. A. Girls and Boys

American Animation and Strippers

A Tribute to Mel Blanc and The Sounds of California

I hate scanning so much I missed a page. It's a drawing of traffic. Maybe it'll make it onto the DVD extras.

Canadians; cows. Venice Beach; cats and mice.

Yugoslavian Animation. 15 Ways To Die In L. A.

Jan Svankmajer. Getty Museum.

Inside the Getty?

The Belgians are tight. Hollywood, stars.

audience

MTV (Maciek was there with -I'm guessing- an MTV ID he made at The Ink Tank)

rubber stamp (address and phone no longer active)

Get Happy

Yesterday was the last class of the semester.

One of the many unappreciated poeticisms of the syllabus -we end with a class on title design (which includes a bit on end credits).

This year I pulled up the opening titles to "The Partridge Family" after screening the titles to "Blacula".  Both were designed by Sandy Dvore.

TV titles are usually pretty stingy budgets. There are two points of interest to this piece. Two things that make it good design.

First is obvious. The economy. The animation is simple, clear and based on repeat action with color variation.

The second is narrative and a little subtle. All of the "family" are introduced in the same way -through the little birds: the manager, Ruben, is introduced in a different manner. This also allows for the transition to the live action bus at the end. A story is being told through the gesture of the graphics.

Origami - post 1

I've been thinking about writing a bit on our process for a short film we made for Nickelodeon a couple years back but it's taking a while to assemble the goods.

We'll start with the concept models.

The piece was called "Origami". And it was about a boy who escapes to an origami world.

Matt Stoddart wrote the scenario and did the character designs. He also made these to model after:


Eventually we would create our own patterns. Origami paper is copyrighted and we respect artists' rights.

early models with store bought paper

These would interact with a drawn character.

concept illustration

Matt also broke down a character rotation.

He's worked as a puppet designer for many years, so he has an innate feel for construction and dimensionality.

This is how he began to breakdown the character:

Wonder Mom

Brief weekend trip to Philadelphia.
My high school pal, Marc Schuster, was releasing his first novel.

the sky was really grey like this, not my fault

The first line is good and the excerpt he read was also interesting.  He admitted that he had a hard timing finding 5 pages that were "all ages" suitable for the party.

The party was held at the Swedish American Museum.  It's on the grounds of a lovely park in South Philadelphia, just north of the Navy Yard, just West of the ballparks (which we attended on Sunday).

Swedes

I had a vague feeling I had been in these fields before.  Maybe with the Spinelli family the time I went to the baseball game with them and not my Aunt Betty.

Inside the Swedish Museum, a room dedicated to Nobel Prize winners.

I told Marconi "Wireless was a phoney".

who had the last laugh?

Refried Beans

MyDamnChannel just redesigned their site.

In some ways it better than the previous versions, in others -it isn't.

I'm not sure how they pay their bills, but we did several films for them last year.

Three of these:



And we're also responsible for "discovering" the "face" of their website having cast Grace Helbig to narrate all seven of these "racy" Bedtime Stories:

Everybody's Favorite Cracker

Ray Romano? Tom Hanks? Neil Diamond? No, no and no!

Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers!

escaped cows

We did this little film through Young & Rubicam. Click here to play.

It's based on a little booklet. Originally the book was intended as a magazine insert -glued onto an ad. Turned out the media buy was too steep (there's a Depression on, you know).

The agency was taken with the idea and wanted to put it to use. TV would also be a little pricey -so they turned to the web for distribution.

The first version we did was much more complicated. All of the story points were identical, but the transitions were much more complicated.

Each drawing was traced back in the first version (at agency request). A traceback is when the animator (usually the clean up artist or inker) loosely traces over a drawing. This gives the line a little life -sometimes referred to as a "boil".

As a rule, we don't like the device. In this case, the agency agreed and it was eliminated.

The drawings for this piece were all done at a small scale. Just under a 5 field which is just under 5 inches across. We wanted to keep a simple, näive look to line and animation. By working small this would come naturally.

Not All Comics Are Pornographic

Brian was concerned that people would think he only buys pornographic comics.

This is not strictly true.

Here's one from the collection. Jill Conner's interview with Gary Panter reminded me to pull this from the library.

pressed cardboard cover

"Invasion of The Elvis Zombies" was published as a "Raw Magazine" One-shot in 1984.

index page

This book also comes with a "flexidisk". You mp3ers may not be familiar with the joys of the flexi. 'Zines like "The Bob" and "The Trouser Press" would staple thin acetate records (flexible ones!) to their covers. These would usually be "exclusive" recordings -bootlegs, undiscovered punk acts, alternate takes.

Not to out-punked. Gary Panter included a flexidisk here.

Pre-Cambrian Bath

We refuse to put it on the turntable, fearing a Gurdjieff like composition which would spark a universal apocalypse. 

Inside:

zombie James Dean

The most impressive thing about Panter's work is his (seemingly) natural draughtsmanship.

Bull! You say? This drawing disagrees.