Ani Me, Ani You

The New York Times reported the passing of Peter Keefe on Friday.

He was the creator of Voltron which he based on the Japanese animation he admired. As a result, he helped usher in the popular wave of anime and anime influenced cartoons which are just a few clicks shorts of dominating television programming.

Mr. Keefe may have passed at the too young age of 57, but he has contributed to a legacy which has yet to even reach adolescence.

Animator 66

Here's a snapshot of the Los Angeles animation world in 1944 via union newsletter.

Disney: the only problem here is the matter of overtime payment for Saturdays and Sundays spent in transit on Company business.  Until recently time and half was paid for Saturday, recently this was tabooed.  The Business Agent queries why.

MGM: The vacation cases still hang fire.  Important for all is the solution of this in which the unions position is that vacations are earned, and that the accrued earnings should be paid if relations are severed.

Schlesinger:  Assistant Animator returned to work by the U. S. Conciliation Service received check for the week out.  Second time in a month the conciliators agreed with us against Schlesinger.  How long is J. B. going to be allowed to continue to disrupt relations between the Company and the Union.  We hope he knows more about Scene Checking.  Can Schlesinger afford these disruptive labor tactics?

Gems: Nothing

Lantz: A case of short change on the scale has been settled...the ante was raised.

Pals: New work for Army and Navy requires new classifications.  The classifications have to be set up, approved by the unit and the Exec Board before they can be sent to the membership.

Wolff: The contract is at WLB.

Terrys: The case at the WLB.

General: The procedure for the assimilation of returning service men or women is being set up.  It has been proposed that when it is necessary for someone to be released to create a position, the following procedure will be followed: The person with the least seniority in the classification to which the member is returning will be dropped to the next lower classification.  This drop to continue till the person with the least seniority in the lowest classification in the in the studio is laid off...

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OCTOBER MEMBERSHIP MEETING:  The membership voted to set the union up in the book business.  100 stones worth of art books are to be offered for sale at the Union office.  The profits to go to the Welfare Fund.

INBETWEENS: Gil Turner leaves Schlesinger's for Wolffs...Basil Davidovich new animator at Schlesingers... Clark Mallory returns from army to Schlesingers...Viola Koler leaves Schlesingers...Marie Stimson weds Mj. Beardsley.

FIRST SHOWING GUILD GALLERY

The painting exhibit at our own Gallery was juried Tuesday night by Stanley  Reckless, Paul Lauritz and John Entedez who expressed their surprise and disappointment at the material turned in by the cartoonists for the show.  This disappointment was caused by the feeling that in effect, we the cartoonists of the Motion Picture Industry should be the most fresh, creative and original pioneering artists of our area.  Instead, the jury felt most of the entries were mere reflections of the traditional teachings and thought processes in vogue locally.  However, they selected a gallery of framed paintings from the material at hand for our first show which should open Sunday, November 14.

Old Ads

These is a design Winnie Tom did for our old website which we translated into some other ads.

I saw Abbey Luck's site and drew up something along those lines.  Winnie re-drew it much cooler, then Abbey came in and built the site itself.

Thinking about this since we're going to be re-doing our website soon.  iPhones and all, you know.  Can't have Flash based sites if you want the cool kids to see it.

This (above) was a .gif for a web ad.

Above is a magazine ad.

Our dvd packaging matched as well.

Inbetweening Nature

Here are few seconds worth of animation drawings from "The Buddha".

These are the extremes animated by Doug Compton.

This is a good sequence to look at to understand how drawn animation works. It's very simple and straight ahead. Since there's no character acting, motion here is broken down to its essentials. Even so there's "character" to the movement.

The scene eventually will be on "twos" -one drawing every two frames. To start, however, Doug has drawn approximately one drawing for every 10 frames.

Those blanks are filled in by an inbetweener.

In this sequence, you don't even need particularly strong drawing skill to create inbetweens. I encourage everyone to print out a few (just click to enlarge) and try it.

Even though animation is a difficult process, if everyone does their part as well as Doug did his here it's not all that hard.

drawing 1

drawing 5

drawing 9

drawing 13

drawing 17

drawing 21

drawing 25

drawing 29

drawing 33

drawing 37

drawing 41

drawing 45

drawing 49

drawing 53

drawing 57

drawing 61

drawing 65

drawing 69

drawing 73

drawing 77

Outtake

This is an outtake from our PBS segment which aired on Friday.



Ben Shapiro shot it, Steve Brodner did the drawings.

The graphic idea here was very cool -MMS employees in a revolving door with oil companies (now on a spinning jenny layered in crude).  As sometimes happens in these pieces it was just too much stuff, one idea too many.

The final piece is here.  It's not exactly the final piece as broadcast.  PBS has "fair use" to any and all music whether public domain or controlled rights.  This doesn't extend to the web, so our music track -Fred Neil's "Dolphins" isn't online.  As is the case in most films, it's much better with the music but we're still proud of the online piece.

In the future, you'll have to watch the broadcasts for the full effect.

Leaving feedback on the PBS page is appreciated.

A Collection of Brilliant Shorts

This is from a 1973 Janus Films catalog, a short film collection they were promoting for rental.

The animation program rented for a minimum of $200 or 50% of gross receipts whichever was greater.

No wonder it became impossible run an independent cinema -rental costs alone would do you in.

I once had lunch at The Ink Tank with Ben Barenholtz, legendary indie distributor and father of the midnight movie (he also is responsible for playing Suzan Pitt's "Asparagus" in front of David Lynch's "Eraserhead" in what might be the greatest ever combination of short and feature).

He told us how he would buy a ticket to his films' screenings and count heads so that when a theater manager said "10 people showed up" he could say, "I counted 20."

Here (above) are the programs.

Program one begins with Fred Mogubgub's "Enter Hamlet" and tours through Truffaut, Polanski and Richard Lester before ending with an all time great "La Jetee".

Program two is the animation program.  Here's what it lists:


Do-It-Yourself Cartoon Kit, Bob Godfrey, England 1961
Two Castles, Bruno Bozzetto, Italy 1962
Ars Gratia Artis, Dusan Vukotic, Yugoslavia 1970
Pop Show, Fred Mogubgub, USA [n.d. 1966]
Portrait of a Horse, Witold Giersz, Poland 1967
Twiddle Twaddle, Zlatko Grgic, Yugoslavia [n.d.]
AI!, Yoji Kuri, Japan 1964
A Texas Romance-1909, Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, USA [n.d.]
The Apple, George Dunning, England 1962
The Pistol, Wolfgang Urchs, Federal Republic of Germany [n.d.]
Striptease, Nadalikjo Dragic, Yugoslavia [n.d.]
Allures, Jordan Belson, USA 1964
Games of Angels, Valerian Borowczyk, Poland 1964

Four Johns

We've been making a little film on Thomas Eakins' "John Biglin in A Single Scull".

In addition to being known as the best draughtsman of his day, Eakins was meticulous in his preparation.

He figured out all his perspectives on paper.

And then did a study:

in oil, to prepare for the "final" watercolor.

This is part of his rowing series.   It marks his first major body of work.  Most of the series are oils, but he crafted  "John Biglin in a Single Scull" as one of his few watercolors.

This is the original which is in collection at Yale:

He was so proud of the work that he sent to his teacher, Gerome, in Paris and made a copy for himself.

Below is the copy which is in the Metropolitan Museum's collection.

These pieces are "works on paper" and can not be restored.  As such, they rarely if ever go on public display.  You can see the discoloration (in the original especially, since that's a high resolution photo we took) by look at the edges where the pieces were once framed.