More Pretty Things

This is a continuation of my previous post about the book illustrations I encountered at the archive last week. I feel like many of my readers are art minded so I think these posts are good for everyone, whether you make art or just enjoy it a lot, not to mention Steve so kindly linked to my afore mentioned post from the archive blog and I was very flattered. It increased the number of people visiting my page at least ten-fold.
I will start this one off the way I ended the last one, with a Peter Pan illustration by Mabel Lucie Attwell. Again, this is just sweet and Peter has fun hat.



Cute, yeah? I almost feel like posting just pictures for the next week. . . which would average about a post and a half in the end. These follwoing three illustrations are from Stories of the Arabian Nights by Edmund Dulac, who, as far as I can tell, was quite the prolific illustrator; I have many by him. I find the Arabian Nights ones pretty interesting and a bit funny because all of the women depicted are quite beautiful while the men. . . just aren't. This isn't the first time I have encountered this trend so I want to talk about it for just a second. For some reason, it is always a beautiful girl paired with a goofy looking guy. Betty Boop and Bimbo? How did that happen? But that isn't really even a good example since Betty Boop, although undeniably sexy, posesses an unhuman sort of pretty with her enormous head and strange walk. I could fully opine on why drawn women tend to be more beautiful than the men, but I realize I would rather get to the illustrations. This one just below is another good example of how the artist spent his time on the important details. The woman's clothes and the bird are very detailed but there is no real background, which is no detriment to the illustration.



I love the sense of movement Dulac captured in this following one. I do not need to actually see her move to know perfectly well how she will dance if ever released from the page.



Another quick note about the difference in backgrounds nowadays and the one in this next Arabian Nights illustration. I think that although these painted backgrounds may be sparse, they are also intensely interesting. See how the sky changes shades and how subtle the shawdows of the trees across the lake are? Just gorgeous. Today Jojo, another assistant and student at the archive, showed me a picture from an upcoming CGI movie that I don't really want to mention by name. Yes, it was that scary. I think it important for people to realize that bright colors do not equate to beauty, especially if the main characters get lost in the palette. I like this picture because the tree and bank so nicely frame the couple sitting by the water.



This next one is also by Edmund Dulac from The Bells and Other Poems by Edgar Allan Poe. I have chosen to share it with you because I love how well the fabric and the girl's hair is depicted. While I can't be certain, I am under the impression that she is dead, which causes the focus on the beautifully static fabric to make the illustration all that more dark and depressing. I love to draw the curve and folds of fabric and the way light falls upon it, so naturally I would take a liking to this picture. I can only hope that one day computer animation will find a way to make cloth as gorgeous as this. For those of you who do not frequent the archive, do not think I am being too hard on computer animation, I realize that there is probably little fabric as lovely as this in drawn animation either, but I have seen clothes used to enhance a character, a movement or a mood in drawn animation whereas I am having a very difficult time thinking of an example in CGI films. I think clothes should add to a character, not just cover it. I feel the same way about curtains and windows.



I really like this next one from the same book of Poe's poems because the man is simply a silohuette while the sky has so many shades and colors in it. Again, this composition pleases me.



I don't know why I wanted to show the following Dulac illustration from Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam to you. Something about it must have struck me.



I certainly do know why I wanted to share the following two Dulac illustrations from Sinbad the Sailor with you. I love this first one for the waves. The way the waves have been depicted give them an almost glassy texture, which one does not usually associate with a stormy sea, but I think it works quite well. I also like this picture because of the little man completely suspended above the sea and the tiny pair of legs disappearing over the back wave. Sometime it is the little things that really make a drawing.



It is hard for me to call this next picture all that interesting really, I just really like how nicely the human figures are positioned. They are so elegant and completely natural at the same time. The right placement of head, neck, and hands made this otherwise less than striking illustration really jump out at me.



Now I sadly must go to bed, but I promise to pick up where I have left off with the illustrations and let you know if I happen to do anything else interesting in the meanwhile.

Book Illustrations

Lately, the archive has at times felt very slow to me. I built the database in the winter and now I am filling and cleaning it and Thursday I masochistically decided that the 25th of February should no longer come before the 3rd of February in my chronological sort. This decision inevitably made the database better but meant that I had to manually go through over 2,000 records. Let’s forget about headache Thursday and go back to Tuesday and also forward to Saturday (I have heard that time might not be as linear as we think). These days I finally did some work with the media database. The task was nothing special, I was entering images and their information into the database, it was what I was working with that made it so interesting. I spent a total of 6 or so hours on Tuesday clicking the same buttons and hitting the same keys and yet my interest was held the whole time.
This is only one testament to how lovely the illustrations were. I was working with book illustrations from the early 1900’s that were some of the most beautiful I have ever seen. Steve and ASIFA-Hollywood have kindly let me post some of them on my blog so that I could better describe to you how I felt about them. It was incredibly difficult to choose but I limited myself to only a few. . . which really means I will have to post more up at a later date.
I will start with these. These are 1912 illustrations from Bland tomtar och troll 6 (Among Elves and Trolls) by John Bauer. Bauer was a Swedish artist known for his fairytale illustrations. This following one struck me first because of its composition. Bauer allows the sky to fill a majority of this picture with just two small elements, a bush and a man on a horse, at the bottom to balance it. This allows the sky to have full the grandeur that the gorgeous colors give it. The colors. While I don’t want to make a blanket statement about any of the illustrations I am going to show you, I have to admit that it always comes back to the colors for me in these. I am horrible at coloring, even with crayons on a placemat my sister always exceeded me and went places I could not easily follow. I think this is why I am so fascinated by these artists' use of colors that, at times, can be so subtle and yet so striking at the same time. Lastly in this illustration I notice the regal horse with his distressed rider. The juxtaposition of the nature of the horse and the human accentuates the rider’s pain just as the beauty of night sky also serves to enhance it. Sorry if I talked too much about it, but look for yourself:



This next one is also a Bauer illustration and I really wanted to show it to you to point out how brown the whole background is while still being so interesting. I think Steve gets a lot a crap from certain people about the fact that the archive spends its time on book illustrations, comics, static art instead of just focusing on animation. I think animators could learn a lot from this art. I have found in certain recent animation that people love their backgrounds to be colorful and eye-catching. I don’t think that should be a focus, the animation should be the focus. But this doesn’t mean that the backgrounds should be lackluster. Animators only need to look at this illustration to know that. I also want to show you this illustration to point out that while it is obvious that the troll is far from “pretty” there is an undeniable appeal to it. Sadly, I don’t think the people at Dreamworks saw this illustration before they made Shrek. Well, that movie’s loss.



Okay I could show you more Bauer illustrations but I will restrain myself and show you now two illustrations by Charles Robinson from Our Sentimental Garden and then The Secret Garden. These are kind of Art Deco and are obviously from around the time when advertising art hit its stride. Notice the vibrant colors as well as the contrasting shadow.



There are less colors in this one, obviously, but just as gorgeous.



Okay, I love that those of you who have reached this part have actually read this whole post, because this is getting long. I think I will stop now and continue with more illustrations another day because I want to be able to talk about them without losing my audience.
Wait! No, I will show you one more that I don’t think I needs too much of an explanation of how great it is. It is a Peter Pan illustration by Mabel Lucie Attwell and maybe I just love it because it is so sweet. I don’t think I need to justify why I like this one.



Thank you!

My Excuses

Ugh, see? I knew I would be really, really bad at this blog thing this summer! I suppose I will have to tell you why I have not written in a while. First of all, I have no clue really who "you" are this time around, whereas last time I had a pretty concrete idea who was reading my blog. For some reason I use this as an excuse not to write. Second of all, I have been doing all of the following:
Thursday night I played UNO, yep the card game, with Alex's work crew in a pub. Well to be specific, not just any UNO, but waterproof UNO so that you can safely spill on, spit on, and finally lick the cards. Although I don't recommend spitting on them. . . or licking them for that matter. Come to think of it I don't know why water UNO was invented. I will get to the point now, shall I? Yes, there is a point to UNO. I found the whole interaction entirely interesting due to the striking similarities between Alex's gang and the group I hang out with at the Coral. The first and final one being that I would never have chosen these people off the street to be a part of our respective crews, and yet, now finding them to be my friends and my sister's I cannot really imagine having found any group more intriguing or of a better fit.
Friday night I made the amazing discovery that my friend Anna from Dartmouth is in LA! I suppose it was more her discovery though since she is the one who called me. Anna invited me to the Hollywood Bowl that night to see the LA Philharmonic and Jamie Cullum. The program was called Cool Britannia so we listened to cool British music all night. Ian Fleming (James Bond), Noel Gay and Austin Powers were the features of the first half. Then Jamie Cullum joined the orchestra. He is a young and talented pianist who, as far as I am concerned, has yet to really mature into his talent. For those of you who do not know what the Hollywood Bowl is, it is an outdoor amphitheater set in the Hollywood hills. It was close to magical listing to the LA Philharmonic and looking up at the stars and hills, until I saw the spotlights making an X over our heads. While everything was still gorgeous, it was also so LA. It was quite the experience.
Saturday night Alexis invited me to join her and her friend Jordan and Jordan's husband at The Comedy Store on the Sunset strip. This was two firsts for me. I had never been to the strip before and I had never been to a comedy club. That was one expensive night! Parking was a complete nightmare and the club of course had a cover charge then a two drink limit as well. What the two drink limit really means is that they serve you small, poorly made drinks at outstanding prices.
Sunday was a day spent in the sun with my sister reading. That night we cooked MahiMahi in a lime marinade (that I managed to leave a majority of the ingredients out of at first) and a tomato and avocado sauce. Then last night we cooked saffron and asparagus risotto with scallops. I am proud of us. Both were very tasty and looked good too. I have included a picture.

The State of Interior Decorating

Sorry I have not written anything recently but finding interesting things to post about have proven to be a difficult task for me this time around. Again, I do not wish to relate what I eat at every meal or when I take showers. Oh! Although Uncle Chris made a fantastic chicken curry last night and now I have the recipe and can't wait to try it some time. You see, Alex and I cook dinner together sometimes so that I can pretend that I am ready to go live in the real world (her too).
I have been meaning to write about this particular discovery for a little bit now. Full credit must go to my friend Krystal for this fantastic find: Edgar Allan Poe's Philosophy of Furniture. Who knew there was such an essay? Perhaps some of my more well read readers (that sounds awkward) have heard of it, but this really isn't the Poe essay your English teacher decides to cover in high school. I can't imagine why not. It certainly has deepened my understanding of Poe and all manner of interior decorating.
First Poe covers many a nationality's ability to decorate. I believe my favorite description is as follows: "The Dutch have, perhaps, an indeterminate idea that a curtain is not a cabbage." Well thank goodness they have such fundamentals down. He is no more kind to the American sense of decorating. We Yankees are no less than "preposterous."
In fact Poe is quite disparaging about the art of interior decorating. We have too many straight lines in our rooms that either continue for far too long or are rudely interrupted by right angles. What curved lines we do attempt only result in confusion and mess. Americans cannot handle any kind of line at all according to Poe.
It is almost difficult to take this essay seriously having read other writings by Poe. He is overly critical of all elements of a room from curtains to lighting to carpet. While I can imagine that he may have been quite judgmental of one's sense of interior decoration, I find it hard to believe that he would deem the state of our rooms so important and so shockingly out of tune as to merit a full essay on the ideal decoration of a room.
This essay is both interesting and adds an unexpected bit of understanding about Edgar Allan Poe. I highly recommend that you take the time to read it, although I cannot say that his idea of a perfect room, which includes much red, silver and gold, is quite my own but this may just be my one gaudy American taste getting in the way.
I hope you have enjoyed this slight broadening of your Poe horizons

Why Art?

Lately I have been giving increasing thought to what I want to do with my future. I have had mostly vague and somewhat scary thoughts. The options seem almost endless and this scares me. No, scare is the wrong word. This is the fact that makes any decision much more difficult. I don't even know what my options are.
In the end I have always wanted to do something not only that I enjoy but that also brings something to the world. This may seem like a tall order but this is why I wanted to be a teacher for quite a while. I think teachers are incredibly important and certainly help to shape the world into what it is. My aspirations of becoming a teacher have now been laid to rest and have yet to be replaced.
Despite the lamentations (or perhaps I can label them: rants) of a certain Mike about the state of animation today, I believe I still want to work with animation. I don’t know in what capacity, but that decision can come with time. The only thing now is to reconcile my want to do something of (for a lack of a better way to articulate myself) consequence and my want to work with animation. For some this may seem like an easy task, and I will get that in a minute, but you have to understand that while I greatly appreciate and enjoy everything I learn at the archive, I have not exactly been led to be hopeful about the current production of animation. It is also difficult for me to say that some of my pursuits really bring anything to the table as far as helping humanity goes. I still can’t figure out how building my campus in 3D fits in, or how sitting in front of my computer coding fits in. I suppose it depends on what I code. . . but my point or concern still stands.
Happily after an interesting conversation with my friend Tim, with whom I shared my concern that what I study is not really pointing me in the direction I had once envisioned (I may have phrased that differently), he said something I considered very interesting: “I think that by the act of creating art the artist is defining humanity, and in some sense it is a real responsibility to define it in a good direction.”
Thank you, Tim. I feel much better about my choice to go into making art. Even if what I end up creating does nothing quite so profound as to define humanity, I believe I will have done something if I can only make one person smile or think a little.
(A quick note: the Mike I mention is in no way discouraging about going into animation, I just want to make that clear, mostly for his sake)

Google Earth

Last term I joined a team at Dartmouth which was entered in a competition to build our campus in 3D. The competition was put on by Google. Now, Google is a brilliant company. They needed to promote their 3D software, SketchUp, for Google Earth, so what do they do? Get people to build things for Google Earth for free by calling it a competition! Really genius!
To ruin the suspense: we won! Not too be overly confident but I really am not surprised. This could be because our team leader drove us into the ground and was always saying that we were going to win so that once it was officially announced, I knew it was just a confirmation of what she had been saying all along. I am so proud! And also soooo famous. Well, not that famous. I made it into Dartmouth news and that is good enough for me right now. Here is a picture of the work my team did (picture courtesy of Jess):

The prize for winning this competition is, for all intensive purposes, a trip home for me. We won a trip to the Googleplex (great word) which is 20 minutes south of my house. While this may seem a bit underwhelming to some, I am very excited just to see my whole team again. I may have hated the project at the time, but memory puts a lovely tint on everything and I love my team. Not to be sappy but I can't wait to see them in August.
If you want to see my work, go here and download the Dartmouth file. Then open the kmz files into Google Earth (you need to have Google Earth to see the buildings) and be impressed by me and my whole nerdy but oh so loveable team.

To Blog Or Not To Blog

While this may not be the eternal question that was once asked by a Danish prince, I find it is the one that has been plaguing me for about 2 weeks. I suppose that because I am now writing this, I have decided that I shall pick up my blog again. One reason that I should not write my blog is because I feel like a hypocrite in writing one. I am awful at reading everyone else's blog so why should anyone read mine. Well hopefully I will have some people reading this.
For those of you just joining me, I am back in LA and after a less than ideal start to my LA summer I am back at ASIFA-Hollywood's animation archive. I have to admit that despite the rocky beginning, I am very happy to be back at the archive. I missed being surrounded by animation and those who love it, know it, and make it.
As far as posts go, I have to admit that this is not a truly exciting one but I promise more interesting ones in the future seeing as they can be more specific and less. . . vague (oh man I think that one just killed this whole post). It is time for this one to end.
Good night, I will talk to you all soon and I hope you will enjoy the return of my blog.