A collection of digital wonders and some other stuff
I’ve been having a great old time this afternoon drawing my heart out and listening to Clay Kaytis’s Animation Podcast.
Here is my page of drawings from John Kricfalusi’s Preston Blair animation lessons: Lesson 2 – Squash and Stretch:
John Kricfalusi writes:
You can go to animation school, spend a $100,000 and not learn a damn thing about the basics of good animation drawing-OR you can buy a Preston Blair book for $8 and learn it all in a couple months. You pick.
Just about every cartoon being made today is based on the principles and style of cartoons made in Hollywood in the 1940s—Anime, Cartoon Network flat stuff—even the Simpsons. The only difference is, that some of the principles that make the classic stuff look so good have been lost. The new cartoons are all a degeneration of what cartoons once were—a superficial copy of them—even though many off the artists drawing today don’t even know they are copying—but copying wrong—styles and trends and principles of what developed from the animated cartoons of the Golden Age.
John feels that one of the best ways to learn is by studying master animator Preston Blair’s book, “Animation”.
I’m going to not only tell you about the Preston Blair Book—but I’m gonna guide you through it, fundamental concept by fundamental concept.
I decided to take a whirl at the first lesson, by drawing the cartoon characters from the book. Here are my first drawings:
If you’re up to it, you can give the first lesson a try too. It’s easy when you follow the instructions.
I came across a BoingBoing post about the so-called Devil’s Interval, a musical form suppressed by the Church in the Middle Ages.
The post also talks about a new heavy metal documentary which ties the Devil’s Interval, a specific kind of musical interval that spans three whole tones, with the history of heavy metal.
See the BBC’s report called The Devil’s Music (with mp3 examples), and if it floats your boat, the metal history site (with documentary trailer) Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey.
Oh, and for the record, I’m pretty sure Xeni was just joking when she said, “When you play Wagner backwards, it goes, ‘I LOVE SATAN’. But nevertheless if that’s what you want to hear…
I remember posting this list in 2006, I was feeling extremely down that day… I guess it was too subtle for anyone* to notice. Discovering this list again today made me wish I could go back in time and tell myself that life gets so much better. And worse. But for better or worse, life is wonderful.
*Ok, at least one person noticed. Thanks Sherri S.
Fans of Ren and Stimpy will probably enjoy this Yogi Bear parody by John Kricfalusi. It’s a parody of the old Hanna Barbara Ranger Smith/Yogi Bear cartoons in which Boo Boo finally snaps after years of being such a straight arrow.
Get it while it lasts because knowing YouTube, this won’t be online long, once it gets noticed.
Rated TV7, which I’m guessing means for seven year olds? Well, whatever, it aired on Adult Swim, so your mileage may vary.
For your viewing pleasure, here is some original artwork I did for an online stock photo place, but unfortunately it got denied because I did it in Photoshop instead of Illustrator and well, long story short: it’s the wrong format.
But what’s bad for me is good for you, because now I’m just going to post it here! Enjoy:
For the last couple weeks I have been looking forward to hearing legendary visual effects artist Ray Harryhausen speak tonight at the University. I was hoping to take my camera and get a few shots of his stop motion armatures. I even picked up a couple of extra tickets for my parents, whom are going to be in town tonight—this was going to be a source of some much needed excitement. The only catch is, Mr. Harryhausen isn’t actually going to be here.
I first thought something was odd last week when I read on the tickets, “A VIRTUAL APPEARANCE BY RAY HARRYHAUSEN”, but I figured it had something to do with the title of the lecture, Grand Illusions. Upon re-reading the lecture description it hit me like a ton of bricks that the real grand illusion was the fact that Ray Harryhausen would only be making a virtual appearance, as in live via satellite from Los Angeles.
I hate to be a stick-in-the-mud and I’ll see what my folks think but I’m probably not even going to go. Frankly, I wouldn’t be much more disappointed if I’d just discovered they were merely showing a DVD interview with Mr. Harryhausen. Why would they bother paying him to speak, if they couldn’t afford to actually bring him here.
I’ve been to virtual lectures before, and they really leave a lot to be desired.
Now I know why there were so many tickets left over; I now also know why they are free. You get what you pay for I guess.
I’m not sure why, since there are so many of them, but I’m always surprised when I run into die-hard fans of the Family Guy. On at least three occasions I have made the off-handed comment that it seems like the show has been specifically made for someone with attention deficit disorder—to which each of the people I was talking to said, actually I used to have ADHD.
I guess that explains a lot.
Given the enormous fan base, I decided that maybe I was just happening to catch “off” episodes that weren’t as funny as the truly great stuff that they must be putting out in order to create so many fanatics. So I pulled out my roommate’s “Best of Family Guy” DVDs and, as painful as it was, watched them straight through.
Ho-hum… and these were supposed to be funnier than all other episodes? Give me a break.
I’m glad to see I’m not the only one that feels the show is highly over-rated. Jaime Weinman’s blog post “Why I Hate FAMILY GUY” nicely sums up my feelings.
I found a link today over at Cartoon Brew that let me know about Wednesday night’s episode of South Park in which they make fun of the Family Guy. Although South Park has offended me on numerous occasions (to the point that I no longer watch the show), I still think it has a collection of very intelligent writers and is very capable of creating memorable and often insightful commentary on the world around us. For your viewing enjoyment, here is a clip from Wednesday’s show:
Update: I guess the video no longer works because YouTube is cracking down on playing clips of tv shows.
My sister, Jackie Hutchinson, is a photographer in Drayton Valley Okotoks, Alberta. She still gets up to Drayton Valley for special occasions.
This is a screen capture of the new website I put together for her. It’s a work in progress as she develops her portfolio, but so far she already has some really nice shots online.
Update: Here’s a screenshot of the newest iteration of her site (as of September 2009). I’m blown away by how great of a photographer she’s become.
Check out jackiehutch.com to see more of her amazing photography.
Jackie and family have moved to Okotoks, Alberta.
