Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Here is the remainder of the Heath Book. This is a book that was written by Tony Creazzo, one of New York’s finer Assistant Animators and Bob Heath, a cameraman. Together they made an odd couple to author such a book. Yet, there’s no doubt that this material is first rate and there’s a lot to learn from the book they’ve given us. Originally, I thought the book looked too basic to be of interest, but the more I got into it, the more I realized how solidly constructed it is.

There are a few more pages of “Glossary and Terms” used in animation and for this book. It’s a lot of work scanning this oversized book and reconstructing it in photoshop. Since I don’t have the patience, I’m skipping these final few pages.

I learned that you can still buy the book on Amazon, which is quite amazing to me, but I’m glad to see it available if you look hard enough. I’d suggest buying a copy to include in your library, if you don’t already own it, before it’s completely out of print and very expensive.

If you want to see the remainder of the book you can go to these posts go here for: part 1, part 2, part 3, 4, 5.

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- Before there was video tape (which means before there were dvds), there was only 16mm film that you could project in your own home. I had (and still have) a nice collection of decaying movies and used to show these often. One of the regulars to show and watch and laugh at was the great Mickey short, The Whoopee Party. Everyone loved this short, no matter how many times we watched it. It’s a great film!

This encouraged me to watch it again on the B&W Mickey dvd I have. So I couldn’t help but jump for joy over the story sketches they include in the extras. Why not post them? So here they are – sketches from the limited storyboard they produced. I’ve also interspersed frame grabs from the film so you can compare images.

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Signe’s Kickstarter Campaign

Signe Baumane has started a Kickstarter campaign to try to complete her animated feature. Rocks in my Pockets. I saw this film at a small preview, and I can honestly say this is one of the best of the Independent films I’ve seen in production. The story is just great. It works on the surface and it works in several levels of depth. Visually it’s stunning using three dimensional backgrounds that are sculpted by Signe. She has a number of talented people working with her on the film, but this truly feels like a one person show, it’s so defined and original.

I heartily recommend that you not only look for the film when it’s finished but help it get there now by donating anything you can. This is one that deserves to be completed.

Take a look at the Kickstarter site.

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George Griffin Show

I’ve always considered George Griffin the leader of the Independent movement in animation in New York. For good reason, his work dominated the local scene back in the seventies, and he gave us a clear vision of an original auteur at work with a very specific statement to make in all of his films. Since then, that vision has remained true through all of his films, although, of course, it has grown enormously, expanded to something even richer.

It isn’t often that we get to see a fuller presentation of George’s work, so I’m pleased to announce that there will be a program shown at the Anthlogy Film Archives on Thursday, Jan. 24 at 7:30 pm. The program will represent a mixed bag culled from his body of work. It will include recent films like “The Bather,” cartoons like “Flying Fur,” “Viewmaster,” and “Ko-Ko,” and the 1975 anti-cartoon “Head”. All of these films have been transferred to HD and will be shown in pristine condition.

The full program:
HEAD (1975, 10.5 min, 16mm)
VIEWMASTER (1976, 3.5 min, 16mm)
FLYING FUR (1981, 7 min, 16mm)
KO-KO (1988, 3 min, video)
NEW FANGLED (1990, 2 min, video)
A LITTLE ROUTINE (1994, 7 min, video)
IT PAINS ME TO SAY THIS (2006, 10 min, video)
MACDOWELL: A USER’S MANUAL (2007, 14 min, video)
THE BATHER (2008, 3 min, video)
YOU’RE OUTA HERE (2009, 3 min, video)
FLYING FUR FRAGMENTS (2012, 6.5 min, video)

Total running time: ca. 80 min.

Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue
212-505-5181

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Muldavian Animation

I recently receoved a note from someone at the Simpals Animation Studio in the Republic of Moldova. the studio produces 3D animation and proudy wanted to show off their character, “Dji,” the figure of death. They’ve done a few shorts featuring this character and, after wrote a bit about the series they’ve done completely in-house. “Dji. Death fails” is their fourth short built around this character, and you can see the development on the screen. I found some warmth around the principal, though I must say it feels similar to some other films out of Europe . They have a fascination with “Death” and making fun of it appeals to them. I have to say, they’ve made the most of it.

Others of their films can be found at their YouTube page. I’d like to see some more of their 2D work. It looks interesting.

Here’s the most recent work finished in November, 2012.

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Redhead du Jour

Direct from Tom Hachtman to you.

Portrait of Jorz Strooly by Traci (age 6)
Color by Jorz Strooly

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A New Fischinger Book

Due in April:
Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967): Experiments in Cinematic Abstraction.
Edited by Cindy Keefer and Jaap Guldemond.

Available April via Thames & Hudson.

This new Oskar Fischinger monograph explores the position of his work within the international avant-garde. It examines his animation and painting, his use of music, his experiences in Hollywood, and his influence on today’s filmmakers, artists and animators. The book also contains previously unpublished documents including texts by Fischinger himself.
The essays include:

Jean-Michel Bouhours, Oskar Fischinger and the European Artistic Context
Ilene Susan Fort, Oskar Fischinger, The Modernist Painter
Jeanpaul Goergen’s Timeline: Oskar Fischinger in Germany, 1900-1936
Paul Hertz, Fischinger Misconstrued: Visual Music does not equal Synesthesia
Joseph Hyde, Fischinger’s Scores: New Perspectives on his Approach to Music
Richard Brown, The Spirit Inside Each Object: John Cage and Oskar Fischinger
Cindy Keefer, Interview with Barbara Fischinger. The Lumigraph: Dancing with your Hands.
Cindy Keefer, Optical Expression: Oskar Fischinger, William Moritz and Visual Music.
James Tobias, Essay Without Words: Motion Painting no. 1, Insight, and The Ornament
Joerg Jewanski, The Visions of Oskar Fischinger and Alexander Laszlo in 1935/36
and more

plus texts by Fischinger, a new bibliography and filmography by CVM,
and testimonials by international artists, scholars, historians and authors
including David James, Giannalberto Bendazzi, John Canemaker, Suzanne Buchan,
yann beauvais, Joost Rekveld, Arthur & Corinne Cantrill, Scott Snibbe, and others.

240 pages, paperback. Extensive color illustrations.
Co-published by EYE Filmmuseum and Center for Visual Music.
ISBN 978-9071338007. Available April via Thames & Hudson.
Limited supply available earlier at Center for Visual Music.

Water water everywhere and Paul Murry gets to draw it all. Here are two stories starring Disney’s greatest characters, Donald and Mickey. The two stories have three years apart from each other, but Murry gives us plenty of a stylized water, drawn slightly differently from one story to the next. How appropriate of Bill Peckmann to send us these tales when Congress finally got off their butts and voted the victims of Hurricane Sandy some financial relief. Here’s Bill’s comments:

Here is another Paul Murry story containing H2O hi-jinks. It’s a ‘Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories‘ Donald Duck 10 pager from 1950. (It was the only year that DD regular Carl Barks missed doing a number of his signature character stories. There’s another great Murry Duck story that deals with an overnight flood; sorry, I just can’t remember what comic book it’s in.)

The comic cover from1950. This cover art is by Carl Buettner.

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If we jump three years to 1953, we’ll find another Paul Murry story with a strong focus on water. Here our intrepid artist adapts The Sorcerer’s Apprentice from Fantasia. (Perhaps there was a re-release of the film that year.)
Part of the cover.

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- Speaking of Paul Murry, let me end by giving another pitch for the excellent collection of The Adventures of Buck O’Rue and his hoss, Reddish by Dick Huemer & Paul Murry. This is a rip roaring (you’ll be roaring with laughter) classic of a brilliant strip.
No, no one is paying me for this or prompting my wanting to remind you of the perfect Valentine gift. I just like this book and this strip, and I think you might like it, too.

- Back during the black out of Hurricane Sandy (when we had no electricity or heat), John Canemaker invited us up to his apartment to use his computer so that we could check email etc. I spent a nice couple of hours with John that day, and one of the things he pulled out was the DVD of the Mickey Mouse Club. (One of those expensive, tin boxes I didn’t own.) On the extras of the program was a colored version of the animated opening to the show. The original Mickey Mouse Club aired in B&W, which is how I remember it. It was fun sitting through that piece of animation, and I was charmed by a somewhat abstract section, a musical interlude that was rarely shown in the B&W version. It reminds me of Toot Whistle Plunk & Boom in its styling.

I recently bought a copy of that DVD and went directly to that extra. I’ve pulled some frame grabs of the center sequence and will post those here. But then I couldn’t stop there. I went back and did the entire piece. The abstract sequence stands away from the poorly designed Mickey, Donald & Goofy. Those thick outer lines against the thin inner lines reminds me of the bad imitation UPA art that was going on at the time. It was their idea of “modern art,” I guess.

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Pluto’s drums burst in a B&W flash.

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To the stylized abstract.

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I wonder if Ward Kimball had anything to do with this.
Ken O’Connor was the Art Director for Kimball including:
Mars and Beyond, Man in Space and Man and the Moon

Victor Haboush was the Asst. Art Director, and he had an important role
in the Mr. Magoo TV show as well as the Dick Tracy show back in 60s.
He was also the Art Director on Gay Purr-ee.

- Over the years I’ve found that a number of animation personnel saved their copies of Top Cel, the u-nion newspaper. However, we’re not talking every copy of Top Cel, we’re focused on the Ed Smith years. Ed was the editor for a number of years, and his issues were filled with great graphics done by local members.

I have a complete collection from the late forties up to the final years. That collection has been in storage for the entire run of this Splog, or I would have been posting these sooner. However, there among the Vince Cafarelli collection was a couple of the Ed Smith years’ papers. Starting with July 1960 and running through May 1968, there are a lot of papers. I hope to post the graphics from these and wil pick out particular stories or images within to give an idea of what was happening in the business. I don’t want to post the entire thing, since many of the articles pertain specifically to u-nion business, and it seems pointless in its outdated nature.

We’ll start with the first 10 issues:

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July 1960
Artwork by Mordi Gerstein

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(Click any of these frames to enlarge to a more legible size.)

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August 1960
This issue, like many others, has to be turned clockwise to properly read.
For the sake of these covers, I am turning the image 90° c/w
for you to read and will do this for all subsequent covers.
Artwork by Ed Friedman

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Sept 1960
This cover was also turned 90° c/w.
Artwork by Spipol (? I have difficulty reading the name ?)

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This cartoon, by Ed Smith, makes fun of the fact that the fashionably popular
HuckleberrynHound and Yogi Bear were being advertised as “Adult” cartoons.

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Within this larger issue, there were two pages of photos taken at
the Annecy Animation Festival to which a number of members went.
The left page is posted above, the right page is posted below.

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Reports about the Festival by two members, Dick Rauh and Hal Silvermintz.

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October 1960
The front cover of this issue.
Artwork by Karl Fischer

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The back cover

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Nov 1960
Artwork by Mordi Gerstein

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Jan 1961
Artwork by Len Glasser

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This back page had the contacts of all contracted studios in NY.
I love that P.Kim & L.Gifford have
different contact info from Gifford-Kim.

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February 1961
Turned 90° c/w.
Art by Edwin R. Smith J.R. (Ed’s son?)

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March 1961
Turned 90° c/w.
Art by Hal Silvermintz

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April 1961

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May 1961
I think the artwork is by Arnie Levin
Front cover

Back cover is an extension of the front.

Attached they look like this.

Inside is a 2-page promotion for the Hubley show at the
Beekman Theater. This was the premiere of their feature, Of Stars & Men.

This was the 2nd page of the promo.

There also must have been a middle page of text which is lost from this copy of the issue.

Attached the program looked like this.

This was my first viewing of the Hubley works. I had never seen a Hubley short
prior to this program. I was a Sophomore High School student at the time.
I went back a couple more times, and my world was changed forever.

To see some copies of Top Cel which were issued in 1945 and 1946, Richard O’Connor and his company’s blog Ace and Son has ostd quite a few of these issues. By going here, you’ll find 8 or 10 documents.

- I’m not sure if this is a complaint. It’s been tossing on my mind all week, and it’s good to get it out.

The Oscars!
I know, what now? you’re saying.

Well, there’s been a big change in the Oscar voting and it affects the animated short and who will become the winner. To understand the whole thing, let me give you a little history.

Back in the fifties – up to the very late fifties – the animated short (and, as it turns out, the live action short) were voted on by members who never saw the film. Say you work for WB in the costume department. The nominees for animated short are listed, and one is for Disney (naturally), one is for Terrytoons (20th Fox) and one is for WB. You haven’t seen the films, who do you vote for.

Naturally, you work for WB and WB has told you to vote for our own company.

So you vote for Knighty Knight Bugs.
Paul Bunyan and Sidney’s Family Tree lose your vote. Guess which one won?

Knighty Knight Bugs

The same thing happened the year before – 1957 when a WB, Tweety cartoon won over a Droopy, a UPA and a Disney.
1956 they were all UPA cartoons, so a UPA cartoon won (Mr. Magoo, naturally.)
1955 a WB Speedy Gonzalez short beat out Disney, MGM and a Walter Lantz (Tex Avery) short.

So in 1959 a bunch of animation Oscar members sought to change things. All they asked was that the people who voted on the short subjects have to SEE the short subject. And what do you know, they changed the rule. If you wanted to vote for animated and live action short subjects, you had to see and prove you saw the short films.

Suddenly, things changed.
The nominees included a WB short, Mexicali Shmoes (Speedy Gonzales), a Disney short, Noah’s Ark and
2 Independent shorts were nominated:
John & Faith Hubley, Moonbird and
Ernie Pintoff, The Violinist

Moonbird

This time the WB short did not win, the Independent film did. Moonbird won the Oscar for the 1959 animated short.

Let’s get back to NOW.

This year, they are showing the shorts – all of them – in a screening. We can go, see 5 animated and 5 live action shorts and vote for them.

Or there’s another choice.

They’re sending out DVDs to ALL OF THE MEMBERS. The person working in the costume department will get a DVD with your short on it. (S)he might watch that DVD and vote for the film (s)he thinks deserves it. OR she might not put the DVD in the machine and vote for the film she heard of.

What! There’s a Maggie Simpson short in there. Aha. I like the Simpsons. Give it to them.
Oh wait! There’s a Pixar short in there. They do good work. And I think I saw an ad they took out in Variety. I’ll give it to the “Arty” Pixar film.

Paperman

Hmmm.

So I expect the “Arty” Pixar film to win or else the TV cartoon – the Simpsons. They’ll win.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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- Jim Tyer never won an Oscar. Actually he was never nominated for one. Too bad. He was a man before his time. His art was in distortion of the character trying to get to the emotional center of that character. At the same time, his drawings made you smile. It’s unfortunate that most people didn’t get it. The people of the period within which he worked. Younger generations today stop frame Jim Tyer‘s work and study it. They want to do it, themselves. But it’s a vain attempt if they do try. His guy was a one-of-a-kind, and no one else could really do the same thing.

You can find in LA, at Bob Clampett‘s unit at WB, someone who tried for something similar. Rod Scribner was deeply affected by the comic strip work of George Lichty in his daily panel, “Grin and Bear It.” The distortion was too exciting for Scribner not to try pulling into his animation. He got permission from Clampett, and they did this wild style. It didn’t quite turn into the
abstractions of Tyer, but it did its own thing. Scribner followed the animation rules too closely to be able to get what Tyer did. Scribner knew that if you distort a character you have to keep the same mass in the body of the character, and he did just that. If the eyes got wildly large, the rest of the body diminished to make up for it. If an arm withered, something in the body took on that mass. It kept the 3D masses to remain true.

Tyer’s work was completely graphic. The body became an abstraction and the timing was wildly geared to Tyer’s own version of a “take” or “anticipation.” Even something like a “sneak” became a graphic excuse for his his own abstract movements.

Tyer gave up 3-dimensional drawing and allowed the line to take control. He gave the forces in the animation full strength, but allowed the rules of animation to stay in place. Essentially it’s not a new language just a new
dialect. A very thick one, but new – just the same. It’s to animation what Creole is to English. Of course, the saving grace is that it couldn’t be funnier. The other animators weren’t crazy about the work Tyer was doing, but they didn’t know how to stop him. They just assumed he had permission to speak Creole.

Many thanks to Kevin Langley who posted these images back in 2008.
He has the best frame grabs on the web, at least the most enjoyable.

There are many more frame grabs of the Jim Tyer material at Kevin’s site. Check out here, or here or keep browsing. It’s a treat of a site.

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Essentially today, we finish the book. All that remains is a long section which gives answers to questions raised with each lesson. We’ll post a couple of them today (once we finish with lesson 12) and will complete the remainder next week. The “Answers” alone is 35 pages long.

To read past posts go here for: part 1, part 2, part 3, 4.

We pick up this week with page 89, Lesson 11:

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This is essentially the end of the book, the end of Lesson Twelve.
The remainder of the book offers “Answers” to questions posed at the end of each of the 12 Lessons. These are the first of those pages. I’ll complete the final post of these next week.
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- Two of my favorite friends in the NY animation community are Lisa Crafts and Ken Brown. These two guys spend a lifetime making art and making art of animation (among other media). They both have different ways of doing it and they both have an simpatico art that supports the other. It’s a treasure just to visit them.

Ken, this weekend, opened an art exhibit. It was at your typical gallery; it was at a Mac service center. A big sales shop of a place with monitors, printers, laptops and other hardware all about the art. I went yesterday to this opening and brought my camera to give you an idea of what was going on.

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This is TekServe. It’s a hardware store that’s focused on all things Apple.
Everyone who’s into Apple and mac and computers knows TekServe on 23rd St.

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Get closer to the window and see the poster promoting a new
art exhibit of the work of genius/friend, Ken Brown.

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When you’re in the store, it is just a store.
It took me a while to be convinced that the art was everywhere.
I had to open my eyes and take a couple of good looks.

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Right inside the front door are some plastic cubes full of stuff pulsing
from the mind of Mr. Brown. Great to peer through these miniature things.

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Here they are, Lisa and Ken, the dynamic duo.

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This is a very old post card of Ken’s sitting in those cubes up front.
I used to own a bunch of them, but mailed them out to get my friends to smile.

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Throughout the store tere were plenty of video monitors playing Brown films.

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From live action to video cartoons. Lots of variety plays for you.

Meanwhile, T-shirts hang frm the rafters and float all about you.
Lots of these are collector’s items and are no longer available.
Bt you can look.

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There were walls of pixpop post cards.
A good way to pull a smile in the middle of the afternoon.

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See what I mean.

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No, it’s not Steve and Edie but Chuck and Candy.
That’s Candy Kugel and Chuck Hunnewell, her husband.

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One of the hits of the exhibit was the phone booth. Projections
were going on within, and they got attention from the crowds.

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Another shot of the same.
He’s not live; he’s memorex.
The phone booth is live.

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That’s animator, Debra Solomon with
artist of the day, Ken Brown.

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Video projections were at all levels and moods.

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And they were everywhere you looked.
Truly MULTI – media.

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and A-OK T-shirts that are now collector’s items.

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The poster for the exhibit,
in the store window,
said it all.

TekServe is at 119 West 23rd Street

The exhibit runs Saturday, January 12th through Sunday, February 24th
hours: Mon – Fri 9am to 8pm; Sat & Sun noon to 6pm

At the door, TekServe passed out a free calandar of Ken Brown’s pictures.
Here are a couple of the images from that publication:

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Oscar Toons

- The Oscar nominations came out this week. It was an odd mix, and a curious grouping of those in that mix. I couldn’t be happier than that The Life of Pi (left) did so well. Let’s hope it wins one or three awards from those 11 nominations. I like that film a lot. I wouldn’t be too disappointed with Lincoln or The Master winning either, but I really like Pi. How can you not like a film that proves the intellectual existence of god?

Skipping down to the animated shorts, I’m not allowed to say much, but I am surprised at some of the choices. The ones that were eliminated so that a tv cartoon could make the list is embarrassing to me. Perhaps the hollywood people wanted to vote in something they had worked on, or maybe it’s just that it was supposed to be funny. Presumably they must have laughed in LA. They didn’t in NY. Oh, well. As Groucho would’ve said, “Why a duck?”

Best Animated Short

Adam and Dog – Minkyu Lee
Fresh Guacamole – PES
Head over Heels – Timothy Reckart and Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly -
The Longest Daycare – David Silverman -
Paperman – John Kahrs

Congratulations to all five nominees.

– As to the features, is it an accident that both the animated short nominees and the animated feature nominees both have one film that’s about the love between a boy and his dog? It seems too much of a coincidence. Hmmm. I never thought of myself as a conspiracy theorist, so I must be onto something here.

I’m impressed that there are three puppet animated films nominated. Not bad. I also don’t mind Brave‘s nomination and think that Wreck-It Ralph will probably win. It was pretty damn popular though I lost interest half an hour in. Maybe I should play more video games. Somehow, though, it seemed to be about so little as compared to all the others.

Best Animated Feature

Frankenweenie – Tim Burton
ParaNorman – Sam Fell and Chris Butler
The Pirates! Band of Misfits – Peter Lord
Wreck-It Ralph – Rich Moore

They all involved a lot of work and they’re all pretty good. Personally, I’d like to see Tim Burton win one after all the animation work he’s done. There haven’t been that many stars who have been consistently supportive and attentive to the medium. The Nightmare Before Christmas has become something of a classic, and The Corpse Bride was so gracefully attractive. The guy deserves a win.

This actually gives me an idea for a blog. Lately a lot of live action people are turning to animation. I guess animation people are trying o turn to live action as well. There must be something worth discussing there, and I’m going to find it.

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Muhammad’s Cartoon

- Talking about animated features brings me to this oddity. While tooling around YouTube, I came across a feature I’ve wanted to see. It was Directed/Produced by Richard Rich. That guy made a lot of animated features, and they all have some strong semblance of professionalism. I have to give it to him. Features are hard to do, hard to raise money for, and hard to maintain the enthusiasm, not only within yourself, but for the whole crew. As a director, if you’re not up to it, neither is your crew. You’re the backbone of the energy level of a film, and a feature goes on for a long time.

After all, before he left Disney, Richard Rich had directed The Black Cauldron and The Fox and the Hound. On his own, he had a bit of a hit with The Swan Princess in 1994. Good enough to get four sequels out of it, including The Trumpet of the Swan, the biggest. He also did an version of Rogers & Hammerstein’s The King & I as an animated feature. A daring idea that didn’t really work. Then there’s Muhammad: The Last Prophet which sneaks in there among dozens and dozens of Christian shorts about Christ and the apostles. He also produced Alpha and Omega, and another sequel called The Swan Princess Christmas. Those last two were cgi done in India.

John Celestri, a good friend, was an animator on all of Rich’s work done outside of Disney. We’re set to talk sometime soon, but John is buried with work. (I’m glad to hear that.) I’m also glad that Rich recognized John’s talent and held onto him all those years. I only wish some of the films were better. At the very least, better than Don Bluth’s output. At least Richard Rich keeps going. That’s positive in its own right. I’m also sorry he deserted 2D animation. I can’t blame him, though. It’s tough holding onto the 2D world.

Anyway, here’s Muhammad. I suspect it’s better on a big, theatrical screen.

Muhammad, the Last Prophet

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J.J.’s History

– I had planned to post a piece about the study J.J. Sedelmaier did for Imprint Magazine. But then Mark Mayerson did another of his perfect posts, tight and to the point excellently written and finely thorough. Though I’d already spent a lot of time looking at the Imprint Magazine piece, Mark’s writing got me back to read it again.

J.J. has an article with a lot of good pictures, about animation discs, pegs and desks. This is the old style hardware where anmators called themselves at home. Hours staring into desks made of cheap drawing tables with holes cut into them; lighting housing built on the underside of those desks, and animation discs were placed into the holes. This allowed man-made light to shine into the artist’s eyes revealing the animation in process through several layers of paper.

Divine.

For many years I’d collected a bunch of his animation hardware. I have a Fleischer disc – the earliest one I have didn’t use the foot-pedal peg release system. They’re just Acme pegs in that disc, though I have at times changed the pegs to Oxberry system or Signal Corps style. Now they’re Acme. I do have one of the bars of three round pegs from the Fleischer system.

I also collected X-Sheets. They’re all different. Most used the 80 lines on the page. 80 lines representing 80 frames or two 16mm feet or five 35mm feet. Some studios used 100 frames to the page. Shamus Culhane’s studio used those. Mathematically they meant nothing, but Shamus told me he liked that even number. The even number was pointless, really. Some other studios liked using 96 frames on a cover sheet and 80 frames on all sheets that followed. Disney did this for years. There was also a lot of room for I.D. info on those cover sheets. I liked the basic 80 frames; they made sense mathematically.

So you can see why an article like J.J.’s piece on discs and desks and pegs would interest me.

J.J. had also put together an exhibit about the history of NY animation and the studios here. Like most exhibits, they move on. However, Imprint Magazine posted an article covering that exhibit. J.J. also wrote that article. You can click this link to see It All Started Here. The article will live on, fortunately.

As a matter of fact, scroll through J.J. Sedelmaier’s articles while you’re there. They’re all interesting.

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Ken Brown’s NY Street Pop

- Today at TekServe, Ken Brown will open an exhibit of his artistry. Slide Shows, Post Cards, Short Films, Prints, Drawings. Multi media, in short. From 1pm-3pm there will be a feast of all that magnificent material Ken collects and reconstructs to create and artform that’s all his. There’s no charge and it’d be great to get out and support one of our best artists. (I’ll try to post some photos if I can remember to bring the camera and then take my eyes off the art to make stills.)

TekServe is at 119 West 23rd Street

The exhibit runs Saturday, January 12th through Sunday, February 24th
hours: Mon – Fri 9am to 8pm; Sat & Sun noon to 6pm

Just cherck out these sample photos which are displayed in the article on HuffPost. Sheer fun. you’ve gotta see the show live. If you can’t make it today, follow up in the next month while the exhibit stays up and lively.

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Gaiman’s Game’s on

- You’ll remember that I recently posted some photos of Tom Hachtman‘s waterlogged house at the Jersey Shore. His home was a victim of Hurricane Sandy, and that wasn’t too recent. Take a look here if you missed the pictures and want to see them. I received this email from Tom this past Wednesday:

Neil Gaiman gave a commencement address to the graduating class at U of the Arts and it went viral on Youtube.
Now it will be a book – any book designed by ‘Chip Kidd is of interest – so I am forwarding this.
Not animation news but interesting I think.
Love those Rabbit Boy strips you posted today.
btw: Len Glasser went to the Museum School that became PCA our alma mater (Phila College of Art) that became University of the Arts.

We are just getting back into our house.

We have heat and hot water again.

Woody is home from LA.

going to celebrate now – talk later

(Finally, afer all this time, heat and hot water. Some kind of frustration/joy sound; that’s all I can emit.)

Commencement speech? Neil Gaiman?

It’s a comic book. I’m not a big fan of Gaiman, so I have to have a reason for posting about it.
Gavin Aung Than illustrated it.

Ok, here’s part of the HuffPost article about it:

Gaiman, known for his short fiction works including “Coraline” and “The Sandman,” gives a 20-minute speech on the difficulties waiting in both failure and success that emerge in the pursuit of art. The standout passage reads:

When things get tough, this is what you should do: Make good art. I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician — make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by a mutated boa constrictor — make good art. IRS on your trail — make good art. Cat exploded — make good art. Someone on the Internet thinks what you’re doing is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before — make good art.

If you’re an artist, do you really need Neil Gaiman to tell you this?

Seriously, though, the only one like Gaiman out there is William Joyce. His books have also attracted a lot of features: Robots, Meet the Robinsons, Rise of the Guardians, and Epic (coming soon).

Anyway here’s part of Gavin Aung Than‘s strip.

Looks très commercial and way too tight for my taste. But if god serves you lemons, make some art.

By the way, here’s the video of Gaiman’s commencement speech, just in case you’re a fan and haven’t caught it yet.

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