#1963:HORUS

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

"FOR DOES THE ROYAL BLOOD-LINE OF THE SUN NOT FLOW WITHIN MY VEINS? DO I NOT HOLD THE SOLAR STAFF?"

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on cover art, the opening splash page (battling Termagant), and a bonus page to "1963: HORUS: Lord of Light" Vol. 1 [Book Five]. August, 1993. Image Comics. Artwork by Rick Veitch.

"Vile creature, know this: The son of Isis and Osiris does not fear the Western lands of death! They are my father's kingdom! Nor do I fear that you shall hide the sun from me! For does the royal blood-line of the sun not flow within my veins? Do I not hold the solar staff?"

-- HORUS, Lord of Light, to Termagant

Sand-blasted script by "Affable" Al Moore

Papyrus-pencilled by "Roarin'" Rick Veitch

Sphinx-like inks by "Jaunty" Johnny Totleben

Helpful hieroglyphics by "Joltin'" John Workman

Celestial colors by "Musty" Marvin Kilroy

Source: http://forgottenawesome.blogspot.com/2018/08/1963-5.html.

[companion-showdown]

Who is your favourite companion?

ROUND 1 MASTERPOST

propaganda under the cut

C’rizz

He came in in the middle of an arc where everybody is dealing with nasty feelings and went, "hold my beer." He's a chameleon; he's a fish out of water. He's a priest and a killer. He can be extremely dry and snarky. I really wanted to see him get to live, and the tragedy that he didn't is part of why I still think about him constantly. (anonymous)

Helen Sinclair

She's a linguist from 1963 (whoo! non-contemporary companion!) who before traveling with the Doctor & Liv had to constantly fight for her right to be a woman in academics and after leaving her time still has to contend with self-doubt but is such a badass. She's a literal genius, saved the universe multiple times, always stands up for people getting screwed over by mainstream society, and is canonically gay (though horribly repressed). Also upon meeting Roberts!Master for the first time, Helen immediately punches him in the face and nothing is more iconic than that. (anonymous)

She’s smart and funny and resourceful. Liv and Eight would probably kill each other if she wasn’t around. She’s usually got the shared TARDIS team brain cell. (anonymous)

you can't have liv without helen :( (anonymous)

Liv Chenka

no propaganda submitted

Lucie Miller

no propaganda submitted

Cousin Eliza

Companion to Cousin Justine (possibly in a more ways than one) Justine is the successor to the Grandfather Paradox who is a reincarnated version of the Other who is also reincarnated as the Doctor. Eliza is a genetic creation of Chris Cwej (and also Chris Cwej) name after Chris Cwej and Bernice Summerfield. Was also briefly Chris Cwej’s Partner but that did not last after Cwej committed genocide and destroyed her parcel version of earth. Joined Faction Paradox picked a new name. Befriended a heavily repressed individual of unknown gender and sexuality but insists they are a heterosexual woman name Cousin Justine. In shirst order Justine Becomes the Faction Paradoxes founder, Eliza’s new home universe is destroyed by the Time Lords they mess around in the 1700’s for a while then Eliza becomes a God called Horus and dies. (anonymous)

[imaginationstimulation]

Introduction

What is beauty? You know it when you see it, but can you describe it? Can people agree on it, or is it purely subjective? Is our concept of beauty based in nature, or society? These are the questions that people have been asking themselves for thousands of years. It’s important to remember that beauty ideals are ever-changing. By looking at the past, we can see that at some point, just about everyone was considered the ideal.

We are going to learn a changeable women ideals of beauty throughout history in the pictures, sculptures created by those self-elected gods we call artists. History provides us a record, and from it one basic, inescapable, and ultimately unconscionable truth stands out: the ideals women are asked to embody, regardless of culture or continent, have been hammered out almost exclusively by men. This fact, more than any sort of evolutionary determinism, has meant that a fairly narrow range of attributes resurfaces across eras, returning every couple of decades.

Beauty, as defined by Webster’s Dictionary, is “the qualities that give pleasure to the senses or exalt the mind.” But what exalts my senses, something that I find beautiful, may very well be considered average or even ugly to others. Hence, the constant debate throughout history about what constitutes beauty.

Egypt

Nefertiti (1370–1330 BC)

This representation of the pharaoh’s wife, Nefertiti, is thought to be the most beautiful by both modern and ancient Egyptian standards.

The kohl around Nefertiti’s eyes and her apparently rouged lips speak to a desire for enhancement and adornment that seems too much a part of being human to have a historical starting point. Trends in altering how we look through fashion and jewelry in all likelihood predates any culture-wide preference for a specific body type. The Egyptian example has proven especially influential in the West, particularly since the 1920s.

Goddess Isis (332–30 BC)

For the ancient Egyptians the image of the goddess Isis suckling her son Horus was a powerful symbol of rebirth that was carried into the Ptolemaic period and later transferred to Rome, where the cult of the goddess was established. This piece of faience sculpture joins the tradition of pharaonic Egypt with the artistic style of the Ptolemaic period. On the goddess’s head is the throne hieroglyph that represents her name. She also wears a vulture head-covering reserved for queens and goddesses. Following ancient conventions for indicating childhood.

Cleopatra VII (69 BC — 30 BC)

Cleopatra VII Philopator, contrary to popular belief, was more Macedonian Greek than Egyptian. Her family tree consisted of siblings who married each other (Yes, incest was the custom in the Ptolemaic Kingdom), descended from the Macedonian general Ptolemy I. When she was presented to Julius Caesar, she made a grand entrance by being rolled up in a carpet. It was said that her beauty impressed Julius Caesar to side with her against her husband(he was her brother, Ptolemy XIII). She allegedly gave birth to Caesar’s son, Cesarean. After Caesar was assassinated and the Roman civil war was over, she used her beauty again to charm Mark Antony to side with her, to the point of him donating Roman territories to her children and moving the Roman capital to Alexandria.

Cleopatra is a famous cultural icon of feminine beauty from far history. She was the Ptolemaic Queen of Egypt. Even today, she is portrayed in many media and literature like 1934 and 1963 films Cleopatra, William Shakespeare’s tragedy Antony and Cleopatra and George Bernard Shaw’s play Caesar and Cleopatra.

She is a famous source of perpetual fascination in the Western culture. Cleopatra was the last known pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt. Even in the ancient world, she was regarded as a great beauty. A good deal of literature described and praised her beauty to a great extent. In Life of Antony by Plutarch, she has been remarked as “her beauty, as we are told, was in itself neither altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her.”

Mummy Mask (60–70 AD)

Plaster masks seem to have been particularly popular in Middle Egypt. They develop of course from Egyptian traditions, but appearances could be strongly individualized and Roman fashions of hairstyle, dress and jewelry were followed to varying degrees. The woman is represented as if lying flat upon her bier. She wears a long Egyptian-style wig made of plant fibers, a deep-red tunic with black clavi (stripes), and jewelry that includes a lunula (crescent pendant), and snake bracelets. At the lower edge of her tunic are two holes, which were used for attaching the mask to the mummy. Over the top of her head is a gilded wreath encircling a scarab beetle that represents the sun appearing at dawn, a metaphor for rebirth.

Conclusion

This relationship between beauty and youth is a very significant part of the concept of beauty in Ancient Egypt, women were encouraged in their independence and beauty. Ancient society promoted a sex-positive environment where premarital sex was entirely acceptable and women could divorce their husbands without shame.

Egyptian women were small in overall stature. In this era, the ideal woman is described as slender, narrow shoulders, high, symmetrical face. Women — used wigs, hair extensions, and hairpieces, as thick, long hair was highly valued.

Women of high rank wore makeup. The Egyptians are, of course, well-known for their opulent eye makeup, which was applied from the eyebrow to the base of the nose. What many do not know, however, the ingredients of the makeup had antibacterial qualities and helped to deter flies and protect against the hot Egyptian sun. Many tinted their nails with sheep fat and blood or henna. Tattooing, generally from henna, was considered erotic, and was heavily practiced among certain classes in Egypt.

Greece

Until in the century of Pericles, fifth century BC, when Athens won a significant development, becomes the cultural, political and economic center of Greece, there was no clear definition of beauty. Before painting and sculpture to develop great beauty was attributed to other virtues such as truth, loyalty, harmony. However, when artists began to paint or write, began to outline some features that, if a person or an object had, they deserved to be called “beautiful.”

Greek philosophers were the first people who asked what makes a person beautiful. Platon, who saw beauty as a result of symmetry and harmony, created the “golden proportion”, he found that in order to be considered “beautiful”, women’s faces should be two-thirds as wide as they are long, and both sides of the visage should be perfectly symmetrical.

But the Greeks were not just obsessed with symmetry, but also long blond hair that is associated with youth and fertility.

Helen of Troy (1300–1200 BC)

For 3,000 years, the woman known as Helen of Troy has been both the ideal symbol of beauty and a reminder of the terrible power beauty can wield. Helen of Troy and the Trojan War were central to the early history of ancient Greece. She is the object of one of the most dramatic love

stories of all time and one of the main reasons for a ten-year war between the Greeks and Trojans, known as the Trojan War. Hers was the face that launched a thousand ships because of the vast number of warships the Greeks sailed to Troy to retrieve Helen.

The poems known as the Trojan War Cycle were the culmination of many myths about the ancient Greek warriors and heroes who fought and died at Troy. With so many men were willing to put their lives on the line to go to battle for her, it’s clear even without a contemporary portrait that Helen had a very special type of beauty.

Aspasia (500 BC)

Aspasia was an influential immigrant to Classical era Athens who was the partner and lover of the statesman Pericles. The exact details regarding the marital status of the couple are still unknown. Aspasia’s house became the center of intellectual teaching in Athens, attracting and influencing prominent teachers like Socrates.

Aspasia is known to have to become a hetaera in Athens, and she has displayed great physical beauty and intelligence. Aspasia’s role in history proves to be crucial to the clues for understanding the women of ancient Greece. In Athens, she was more than just an object of physical beauty and also she was noted for her ability as a conversationalist and adviser.

Phryne of Thespiae (370–316 BC)

Phryne of Thespiae was a famous courtesan of Athens, best known for the court case she won by baring her breasts. Her actual name was Mnesarete (“commemorating virtue”), but she was called Phryne (“toad”) because of the yellow complexion of her skin.

Ancient writers such as Athenaeus praise her extraordinary beauty, and she was the model for many artists and sculptors in Athens, including chiefly posing as Aphrodite.

She was acquitted and went on living a life of luxury as one of the most beautiful and sought-after women of Athens. She became wealthy enough to live as she pleased and even offered to re-build the walls of Thebes, which Alexander the Great had destroyed, if the people would consent to her inscription reading, “Destroyed by Alexander, Restored by Phryne the Courtesan”, but the Thebans refused her offer. Phryne is a famous figure of beauty from the ancient world who is still admired through statues and paintings.

Aphrodite (200 AD)

The Aphrodite exists only in copies of which there were many, because this Aphrodite represented the embodiment of female beauty for Classical Greeks. For us, she is the original Western model, woman as goddess, to be adored and feared. Her soft, rounded flesh bespeaks the power of her sexuality and advertises her life-giving potential. Aphrodite, the goddess who won the goddesses’ beauty contest that led to the Trojan War should be counted among the all-time world-class beauties.

However, this is a list of mortals, so Aphrodite (Venus) doesn’t count. Luckily, there was a woman so beautiful she was used as the model for a statue of Aphrodite. Her beauty was so great it brought about her acquittal when she was put on trial. This woman was the courtesan Phryne whom the famed sculptor Praxiteles used as his model for the Aphrodite of Knidos statue.

Conclusion

Ancient statues show us artists’ idealized form, which for women featured largish hips, full breasts, and a not-quite-flat stomach. But the Greeks were defining more than just “beauty” — they were nailing down the math of attractiveness.

Ancient Greece worshiped the male form, going so far as to proclaim that women’s bodies were ‘disfigured’ versions of men. In this time period, men faced a much higher standard of beauty and perfection than The Greeks were defining beauty literarily, thanks to 8th-7th Century BC author Hesiod, who “described the first created woman simply as ‘the beautiful-evil thing’. She was evil because she was beautiful, and beautiful because she was evil.”

The Greek idea of beauty was pale skin, golden locks and natural makeup. This is vastly different than that of the early adapters to cosmetics the Egyptians and soon we will find that to an extent this ideal is far less dramatic to that of the Romans.

In fact, I think we can conclude that most of the Greek and Egyptian makeup trends are vastly different. In Greece only rich women were able to use cosmetics due to their price.

When it came to Greek women and their hairstyles different lengths and arrangements meant different things. If one was a female slave she would wear her hair short, if a woman wasn’t a slave she would have long hair.

While many women today would pluck a thick “unibrow,” women in Ancient Greece liked the look, and many used dark pigment to draw one in.

Italy

Both for women and men, Romans inherited the Greek standards about symmetry and harmony. Beautiful bodies were proportioned in shape, limbs and face. The ideal of beauty for women was small, thin but robust constitution, narrow shoulders, pronounced hips, wide thighs and small breasts.Smooth white skin was very important for Roman women. To keep it beautiful, they put at night a mask called tectorium (traditionally invented by Popea, Emperor Nero’s wife), which they would remove the next day with milk. They exfoliated their bodies by smearing olive oil and then applying calcium carbonate or with pumice stones. Then they rinsed the mixture with water or with scented oils (cedar, myrrh, pine, lily, saffron, quince, jara, violet or roses). Women in the aristocracy also took milk baths (although Cleopatra is famous for it, it was a usual solution).

By the 1st century AD in the city of Rome the obsession with white skin became very important. Many women used products like bean flour to appear the maximum pale but according to Galen some of them also used lead powder which is extremely toxic.

Women had to be careful with cosmetics because applying them too much was considered only proper for prostitutes. By Greek influence, the eyebrows were very thick, painted with antimony or soot to create almost a unibrow. This custom fell in disuse at the beginning of 1st century BC and they started trimming the eyebrows.

Long eyelashes were considered very beautiful, eyes were shaped as big as possible with black antimony powder. Only in very special occasions, and after Cleopatra went to Rome, some women shaded their eyes with greenish clays (rich in celadonite, malachite or glauconite) or with bluish earth containing zurita.

White regular teeth were very valued (both in men and women). For a long time they used pumice powder or vinegar to clean them. Hispani used urine and this was considered very funny for the Romans (Catulus made a poem about a friend using this method). In the 1st century AD Escribonius Largus, the physician of the Emperor Claudius, invented the first toothpaste based on a mixture of vinegar, honey, salt and heavily crushed glass. If they were lacking teeth, they could use false ones made from ivory, human or animal teeth, sewn with gold.

For centuries Roman women considered mahogany (or red) hair the most beautiful. When Julius Caesar brought so many Gaul slaves to Rome, blond hair became a new obsession (and probably blue eyes, too). Many women started dying their hair with vinegar and saffron, sprinkling it with gold dust (or using gold hairnets) to make it golden. Pigeon droppings, goat fat and caustic soap were also used at the end of the 1st century AD. If they didn’t have enough hair, they had wigs made with real hair from German slaves.

The Republican hairstyle was quite simple, parted in the middle and a bun. In imperial times the fashion were complicated creations with several layers. Even modest women used crossed braids over the forehead. Married women, like vestal women and priestesses, would wear a hairstyle known as sex crines (six braids).

About body hair, from the existence of slaves only dedicated to shaving, historians think that they shaved the whole body. The mosaics don’t show hairy women. The canon for the face was large almond-shaped eyes, sharp nose, medium-sized mouth and ears, oval cheeks and chin.

Bikini Girls (300- 400 AD)

Part of a mosaic found in the early 4th-century Villa Romana del Casale in Sicily, the “Bikini Girls,” as they are known, provide one of the few celebrations of the female figure performing athletic acts, other than dance, in the history of art. Thin without being wrought by exercise, their vivacious bodies would not be out of place in mid-20th century Italy or America. Which is to say, the present a “natural” ideal, formed by activity rather than training.

Conclusion

Roman men preferred modest women who do not use too much make up or ornaments, but still had their ‘natural beauty’. This didn’t mean that Roman men were against cosmetics, since there is a lot of evidence that showed that the cosmetic business was popular then, but Roman men felt that makeup should be done for ‘preservation of beauty’, not ‘unnatural embellishment’.

Natural beauty symbolized chastity and purity, values held up high in the Roman Empire. Women wearing too much makeup or jewelry were seen as seductive and manipulative. Roman men liked women with a light complexion, smooth skin, and minimal body hair. White teeth, long eyelashes, and no body odor was preferable as well. To maintain these standards, rich Roman women used extensive measures to keep their ‘natural beauty’.

Wealthy women like Cleopatra and Poppaea were known to have bathed in milk to keep their milky complexion. Many skincare products were sold in the Roman Empire. Examples are oil from sheep’s wool for makeup, chalk powder as a whitener, gum Arabic as wrinkle cream, and ash from snails as treatment for freckles and sores. Roman women shaved and plucked with resin paste and pumice stones. Perfume was to be strong enough to block off body odor, and not too strong to the point of reeking. As for things that couldn’t be taken care of such as oral hygene(oral hygene was backwards then), fake teeth made from bone and ivory were used. Romans may also have preferred light haired women, a tradition borrowed from the Greeks.

Greek and Roman women used oils, vinegar, and customized hats to keep their hair light. Hairstyles were important too. Young maidens had long hair, slave girls had shorter hair, and matrons had their long hair tied into a bun and adorned with accessories.

[brookston]

Holidays 12.26

Holidays

Alexandria Day

Annabel Nostra’s National Cozy Day

Awful Tie Day

Boxing Day [26th unless Sunday, then 27th, but generally ignored] (a.k.a. ... 

Boxing Day (UK, Commonwealth) 

Day of Goodwill (South Africa, Namibia)

Family Day (Namibia, Vanuatu)

J’Ouvert (Saint Kitts and Nevis)

Le Lendemain de Noël (Quebec, Canada)

Thanksgiving (Solomon Islands)

Dissolution of the Soviet Union Day

Father’s Day (Bulgaria)

Holiday Magic Days begin (Mystic Seaport, Connecticut) [thru 1.1]

Junkanoo (Bahamas)

Lava Day (French Republic)

Lunes Siguiente a Navidad (Spain)

Maomas

Mauro Hamza Day (Houston, Texas)

Mummer's Day (Cornwall, UK)

National Homeowners Day

National Ranboo Day

National Safety Day (South Africa)

National Thank You Note Day

National Whiner's Day

Proclamation Day (South Australia)

Recyclable Packaging Day

Sakewa (Sikkim, India)

Second Day of Christmas (Baltic states, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden)

Shenandoah National Park Day

Sports Day (Falkland Islands)

Stairway to Heaven Day

Utamanduni Day (Kenya)

Wren Day (a.k.a. Day of the Wren; Ireland, Isle of Man, Wales)

Food & Drink Celebrations

Blessing of the Wine (Luxembourg)

Candy Cane Day

Coffee Percolator Day

Irish Pub Day

Kitty Dukakis Day (Challenge to Drink 750ml in 24 Hours)

National Leftovers Day (Australia)

Unbottling Day

4th & Last Tuesday in December

Charity Giving Day [4th Tuesday]

National Co-op Day [4th Tuesday]

Independence Days

Essexia (Declared; 2017) [unrecognized]

Independence and Unity Day (Slovenia)

Istria (Declared; 1935) [unrecognized]

Marienbourg (Declared; 1935) [unrecognized]

Monmark (Declared; 2017) [unrecognized]

West Sayville (Declared; 2022) [unrecognized]

Feast Days

Abadiu of Antinoe (Coptic Church)

Day of Horus (Pagan)

Day of Theotokos (Byzantium)

Dionysius, Pope (Christian; Saint)

Feast of Fools, Day 1 (St. Stephen's Day)

Full Moon [12th of the Year] (a.k.a. ... 

Bitter Moon (China)

Christmas Moon (Colonial)

Cold Moon (Amer. Indian, Celtic, North America, Traditional)

Fruit Moon (South Africa)

Hoar Frost Moon (Traditional)

Long Night’s Moon (Alternate, Amer. Indian, Neo-Pagan)

Moon of the Popping Trees (Traditional)

Oak Moon (England, Wicca)

Peach Moon (Choctaw)

Snow Moon (Cherokee)

Southern Hemisphere: Honey, Rose, Strawberry

Unduwap Full Moon Poya Day (Sri Lanka)

Winter Maker Moon (Traditional)

Iarlath (Christian; Saint)

James the Just (Eastern Orthodox Church)

John Calvin Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Kwanzaa, Day 1: Umoja (Unity)

Linnæus (Positivist; Saint)

Maurice Utrillo (Artology)

Proclamation Day (Australia)

Saka Sirhind Martyrdom Day (India)

Scudge (Muppetism)

2nd Day of Noodlemas (Pastafarian)

Stephen (Western Church)

Synaxis of the Mother of God (Greek Orthodox Church)

Synaxis of the Theotokos (Eastern Orthodox Church)

Twelve Holy Days #1 (Aries, the head; Esoteric Christianity)

Twelvetide, Day #2; St. Stephens Day (a.k.a. the Twelve Days of Christmas or Christmastide) [until 1.5]

Veer Bal Dias (India)

Zartosht No-Diso (Zoroastrianism)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Shakku (赤口 Japan) [Bad luck all day, except at noon.]

Premieres

The ABC Murders (BBC TV Mini-Series; 2018)

The Art of Self Defense (Disney Cartoon; 1941)

Brighton Beach Memoirs (Film; 1986)

The Exorcist (Film; 1973)

Fast & Furious Spy Racers (Animated TV Series; 2019) [F&F]

The Glass Menagerie (Play; 1944)

Happy, by Matthew West (Album; 2003)

I Want To Hold Your Hand, by The Beatles (US Song; 1963)

King Lear, by William Shakespeare (Play; 1606)

The Last Edition or Five-Scar Final (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S3, Ep. 138; 1961)

Magical Mystery Tour (BBC TV Special; 1967)

Marvin the Martian in the Third Dimension (WB LT Cartoon; 1997)

Mati Hari (Film; 1931)

Measure for Measure, by William Shakespeare (Play; 1604)

Monterey Pop (Music Documentary; 1968)

Pluto’s Blue Note (Disney Cartoon; 1947)

The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann (Adult Film; 1974)

Purple Haze, lyrics written by Jimi Hendrix (Song; 1966)

Queen Christina (Film; 1933)

Rashomon (Film; 1951)

Red-Headed Baby (WB MM Cartoon; 1931)

Rickety Gin (Disney Cartoon; 1927)

The Ritz (Film; 1976)

Road to Andalay (WB MM Cartoon; 1964)

Spice World (Film; 1997)

Subway Finish or An Underground Round (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S3, Ep. 137; 1961)

Tequila, by The Champs (Song; 1957)

We Bought a Zoo (Film; 2011)

Wool: The Unraveling, by Hugh Howey (Novel; 2011)

Today’s Name Days

Stephan, Stephanie (Austria)

Iosif, Yosif (Bulgaria)

Kruno, Krunoslav, Stjepan (Croatia)

Štěpán (Czech Republic)

Stefan (Denmark)

Sten, Taban, Tahvo, Teho, Tehvan, Tehvo (Estonia)

Tahvo, Tapani, Teppo (Finland)

Étienne (France)

Stephan, Stephanie (Germany)

Constantios, Emmanouela, Emmanouil, Emmanuel, Manolis, Panagiotis (Greece)

István (Hungary)

Santo (Italy)

Dainuvite, Gija, Saulvedis (Latvia)

Gaudilas, Gindvilė, Steponas (Lithuania)

Stefan, Steffen (Norway)

Dionizy, Szczepan, Wróciwoj (Poland)

Štefan (Slovakia)

Esteban (Spain)

Staffan, Stefan (Sweden)

Joseph, Josephine (Ukraine)

Esteban, Estefania, Estefany, Estevan, Stefan, Stefanie, Stephan, Stephanie, Stephany, Stephen, Steve, Steven, Stevie (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 360 of 2024; 5 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 2 of week 52 of 2023

Celtic Tree Calendar: Beth (Birch) [Day 1 of 28]

Chinese: Month 12 (Jia-Zi), Day 14 (Wu-Wu)

Chinese Year of the: Rabbit 4721 (until February 10, 2024)

Hebrew: 14 Teveth 5784

Islamic: 13 Jumada II 1445

J Cal: 30 Zima; Nineday [30 of 30]

Julian: 13 December 2023

Moon: 100%: Full Moon

Positivist: 24 Bichat (13th Month) [Linnæus]

Runic Half Month: Eihwaz or Eoh (Yew Tree) [Day 1 of 15]

Season: Winter (Day 6 of 89)

Zodiac: Capricorn (Day 5 of 31)

Calendar Changes

Beth (Birch) [Celtic Tree Calendar; Month 13 of 13]

Eihwaz or Eoh (Yew Tree) [Half-Month 1 of 24; Runic Half-Months] (thru 1.12)

[brookstonalmanac]

Holidays 12.26

Holidays

Alexandria Day

Annabel Nostra’s National Cozy Day

Awful Tie Day

Boxing Day [26th unless Sunday, then 27th, but generally ignored] (a.k.a. ... 

Boxing Day (UK, Commonwealth) 

Day of Goodwill (South Africa, Namibia)

Family Day (Namibia, Vanuatu)

J’Ouvert (Saint Kitts and Nevis)

Le Lendemain de Noël (Quebec, Canada)

Thanksgiving (Solomon Islands)

Dissolution of the Soviet Union Day

Father’s Day (Bulgaria)

Holiday Magic Days begin (Mystic Seaport, Connecticut) [thru 1.1]

Junkanoo (Bahamas)

Lava Day (French Republic)

Lunes Siguiente a Navidad (Spain)

Maomas

Mauro Hamza Day (Houston, Texas)

Mummer's Day (Cornwall, UK)

National Homeowners Day

National Ranboo Day

National Safety Day (South Africa)

National Thank You Note Day

National Whiner's Day

Proclamation Day (South Australia)

Recyclable Packaging Day

Sakewa (Sikkim, India)

Second Day of Christmas (Baltic states, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden)

Shenandoah National Park Day

Sports Day (Falkland Islands)

Stairway to Heaven Day

Utamanduni Day (Kenya)

Wren Day (a.k.a. Day of the Wren; Ireland, Isle of Man, Wales)

Food & Drink Celebrations

Blessing of the Wine (Luxembourg)

Candy Cane Day

Coffee Percolator Day

Irish Pub Day

Kitty Dukakis Day (Challenge to Drink 750ml in 24 Hours)

National Leftovers Day (Australia)

Unbottling Day

4th & Last Tuesday in December

Charity Giving Day [4th Tuesday]

National Co-op Day [4th Tuesday]

Independence Days

Essexia (Declared; 2017) [unrecognized]

Independence and Unity Day (Slovenia)

Istria (Declared; 1935) [unrecognized]

Marienbourg (Declared; 1935) [unrecognized]

Monmark (Declared; 2017) [unrecognized]

West Sayville (Declared; 2022) [unrecognized]

Feast Days

Abadiu of Antinoe (Coptic Church)

Day of Horus (Pagan)

Day of Theotokos (Byzantium)

Dionysius, Pope (Christian; Saint)

Feast of Fools, Day 1 (St. Stephen's Day)

Full Moon [12th of the Year] (a.k.a. ... 

Bitter Moon (China)

Christmas Moon (Colonial)

Cold Moon (Amer. Indian, Celtic, North America, Traditional)

Fruit Moon (South Africa)

Hoar Frost Moon (Traditional)

Long Night’s Moon (Alternate, Amer. Indian, Neo-Pagan)

Moon of the Popping Trees (Traditional)

Oak Moon (England, Wicca)

Peach Moon (Choctaw)

Snow Moon (Cherokee)

Southern Hemisphere: Honey, Rose, Strawberry

Unduwap Full Moon Poya Day (Sri Lanka)

Winter Maker Moon (Traditional)

Iarlath (Christian; Saint)

James the Just (Eastern Orthodox Church)

John Calvin Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Kwanzaa, Day 1: Umoja (Unity)

Linnæus (Positivist; Saint)

Maurice Utrillo (Artology)

Proclamation Day (Australia)

Saka Sirhind Martyrdom Day (India)

Scudge (Muppetism)

2nd Day of Noodlemas (Pastafarian)

Stephen (Western Church)

Synaxis of the Mother of God (Greek Orthodox Church)

Synaxis of the Theotokos (Eastern Orthodox Church)

Twelve Holy Days #1 (Aries, the head; Esoteric Christianity)

Twelvetide, Day #2; St. Stephens Day (a.k.a. the Twelve Days of Christmas or Christmastide) [until 1.5]

Veer Bal Dias (India)

Zartosht No-Diso (Zoroastrianism)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Shakku (赤口 Japan) [Bad luck all day, except at noon.]

Premieres

The ABC Murders (BBC TV Mini-Series; 2018)

The Art of Self Defense (Disney Cartoon; 1941)

Brighton Beach Memoirs (Film; 1986)

The Exorcist (Film; 1973)

Fast & Furious Spy Racers (Animated TV Series; 2019) [F&F]

The Glass Menagerie (Play; 1944)

Happy, by Matthew West (Album; 2003)

I Want To Hold Your Hand, by The Beatles (US Song; 1963)

King Lear, by William Shakespeare (Play; 1606)

The Last Edition or Five-Scar Final (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S3, Ep. 138; 1961)

Magical Mystery Tour (BBC TV Special; 1967)

Marvin the Martian in the Third Dimension (WB LT Cartoon; 1997)

Mati Hari (Film; 1931)

Measure for Measure, by William Shakespeare (Play; 1604)

Monterey Pop (Music Documentary; 1968)

Pluto’s Blue Note (Disney Cartoon; 1947)

The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann (Adult Film; 1974)

Purple Haze, lyrics written by Jimi Hendrix (Song; 1966)

Queen Christina (Film; 1933)

Rashomon (Film; 1951)

Red-Headed Baby (WB MM Cartoon; 1931)

Rickety Gin (Disney Cartoon; 1927)

The Ritz (Film; 1976)

Road to Andalay (WB MM Cartoon; 1964)

Spice World (Film; 1997)

Subway Finish or An Underground Round (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S3, Ep. 137; 1961)

Tequila, by The Champs (Song; 1957)

We Bought a Zoo (Film; 2011)

Wool: The Unraveling, by Hugh Howey (Novel; 2011)

Today’s Name Days

Stephan, Stephanie (Austria)

Iosif, Yosif (Bulgaria)

Kruno, Krunoslav, Stjepan (Croatia)

Štěpán (Czech Republic)

Stefan (Denmark)

Sten, Taban, Tahvo, Teho, Tehvan, Tehvo (Estonia)

Tahvo, Tapani, Teppo (Finland)

Étienne (France)

Stephan, Stephanie (Germany)

Constantios, Emmanouela, Emmanouil, Emmanuel, Manolis, Panagiotis (Greece)

István (Hungary)

Santo (Italy)

Dainuvite, Gija, Saulvedis (Latvia)

Gaudilas, Gindvilė, Steponas (Lithuania)

Stefan, Steffen (Norway)

Dionizy, Szczepan, Wróciwoj (Poland)

Štefan (Slovakia)

Esteban (Spain)

Staffan, Stefan (Sweden)

Joseph, Josephine (Ukraine)

Esteban, Estefania, Estefany, Estevan, Stefan, Stefanie, Stephan, Stephanie, Stephany, Stephen, Steve, Steven, Stevie (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 360 of 2024; 5 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 2 of week 52 of 2023

Celtic Tree Calendar: Beth (Birch) [Day 1 of 28]

Chinese: Month 12 (Jia-Zi), Day 14 (Wu-Wu)

Chinese Year of the: Rabbit 4721 (until February 10, 2024)

Hebrew: 14 Teveth 5784

Islamic: 13 Jumada II 1445

J Cal: 30 Zima; Nineday [30 of 30]

Julian: 13 December 2023

Moon: 100%: Full Moon

Positivist: 24 Bichat (13th Month) [Linnæus]

Runic Half Month: Eihwaz or Eoh (Yew Tree) [Day 1 of 15]

Season: Winter (Day 6 of 89)

Zodiac: Capricorn (Day 5 of 31)

Calendar Changes

Beth (Birch) [Celtic Tree Calendar; Month 13 of 13]

Eihwaz or Eoh (Yew Tree) [Half-Month 1 of 24; Runic Half-Months] (thru 1.12)

[zanimljivaekonomija]

Promocija knjige Snežane Teodoropulos “Oslušni vetar”

U Press centru Udruženja novinara Srbije održana je promocija treće knjige Snežane Teodoropulos “Oslušni vetar”. Bilo je to izuzetno lepo osmišljeno književno veče uz puno poezije, muzike, grčkog i našeg zvuka, obraćanja izdavača, recenzenta i same autorke. Biranim rečima o Snežani i njenoj poeziji govorili su Žika Ajdačić, generalni sekretar Kulturne prosvetne zajednice Srbije, Majo Danilović, književnik i recenzent knjige, kao i teatrolog dr Milovan Zdravković, koji je ujak pesnikinje i koji je ispričao zanimljive priče o porodici pesnikinje, predstavivši i njenog muža Jorgosa i decu. Snežana Teodoropulos, devojački Đorđević, rođena je 1963. u Prištini, a odrasla je u Kuršumliji, pa je jugu Srbije i Kosovu i Metohiji i ljudima koje je poznavala posvetila i deo svojih pesama. Naravno tu je i pregršt ljubavnih stihova (ciklusi “Oslušni vetar”, “Šapat kiše”, “Šapat zvezda”…) zbog čega je recenzent Danilović knjigu nazvao “darovnicom ljubavi”. Pored autorke na promociji su njene stihove kazivali i Maja Savić, novinar i voditelj TV Kuršumlija i Lepomir Ivković, dramski umetnik. Na harfi ih je pratila Sofija Sibinović, a nastupile su i Senžanine drugarice iz Kuršumlije i Beograda sa kojima je kao vrlo mlada nastupala u horu, a koje su i ove večeri oduševile pristutne pre svega izvođenjem poznatih grčkih pesama. Aplauzom su pozdravljene i reči Žike Ajdačića da je Snežana Teodoropulos predložena za nagradu “Zlatna značka” Kulturno prosvetne zajednice.

Foto: Momčilo Karan

[p-s-bmc-3012-haruni]

Assignment 1 - Industry Model - Hayao Miyazaki

Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese animator, director, producer, screenwriter, author, and manga artist.

Over the years, he has created extraordinary, magical and whimsical worlds for both children and adults to lose themselves within.

Miyazaki is a genius, and his films succeed on many levels – technical, emotional, intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and political.

He is a co-founder of one of the biggest animation studios in the world, Studio Ghibli,

Miyazaki has directed masterpieces like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke which have earned him critical acclaim as well as immense popularity on a global scale.

In 2003, Miyazaki won the best-animated film Oscar, for the spooky and surreal Spirited Away.

Early years

Hayao Miyazaki was born on 5th of January, 1941, in Bunkyo, Tokyo.

He is the 2nd Oldest of 4 brothers.

Father was director of his uncle's factory, Miyazaki Airplane, which made rudders for fighter planes, during WW2

He constantly liked to draw, especially planes.

His childhood dream was to become a manga artist.

During his 3rd year in High School, Miyazaki's interest in animation was sparked by “Panda and the Magic Serpent (1958)”, Japan's first feature-length animated film in color.

Miyazaki attended University in the department of political economy, majoring in Japanese Industrial Theory.

He joined the "Children's Literature Research Club", as it was the "closest thing back then to a comics club".

Around this time, he also drew manga; he never completed any stories but accumulated thousands of pages of the beginnings of stories.

Early Work

These are the studios he worked in;

In 1963, he began his career, working in television at Toei Animation as an in-between artist.

The first large-scale animation studio in Japan, between 1963 and 1971.

Following are some examples of his animation in early work;

1963 Watchdog Bow Wow

1971 Lupin III - Series

1984 Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind

He became chief secretary of Toei's labor union in 1964.

Miyazaki later worked as chief animator, concept artist, and scene designer on The Great Adventure of Horus, Prince of the Sun (1968).

Miyazaki’s first trip abroad was an important source of inspiration, and his great love for the European landscapes were integrated into these shows.

Following are some examples of his Manga in early work;

1969 Puss in Boots

1972 Animal Treasure Island

1998-1999 Tigers Covered With Mud

Studio Ghibli

Studio Ghibli was founded with Miyazaki’s friends and colleagues Isao Takahata and Toshio Suzuki in 1985.

Ghibli halted production in 2014 when Miyazaki announced his retirement, but reopened in 2017 when he decided to go back to work on How Do You Live?, which is currently some three years away from completion.

Miyazaki’s career as a feature-film director at Studio Ghibli:

Castle in the Sky (1986),

My Neighbor Totoro (1988),

Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989),

Porco Rosso (1992),

and later works Princess Mononoke (1997),

Spirited Away (2001),

Howl’s Moving Castle (2004),

Ponyo (2008)

and The Wind Rises (2013).

All of Miyazaki’s films are aimed at children or young teenagers. But he makes his films resonate with adults as well as children by keeping the emotions authentic.

Miyazaki does not underestimate the intelligence of children, or their powers of understanding. Characters in his films, they experience loss and sadness as well as joy, despair as well as hope, in a way that is relatable for both children and adults.

Miyazaki draws heavily on Japanese landscapes and culture, although the humanism of his films means they can be appreciated by international viewers. He loves the country’s woodlands (which he says contain more bugs than those of Europe), and he and his team made field trips to forests to research films like My Neighbour Totoro.

Themes and approach

Miyazaki tends to focus on female heroines, and his work has a feminist angle.

Miyazaki says he likes to create female characters because, he does not want his films to reflect only his own experiences.

Heroines that are powerful women in control of their own fates, and the destinies of whole cities and countries.

Flying is an activity which Miyazaki loves to animate, and it is a big theme of his films. Miyazaki’s father designed planes, and Ghibli shares its name with an Italian aircraft manufacturer.

Miyazaki likes the connection between creative design and engineering that goes into aeroplane design, and thinks it is similar to the process of making animated films.

Miyazaki’s approach to animation is based on Japanese anime, but is uniquely his own. Each of his films looks different, and each uses a unique colour scheme and library of shapes. His skill at depicting human movement has played a big part in his success.

Instead of writing the scripts and then adding the animation later – the modern Hollywood way, he focuses on the visual storyboards and then constructs the stories around the images he creates. Miyazaki’s focus on visual storytelling has allowed his imagination free reign.

References

[cgbcomics]

[razberithreepointonefour]

[neil-gaiman]

I recently got my hands on Alan Moore's 1963 miniseries and was amused to see a letter from you in the letter pages for the Horus issue. I just read that you actually did write the text for letter and was wondering, is that true?

It is true.

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

TRAVEL BACK TO THE SANDS OF THE EGYPTIAN PHARAOHS WITH "1963."

PIC(S) INFO: Resolution at 820x1231 (3x) -- Spotlight on "Sizzlin Sixty-Three Souvenir Snap-Shots" from "1963: Book Five -- HORUS: Lord of Light" Vol. 1 (he is an homage to Marvel's Silver Age Thor). August, 1993. Image Comics.

"...we return to the marvelous world of "1963," where we leave the world of man and enter the world of gods! ...we go on a journey into the mythology of Egyptian religion with Horus, the Egyptian Lord of Light, who is the Thor stand-in for Moore’s "1963"!"

-- ALAN MOORE'S FORGOTTEN AWESOME (blogspot by Derek Mont-Ros)

Source: http://forgottenawesome.blogspot.com/2018/08/1963-5.html.

[canmom]

Animation Night 70 - All Right Then, Hayao, Let’s Do This

So it’s Animation Night 70! Seven tens! We’ve had some good ones recently huh. Going to be hard to beat that.

Back at the start of Animation Night, I set myself a fairly simple rule: none of the really well known Miyazaki/Disney films; if I was going to show anything by them it would have to be at least a little old and obscure. In that spirit, while we did a night on Takahata in which we watched Horus: Prince of the Sun, and watched Miyazaki’s film The Castle of Cagliostro on Lupin III night.

Well, I have arbitrarily decided it’s finally time to give Hayao his due. He is, I can’t deny, something of a very formative influence...

Miyazaki’s career is one of the best documented of any Japanese filmmaker, so strap in, this one’s gonna get long.

If we’re gonna do this, let’s start in the old days! Long before Studio Ghibli became an international household name, Hayao Miyazaki was, as we discussed on Takahata’s night, working at Toei Animation (the first major anime studio) in the 60s on films like Takahata’s Horus. There, he was a close student of Yasuo Otsuka, one of the biggest names in 60s animation, working all sorts of jobs from key animator to character designer. He was also very active in labour organising at the studio from pretty much the moment he joined, a stark contrast to his and Takahata’s behaviour as bosses at Ghibli and A-Pro later in their lives.

I have been able to find out a little more about the labour struggles at Toei, and their significance for the rest of the industry; in this article, in Matteo Watzky writes on the reason they began in 1961, shortly after Osamu Tezuka - already a famous mangaka - joined the company:

Tezuka was very dissatisfied with the modifications to his original storyboard, which is why he only wrote the two other movies. But the production of Saiyûki was capital : Tezuka could see how an animated movie was produced and made a lot of contacts, but also discovered the already very difficult working conditions of animators. Indeed, the director of Saiyûki, Taiji Yabushita, was hospitalized at the end of production, and was probably the first victim of what Yasuji Mori called the “anime syndrom” [Quoted in Clements, 2013, p.103].

These difficult working conditions caused many tensions that exploded in September 1961, with the first strike at Toei. At the time, most staff received a monthly salary, but at the start of the 60’s, Toei’s management started to recruit part-timers that were paid hourly, and did not receive any bonuses. This inequality created tensions among the animators, but also in the rest of the staff, as all the more technical workers (shooting and editing staff, colorists, etc.) were paid significantly less than animators. The studio’s union started pushing for a raise in salaries and bonuses, but the studio’s management refused to give as high a raise as expected. In early December, animators held three two hours strikes, which led to a lockdown of the studio from the 5th to the 9th of December [Clements, 2013, p.104 ; Pruvost-Delaspre, 2014, p.466]. Negotiations ensued and some demands were met, but the ringleaders of the strike were asked to leave. The most prominent among them were two young animators, Gisaburô Sugii and Shigeyuki Hayashi, who would later go by the name Rintarô.

Paradoxically, this strike accelerated the deterioration of working conditions at Toei : the studio started relying more and more on cheaper (and less revendicative) independent part-time staff. In 1965, they stopped paying those hourly, but by the number of cuts, which is now the industry standard practice [Pruvost-Delaspre, 2014, p.460]. In 1970, the studio went even further and fired 43 animators, which provoked another massive strike and another series of voluntary departures. 

This image from the same article illustrates a strike at Toei in 1963. Yasuo Otsuka is the one standing on the tables; Hayao Miyazaki may be the one with glasses on the far right of the picture.

The labour struggles at Toei were the cause for a lot of animators leaving the studio; Tezuka of course left to found MushiPro and created the TV anime in Astro Boy, creating the tradition of limited animation. Miyazaki and Takahata, however, belong to another lineage - that of realism. They remained at Toei up through 1969, along with Otsuka who stayed to mentor them. On Horus, assigned to the very young untested Takahata by Otsuka, Miyazaki built a number of connections that would stay for the rest of his life, many of them through the union:

The staff was incredibly young : in 1965, Otsuka himself was 34, Takahata 30, Reiko Okuyama and Yoichi Kotabe 29, Akemi Ota 27 (1) and Hayao Miyazaki only 24. The elder of the group was Yasuji Mori, who had been brought into the team after a first stop of the production by Toei’s management to bring some order into this staff of rebellious young people (2).  After all, most of them had met in the studio’s union (under Miyazaki’s chairman term in 1964 [Miyazaki, 2009, p.323]) where they both discussed politics and watched animated films from around the world.

After Horus’s very limited release, Otsuka almost immediately defected to the young A-Pro (founded in 1965 by Daikichiro Kusube, in the second wave of departures from Toei). Miyazaki didn’t follow immediately; he spent a few years still at Toei publishing pseudonymous manga People of the Desert, which can be seen as a sort of prototype for Nausicaa, while working on various Toei productions like the tank scenes in Flying Phantom Ship.

During this time, he may well have animated a scene of planes and tanks in A-Pro’s Moomin (1969); a scene that so upset Tove Janson that she pulled the rights to the series and gave them to Mushi-Pro to make instead.

In 1971, Miyazaki and Takahata finally followed Otsuka out to A-Pro, in fraught circumstances: Toei was pivoting to TV animation and dimissing staff left and right, and the union was unable to stop it...

Back in Toei, post-Hols tensions only exploded in 1971, after the death of the creator and head of the studio, Hiroshi Okawa. Following this event, the management confirmed its new priorities : no more ambitions to become the “Disney of the East” that would produce mass-appeal, high-quality feature films, but focus on lower-quality but highly-competitive TV work. That meant leaving aside the remnants of the film-focused production process and relying on a cheaper, more efficient workforce. Concretely, the result was the dismissal of 43 animators. Those left, led by Takahata, organized a mass strike at the end of 1971 and the start of 1972. But the strikers just didn’t have enough leverage, and rather than attempting to change the studio, they left it.

At this time, the system seems to be that TMS Entertainment was the producer on all kinds of series, with the animation work subcontracted out to various Toei offshoots like A-Pro, along with Mushi-Pro offshoot Madhouse. Despite the Moomin catastrophe, A-Pro had big ambitions: an adaptation of Pippi Longstockings. But this didn’t quite happen...

In 1971, as the situation in Toei degraded, Otsuka took up the opportunity and called his comrades from Hols to A Pro where he and Kusube had projected to try another adaptation of a Scandinavian children’s classic, Pippi Longstockings by Astrid Lindgren. Otsuka apparently had little creative importance in the project, led instead by the Takahata-Miyazaki-Kotabe trio : Takahata would adapt the books into a scenario that Miyazaki would illustrate with his recognizable and always rich image boards, while Kotabe designed the characters.

However, that ambitious project would also end up being a disappointment. Tokyo Movie’s director, Yutaka Fujioka, left for Sweden to acquire the rights of the original work, and was accompanied by the trio whose insistence on realism made scouting essential. But the team couldn’t meet Lindgren, who in the end refused to give the rights to Tokyo Movie ; the trio apparently believed that it was because of the Moomin case, which Lindgren had heard about. This is a believable explanation, and the only one I could find, but without any tangible proof…

Although this project was never finished, the work they did became foundational on one of their most influential early projects: Heidi: Girl of the Alps. For this to happen, Miyazaki and Takahata departed to Zuiyō Eizō in 1973, after directing two slice-of-life Panda! Go, Panda! shorts which adopted the slice-of-life sensibility they’d intended for Pippi.

In the next couple years at A-Pro, Otsuka, Miyazaki and Takahata would find themselves working on the very first adaptation of Lupin III, one of the most influential franchises in anime history, during one of the highest points in TMS’s creative output. There’s lots of interesting details in that article which are tangential to telling the story of Miyazaki, so go read it if you wanna learn about the ‘TMS golden age’.

Lupin III: Part 1 (known as “green jacket” to fans of the franchise) has a bit of an odd story, and Watzky devotes a full article to it. A passion project of Otsuka and director Masaaki Osumi, and at first supervised by the mangaka Monkey Punch himself, it was taken in a gritty, seinen direction from its initial pilot - but this did not play well with the higherups:

The first 9 episodes, directed by Osumi, are still close to the atmosphere of the pilot, and of the manga. The animation, while good, feels very rough and the characters are dark, manipulative and violent. Star of the Giants and Ashita no Joe had shown the potential of more dramatic animation that could eventually appeal to older audiences, but this was too much for the time. The series had poor ratings and, as early as episode 2, producers asked Osumi to make changes – which he flat-out refused to do. Under pressure from the TV station, Osumi was progressively relieved of his duties as director while Otsuka introduced his two friends to the series to give them work after the failure of their Pippi Longstocking project.

With Osumi’s departure, Miyazaki and Takahata were brought on board, and their work at this point was a prototype for many of their later movies (including their eventual film adaptation of Lupin III), creating the sort of fun, comic style that became the default tone of the series.

While keeping the fundamental conceit of the series, they started changing the characters and atmosphere of the show. For example, Goemon stops being a dark and dangerous samurai but is used more often for comic relief : Miyazaki himself reminisces about the last episode, where the scenario is pushed to its limits when “we had Goemon tunnel below a huge, seemingly impregnable bank vault and then slice a hole in the floor with his sword, and we showed Inspector Zenigata reduced to tears” [Miyazaki, 2009, p.280]. The general impression given by Miyazaki is that of a chaotic production (he says the producers made apologies to the staff once the show was over), which didn’t stop the staff from having a lot of fun with the thing.

Their work wasn’t quite enough to save the show from poor ratings - it would only get attention in a rerun years later with the second Lupin adaptation.

This brings us to Heidi: Girl of the Alps, probably one of the most important shows for Miyazaki and Takahata and the anime industry as a whole. By this point, the duo were starting to develop strong opinions about what kind of anime they wanted to make, charmed by seeing how children reacted to Panda Go-Panda, and meanwhile they were very disdainful of the limited animation tradition that began at Mushi-Pro and continued at Madhouse. Recognising that they needed to move beyond A-Pro, Otsuka put some effort to negotiate a deal with Shigeto Takahashi where he’d persuade Takahata to go over to Zuiyō Eizō as long as Takahashi would give Takahata a good salary and treatment.

“I’m really grateful to him,” Takahata said in 2004 as he remembered Otsuka’s gentle encouragement to meet with Takahashi. “You can tell he’s looking out for your interests. I’m deeply indebted to him for his help.”

They hit it off really well: both shared a very similar vision for what Heidi should be. Pre-production set off to a good start. Miyazaki remained at A-Pro a little longer, directing one episode of Otsuka’s project Samurai Giants, perhaps as a last favour before he went to Zuiyō Eizō.

As a work of animation, Heidi is remembered perhaps for being uncompromising: TV animation that tried its level best to be film.

What set Heidi apart was its distinct philosophy: one that would be focused on “realism”, an ability to create a believable world, to reproduce the actions and motions of mundane life, and to challenge live-action cinema in terms of technique and staging. 

To this end, Takahata brought on many of his colleagues from Horus. Watzky’s article goes into exhaustive detail about some of the major character animators who flourished on the production.

Heidi is often noted for innovations it made to the anime production process, notably the ‘layout system’. After the storyboards (絵コンテ e-konte) were finished, Hayao Miyazaki would draw layouts (aka 1st key animation) as a step prior to the actual key animation. Nowadays, layouts are normally handled by key animators themselves, but this first step has become universal. According to Watzky’s article, there were already a number of precursors to this, but Heidi certainly accelerated its adoption, and provided a particularly developed form, with the layouts often being extensively inbetweened; they were also much more integrated with the background art.

Heidi’s production was characterised by a great deal of centralisation. It had a single animation director checking the key animation for the entire series; it also introduced the role of in-between checking, and further cemented the key animation (genga)/cleanup & inbetweening (douga) divide. It was also notable for making a location scouting trip to Switzerland, an expense almost never indulged by TV animation at the time.

Unfortunately, Heidi also marks a catastrophic reversal of Miyazaki and Takahata’s days as union men advocating for the workers. While early episodes were made with ample time, the production slid behind schedule and increasingly became a crunch time hell.

Things wouldn’t stay so comfortable for long, however; due to the demands put upon the staff by the main trio and especially by Takahata, Heidi’s production quickly spiraled into hell for its staff. According to Yōko Gomi, although Heidi broke many artistic barriers, it also “opened a new and frightening door to a way of working that is not normal for human beings.”

(...)

She mentions that, by the middle of the show (probably around episode 22), the staff started regularly pulling all-nighters – something apparently unusual in anime production until then, outside of exceptional cases like Mushi Pro’s A Thousand and One Nights. By the latter stages of the show, episodes had to be entirely completed in just less than 2 weeks each. At some points, all free or not-so-free hands were put to work: production assistants had to help with cel painting so that the episodes could be delivered on time.

This brutal pace of production led to many animators departing the production. It was also characterised by some really bizarre workplace abuse: badly drawn inbetweens would be displayed on the wall for everyone to see.

Watzky writes darkly, of Heidi’s enduring influence:

It was obvious that Shigeto Takahashi had kept his promise to give Takahata as much rope as possible: now Takahata’s iron-fisted directorial style, with the full support of producer Junzô Nakajima, was unleashed with a vengeance as the entire staff underwent enormous suffering to meet his demands while keeping deadlines. The most remarkable thing is that, under such conditions, Heidi didn’t collapse. It certainly went through drops in animation quality and consistency, as we will see, but it still stood head and shoulders above the standard of most of 1974’s animation. This was perhaps a natural result of the “no failure allowed” mentality: the tension and pressure on the staff were so high that they had no choice but to deliver, and ended up doing so superbly. The fact that they were able to do so would only encourage producers and directors to push them further and raise their standards even more. Such a vicious cycle would go on to become the core not only of Studio Ghibli’s organization, but also of the entire anime industry’s exploitative practices. Of course, Heidi should not be held solely responsible for anime’s problems; but it should never be forgotten that this pioneering and revolutionary show was made in extremely difficult conditions, by a staff which never had to face such things before, under producers who were all too willing (or contractually obligated) to give Takahata the near-complete freedom and authority he needed to pull it off.

Naturally Heidi was an enormous success, providing a powerful launch to Zuiyō Eizō (at some point renamed to Nippon Animation)’s World Masterpiece Theatre programming block.

Following Heidi, Miyazaki’s output seems to have gone quiet for a few years; his next big splash came with Future Boy Conan in 1978, on which he was finally the director rather than the ‘guy who can actually draw’ working under Takahata’s wing.

Conan shows a lot of Miyazaki’s interests as a director: a post-apocalyptic series after an environmental catastrophe, in a world full of boats and planes, with a techno-militaristic threat; all themes that he would develop much more complexly later, but already evident. It was based on a novel, The Incredible Tide by Alexander Key, but soon eclipsed that original. Miyazaki insisted on being able to change the tone of the story, expressing a curious attitude given his later works:

In a 1983 interview with Yōkō Tomizawa from Animage, Miyazaki stated that he only worked on the show under the condition that he was allowed to change the story. He disliked the pessimistic world view of the original story, feeling it was a reflection of Alexander Key's own fears and insecurities. He wanted a story aimed at children to be more optimistic, stating "[e]ven if someone's lost all hope for the future, I think it is incredibly stupid to go around stressing this to children. Emphasize it to adults if you have to, but there's no need to do so to children. It would be better to simply not say anything at all."[5]

He also attempted to change the story’s geopolitical themes; in Key’s novel, Industria was much more directly symbolic of the Soviet Union, and the protagonist’s home High Harbour representative of America, but Miyazaki (who I believe was still a Marxist at this time) seems to have tried to abstract it.

Animation wise, it took the comedic A-Pro style and turned it more towards the developing tradition of realism. For the sake of it, he pulled in a number of his old A-Pro colleagues, notably Otsuka. By this point, Miyazaki was starting to catch attention. Another catch was Yoshifumi Kondo, who would become one of Ghibli’s core staff, working as animation director on many of their films.

The production of Conan also ran behind schedule, but this time, Nippon Animation had the benefit of working for major TV broadcaster NHK, who had the freedom to change the schedule and insert something else to give them a bit of extra time. 

Anyway, there is another note... if you love Eizouken, you may well recognise Conan as the series that inspires the young Asakusa to pursue animation. It remains a very imaginative and beautiful show: not quite as aesthetically distinctive as Miyazaki’s later works, but full of lush sunsets and beautiful environments. I had a still of it as my Tumblr banner for ages... maybe I still do?

A year after Conan, Miyazaki jumped studios again, heading to Telecom and bringing Otsuka with him (with the promise of working on his passion, Lupin III). The Castle of Cagliostro (1979) makes many departures from the usual characterisation of Lupin, painting him as more of a ‘heart of gold’ heroic character; it found success as an astonishing work of animation. We’ve already watched this film (even though I neglected to give it a proper writeup at the time), and I talked a bit about the more questionable side of its lasting influence last week, so I won’t spend too many words on it right now; but it did a lot to establish Miyazaki’s reputation as a film director, an environment he’d find much more comfortable than TV animation.

While at Telecom, Miyazaki started talking to Toshio Suzuki (future Ghibli president) and Osamu Kameyama at Animage magazine, showing them his sketchbooks and discussing his hopes to create two anime projects, an adaptation of Rowlf and a sengoku period story called Sengoku Demon Castle. These were rejected since Animage would not fund something based on manga, but they liked Miyazaki enough to serialise a manga from him, Nausicaa, on the condition that (ironically) it would never be made into a movie. Miyazaki would end up drawing Nausicaa for a good twelve years of his life, and it traces a lot of his slide into despair and evolution of thought towards Mononoke-Hime.

Within a year, Nausicaa had become a hit, and Animage (rather, their parent company Tokuma Shoten) changed their minds and offered to fund a 15-minute film adaptation. Miyazaki proposed a 60-minute OVA; they said hey ok why don’t you make an entire film?

Nausicaa brought Miyazaki together with some of the greatest animators of the era, like Yoshinori Kanada, and even a young Hideaki Anno who drew the distinctive sequences of the God Warrior blowing up the ohms before rotting away. It is a much simpler story than the manga, and yet an absolutely astonishing film on a production level: its animation is both expressive and gorgeously solid, its imagery is exquisite, and they brought on experimental composer Joe Hisaishi who, while he hasn’t quite reached the sound he’d achieve on later Ghibli films, delivers some really beautiful moments.

Since Tokuma Shoten did not have an anime studio, Miyazaki ended up scouting around for one which could handle the project. He landed on a tiny studio called Topcraft, who were at the time mostly known for working on Rankin/Bass productions; but even at this point Miyazaki’s name would draw a lot of talent. But many others were drawn by Kazuo Komatsubara:

The other specificity of the movie is that the animation director wasn’t Miyazaki himself, but someone he had never personally worked with previously: Kazuo Komatsubara. It is most probably Komatsubara who brought on board many “charisma animators” whose philosophy was very different from Miyazaki’s: the rising star of effects animation Takashi Nakamura, the ex-Oh Pro alumnus and studio Z3 member Osamu Nabeshima, and of course Kanada himself. Kanada and Miyazaki had already met a few times by then, and Kanada had even done some of his first in-betweening work on a Miyazaki episode back in the 70’s. But it’s on Nausicaä that began a relationship that would last for a decade.

At Ghibli, Miyazaki would become known as a famously strict director, correcting almost every cut animated for him to ensure consistency in style, such that only truly outstanding animators like Shinya Ohira will be noticeable. This was less true of Nausicaa, which demonstrates many animators’ distinctive approaches; instead Miyazaki exerted his control on the storyboard stage, specifying every moment of the film with unusual precision...

With Komatsubara as animation director, the movie’s animation is probably the most diverse among all of Miyazaki’s catalogue: it’s much easier than in his other movies to spot the different animators and their sensibilities. The level at which Miyazaki exerted his control was therefore not the animation itself, but the storyboards. Especially compared to Rintarô’s, they are very detailed and sequential: every movement and expression is recorded. To put it in raw numbers, Nausicaä’s storyboard is as long as Galaxy Express’ (around 550 pages for each) even though the first one is shorter by 30 minutes and Galaxy Express’s storyboard is already notably long. 

Kanada, recently coming off his unsuccessful Birth OVA which we watched some weeks ago, animated the incredible air battle sequence; he would afterwards become a Studio Ghibli regular, but never a permanent employee of the studio, with a slightly odd relationship: Miyazaki’s increasingly strict style would give a famously individualistic animator like Kanada little room to breathe, but Kanada developed his style a lot at Ghibli. But that might be a story for another day.

Nausicaa is a beautiful movie, and on a personal note she’s the only character I’ve cosplayed since I was a kid; it is by far Miyazaki’s most distinctive setting, with the beautiful insectoid “sea of destruction” and the distinctive constructed cultures living around it. It does a decent job of taking key moments from the manga and fitting them into a simpler, closed plot, but it does lack that thematic ambiguity and bleakness which the manga develops in its later chapters.

(I’m well beyond ‘out of time’ here, so I will have to write a proper in depth review of the manga another time. It remains one of my favourite works of fiction ever.)

The success of Nausicaa paved the way for its team to found a new anime studio, Ghibli, named after an Italian aeroplane, which would primarily work on Miyazaki and Takahata’s films. I won’t cover that in detail tonight. But I will talk about Miyazaki’s first film at Studio Ghibli proper (even if Nausicaa was in effect a Ghibli film), Laputa: Castle in the Sky.

Even more so than Nausicaa, Laputa reprises the themes of Future Boy Conan: a boy who meets a mysterious girl in a pastoral post-apocalyptic world full of flying machines, threatened by techological militarism; a cheerful band of sky pirates who inhabit it; a forgotten superweapon. One of the delights of the film is Miyazaki’s interpretation of Welsh miners, who wear the same bushy moustaches as the villagers of Nausicaa and delight in punching the shit out of each other; yet the real star is the Castle itself, a beautiful sandstone creation walked by some delightful robots.

Kanada returned, displaying his famous dragons in the storm sequence; there is a remarkable sequence of a robot burning through a door which I can no longer find. Joe Hisaishi really comes into his own with the soundtrack, too. So let’s watch that tonight, as an illustration of what Miyazaki got up to when he had a studio of his own; perhaps at some point I will get a chance to research its production more.

Since these early days, Miyazaki went through a lot. The following period, with the increasingly bleak tone of the Nausicaa manga and its thematic culmination in Princess Mononoke is one of my favourite periods of his work. His films became much more subtle in tone in later years, with works like Porco Rosso and My Neighbour Totoro delivering a certain wistfulness that is missing from these more clear-cut bombastic earlier entries.

And then you might say Miyazaki became a victim of his own fame, retreating from the struggles that once animated him; sure Spirited Away and Kiki’s Delivery Service certainly still have the goods as very moving stories about growing up, but films like Howl’s Moving Castle turn their lavish animation towards increasingly thematically muddled projects, and eventually we land on unfortunate stories like the honestly painful approach to nationalism in The Wind Rises. (Ponyo’s cute at least... but that’s kind of all it is.) So I can’t help but miss the sheer inventiveness of early Miyazaki: the elaborate worlds, the earnest idealism.

So, the plan tonight is to watch a selection of Miyazaki’s early works: Nausicaa and Castle of the Sky as our main features, but also some episodes of Conan and Heidi! If that sounds fun, I’m going to be starting just about immediately, over at twitch.tv/canmom. hope you can join us!

[coppercookie]

Every animated movie index part 1

Hey imma try to watch every animated movie in order and write a little bit on each one. This will include TV and direct to video ones but it has to be at least 40 minutes long and has to have animation for 50% of the movie. I won't include live action movies with cgi or live action puppet movies (I love Jim Henson but I have to draw the line somewhere so I don't lose my sanity.) Whatever ones I can't find a copy of will be skipped.

The adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)

The tale of the fox (1930)

The new gulliver (1935)

Academy award review of Walt Disney cartoons (1937)

Snow White and the seven dwarves (1937)

Gulliver's travels (1939)

Top 5 animated movies pre 1940

Pinocchio (1940)

Fantasia (1940)

Princess iron fan (1941)

The reluctant dragon (1941)

Dumbo (1941)

Hoppity goes to town (1941)

Bambi (1942)

Saludos amigos (1942)

Victory through air power (1943)

The three caballeros (1944)

Momotaro's divine sea warriors (1945)

The lost letter (1945)

Make mine music (1946)

Song of the South (1946)

The humpbacked horse (1947)

Fun and fancy free (1947)

Melody time (1948)

The adventures of ichabad and Mr.toad (1949)

The emperor's nightingale (1949)

Top 10 animated movies of the 40s

Cinderella (1950)

Johnny the giant killer (1950)

Alice in wonderland (1951)

The night before Christmas (1951)

Prince Bayaya (1951)

The king and Mr. Mockingbird (1952)

The scarlet flower (1952)

The snow maiden (1952)

Peter Pan (1953)

Hansel and Gretel an opera fantasy (1954)

Animal farm (1954)

Tsarevna the frog (1954)

The enchanted boy (1955)

The great soldier schweik (1955)

Lady and the Tramp (1955)

The twelve months (1956)

Hemo the magnificent (1957)

The snow queen (1957)

Panda and the magic serpent (1958)

Beloved beauty (1958)

Sleeping beauty (1959)

A 1001 Arabian nights (1959)

A midsummer's night dream (1959)

The adventures of Buratino (1959)

Magic boy (1959)

Top 10 animated movies of the 50s

Alakazam the great (1960)

It was I who drew the little man (1960)

One hundred and one dalmatians (1961)

Chipolino (1961)

The key (1961)

Gay Purr-ee (1962)

The wild Swans (1962)

Arabian Nights; Adventures of Sinbad (1962)

The bath (1962)

Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol (1962)

The sword in the stone (1963)

Doggie March (1963)

The little Prince and the eight-headed dragon (1963)

Hey there, it's Yogi Bear! (1964)

The incredible Mr. Limpet (1964)

Havoc in heaven (1964)

Of stars and men (1964)

Lefty (1964)

Return to oz (1964)

Rudolph the red nosed reindeer (1964)

The man from Button Willow (1965)

Pinocchio in outer space (1965)

Willy McBean and his magic machine (1965)

West and soda (1965)

Gulliver travels beyond the moon (1965)

Alice in wonderland or what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? (1966)

Alice in wonderland in Paris (1966)

The daydreamer (1966)

Cyborg 009 (1966)

Ballad of Smokey the bear (1966)

The man called Flintstone (1966)

Go there don't know where (1966)

Band of ninja (1967)

Ruddigore (1967)

Asterix the Gaul (1967)

A story of Hong Gil-Dong (1967)

The wacky world of mother goose (1967)

Hopi and Chadol bawi (1967)

Mad monster party? (1967)

Jack and the witch (1967)

The Jungle book (1967)

Cricket on the hearth (1967)

The world of Hans Christian Anderson (1968)

Asterix and Cleopatra (1968)

Yellow submarine (1968)

Horus, Prince of the sun (1968)

Part 2

[zzariyo]

since I’ve been essentially bed-bound, I kinda started fixating on Hayao Miyazaki and his works and delving into the books I have of his that I’ve been neglecting. And taking into consideration his history in animating, the thought of him having to watch how anime changed into what it is now and how freaky the industry became is pretty fucking sad. And I keep thinking about all of this so much that I can't focus on anything else so I'm writing something nobody asked for to get it off my chest.

Tale of the White Serpent (1958) was the first anime feature film in color and was one of the main reasons why Miyazaki wanted to be an animator. He went to the theater to watch it several times as a teen

The first animation project he took part in was fucking Wolf Boy Ken (1963) And the first animated film that he took a large part in was The Great Adventure of Horus, Prince of the Sun (1968) (Directed by Isao Takahata, Co-founder of Studio Ghibli and director of Princess Kaguya by the by). Still when anime was relatively fresh. So he was in the industry super early on. Not at the very beginning of course but pretty fucking close

From there he worked as an in-between animator, then key animator, then storyboarder, then co-director with Takahata as the years went on and the anime industry developed until becoming a director himself and fully realizing his ideas into his own films...Nausicaa being the first one that was all his.

So imagine falling in love with this in the 50s

Then working on this in the 60s

Following your dreams of being a director in the 70s all the way through 2010s...

JUST FOR THIS TO FUCKING HAPPEN TO THE INDUSTRY-

-and so here is where my rant i wrote in a flurry yesterday ended because when I went to get some stupid anime gif of gropping or something to begin talking about how part of the industry changed for the worst cuz of otakus, I started to look too intently at those. Then I gradually looked at...other things. And then I got a little....hm.

and so here I realized that I'm not as above the otakus that miyazaki hates as I thought I was and that I'm an even bigger hypocrite than I was going to state I am. And I am so so sorry..... I am sorry I couldnt be better for you........

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The Importance of Eye Make Up Throughout Egyptian History

The use of make up among the ancient Egyptians began as long ago as 4000 B.C. and it was worn by both sexes. While the modern make-up industry has evolved into a multi-million dollar one, back then, cosmetics were equally important to daily life for ancient Egyptians, with men and women from all social classes using eyeliner, eyeshadow, lipstick and rouge.

Skin care oils and perfumes were also used to protect the skin and eliminate any bodily odors that might offend the Gods, or each other. Nails were even painted by the ancient Egyptians and many dyed their hair. Their civilization was the first known to place such an emphasis upon their appearance. Imagine how excited they would have been had someone invented eye lash extensions all those years ago!

Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra

Iconic actress Elizabeth Taylor is perhaps best remembered for her 1963 chic portrayal of Egyptian Cleopatra in the eponymous epic, in which she wore saturated blue eyeshadow and thick, dark eyeliner. Glamorizing the ancient queen, she helped us perceive Egyptian civilization as being seductive, sensual and intensely beautiful.

We’re certain she would have enhanced her eyes for the performance with the use of eyelash extensions too, and as Elizabeth Taylor was renowned for her glamorous appearance off the big screen, it’s likely that she often wore eyelash extensions even when she wasn’t acting.

The ancient Egyptians and eye make-up

Depicting themselves with wide, almond shaped eyes enshrouded with copious amounts of eyeliner in both hieroglyphics and sarcophagi, they were known to have worn it every day and believed that it allowed Horus and Ra, the ancient gods, to prevent them from ever becoming sick.

Made from lead salts (somewhat surprisingly!), the eyeliner they wore every day helped to boost their immune systems due to the nitric oxide produced by the salts, and the black liner they’re so frequently seen wearing, was made from a lead-based mineral found in abundance in the desert. Stored in stone pots, soot was added to the liner to make Kohl or Mesdemet (their name for the eyeliner), and sometimes they also wore green eyeliner made from crushed malachite stone. Water or animal fat was then added to the powder to make it into a paste that could be easily applied around the eyes with a bone or stick, and the substance was known to have been a fantastically effective fly repellent and sunscreen! For added definition, the liner could also be applied to the eyebrows and eyelashes, and a cat-like shape was favored.

Even when the ancient Egyptians died and were mummified, their eyes were painted with liner.

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