#Windsor McCay

[driveintheaterofthemind]

Vintage Comic - Little Nemo In Slumberland Sunday Comic (April29th1906)

Art by Winsor McCay

[balrog-slayer66]

Concept art from the development of the 1989 Japanese/American animated film "Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland" by Moebius

[adamwatchesmovies]

Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (1989)

What Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland does successfully makes it worth seeing. Keep that in mind as you make your way through the rough patches. When this movie is bad, it weighs so heavily on your nerves you can’t stand it.

Young Nemo (voiced by Gabriel Damon), is brought to the dream kingdom of Slumberland by King Morpheus (Bernard Erhard). As the king’s new heir, Nemo's job is to guard his future subjects against the Nightmare King, the terrifying demon-like ruler of Nightmare Land. When Nemo accidentally opens the passage between the two worlds, he, his no-good friend Flip (Mickey Rooney) and Princess Camille (Laura Mooney) are Slumberland’s only hope.

This is a great-looking movie. It’s filled with stunningly complex shots, all of which have been brought to life by talented animators. As we navigate through a variety of inspired locations, we meet inventively designed characters and creatures. When the film is solely about movement, action, and our hero's adventure, it’s great. The images and animation have aged remarkably well and the special effects are top-notch. Something is refreshing about seeing a meticulously assembled animated picture like this one where you know each frame was hand-painted and hand-drawn. The gags that hit their mark help as well. If you’re passionate about animation, you should track this film down and take a look… once.

“Little Nemo” is meant for kids. LITTLE kids. Much of the dialogue in the first 30 minutes is disposable. People explain to us what we’ve already deduced from what’s happening on-screen, or we’re simply hearing Nemo say “wow!” And “yippee!” as his bed flies him through the air. You’re begging for him to have a friend or sidekick to bounce conversation off of. ANYTHING to stop the inane sounds coming from the boy’s mouth. Be careful what you wish for. Eventually, we’re introduced to Nemo's flying squirrel sidekick, Icarus (Danny Mann). the rodent is the definition of annoying and his character so useless to the plot you’ll look back fondly at the pointless non-dialogue we left behind. Unfortunately, he isn’t the only animal sidekick. Little ones may not mind the introduction of one goofy character after another but every grown-up will. It’s bad enough the plot is simplistic to a fault and the characters juvenile to the point of being unrelatable to anyone over the age of 8 but they undermine anything that might’ve been cool to the rest of us. Combined with the dreadful soundtrack courtesy of the usually bankable Sherman Brothers (who do not offer us a single memorable note or verse), you'll be tempted to put the film on mute. There's got to be some kind of soundtrack that will synch up to the tone of the images somewhere....

Rewatching Little Nemo, the visuals still dazzle but the annoying bits are so egregious it made me wonder how I managed to sit through it not once, but twice. At least the film is obviously bad - at least story-wise -, which will hopefully prepare you for the overall experience. And yet, what's on-screen is so striking you're compelled to keep watching. Perhaps it isn’t so bad after all. I’d hate to dissuade you from seeing it in case it sparks that bonfire of imagination within you. Consider yourself warned but encouraged. (On DVD, May 24, 2019)

[krafty1]

The Daily Panel 12/7/24

Image Credit: Blackthorne Publishing

[vincent-marie]

Throwback to my animation major days. In animation history something we did was draw turnarounds of the same character based on what era we were learning about at the time.

First was the standard (this was before I had nailed down Bianca's character), then in the style of Windsor McCay, then 1930s rubber-hose animation

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[balu8]

Frank Pe's Little Nemo After Windsor McCay

by Frank Pe

 Magnetic Press 

[teomodo]

they had to hit me with a blowdart sedative and drag me out of my local comic shop in a big net for making a scene because all they had was marvel comics and papergirls they didn't have any george herriman or windsor mccay they didn't even have any yellow kid

[k00295632]

Week 1: Secondary Research & my Idea.

These are some of the different artists I was looking at during the week.

This is Stuart Blackton, the first person to use pixilation and the creator of the "the enchanted mirror". He would "interact" with the drawing, even "removing" parts of the drawing and making them "reappear" as real objects, and would make the face "react". He would stop the recording, make his changes, and continue as before.

This here is Windsor McCay, american cartoonist who created "Gertie the dinosaur", the earliest cartoon to ever feature a dinosaur. This was also the first film to ever use Keyframes, Registration marks, Tracing paper, Animation loops, and Mutoscope action viewer. He would similarly interact with the animation, "throwing" an apple onto the screen and pocketing it when no one looked while an "apple" would appear on the screen, or he would walk behind the stage and "reappear" on screen and ride Gertie.

Georges meileis "trip to the moon (1902)", the first film to use Double exposure, Stop motion, and Slow motion. He was a illusionist film maker and a magician. The film took 3 months to make and was filmed in a greenhouse like building to get as much light as possible.

"Loving Vincent" directed by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman, the worlds first fully painted film with over 65,000 frames. The they would record the actors dressed as their characters , and would use a projector to project the frames from the video onto the canvases and the animators would paint each frame in Van Gogh's art style.

I briefly looked at Jan Svankmajers "Darkness light Darkness", its a very peculiar piece of media, and it is a 7 minute clay stop motion animation. Its just a body reconstructing itself in a miniature house and figuring out where everything goes.

How does this relate to my project?

Well my idea is to create a mixed media short film based in a haunted art gallery/museum ( some place with a lot of artwork) with a security guard monitoring the building and the strange occurrences within its walls. The main focus will be the different security cameras, which will be changing perspectives a lot, and even the p.o.v of the guard. The centerpiece will be an an animation of a portrait crawling out of the frame, but the first part of the animation will be painted like in "Loving Vincent", but as the creature begins to leave the frame it transforms into stop motion animation with clay. I was thinking that since the creature is made of paint it would make a wet sound when it moves, which is where I want to incorporate foley sound, and leave traces of itself around the building. In the background I want to create other spooky visuals like other paintings distorting or objects from paintings disapearing and showing up in the wrong places like in "The enchanted mirror". I want to experiment with different Camera trick to create different visuals and create suspense like the dutch tilt. I want to slowly unnerve the viewer, using different visual affects and changes in each camera.

There's a lot of work to be done and I'm looking forward to see how I'll incorporate the different workshops into it too

[bonyfish]

A fun thing about me and Nik is that I'm the one with the comics degree, but Nik has almost certainly read more comics than me by like, an order of magnitude. I reference Windsor McCay's "Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend" in casual conversation more than the average person but Nik can tell you what year Tony Stark got his terrible perm.

[corpusplastique]

Gertie the Dinosaur, premier film d'animation, Windsor McCay, 1914

Mélange d'images animées et de prises de vues réelles, travail étendu sur 6 mois.

[archivist-dragonfly]

Book 486

Little Nemo: Little Nemo in Slumberland / Little Nemo in the Land of Wonderful Dreams - 1905-1914

Windsor McCay / introduction by Bill Blackbeard

Evergreen 2000

So, this is a really great one-volume collection of Little Nemo, and if you can only have one Nemo collection you could do a lot worse. I think Evergreen was a bargain price imprint of Taschen, so the quality of this edition is fairly high. The colors and lines are clearly reproduced, and with a trim size of approximately 10x13, the pages are given just enough space to be legible. However, given that these incredible strips were originally intended to be newspaper size, it’s still a bit uncomfortably small to be read easily. Ultimately, I ended up getting a much larger Nemo volume, which I’ll get to later, so this is somewhat redundant in my collection. But as a convenient one-volume collection, it’s solid.

[driveintheaterofthemind]

Vintage Comic Strip - Little Nemo In Slumberland (Dec09th1906)

Art by Winsor McCay

[robotsfromtomorrow]

Episode 798: Josh O'Neill and BEEHIVE BOOKS

The last time today's guest was here for his own episode, it was July 2014, during the final days of the Kickstarter campaign for Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream, the Eisner-winning anthology title assembling a truly dream-worthy roster of creators to pay tribute to Windsor McCay's seminal comic strip. In the nearly ten years since then, he has gone on to found Beehive Books, where he and creative partner Maielle Doliveux continue to put out book after book, work after work that seem like artifacts from some other, better timeline. 

From Illuminated Editions pairing such literary classics as Crime and Punishment, Peter Pan, and The Kwaidan Collection with artists like Dave McKean, Brecht Evans, and Kent Williams, to documenting the continuing works of cartoonist Ronald Wemberly, to blanket tapestries from the likes of Michael DeForge, Jim Woodring, Yuko Shimizu, to a literal suitcase of period-accurate text & ephemera for the epistolarian horror classic Dracula, and so much more, my guest apparently hears the word NO as an invitation, not an obstacle. He is Josh O'Neill, and Greg is thrilled to have him back on the show after much too long an absence to talk about all things Beehive Books.

Robots From Tomorrow is a twice-monthly comics podcast recorded deep beneath the Earth’s surface. You can subscribe to it via iTunes or through the RSS feed at RobotsFromTomorrow.com. You can also follow Mike and Greg on Twitter. Stay safe and enjoy your funny books.

Check out this episode!

[brettsinger]

Classic Comic Strips and Web Comics

My guest this week is comedian Rebecca Kaplan! Have you read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics? What was The Yellow Kid? Why was he called that? What's the deal with Krazy Kat? How much does Brett like Fun Home? Has Brett seen Fun Home the musical? What is Barnaby? What do you learn about history by reading newspaper comics? What the heck is Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend? Who was Windsor McCay? Where does Brett get most of his comic strips these days? What happened with the comic strip Nancy? What happened with For Better or Worse? What is Hark! A Vagrant about? Who is Sarah Vowell? What is xkcd famous for? What is Dilbert really about? What happened to Dilbert? What did Scott Adams say? What is Dinosaur Comics? 

Reading list: The Yellow Kid Krazy Kat Pogo Barnaby (free on Comixology Unlimited) Fun Home The Annotated Alice in Wonderland xkcd books Peanuts Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend For Better or Worse (free with Kindle Unlimited)

Watch list: Citizen Kane

Check out Comics Who Love Comic Books!

[tickldpnk8]

Charles Vess appreciation post incoming! building off of what you said @writing-for-life because I simply adore Midsummer Njght’s Dream. I know that I started my blogging when I got to Season of Mists and have declared some of those issues my favorite. But really, it’s actually the Shakespeare issues.

This issue is when I really got Hooked on this comic. This page in particular: there’s something so Old school lithograph or even Windsor McCay about the way Vess illustrates a scene. I love his delicate line work, elaborate costuming and sense of place and time he imbues to all of his illustrations.

The above page where the landscape of the Long Man of Wilmington becomes a portal for all of fairie just really captured my imagination. I love how he draws Titania and all of her retinue. It feels magical and I can’t imagine anyone else having drawn the pencils for this issue. They’re rereleasing it soon with new colors. I have mixed feelings about it. But the new cover art is a feast for the eyes.

Likewise, his art for the second Shakespeare issue, The Tempest, is equally eye catching:

This is where I most see his influence from Mucha: the scenes of Prospero remind me of Mucha’s murals and series called The Slav Epic. The dramatic poses and compositions paired with the muted blue color palette invoke a fantastical atmosphere for me. I want to see Vess do a stage production for this play!

Not to mention all of the beautiful works of his that my partner in crime posted above. If I were to vote with my heart, it would have been for Vess. But…I agree that his Morpheus isn’t my favorite. But it truely was a close poll for me because Russell’s Ramadan is another favorite issue. As far as Dream depictions go, I had to side with Russell. But if we were voting on art style alone, it would have been Vess.

One more hour to get your own votes in folks. We’re almost done with Round 1 of March Mania…and next week the choices are going to get even harder. Stay tuned for our next match up!

Round One/10, Poll

P. Craig Russell, artist #50

VS.

Charles Vess, artist #19

Two of the probably most beloved Sandman artists, so this will be a tough choice for many.

If you would like to refresh your memory:

P. Craig Russell: Fables & Reflections #50: “Distant Mirrors—Ramadan”, Endless Nights: “Death—Death and Venice”, The Dream Hunters

Charles Vess: Dream Country #19: “A Midsummer Nights’s Dream”, The Kindly Ones #62, The Wake #75: “The Tempest”

And remember, you are voting for your favourite version of Dream, not the particular storyline.

Who is your favourite and why? Let us know in the comments/reblogs. Share your thoughts about their art, your favourite panels from their issues, or even other art they created and help us turn this into an artist appreciation post.

Here’s the poll to vote for your favourite if you want to see them again (you can find the whole bracket and some additional info here, and feel free to check out previous matches via the tag #sandman march mania):

Event organisers: @writing-for-life and @tickldpnk8 (who also created the logo)

[balu8]

No Smoking

Frank Pe's Little Nemo After Windsor McCay

by Frank Pe

 Magnetic Press