#codak studios

[dresdencodak]

Hey Senna, what art program did you start Dresden Codak with? I always thought it looked like Corel Draw but I was never sure.

Originally I used an ancient version of Photoshop, but for the past 7 or so years I've used Clip Studio Paint.

[canmom]

Animation Night 151: Modest and Immodest Short Films

Ahoy my friends! The hour is late, but not so late that we can’t watch a few films...

So. Lackadaisy huh.

I feel like you need to be in a somewhat specific age bracket of internet old to feel like that’s immensely significant. You need to be a webcomics bitch, basically. But from quite a specific era: the decade or so window between when webcomics looked like newspaper comics, and before the present era of webtoons. The Webcomics Review narrativises it as people who went to art school arriving on the scene in the mid-2000s, and that seems accurate enough. And of that crop, Lackadaisy Cats was certainly one of the biggest!

The concept is pretty straightforward. It’s a Prohibition-era crime drama set at a speakeasy that’s seen better days... and also everyone is an anthropomorphic cat. It was the beginning of the furry boom (Digger was a contemporary). But mostly... Tracy J. Butler could really fucking draw. You could say things like: clean, expressive designs with a lot of texture and depth and strong composition. (Not surprisingly, she’d worked in animation before drawing the comic.)

And compared to other comics whose selling point was the art such as The Meek and Dresden Codak, it also updated (if I’m remembering right) fairly consistently. It had archetypal characters, a very clearly defined aesthetic, and, compared to many webcomics of its era, a clear, accessible story. In short it read like a pro comic.

So it was natural for it to pick up steam.

Now, at some point I kind of stopped keeping up with most of the webcomics I read back then. Sure, some of them stopped updating, but others kept on going, sustained on merch and later, Patreon type sites. In that time, the standard of art in the scene went way up, the number of comics became so huge that there was no longer really a ‘shared context’ of webcomic readers, and manga scans and webtoons arrived in force. It is now almost impossible to build a new following with a webcomic, but you can do pretty well for yourself if you got in at the start.

Well, in the last few years a new phenomenon has developed out of that whole webcomic scene: the crowdfunded independent animated film. I wrote about this a bit back on Animation Night 117, with the biggest example being Vivziepop‘s works like Hazbin Hotel. In 2000, Lackadaisy joined in, running a kickstarter for an art book and maybe a short film if it did well. You can guess the rest of that story.

These films sit at an odd scale between ‘independent’ and ‘studio’. If you look at the credits of Lackadaisy, you’ll see a small army of animators and cleanup artists to exceed most TV productions (apparently the staff number in the 170s in total). The calls they put out for animators were demanding. And the lavish effort certainly shows! The makers of Lackadaisy set their sights on full animation, on-model, cleaned up and with an ambitious drawing count. Every scene is full of movement and acting. (There’s actually an interesting stylistic choice where construction lines are left in the final composite on many scenes.)

But in many other ways it was very unlike a studio production. One of the animators who worked on the short, Manu Mercurial, has put out a little making-of retrospective, which is pretty light on detail, but still gives some info. Since the production took place during the pandemic, it was completely organised over Discord, with animators posting WIPs and receiving feedback in full view of everyone else, and a director receptive to animators adding their own spins to shots. This apparently led to an atmosphere of friendly competition that was beneficial to the film as a whole.

Mercurial is full of praise for the film’s director Fable Siegel, who seems to have been the major organising force behind making this be an impressive, finished short film instead of just a bunch of artists hanging out in Discord. At least going off IMDB credits,  Siegel seems to have come to The Industry by way of participating in ‘Reanimated’ collabs on Youtube, before getting jobs on Hazbin and also Pendleton Ward’s experimental post-Adventure Time series The Midnight Gospel. (Right now their Twitter is a huge wall of Lackadaisy process shots if you’re curious.) Here’s an interview (by Toon Boom, so one of the questions is blatantly slanted to sell Toon Boom, but the rest is pretty interesting.)

The short film is presented as a pilot, and that is indeed how it plays out: a tour of all the major characters and dynamics of the comic/show, with a car chase, a set piece battle in a quarry, and a final wind down scene in the speakeasy itself which sets up the broader plot. It’s unquestionably very well executed. I’m certain it’s going to get a good few million views in the next few days alone, and maybe it will lead to a series. (Will it surpass Hazbin?). It’s got electro-swing, of course. SungWon Cho (ProzD) is in it, of course.

All the same... I wish it was weirder. Like something about Lackadaisy always feels like it’s playing it safe. It’s fun, it’s goofy, it’s charming... and that’s where it stops! For all that the creators like to talk about how we’re on the cusp of adult animation really taking off in America, the moonshine, and strangely ineffective guns, don’t really change the tone from the more mainstream animation. Bah humbug, etc.

Still, it’s unquestionably an extremely impressive work of animation and a sign of the way things are changing. I expect with all the animation studios laying off staff left right and centre, we’ll start to see a lot more like this.

That’s our first act! For our second...

Ian Hubert returns! I wrote briefly about him back on Animation Night 78. Hubert’s thing is compositing human actors into elaborate cyberpunk environments using Blender; his channel is full of ingenious tricks for creating impressive looking shots and effects with minimal geometry. What makes it work is Hubert’s eye for lighting and composition, knowing just where to place detail to sell a shot and what’s unnecessary for the camera.

The first episode of Dynamo Dream - which we’ll rewatch! - introduced us to a plant selling girl in some sorta cyberpunk megacity. After inadvertently saving out the weird cyborg landlord that runs her apartment, she gets a favour, which she calls on to contact her faraway boyfriend using a kind of missile launched phone terminal I guess? He invites her to come out and join him, but weird shit starts happening on the train. I haven’t watched this yet but I’m sure it’s going to deliver some fascinating visuals.

And then...

Modest Heroes is a collection of three short films by Studio Ponoc, a studio which spun out of Studio Ghibli. In the mid 2000s, the period that Ghibli could enjoy an exceptional state of employing lot of full-time salaried staff (instead of per project freelancers) was coming to an end. In 2014 it seemed they were on the verge of shutting down altogether. Yoshiaki Nishimura, lead producer of many of Ghibli’s films in the 2000s era (Howl - When Marnie Was There), left the studio in 2015, bringing in a bunch of ex-Ghibli animators under a new studio called Ponoc.

Their first film, Mary and the Witch’s Flower, apparently found it hard to define an identity beyond the shadow of Miyazaki (I haven’t seen it!), but things got a lot more exciting with their second. Modest Heroes is a collection of three short films, showing off a variety of ingenious approaches to animation. (It was originally planned to be four, but then Isao Takahata went and died while planning the segment on the theme of ‘death’... oof.) The writers of Animation Obsessive are big fans, and they’ve written two detailed, enthusiastic articles on two of the shorts in the collection.

Invisible, directed Akihiko Yamashita, is a take on the invisible man concept. Since the invisible man is, well, you know..., his entire existence must be communicated through interactions with objects and clothes. Yamashita hoped to communicate feelings and interior life. His invisibility is a metaphor for social invisibility, and thus it comes combined with other metaphors, such as weightlessness.

The idea came from Nishimura, who thought it was a worthy subject for an ‘animation genius’ such as Yamashita. Nishimura wanted the film to bring a kind of inventiveness that he felt was missing from the overly conservative contemporary anime. Yamashita, after leaving Ghibli, attempted to get by in the regular anime industry and found it unbearably strained. He returned to the fold to work on Boro the Caterpillar with Miyazaki, and this convinced him to follow Yamashita over to Ponoc.

The result is something gorgeous, with its emotional drama playing out against grimy desaturated backgrounds that are perhaps closer to something like Tekkonkinkreet than the Ghibli nature scene. Yamashita named quite a specific palate of inspirations...

As reference, Yamashita drew from Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men and Gravity, the films of Alejandro González Iñárritu and the manga of Junji Ito, among others. They contributed to the dark, unusual vibe and look of Invisible.

I’ve been wanting to watch this film for ages, here’s our chance!

Alongside that comes Yoshiyuki Momose’s film Samurai Egg (here’s the aniobsessive link again). Momose, the ‘right-hand man’ of Takahata, was one of the guys he leaned on to actually draw the storyboards of films like Grave of the Fireflies.

In contrast to the elaborate visual metaphor of Invisible, Samurai Egg is a very grounded film about a kid with a severe egg allergy. Takahata is famed as a realist, although a different sort than people like Okiura and Inoue who bring incredibly meticulous detail and well-observed acting to sci-fi scenarios. Certainly, Takahata would make films about ghosts and mythology, but he’d also make films like Only Yesterday that are much quieter, everyday dramas.

Despite sharing the everyday focus of, this film veers away from it into more expressionistic techniques, bringing in softer pencil effects to the anime cels, as well as techniques like 3DCG-rotoscoping. There’s a dance scene where Shinji Hashimoto gets to go nuts with shapes a la Ryan Woodward.

Momose took some pains to avoid being too sentimental with it; AniObsessive quote Nishimura in Animation Magazine:

When you make a film about a parent and a child, it’s easy to fall into the trap of showing a “heartwarming” relationship, and creating a cheap-feeling structure. We wanted to avoid that.

The film is pre-recorded - like Grave of the Fireflies, actually. (It’s the norm in the West, but rare in anime.) There’s some interesting linguistic nuance there:

It was necessary because Oko’s role called for something special. In a detail that’s lost on foreigners, Shun’s mom uses the Kishiwada dialect, which “sounds harsh, but you can feel the love behind it,” Momose said. It’s a cruder, shorter form of Japanese. They used it partly to fit more information into Samurai Egg’s 16-minute runtime, and partly to reveal the relationship she has with Shun. He’s a Tokyo kid — he speaks differently.

As for the third film...

Kanini & Kanino takes us underwater for a pair of kids who live on a coral reef. Alas, I don’t have a detailed article on the making-of and influences on this one, but I can tell you that the director Hiromasa Yonebayishi, aka Maro, is behind it - best known as the director of The Secret World of Arriety, When Marnie Was There, and Ponoc’s first film Mary and the Witch’s Flower. Notably the dialogue for this short is all in ‘crab language’ - are these kids anthro crabs? In fact, yes, it would appear they are anthropomorphic crabs. Sick. Whether they will attend a rave I can’t say, but the internet reliably informs me that is the primary activity of crabs, so probably.

I think that’s enough to be going with! Apologies it’s so late - I had to spend most of today reinventing Canabalt. But I succeeded, so I think I’ve gotten a lot better at this whole game dev thing. Let’s go enjoy some short films!

Animation Night will be going live now at twitch.tv/canmom, films to begin in maybe 15 minutes.

[partywillsplace]

Diving into 

"Heretic" 24' Thriller

🌟 River Codak

🌟 Topher Grace

🌟  Julie Lynn Mortensen 

🌟  Hugh Grant

Don't miss our .Exclusive Movie Review soon on our podcast!!

🎙 Studio 59

Willy-Nathan's EXTREME 

411 Hollywood Buzz Podcast 

Season 14

Nov Sweeps!

[defalternative]

Join us at 5:30pm TODAY Thursday, Oct. 5 to celebrate the opening of "Not For Sale: Graffiti Culture in Oklahoma" at Oklahoma Contemporary's fairgrounds location. This free reception features: * incredible full-scale graffiti gallery experience * meet and greet with all the artists * panel discussion with co-curators Chris SKER and Angel Little * live artmaking * DJ Nymasis * virtual reality graffiti demos * refreshments (Wine & beer for over 21, 2 drink tickets per guest) * hands-on Learning Gallery with mini-mixing studio and photo booth * behind-the-scenes video * live T-shirt printing by Tree and Leaf, shirts available for $20 * custom poster prints available for $15 "Not For Sale" will showcase 10 talented artists who have been an integral part of the Oklahoma graffiti scene. Artists will paint their pieces directly on the walls of the gallery, transforming Oklahoma Contemporary into an amazing display of styles. This immersive experience will be unlike anything seen yet in Oklahoma, and the opening promises to be an event that you do not want to miss! SKER | HEK | CODAK | GERM | ENTAKE | SEAPO | RHAK | MANIK | JASPYR | SADAT Curators: SKER and Angel Little Full event info here : https://www.facebook.com/events/382008798899436/

[sentrava]

The Best Murals in Oklahoma City and Where to Find Them

It’s no big secret that we’ve been invested in street art for a while now, so much so that it’s bled into SVV’s and my personal life as we launched a mural movement in our own hometown. Murals can help shape the identity of a place, drive tourism, assist in economic development and convince others to invest in their city—and within moments of arriving in a new place, I can immediately distill its vibe based on its walls alone. Lucky for us, when we first arrived in Oklahoma City, it was immediately evident that OKC’s mural scene is absolutely exploding.

In fact, from the moment you get to the baggage claim, this wall at Will Rogers Airport sets the tone for OKC’s artsy vibe and is an indicator that there’s a lot of color in your immediate future.

Like many big cities’ art scene, you really need a car to best explore Oklahoma City’s mural landscape. Many of the best walls are clustered on the outskirts of downtown along Western Avenue, but it’s a long street and it would take you days to try to walk from point to point in your mural-chasing endeavors.

On our first three trips to Oklahoma City, SVV and I have tried our hardest to hunt down all the art we could find, mostly by using the OKC streetcar and the scooters scattered about downtown. This method is definitely doable, but I’d recommend renting a car if you also want to hit up all the murals located north of the Paseo Arts District and along Western Avenue.

The problem we found while looking for murals in Oklahoma City was tracking down the exact address, so we did the hard journalistic work for you and tagged each one to its exact location. We even made a Google Map for you to reference on your next visit to OKC. (You can thank us later.)

Note: This post was last updated in February 2019.

Downtown, Arts District + Film Row

On our second visit to Oklahoma City, we based ourselves out of the 21c Museum Hotel OKC—what better base for exploring art than staying in a museum, right?—and loved that we were walking distance from so many of the art museums and a handful of murals, too.

Steven Adams, artist: Graham Hoete (Mr. G)

701 W. Sheridan Ave. (side of the Paramount Building)

Einstein, artist: Jeks

1015 NW First St. (side of B.C.C. Collective)

Paramount Mural, artist: Graham Hoete (Mr. G)

7 N. Lee (on the side of the Paramount building)

Atlas Shrugged, artist: Chris Presley

W. Sheridan and N. Shartel avenues

Sheridan Walker Parking Garage, artist: Adam “Codak” Smith

501 W. Sheridan Ave.

Kerr Park, artist: The Holey Kids

102 Robert S. Kerr Ave.

Enlightenment, artist: unknown

Robert Kerr and N. Classen

Midtown + Automobile Alley

Midtown encompasses a large area, and several murals and pieces of art exist along the NW 9th and 10th street corridors on the border of Automobile Alley. They’re sandwiched between countless tasty restaurants, so I recommend doing your own walking food-and-art tour, with some stops at neighborhood breweries like Prairie Artisan Ales along the way.

Greetings from OKC, artist: Victor Ving and Lisa Beggs

301 NW 10th St. (across from Bleu Garten)

Buffalo mural, artist: unknown

301 NW 10th St. (on the exterior wall at Bleu Garten)

“All you need is love and waffles,” artist: unknown

1212 N Walker Ave. (side of Waffle Champion)

The Womb, artist: Maya Hayuk

25 NW 9th St.(next to Blue Iguana)

The Braid, artists: Kris Kanaly, Dylan Bradway, Yatika Starr Fields

south side of NE 9th St. (across from Blue Iguana)

Insight Creative Group, artist: unknown

19 NE 9th St.

Vanessa House Beer Company, artist: Jake Beeson

118 NW 8th St.

Plaza District

The Plaza District is, no doubt, the place to go for art in Oklahoma City. Only have one day and want to make the best use of your time? Head straight to the Plaza District. The Plaza Walls are ever-changing—as in, they’re repainted over at least once a year, thus, you’ll likely not see the same pieces of art twice from visit to visit. These are a few we’ve photographed throughout our visits.

Gorō Ramen, artist: Juuri

1634 N Blackwelder Ave. #102 (inside patio)

Plaza Walls, artists: various

along NW 16th Street, N. Indiana Avenue and N. Gatewood Avenue

Maples Barbecue, artist: unknown

1800 NW 16th St.

Paseo + Uptown 23rd District

The Paseo and adjacent Uptown 23rd District is one of my favorite areas, and not just because it boasts local favorites like Tucker’s Onion Burgers and Cheever’s Cafe. I just love the buildings, the patios and the overall vibe of this uptown neighborhood.

Bathroom murals, artist: Denise Duong

3010 Paseo (in the bathroom outside of Holey Rollers)

Roam, artist: Chaney Shores

520 NW 23rd St. (wall of Studio 7 Dance)

Pump Bar Godzilla, artist: unknown

2425 N Walker Ave. (patio at Pump Bar)

Guyutes, artist: unknown

730 NW 23rd St.

Bricktown

While Bricktown is the tourist area of OKC and generally “tourist area” and innovative art do not necessarily jive, the neighborhood has embraced the use of bold, splashy art to give visitors and residents both a reason to come down to the area surrounding its ball park. Judging by this 2007 mural installed along the railroad bridge, it seems that this area has long embraced the arts.

Be sure and take the underpasses beneath the railroad bridge by foot or scooter (there’s a sidewalk) as there’s art everywhere, but it’s mostly hidden. Also keep your eyes peeled for small gnomes hiding surreptitiously at the bottom of telephone poles.

The Chairman, artist: Eric Tippconnic (Comanche Motion)

1 E Sheridan Ave. (side of Exhibit C)

Bricktown Okctopus, artist: Jack Fowler

429 E. California Ave. (behind the Chevy Events Center)

Abstract Passages, artist: Kris Kanaly

N. EK Gaylord Boulevard and Main Street (under the Main Street railroad bridge)

Earth to Sky, artists: Chad Nish Earles and Rhiana Deck

N. EK Gaylord Boulevard and Sheridan Avenue (under the Sheridan Avenue railroad bridge)

Strength of the Woman, artists: J. NiCole Hatfield and Steven Grounds

N. EK Gaylord Boulevard and Sheridan Avenue (under the Sheridan Avenue railroad bridge)

Cultivation, artist: Jason Pawley

S. EK Gaylord Boulevard and W. Reno Avenue (under the Reno Avenue railroad bridge)

Western Avenue

Western Avenue runs vertically all the way through Oklahoma City, and many of the murals we found were up north of the downtown in the 3000 and 4000 blocks near the 38th Street Preservation neighborhood.

Fortune Favors The Brave, artist: Julie “Juuri” Robertson

4416 N. Western Ave. (wall of Ketch Design Centre)

The Nature of Things, artists: Kris Kanaly, Dustin Gilpin, Jerrod Smith

4416 N. Western Ave. (wall of Ketch Design Centre)

Red Tail Hawk, artist: Jason Pawley

4200 N. Western Ave. (wall of VZD’s Restaurant and Bar)

Aiukli, artists: Erin Cooper, Amanda Bradway, Lauren Miller

3704 N Western Ave. (on the side of Mural K & N Interior Consignment)

Alegría, artists: Tree And Leaf Clothing Inc.

3325 N Classen Blvd. (on the side of Cafe Kacao)

We’ll be back in Oklahoma City this spring, so I’ll continue to add to this post as we track more murals down. Drop any tips in the comments of ones you want us to check out on our next visit!

Looking for other info about OKC?

Urban Whitewater Rafting in Oklahoma City

11 Reasons We’re Obsessed with OKC

Oklahoma City’s Art Game is Strong: Check Out These Creative Stops

How to Explore OKC by Streetcar

Baby, It’s Cold Outside: The Best Indoor Winter Activities in Oklahoma City

Our trips to Oklahoma are part of a long-term content partnership with Visit OKC. All opinions are our own.

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The Best Murals in Oklahoma City and Where to Find Them published first on https://medium.com/@OCEANDREAMCHARTERS

[codakstudios]

Cody "Codak" Wood engineering and producing rap artist Tranchilla. Tranchilla brings to the table a style of rap that some might call "shock rap". The album "A Battle Within" introduces a brutal perspective into the mind of Tranchilla through cutthroat rhyme schemes and heavy lyrics. Tranchilla's artwork for his debut album, designed by Codak himself, consists of the lyrics to the title track on the album "A Battle Within" hidden behind the dark face of a hooded mask. There's a metaphor there if you can figure it out. Check out Tranchilla's album at https://soundcloud.com/codak-studios/sets/tranchilla-battle-within

[dresdencodak]

Dark Science #88 - The Eyes and Cat Ears of Nephilopolis

What the heck's going on with Kim? Share your theories in the comments.

This is the very first Dresden Codak comic I’ve done without Photoshop. I’m moving over to Clip Studio Paint and I really like how it turned out!

Stay tuned, dear readers, for a major relaunch of the Dresden Codak Patreon. It’s going to have more fun stuff and insider treats for all of you who are nice enough to let me keep the lights on and not starve. On that subject, you can also support me through ko-fi, if that’s more your jam, or check out Dresden Codak merch over in my store!

[defalternative]

Join us at 5:30pm TODAY Thursday, Oct. 5 to celebrate the opening of "Not For Sale: Graffiti Culture in Oklahoma" at Oklahoma Contemporary's fairgrounds location. This free reception features: * incredible full-scale graffiti gallery experience * meet and greet with all the artists * panel discussion with co-curators Chris SKER and Angel Little * live artmaking * DJ Nymasis * virtual reality graffiti demos * refreshments (Wine & beer for over 21, 2 drink tickets per guest) * hands-on Learning Gallery with mini-mixing studio and photo booth * behind-the-scenes video * live T-shirt printing by Tree and Leaf, shirts available for $20 * custom poster prints available for $15 "Not For Sale" will showcase 10 talented artists who have been an integral part of the Oklahoma graffiti scene. Artists will paint their pieces directly on the walls of the gallery, transforming Oklahoma Contemporary into an amazing display of styles. This immersive experience will be unlike anything seen yet in Oklahoma, and the opening promises to be an event that you do not want to miss! SKER | HEK | CODAK | GERM | ENTAKE | SEAPO | RHAK | MANIK | JASPYR | SADAT Curators: SKER and Angel Little Full event info here : https://www.facebook.com/events/382008798899436/ (at Oklahoma Contemporary)

[defalternative]

Join us at 5:30pm TOMORROW Thursday, Oct. 5 to celebrate the opening of "Not For Sale: Graffiti Culture in Oklahoma" at Oklahoma Contemporary's fairgrounds location. This free reception features: * incredible full-scale graffiti gallery experience * meet and greet with all the artists * panel discussion with co-curators Chris SKER and Angel Little * live artmaking * DJ Nymasis * virtual reality graffiti demos * refreshments (Wine & beer for over 21, 2 drink tickets per guest) * hands-on Learning Gallery with mini-mixing studio and photo booth * behind-the-scenes video * live T-shirt printing by Tree and Leaf, shirts available for $20 * custom poster prints available for $15 "Not For Sale" will showcase 10 talented artists who have been an integral part of the Oklahoma graffiti scene. Artists will paint their pieces directly on the walls of the gallery, transforming Oklahoma Contemporary into an amazing display of styles. This immersive experience will be unlike anything seen yet in Oklahoma, and the opening promises to be an event that you do not want to miss! SKER | HEK | CODAK | GERM | ENTAKE | SEAPO | RHAK | MANIK | JASPYR | SADAT Curators: SKER and Angel Little Full event info here : https://www.facebook.com/events/382008798899436/

[codakstudios]

A fun, friendly, and professional place to make music.

[codakstudios]

Trails and Tribulations featuring Draven doing a Shot You Down remix. Check it out at https://soundcloud.com/codak-studios/03-shot-you-down-remix

[codakstudios]

Advertisement for The Kerrville Happenings magazine.