#winsor mccay homage

[balu8]

The Gremillet Sisters #4: The Mountain Goat and the Comet

by Giovanni Di Gregorio and Alessandro Barbucci

Trailer Vol.1

[squideo]

Squideo’s Favourites: Gertie the Dinosaur

Released in 1914, this short film was created by Winsor McCay – a vaudeville actor who started producing cartoons in 1911. As one of McCay’s best preserved works, Gertie the Dinosaur has gone down in animation history for its innovative techniques and for a time was counted as the earliest animated film until other records were found.

Despite its short running time of twelve minutes, the piece has inspired countless successive animators from Walt Disney to Max Fleischer. It was chosen for this series by Creative Director Hannah Bales who credits Gertie the Dinosaur with introducing animation techniques still used to this day.

We’re diving into the production behind this animated film, exploring the style and techniques which came together to create this compelling story.

Creating a Story

Winsor McCay started working as an artist before becoming an illustrator and cartoonist for numerous Chicagoan newspapers. In 1911, McCay came to work at the New York American, owned by the infamous William Randolph Hurst. That same year, McCay self-financed and released his first animated film Little Nemo in Slumberland.

It was released in cinemas and McCay used the piece in his vaudeville act – a profession he maintained alongside his newspaper career for several years until Hurst convinced him to prioritise his illustrations. Little Nemo in Slumberland used characters McCay had created for a comic strip at the New York Herald, his former employer, a series McCay used to develop his use of colour and fine hatching. Little Nemo was already popular with audiences, first debuting in 1905 and receiving a stage adaptation in 1907.

Audiences were entranced by the 1911 short film, which became popular enough for McCay to colourise the frames. Sadly, like many of McCay’s early works – including How a Mosquito Operates (1912),  Flip’s Circus (1918) and The Centaurs (1921) – only fragments of the film have survived. Which led to the later Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) becoming McCay’s signature film.

As Gertie the Dinosaur was created for McCay’s vaudeville act, the film is timed to create the illusion that McCay – standing beside the screen – is controlling Gertie. To end the film, McCay walked toward the screen and was replaced with an animated equivalent that Gertie carried away. This use of animation showed audiences what potential this developing medium had, and inspired a wave of new animators to follow in McCay’s footsteps.

William Fox, founder of the Fox Film Corporation, paid McCay to extend the film to include a live-action introduction so Gertie the Dinosaur could be shown in cinemas without McCay’s presence. Despite this success, McCay’s own employer William Randolph Hurst banned their newspaper from mentioning Gertie the Dinosaur. Comic strips were very popular in newspapers and, as one of his most popular illustrators whom he had bought away from the New York Herald, Hurst wanted McCay’s attention at the New York American rather than his own side-projects.

McCay would make ten films in total, an impressive achievement considering he almost entirely worked alone. His post-war release, The Sinking of the Lusitania, in 1917 garnered him additional critical acclaim and cemented McCay as an animation pioneer.

“McCay distinguished his work from that of his contemporaries in the field by the sophistication of his elaborate graphics, the fluid movement of his characters, the attempts to inject personality traits into those characters, and the use of strong narrative continuity.” John Canemaker

In an episode of Walt Disney’s Disneyland in 1955, Disney paid homage to Winsor McCay and Gertie the Dinosaur – inviting McCay’s son Robert to act as a consultant. The influence of Gertie the Dinosaur still lives on at Disney, spanning from its first reference in 1940’s Fantasia, to their animatronic dinosaurs for New York’s World Fair in 1964, and now Gertie’s ice cream stand opened in Disney’s Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World in 1989.

Animation Style

Created from over 10,000 drawings, Gertie the Dinosaur was a tremendous undertaking almost entirely created by Winsor McCay with his neighbour John A. Fitzsimmons acting as an assistant. Since the film would form part of his vaudeville act, McCay needed a showstopper – and he wanted to indisputably show the world that his animation skills were unrivalled.

When his 1912 film, How a Mosquito Operates, had debuted some audience members thought the mosquito was operated on wires. That same year, McCay announced his intention to create a film about dinosaurs.

Despite the short time frame between both films, Gertie the Dinosaur shows significant progress which left audiences with no doubt that they were watching animation. More details were added to the characters and, importantly, backgrounds were added to the frames.

McCay used fine hatching to add shadows and depth to Gertie’s movement. He established the use of now standard animation techniques, including “key drawings, effective registration of images to prevent “jitters”, and the concept of “cycling” action that reused drawings.”

Using a constructed dinosaur skeleton on display at the New York Museum of History for reference, McCay worked in painstaking detail to make Gertie as realistic as possible. It worked. According to McCay:

“When the great dinosaur first came into the picture, the audience said it was a papier-mâché animal with men inside of it and with a scenic background. As the production progressed they noticed that the leaves on the trees were blowing in the breeze, and that there were rippling waves on the surface of the water, and when the elephant was thrown into the lake the water was seen to splash. This convinced them that they were seeing something new – that the presentation was actually from a set of drawings.” Winsor McCay

McCay’s work continues to have an influence over modern animators, and since 1972 the Winsor McCay Award has been given in recognition of individuals whose work shows outstanding contributions to excellence in animation. Famous recipients include Bill Hanna, Joseph Barbera, Mel Blanc, Otto Messmer, Roy E. Disney, Tim Burton, John Lasseter, Nick Park, Brad Bird and Matt Groening.

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[goingoverthegardenwall]

Chapter 8: Babes in the Wood

In this last hurrah of explicit homages to animation of the past, the most obvious discussion point is Merrie Melodies and its ilk: Babes in the Wood is essentially a full-episode reference to the bouncing musical shorts of yore, where everything can sing’n’dance and the villain is a blustery bozo who’s defeated with a sight gag. If we expand to children’s entertainment in general, as we did with Greg’s Beatrix Potter episode, then The Wizard of Oz is our logical next step: the song welcoming him to Cloud City owes everything to Dorothy’s introduction to Munchkinland, complete with the fact that our hero has just entered a dream.

And look, there’s nothing wrong with talking about the obvious. But as we near the end, I think it’s a little more interesting to instead explore the very beginning. So let’s go back to a newspaper cartoonist in New York—the one who inspired fellow New York newspaper cartoonist John Randolph Bray to become an animator, which in turn led fellow New York newspaper cartoonist Max Fleischer to become an animator, because it turns out that just like the birth of superhero comics a few decades later, the birth of American animation hinged on print artists who dreamed big in the city that never sleeps. 

A boy named Zenas was born in Michigan on September 26, 1871. Or maybe he was born there in 1869. Or maybe he was born in Canada in 1867. He said one thing, and a biographer said another, and census data says another, and I wasn’t there. It’s similarly unclear when or why he started going by his middle name, but by the time he took his first job at age 21 (or 19 or 17) as a billboard and poster artist in Chicago, he was calling himself Winsor McCay. They sure did know how to name ‘em in the 19th century.

McCay began his newspaper career as a freelancer, but moved to New York in 1903 to work for the New York Herald, where he wrote a variety of comics before hitting it big with Little Sammy Sneeze. McCay’s art was always brilliant, but his gag work was formulaic to a fault: the joke for Sammy Sneeze was always the same, he would sneeze and ruin everything right before the last panel. That devotion to formula would continue in his second big comic Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, where a fantastical events would occur for ever-changing characters before the lead woke up in the last panel, revealing it was a dream.

That second formula was the basis of McCay’s masterpiece. Already a successful cartoonist in the two short years since he’d moved to New York, his fame skyrocketed with Little Nemo in Slumberland, which used the same “wake up at the end” formula but with recurring characters and a running story. He toyed with the medium like none had before, playing with panel arrangement and innovating the portrayal of motion in comics, and his art skills only improved with this full-color strip. His success led to the vaudeville circuit, where he turned the act of drawing into a performance, and this combination of stage entertainment and his continuing comic work led him to seek new ways to dazzle the crowds.

By 1910, the earliest animated shorts had already started to emerge, and McCay was inspired by pioneers like James Stuart Blackton and Émile Cohl to try animating the characters of Little Nemo. Under Blackton’s direction, McCay singlehandedly drew around four thousand fully colored frames to produce his first animated cartoon, presented at the tail end of a filmed short about said cartoon in 1911. As mentioned, animated shorts were already a thing. But none of them looked anything like this. (If you’re concerned that there might be racist caricatures in it, don’t worry, there definitely are, McCay had a lot of strengths but overcoming garbage prejudices was not one of them).

The sheer quality of his work, continuing with the legendary Gertie the Dinosaur, directly led to the invention of the rotoscope as a means to mass-produce cartoons of similar finesse. The influence of Winsor McCay over animation as we know it is hard to overstate (and let’s stress again that this was his side gig, and he was just as influential over comic art): as crazy as it sounds, it’s safe to say that Over the Garden Wall would not exist if not for a story about the whimsical adventures of a little boy who traveled across a land of dreams from his bed. 

“Where’s Greg, Wirt?”

Babes in the Wood is delightful and goofy and lighthearted exactly once.

In the same way our fourth-to-last episode mirrored our fourth, this third-to-last episode mirrors our third: Chapters 4 and 7 focus on Wirt, but 3 and 8 are Greg’s. It’s not simply a matter of who the main character is, but what these episodes are about: Greg’s love of fun clashing with his drive to help others. Both times he's spurred by the desire to help others to go off on his own, both times he gets distracted by whimsical wonders involving funny animals and physical humor, and both times he ends up deciding to help out anyway. But despite switching his goal from making the whole world a better place to just helping his brother, the stakes are actually far higher now, so the fun has to be that much more fun if we want the full horror of the ending to sink in.

There’s no tonal shift in the series that’s more devastating than Greg falling prey to the Beast after nearly ten minutes of goofiness in Cloud City. It turns a moment of welcome relief from the growing tension of Wirt’s despair into a dagger in the heart, and the knife is twisted when we learn in our next episode what the Unknown truly is.

That despair is evident well before Wirt explicitly gives up. We get our second opening in a row featuring Beatrice in a hopeless search, and things aren’t much better for the boys. All sense of progression from the first episode feels lost, with Wirt reverting to mumbling poetry and Greg reverting to Rock Facts. Their boat is an outhouse and Greg uses a guitar as an oar, because (if you’ll pardon my French) they’re up shit creek without a paddle. When they land, Greg’s victorious bugle is a ridiculous sign of hope, but he soon drops it in the same way he abandons the guitar: in Schooltown Follies he takes instruments to help others, but this time he loses them.

Wirt’s frustration with Greg threatened to boil over in The Ringing of the Bell, only to be cooled when the Woodsman interrupts them. This time there’s no such interruption, so after Greg’s total failure to read the room gets to be too much, his brother finally snaps. It crucially isn’t entirely unjustified, as Greg’s antics might be funny to us but have not been appreciated by Wirt, and despite Greg’s age excusing his lack of emotional intelligence, it’s still gotta be frustrating for a teen to deal with that behavior nonstop. And Wirt’s “tirade” reflects his depression, because he doesn’t even seem that angry: he doesn’t shout or rave, he’s just openly irritated as he argues that they’ll be lost forever. This is apathy and fatigue, because he’s lost the energy to be furious.

But the most chilling part of the exchange isn’t Wirt cruelly blaming Greg for their mess, or abandoning their search. It’s when, after Wirt asks if they can give up, Greg responds with a chipper “You can do anything if you set your mind to it!”, a sentiment that the Beast will fiendishly repeat verbatim while tricking Greg. It’s such a generic positive expression that Greg hangs a lampshade on it, but it shows the darker side of the power our minds have over our well-being. Sure, it’s a great lesson that focus and dedication can help us achieve our dreams, but if we use that focus and dedication towards self-destructive behavior, there’s no limit to how badly we can hurt ourselves. 

After a goofy sort of prayer (incorporating lines from the classic Trick or Treat poem, which will become super relevant an episode from now), Greg is whisked away by so-creepy-it’s-funny cherubim to the score of a so-overwrought-it’s-funny song. His flight aboard the bed/cart pulled by a donkey across the sky feels legitimately magical, but we soon switch to the surreal world of 1930′s songs and physics.

Cloud City is such a stark contrast to the tone of the episode so far that it instantly feels delightful, and such a stark contrast to the tone of the entire series that it lends a special sort of wonder to Greg’s dreamland. References to old cartoons are everywhere in Over the Garden Wall, and before we delve into the tension of our last two episodes, we get one last gigantic celebration of the past with a sequence straight from the golden age of animation. 

The transition alone is enough to make this scene hilarious, but the actual jokes help quite a bit: Greg’s growing impatience with the numerous Wizard of Oz reception committees is my favorite gag of the night. Everything is cute to the point of being cloying, including our three angels that look and sound an awful lot like Greg, and the parade that he leads seems like such a fun and peaceful affair after so much time wandering alone. It’s easy to get as roped into it as Greg when we first watch it. But considering the events of our next episode, the scene destroys me every time I rewatch it, because there’s a very specific place Greg is being welcomed to.

Babes in the Wood gets a lot less cute when it becomes clear that it’s a welcoming committee for a dying child. Greg and Wirt are drowning, and this is the episode where the shock wears off and the cold sets in and the younger and weaker of the two looks into a bright light. Greg’s near-death experience is hammered in when we get to The Unknown, but for now it’s being rationalized in a way that brings him comfort.

The cold is Greg’s enemy, and the same childish tone is used to show that he’s willing to fight for his life: thus, the North Wind segment is ironically more hopeful to me than the parade’s warm welcome of death. This third song sounds enough like a Randy Newman number that I’m honestly still convinced it’s an uncredited Randy Newman performance, and it jolts us back to reality for a moment as we see the effect this bitter wind has on our babes in the woods. The boys are starting to freeze, and we again see Beatrice searching for them, getting so close before an owl that looks remarkably like the one we saw in our first episode scares her off. The episode doesn’t want to lose us completely to the sky, and this grounding helps keep the stakes clear as we complete Greg’s dream.

The Popeye-esque battle between Greg and Ol’ Windbag is a hoot, between the latter’s grumbling anger and the former rolling up his sleeve to get back into the brawl. Its conclusion is hidden from us, so we have no idea how Greg gets him in a bottle, but that fits right in with the weird logic of this throwback and allows us to meet the Queen of the Clouds.

I ought to bring up the theory that everything we see here is an illusion created by the Beast, even though I don’t really subscribe to it myself. The most obvious “hint” is that this sequence directly leads to Greg deciding to join the Beast with an off-screen promise, but we also have the old man in the welcoming march wearing an outfit just like Wirt’s and holding a lantern, perhaps a reference to the Beast’s intended fate for Greg’s brother. Plus there’s lines in the songs that seem like they’re luring Greg in, especially the assurance that the wonders of Cloud City “ain’t gonna lie,” which sounds a lot like what a liar would say. Both the Queen of the Clouds and the Beast pointedly call him Gregory instead of Greg, but so does Old Lady Mrs. Daniels (and Wirt when introducing him in Songs of the Dark Lantern). 

While it’s a neat enough idea, I think the Queen of Clouds is pretty clearly on Greg’s side for real: she seems upset at his fate in a way that doesn’t make much sense for an ally of the Beast. I also think it’s more meaningful for Greg to truly have the choice between happiness and responsibility, between the possible peace of rest and the definite struggle of life, and for him to choose the latter right as his brother is giving in. But I’ve got no beef with folks whose interpretation of the show is enhanced by this theory, so believe what you want to believe about this ambiguous situation.

Either way, we cut back to Wirt instead of Greg when the dream ends, and he’s still annoyed as he’s trying to sleep. Greg’s strange new seriousness is already cause for concern, and asking Wirt to take care of the frog is even more alarming, but even that doesn’t compare the horror of realizing where he’s actually going. Or rather, with whom.

This is another reason why I think the Queen is an ally: while it’s obviously dangerous for Greg to go with the Beast, that’s what it takes for Wirt to snap out of his funk. It’s a hell of a gambit, but as soon as he starts to awaken, he’s immediately concerned for Greg’s safety despite whatever anger or resentment he had, sparing no time or thought to the branches creeping over him as he runs after his brother. 

The quiet distortion as we follow his frantic search is soon met by the Beast’s song, but even as he blames himself for Greg’s plight, Wirt is no longer content to wallow in despair. Because it turns out that these brothers are more similar than they seem, and neither is truly capable of letting the other suffer. In the folk tale for which this episode is named, two children abandoned in the woods eventually die and are covered in leaves by small birds (with some versions seeing them enter heaven), but as we’ll see in our next episode, this isn’t a folk tale.

The thrumming noise intensifies as Wirt slips on the ice, then we add visual distortion as he plummets into the freezing water. He’s saved, but this isn’t water that sees him reborn: the distortion finally breaks as Beatrice asks the episode’s terrible question, and we’re left in the cold.

Every even-numbered episode of Over the Garden Wall, perhaps by virtue of airing twice per night, ends in a mood-setting cliffhanger that grows tenser and tenser with every iteration (or at least it does until the end). First we got a leaf symbolically caught in a fence, then the Beast’s introduction, then the fallout of Adelaide, and now the capture of Greg. Getting trapped has always been a threat for these roving heroes, but the greatest threat of all, that of Wirt trapping himself, has been handled. Things look bleaker than they ever have, but despite the glee of Greg’s dream contrasting with the harshness of reality, Wirt’s ability to climb out of the pit of despair keeps hope alive: even in absence, Greg’s influence looms large.

Rock Factsheet

Dinosaurs had big ears, but everyone forgot because dinosaur ears don’t have bones.

Where have we come, and where shall we end?

Most of these were mentioned in the main analysis, but it’s great that we hear Wirt’s description of Into the Unknown right before the episode itself shows us what happened.

[benhumeniuk]

Throwback to one of the more challenging pages I did for Waking Life. Winsor McCay, the inspiration for the comic, was a master of drawing all kinds of things in perspective— including cityscapes! This was my attempt to pay homage to him while also pushing my abilities. *Still* proud of it all these months later.

[yazzydream]

ANIMATION DOCUMENTARIES - a Compilation (1/2)

I’ve been meaning to remake my masterpost on animation documentaries for a while. (Especially since amazon no longer allows us to edit our older listmanias.) I love watching stuff like this, so I figure others would as well! I direct linked as many titles as I could to streams, free or otherwise. Feel free to add to this! (Also, quick prelude since you’re gonna hear it a lot: Any time a Disney documentary says Snow White was the first ever animated feature film is a dirty filthy lie.)

Animation Industry

Anime: Drawing a Revolution (2007)

Between Frames: The Art of Brazilian Animation (2013; website)

The CalArts Story (1964)

[NHK Close-up Gendai] No.3620 逆襲なるか　日本アニメ　～海外輸出・新戦略の行方～ (”The Counterattack of Japanese Anime ~Overseas Export - New Strategy~”) (2015; website)

[NHK Close-up Gendai] No.3171 アニメを旅する若者たち　“聖地巡礼”の舞台裏 (”Young People Traveling for Anime ‘Pilgrimage to the Sacred Place’”) (2012; website)

[NHK Close-up Gendai Plus] ２兆円↑アニメ産業　加速する“ブラック労働” (”2 Trillion Yen ↑ Accelerating Animation Industry ‘Black Labor’”) (2017; website; NHK on how shitty overworked animator wages are.)

Computer Dreams (1988; this is more a showcase of early cgi than a documentary, but it’s interesting to see anyway.)

Creature Designers - The Frankenstein Complex (2016; DVD)

Drawn for Glory: Animation's Triumph at the Oscars (2008; DVD)

Forging the Frame: The Roots of Animation, 1900-1920 (2007; DVD)

Forging the Frame: The Roots of Animation, 1921-1930

Hollywood’s Greatest Trick (2016; website; about the terrible VFX business model.)

I Know That Voice (2013; DVD, website)

Imagine Series 2 Episode 5, “From Pencils to Pixels” (2003; BBC One)

Magia Russica (2004; website; on Soviet Russian animation)

New-generation animators (2016; website)

Weightless Life - Dialogue With Disney (2006; on Russian animation)

Studios

A Grand Night In: The Story of Aardman (2015)

Fleischer Studios -

The Evolution of Animation: The History of the Fleischer Studios (2007; DVD)

First Flight: The Fleischer Superman Series (2009; DVD)

Max Fleischer and the New York Style (2007)

Out of the Inkwell: The Fleischer Story (2008)

Hanna-Barbera’s 50th: A Yabba Dabba Doo Celebration (1989)

Life After Pi (2014; website; about the collapse of VFX studio Rhythm & Hues.)

Industrial Light & Magic: Creating the impossible (2010)

The Magic of Filmation

Pixar -

Pixar: 25 Magic Moments (2011; by BBC Three)

The Pixar Story (2007, DVD; website)

Walt Disney Studios

Dream On Silly Dreamer (2005; DVD)

From Fantasia to Fantasyland (1978)

The Illusion of Life (1981)

Walt Disney Treasures - Behind the Scenes at the Walt Disney Studio (DVD; A collection of old behind-the-scenes docs and telecasts.)

Walt Disney Treasures - Your Host, Walt Disney (DVD; collection of Walt Disney Presents/The Wonderful World of Color)

Waking Sleeping Beauty (2009; DVD; website)

Warner Bros. -

[Camera Three] The Boys Termite Terrace (1975; DVD)

Irreverent Imagination: The Golden Age of the Looney Tunes (2003; DVD) 

Unsung Maestros: A Directors Tribute (2007; DVD) 

Anime Studios

Behind The Scenes! Kyoto Animation Making of Kanon

Ghibli: The Miyazaki Temple (2005)

Inside Toei Animation (2008)

Kingdom of Dreams & Madness (2013; DVD; on Studio Ghibli.)

The Story Behind Banjo (2009; DVD; on creating Don Bluth Productions.)

Animators/Artists/Voice Actors Included a few comic artists who’s works are also widely known through animation.

Al Hirschfeld - The Line King: The Al Hirschfeld Story (1996; DVD; website)

Ami Ankilewitz - 39 Pounds of Love (2005; DVD)

Art Babbit - Animating Art (1988)

Art Chokey - Gumby Dharma (2006)

Bill Pylmpton - Adventures in Plymptoons! (2011; DVD)

Blinky Bill - Blinky and Me (2011; DVD; website)

Bob Clampett - The Man from Wackyland: The Art of Bob Clampett (2004; DVD)

Bob Godfrey - The Craftsmen - Bob Godfrey (1971)

Bruce Bickford - Monster Road (2004; DVD; website)

Charles Schulz -

A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1963; DVD)

[Biography] Charles Schulz: A Charlie Brown Life

Good Grief, Charlie Brown: A Tribute to Charles Schulz (2000)

[American Masters] Good Ol’ Charles Schulz (2007; website)

Chuck Jones -

Chuck Amuck: The Movie (1991; DVD)

Chuck Jones: Extremes and In-Betweens - A Life in Animation (2000; DVD)

Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood (2009)

Heart and Soul: The Timeless Art of Chuck Jones (2007; DVD)

Eyvind Earle - My Life Eyvind Earle (DVD; autobiographical doc.)

Floyd Norman - Floyd Norman: An Animated Life (2016; website)

Frank Tashlin - Tish Tash: The Animated World of Frank Tashlin (2005; DVD)

Frank Thomas & Ollie Johnston - Frank and Ollie (1995; DVD)

Frank Thomas -  Growing Up with Nine Old Men (2013; DVD)

Friz Freleng -

Freleng: Frame by Frame (1994; DVD)

Friz on Film (2006; DVD)

Fujiko Fujio - [NHK The Professionals] Episode 214, “プロフェッショナル ザ・レジェンド 僕は、のび太そのものだった” (”The Legend I Was Nobita Itself”) (2013)

Genndy Tartakovsky - Genndy's Scrapbook: The Story of Genndy Tartakovsky (2005; DVD)

George Pal - Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal (1985; DVD)

Gerry & Sylvia Anderson - Filmed in Supermarionation (2014; DVD; website)

Hayao Miyazaki -

Journey of the Heart (1998)

[NHK Documentary] Owaranai Hito: Miyazaki Hayao (“Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki”) (EN) (2016; website)

[NHK The Professionals] Special, “「風立ちぬ」1000日の記録” (“Windless” A Record of 1000 Days) (2013)

[NHK The Professionals] Special, “引退宣言 知られざる物語” (Retirement Announcement Unknown Story) (2013)

John Lasseter - A Day In The Life of John Lasseter (2011)

LeSean Thomas - Seoul Sessions (2012)

Lotte Reiniger -

John Isaacs The Art of Lotte Reiniger (1970)

Lotte Reiniger: Homage to the Inventor of the Silhouette Film (1999)

Lou Scheimer - Animation Maverick: The Lou Scheimer Story (2008)

Mary Blair - The Art of Mary Blair (2005)

Mel Blanc - Mel Blanc: The Man of a Thousand Voices (2008; DVD)

Naoki Urasawa - [NHK The Professionals] Episode 38, “心のままに、荒野を行け” (Go To the Wilderness With Your Heart) (2007)

Norman McLean - McLaren’s Negatives (2006)

Osamu Tezuka -

The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga (2009; DVD)

Osamu Tezuka Documentary: The Godfather Of Manga

Pablo Ferro - Pablo (2012; DVD)

Peter Ellenshaw - Ellenshaw Under Glass

Quirino Cristiani - The Mystery of the First Animated Movies (2007; website)

Ralph Bakshi -

Forging Through the Darkness (2001; DVD)

Wizards: Ralph Bakshi - The Wizard of Animation (2004)

Ray Harryhausen -

The Harryhausen Chronicles (1998; DVD)

Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan (2011; DVD)

Richard Williams -

Richard WIlliams & The Thief Who Never Gave Up (1982)

I Drew Roger Rabbit (1988)

Persistence of Vision (2012; DVD; website)

Robert McKimson - Drawn to Life: The Art of Robert McKimson (2007; DVD)

Ryan Larkin - Ryan (2004; DVD)

Scott T. Petersen - Scott Petersen: Drawn To Animate (2013)

Takehiko Inoue - [NHK The Professionals] Episode 126, “ 闘いの螺旋、いまだ終わらず” (The Battle Spiral, It Has Not Ended Yet) (2009)

Takashi Yanase - 

[NHK Close-up Gendai] No.3423 アンパンマンに託した夢　～人間・やなせたかし～ (”The Dream I Entrusted to Anpanman ~Human Takashi Yanase~) (2013; website)

[NHK 知るを楽しむ] 人生の歩き方” - 「正義の味方はカッコ悪い！」やなせたかし (”How to Walk Life” - “The Ally of Justice is Uncool!” Takashi Yanase)

Tex Avery -

Tex Avery, the King of Cartoons (1988)

King Size Comedy: Tex Avery and the Looney Toons Revolution (2012)

Toshio Suzuki - [NHK The Professionals] Episode 10, 自分は信じない 人を信じる (”I Trust People Who Do Not Trust Me”) (2006)

Ub Iwerks - The Hand Behind The Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story (1999; DVD)

Tyrus Wong - Tyrus Wong, Brushstrokes in Hollywood (website)

Walt Disney -

[American Experience] Walt Disney (2015; DVD; website; take with a pinch of salt and maybe check out this post.)

Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow: The Futurism of Walt Disney (2016)

Secret Lives Walt Disney (1995; It’s suuper fucked up, but it’s interesting to compare other docs on Walt.)

Walt & El Grupo (2008; DVD; website)

Walt - The Man Behind the Myth (2011; DVD)

Walt Disney (2016; by BBC Two)

Winsor McCay - Remembering Winsor McCay (1974; DVD)

Yoji Kuri - Here We Go with Yoji Kuri! (2008)

Disney Family Album (1984-1986) Doc series on various Disney animators, actors, etc.

No. 1 Clarence "Ducky" Nash

No. 2 Ward Kimball

No. 3 Sherman Brothers

No. 4 Jim Macdonald

No. 5 Milt Kahl

No. 6 Ken Anderson

No. 7 Disneyland Designers

No. 8 Eric Larson

No. 9 Peter and Harrison Ellenshaw

No. 10 Woolie Reitherman

No. 11 Frank Thomas

No. 12 Voice Actors

No. 13 WED Imagineers

No. 14 Golden Horseshoe Revue

No. 15 Ollie Johnston

No. 16 Annette Funicello

No. 17 Marc Davis

No. 18 The Milottes and the Beebes

No. 19 Fess Parker/Buddy Ebsen

No. 20 The Storymen

JUMP Ryu! (ジャンプ流！) (2016; website) A DVD/magazine series that interviews Shonen Jump mangakas and shows their drawing process.

Vol. 1 Akira Toriyama (DVD; Dragon Ball)

Vol. 2 Masashi Kishimoto (DVD; Naruto)

Vol. 3. Eiichiro Oda (DVD; One Piece)

Vol. 4 Tite Kubo (DVD; Bleach)

Vol. 5 Tadatoshi Fujimaki (DVD; Kuroko no Basuke)

Vol. 6 Yusei Matsui (DVD; Assassination Classroom)

Vol. 7 Kōhei Horikoshi (DVD; My Hero Academia)

Vol. 8 Kazuki Takahashi (DVD; Yu-Gi-Oh!)

Vol. 9 Haruichi Furudate (DVD; Haikyu!!)

Vol. 10 Shun Saeki (DVD; Shokugeki no Soma)

Vol. 11 Kentaro Yabuki (DVD; Black Cat, To Love-Ru)

Vol. 12 Nobuhiro Watsuki (Rurouni Kenshin)

Vol. 13 Naoshi Komi (DVD; Nisekoi)

Vol. 14 Masanori Morita (DVD; Rokudenashi Blues)

Vol. 15 Yusuke Murata (DVD; aka ONE artist of One-Punch Man)

Vol. 16 Shimabukuro Years (Toriko)

Vol. 17 Masakazu Katsura (DVD; Video Girl Ai)

Vol. 18 Osamu Akimoto (Kochikame)

Vol. 19 Takeshi Obata (DVD; Death Note)

Vol. 20 Kyosuke Usuta (DVD; Pyu to Fuku! Jaguar)

Vol. 21 Yoshihiro Togashi (Hunter X Hunter)

Vol. 22 Hiroyuki Asada (DVD; Tegami Bachi)

Vol. 23 Sorachi Hideaki (Gintama)

Vol. 24 Kazue Kato (Ao no Exorcist)

Vol. 25 Hirohiko Araki (Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure)

Musicians

Raymond Scott - Deconstructing Dad (2010; DVD; website)

Robert & Richard Sherman - The Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story (2009; DVD; website)

Saori Yuki - [NHK Close-up Gendai] No.3162 世界を魅了する日本の歌謡曲　～由紀さおり　ヒットの秘密～ (”Popular Japanese Songs That Fascinate the World ~Saori Yuki’s Hit Secret~”) (2012; website)

Treg Brown - Crash! Bang! Boom!: The Wild Sounds of Treg Brown (2004; DVD)

(Continue to Part 2)

[biofunmy]

Of Comic Books and Couture

In 1967, Yves Saint Laurent introduced La Vilaine Lulu, the beastly little star of a comic book — or bande dessinée — that he wrote and illustrated.

Short and squat with a froggy face, wearing a beribboned boater and a scarlet cancan skirt that she would flip up to expose her naked derrière, La Vilaine Lulu terrorized her teachers, schoolmates, passers-by — well, everyone, really. A devil child, that Lulu.

Now she is a cornerstone for “Mode et Bande Dessinée” (“Fashion and Comic Books”), which its organizers say is the first major exhibition to take a comprehensive look at fashion in comic books and graphic novels, through Jan. 5 at the Cité Internationale de la Bande Dessinée et de l’Image in Angoulême, France.

As the fall couture season begins on Monday in Paris, the show is a reminder that, while luxury fashion is often viewed as elitist, it has a way of trickling down commercially and artistically to unexpected yet highly accessible places — and vice versa. Comic-Con International and the elaborate character outfits worn by fans are just one flash of the impact.

“Jean Paul Gaultier, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac and Thierry Mugler were obviously influenced by B.D.s,” said Thierry Groensteen, the exhibition’s curator, using the French nickname, pronounced “bay-days,” for comic books. “You see it in Castelbajac’s sweater dresses, with B.D. motifs, and Mugler’s Cat Woman suit, with its cagoule with little ears.” Both are represented in the show.

Two hours by train from Paris, Angoulême is France’s capital of comic books. Each year since 1974, it has hosted the Angoulême International Comic Festival, a four-day event that last year drew more than 200,000 B.D. enthusiasts. The Cité, which opened in 1990, now houses 13,000 original plates and 250,000 B.D.s — the world’s second largest collection of French-language comics (after the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at Ohio State University in Columbus).

Pierre Lungheretti, the Cité’s director, said its collection traces the genre, known officially in France as “the 9th art,” from “the birth of comic books in the 19th century to today.”

In addition to the museum, which has about 70,000 visitors a year, there is a reference library, two screening rooms, bookstore, a restaurant and residences where as many as 50 comic book authors are invited to spend from three months to four years working on their latest projects.

So loved are comic books in France that the Ministry of Culture has declared 2020 the “Année de la B.D.,” with dozens of events scheduled throughout the country.

“Twenty-five years ago, about 500 comic books were published annually” around the world, Mr. Lungheretti said and now it’s 5,000. “In a world saturated with images and graphics, comic books open the human imagination and an interpretation of society that allows for satire, humor, and poetry.”

Also some great clothes.

Curiously, Mr. Lungheretti said, no museum other than the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its 2008 “Superheroes: Fantasy and Fashion” show has mounted a thorough exploration of the relationship between comics and clothing. And yet, “there have always been characters who were dressed in very identifiable or signature outfits,” he said, mentioning Bécassine, a young Breton housemaid who first appeared in a French weekly in 1905 and traditionally has been depicted in a long green peasant dress, white apron, head scarf and clogs.

“Even Tintin has a look,” Mr. Lungheretti said.

The Cité’s six-part exhibition begins with a study of similar pen strokes found in renderings by fashion designers like Elsa Schiaparelli and Saint Laurent and such B.D. luminaries as Winsor McCay, the early 20th-century American cartoonist of “Little Nemo,” and Jean Giraud, the French artist also known as Moebius, who died in 2012.

In this section La Vilaine Lulu pops up at her most naughty — hosing chums with ice water, stringing up innocents, lashing adults to bedposts or tossing them out skyscraper windows — in original drawings on loan from the Musée Yves Saint Laurent in Paris. “It’s remarkable to see that Saint Laurent chose this mode of expression to illustrate his universe, with an imagination that was very tortured, even violent,” Mr. Lungheretti said, adding that the comic “explains a lot who he was.”

The show then turns to B.D. homages and influences on the catwalk and in advertising, such as Parfums Dior’s Eau Sauvage campaign of 2001, which featured Corto Maltese, the enigmatic title character of Hugo Pratt’s high seas adventure series. There also are panels from Marvel’s Millie the Model, which ran from 1945 to 1973, as well as Les Triplés, a regular comic feature about three precocious children that has appeared in Madame Figaro, Le Figaro’s weekly fashion supplement, since 1983.

For a 1990 strip, the Triplés author Nicole Lambert, herself a former model, drew a camellia-adorned black velvet boater just like one Karl Lagerfeld had originally designed for Chanel (the cartoon and hat are both on display). Though perhaps no B.D. so closely joined the shows and the comic squares as Annie Goetzinger’s “Jeune Fille en Dior,” or “Young Woman in Dior,” a 2013 graphic novel that recounted the adventures of a junior fashion reporter covering the couture house’s first défilé.

As the brand prepares for yet another, it could be required reading on the front row.

Sahred From Source link Fashion and Style

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[aion-rsa]

R Sikoryak Talks Bringing the iTunes Terms and Conditions to Comics

The very idea of adapting the Apple iTunes Terms and Conditions into comics sounds insane. And yet, for cartoonist R Sikoryak, it made sense, so he set out to use every single word of the contract in his book-length comic. What makes it interesting, and inventive, and fun, was the way Sikoryak adapted it. The terms and conditions are being said or thought by a character who looks a lot like Steve Jobs — complete with a black turtleneck — and each page is drawn in a different style.

To flip through the book is to see just how masterful a cartoonist Sikoryak is as he draws in the styles of Allie Brosh and Chris Ware, Charlie Adlard and John Romita Sr, Todd Macfarlane and Seth. The result is a book that manages to be incredibly fun and inventive, even if it doesn’t make you want to read the text! In addition to this just-released book, Drawn and Quarterly also just announced that this fall, they’ll be releasing a second very different book by Sikoryak, “The Unquotable Trump.”

CBR: Where did you come up with the idea for this book? It’s not exactly an obvious concept for a graphic novel.

R Sikoryak: In retrospect, it doesn’t seem that absurd! [Laughs] At least to me. I’d been adapting literature and poetry into comics for a long time, and I do it in a humorous or ironic or sometimes smart-ass way. I continue to do that, and I love working with great texts, but I often work in short form. I’d never tried to take on something long. When I adapted “Crime and Punishment,” for instance, I made it a ten-page story. I tend to boil things down, but because I feel like comics keep getting longer and longer, I really wanted to try a long-form work. And because my mind heads in that direction, I thought, what would be funny to do? Also, what would be recognizable to do?

The iTunes Terms and Conditions have long been a kind of joke, in that they’re too long and nobody reads them. Normally, I would go to “Moby-Dick” as the kind of book I would adapt, because it’s a classic, but it’s also perceived as being too long and generally nobody reads it. I happen to think “Moby-Dick” is a great book, but people feel guilty when they don’t read things they feel they should read. It just struck me that it would be funny to illustrate the Terms. I suggested it out loud, the person I was with laughed, and then I thought, I have to do this. It grew out of what I normally do, but it was really a response to the graphic novel form. I wanted to embrace a different kind of comics-making than I had done before.

As you’ve been working on this and putting it out as minicomics, have many people said, I never read the Terms and Conditions until I read your comic?

Some people have said that. Some people have said, “I’m still not going to read it!” And I understand that. This was something I needed to do for myself. I’m very gratified that people are interested in it. I’ve gotten all sorts of responses. Most people are amused and some people are shocked to find that it’s actually entertaining or engaging to read – on any level. [Laughs]

At what point did you say, let’s use every word of the Terms and Conditions, and define the adaptation in that way?

I love adaptation — but I feel like adaptation in comics is doomed to fail. There are adaptations I absolutely love that are in comics form, but it’s really impossible to faithfully translate a text into a different language – let alone into a different form. I like to play with that idea. Is this a good adaptation or is this a bad adaptation? I like playing with those questions when I work. Usually my work is very faithful to the ideas of the text, but I’ll weld it to something that is inherently inappropriate or absurd. For instance, my “Crime and Punishment” adaptation was drawn in the style of a 1950’s “Batman” comic. I think there are good reasons for putting those two classics together, but they also contradict each other in obvious ways. And I could have made that adaptation a lot longer, since the source materials were so rich.

What was interesting about doing Terms and Conditions and using every word was it liberated me in a way from having to make a lot of decisions. It wasn’t a matter of me deciding what was important. I went thinking, all right, I’m going to illustrate all of this. And illustrate it in a way that is not literal. This gave me liberty that I didn’t have when I was working with a classic—I didn’t feel the same reverence I might feel otherwise. This was a matter of me thinking, how can I make this interesting to do? It was my idea. I don’t say that with a feeling of ownership, but the blame goes to me. This was the perfect text to work with. It was not adapted before. It was not something that I had seen put into comics form – or into any form – and I was somewhat unfamiliar with it. I might read those articles that would say, “Here are the five things you should know about the iTunes Terms and Conditions” – but I had never read all of them!

As you were saying that using every word was liberating, I kept thinking about how many choices you don’t have to make by utilizing this approach.

Absolutely, and that was really what prompted me onto this. I actually am working on a “Moby-Dick” adaptation, and it’s really hard because I am so reverent of it, I don’t quite know what to do with it. I don’t want to do an unabridged version – you should just read the book! [Laughs] I want to make it something different, and I’d been working on it in my spare time, but I just had to put it down for a while. So this was a different way of thinking about comics.

As far as “Terms and Conditions,” when did you hit on the idea of making every page in a different style?

I think that was early on. I like to keep things surprising for myself,and I didn’t have any interest in drawing this in one style. The whole point was to use the elements of my working method to make this long-form comic. What really made it interesting for me – or at least made it come into focus – was when I realized that I could dress the main character in the outfit that Steve Jobs always wore. It linked the pages, in a way it provided some glue between these really disparate visual elements. In thinking about what it means to make a graphic novel from Terms and Conditions, and what I would have to do, I stumbled upon that concept and all came together. That also liberated me in another way. All that was necessary for the pages to work was for there to be a character who I could dress in that outfit.

There’s one page in the book where no characters appear, and that’s a Seth page. That was a way to address another kind of comics, which feature “aspect to aspect” shots of a world, rather than the actions of a character. In that case, I strategically placed the Apple logo in a few panels to remind you of where you’re at, but other than that there aren’t a lot of clues as to what it is. That page that was added late in the day, when the Terms were updated.

I remember when this was first announced, I remember thinking you would make each section in a different style, but I didn’t necessarily expect every page.

One of the reasons I wanted to do different styles for every page was that there are so many younger artists to whom I wanted to pay homage. Along with the idea of liberation, this was a means by which I could touch on a lot of different styles of comics and a lot of different creators of comics. And the whole history of comics. There’s a Winsor McCay page, and an Allie Brosh page, and in terms of time I think that’s about as far apart as you can get. They’re over a century apart. I wanted to be able to touch on all these different styles. I also wanted to reflect the nature of the Internet in a certain way. There’s this sense that we have access to everything, and I wanted this book to feel like it had access to everything. Although, obviously, it’s only one hundred styles. [Laughs]

In retrospect, I see it’s much more North American-centric than it could have been. You could easily make another book with a hundred altogether different styles that would be just as recognizable, but this is what I came up with.

How did you decide who to pick?

A lot of it came down to, who haven’t I drawn yet, or who I would love to draw? Some of it came from, what styles of comics do I think are absurd or funny? There’s a “Classics Illustrated” page from “Hamlet” from 1952. One person told me they’d actually recognized it, which impressed me. It’s a page of Hamlet’s soliloquy, it’s a single panel, and there’s one enormous word balloon above a picture of Hamlet. It’s anti-comics. So, I wanted to include that because it’s a kind of comics that they don’t really make anymore. My own obsessions and interests are part of it. I also wanted the choices of comics to allow a way into the book for readers from around the world. Certainly there’s not enough Japanese or European artists, but I did include some. People will know “Garfield” even if they don’t know “Lone Wolf and Cub,” but I really wanted to be inclusive. Many of the American pages are based on original superhero and independent comic books, but then licensed characters are also a big part of the market. So I did “The Walking Dead” and “Batman,” as well as “My Little Pony,” “Transformers,” etc. I really cast a wide net, and I’m only sorry I ran out of pages. [Laughs]

It sounds like you had a lot of fun doing this.

In one way, it was like getting an illustration job where you have to fulfill some strict requirements. I do a lot of freelance work, and you get very specific directions: “make this thing and finish it by this date.” Sometimes it’s great, but sometimes you get a job that’s really tedious and you just have to plow through it. In some ways, this felt like a rigid assignment I imposed on myself, but in other ways it was very broad and exciting. It made me really look a lot of other comics. I had to choose very specific pages of comics for this to work. Like I said, I needed a character who I could use as the “narrator,” but in other ways it was completely freeform. The length let me try out a lot of different approaches. And I think the very strict initial parameters of the project made the end product more focused and interesting.

I didn’t put any of it on Tumblr until I was done. It hadn’t initially occurred to me, but also because I really wanted to finish it without too much notice. I wanted to have some private space in which to do it. I would work on it sporadically in between my other jobs. Comics are what I’d like to be doing all the time. I don’t know if I necessarily need to do more legal agreements, though. [Laughs]

What do you think was hardest style to work in?

Winsor McCay is hard to grapple with. I’ve parodied him a couple times before, but this case was different, because I used a specific page as reference. It’s not me inventing in the style of Winsor McCay – which I’ve tried to do before and that’s a whole other level of difficulty – this is a matter of replicating it. Here I’m literally taking his compositions, so a lot of the work is already done, but figuring out a way to cram all that text into the page. Also I’m compressing a Sunday page down to a comic book format. Sometimes it was a struggle to find pages that matched the project’s needs. “Krazy Kat” is a strip I love and for a few reasons I didn’t get to it. Part of it was the issue of formatting. Often the problem was finding enough space for all the text. For the most part I tried to be very reverent to the original pages.

For the new edition, I basically redrew the first ten pages, and a few of the later ones, because initially I was really barreling through them. But by the time I got to page 30 I was trying to match each page line for line. If you compare this to my other work it’s much sketchier, but even so, as I went along my natural inclination to be fussy took over. Once I had the first 50 pages I slowed down to be more specific about how I was inking these pages. I think it makes the book richer, in a way, because the styles shift more noticeably.

The post R Sikoryak Talks Bringing the iTunes Terms and Conditions to Comics appeared first on CBR.

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[balu8]

Vittorio Giardino: Homage to Little Nemo

[balu8]

America's Best Comics Special: Promethea

by Steve Moore; Eric Shanower; Jeromy Cox and Todd Klein