Ugly Drawings

But they're my ugly drawings.

uhh

So, the reason no one reads this blog is simply because I don't put it out there at all. I don't post it in my Cartoon Brew comments, and I don't give the address to my friends. I think the next step, really, is to get my creative stuff on here as soon as possible. Maybe I'll seem like less of a loser.

So, I've been listening to some of the 50's production music that was used for The Ren and Stimpy Show. This makes me super geeky.

Which brings me to the main point of this post: my love for cartoons and my love for music. I really don't know which is more important in my life, especially when the two go so well together. Carl Stalling and Raymond Scott are two of my biggest heroes, as well as Sammy Timberg and the other people involved in the music for the Fleischer studio.

And how can you not like the Cab Calloway Betty Boop cartoons?



My interest in cartoons and music goes together very well, but I'm starting to think music is more of my primary interest, although it has switched back and forth.

A New Post

Hey, a new post!
I decided I might as well continue this blog, just as a record of my animation research. You know, to help me deal with my obsession. It's not really going to be a place to showcase my own animation for the time being, mainly because I'm busy with college and all the post-high school crap. I could come up with more excuses... my animation stand is covered in DVDs... my camera sucks.

Anyway, I wanted to post about one of my new favorite animators, Milton Knight. He's worked for Ralph Bakshi, as well as DiC. Now, up until now, I've disregarded everything made by DiC, with the exception of John K's New Adventures of Beany and Cecil. Well, I was doing some research on Jim Tyer, and somehow I stumble upon this guy named Milton Knight.

The guy has worked on the pilot for The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, which doesn't sound impressive at first, until you see what he did with it. Things worth noting: 1) Gary Owen's voice can be heard (voice of Space Ghost and Powdered Toast Man). 2) Ed Love, who worked on Tex Avery's Swing Shift Cinderella, also worked on this show. My mind has been blown!



It's very fitting that he ended up directing episodes of The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat.



Anyway, I think this guy is great.

Animation Conversation... Overwhelming.

First I saw this.

That almost made me cry.

Then I remembered watching this:



Where a kid from the 80's talks about how great Transformers was... oh god... (for the record, I like his videos most of the time).

So I drowned myself in Flip the Frog and Bugs Bunny.

Then I saw this.

Then I thought, "Aren't all these animation-related people nerds too?"

I was also kind of sad that people still don't understand autism.

I love the animation blogger community, and I check Cartoon Brew all the time. But all these blogs get overwhelming.

There's nothing wrong with being a nerd, it's just better if you're a nerd about cartoons from the 40's, and not cartoons from the 80's. Those 80's cartoons were bad, and kids from that generation can't give them up.

All these animators and animation-related people are nerds themselves, and that's okay!

And I also thought about how Jhonen Vasquez and JR Goldberg made a book together, and how weird that is. But that's something else I should talk about elsewhere.

But... wow, I'm tired, and I just had to type this all out...

I should go to bed.

All these opinions...

In the 40's, they didn't have blogs or political correctness... or something...

OK, I'm starting to sound like Seymour, from Ghost World... sort of... who is also a nerd.

OK, I REALLY have to go to bed now!

...so many scattered thoughts...

Change, Platform Animation Fest

Well, last time I posted, I was a very different animator wannabe. I'm really not sure what I was thinking. I've changed now...

I'm currently attending the Platform Animation Festival, and it's just great. I got Jerry Beck to sign my first edition copy of his Looney Tunes guide that he co-wrote with Will Friedwald. When I told him I'd had it since I was eight, he said, "that's maybe the scariest thing I've ever heard."

I saw several animators there such as Bill Plympton and Will Vinton (his mustache is hard to miss). My animation teacher, Sharon Niemczyk introduced me to a few professional animators, and I got some good advice. People seem to keep telling me I should go to CalArts. Guess I'd better make a portfolio...

So far, everything is great. I got to see films by Mark Kausler and Nick Cross. Kausler's "It's the Cat" was brilliant. Hand drawn and painted, and a great tribute to his favorite animation.

Nick Cross's film was very funny. There weren't many people at the theater, but this cartoon had the best reaction, I think. It was great.

So, yeah, I think it's going well. I hope it goes on every year here in Portland forever.

Okay, Guys, I'm Serious Now!

Okay, so I'm a short, geeky cartoonist wannabe. I live for cartoons. I love film too, but unfortunately, I reserve so much time for watching animation that there are a lot of movies I have not seen. A friend once criticized me for never seeing the movie Snatch. Another yelled at me for not seeing Apocolypse Now. It was hard to explain, for some reason, that I'm just too obsessed with watching cartoons and studying animation. Just the other day, I went to a used video store and bought American Pop, some old Betty Boop cartoons (some of the weirder ones, actually), and a crappy $5 DVD of Felix the Cat, as well as some very obscure cartoons by Van Beuran, a short lived studio in the 1930s. I had no real reason for getting these DVDs, other than to add to my collection. Also, my girlfriend loves music, so I thought she'd like to see American Pop.

The point of this blog is for my... "art," if you're going to call it that. My animation teacher actually said to me, when reviewing one of my essays, to capitalize the word. I think her point was it made it look more important.

But I'm not going to take myself that seriously. I'm just going to post about my current projects and my weird ideas. I did some of that on my LiveJournal blog, but I'm sort of abandoning it, since I've had it since eighth grade, so there's some teen angst crap in there that I'm kind of embarassed about. But there's also some stuff in there about my frustration with people who don't get that animated and live action films are equal, such as Hunter S. Thompson's wife, who didn't want Ralph Bakshi doing her husband's movie, since she wanted it to be live action. Think about Ralph Steadman's art coming to life on-screen... Johnny Depp and Terry Gilliam did a fine job as usual, but I think using elements of animation in the film would have made it more interesting, especially with all the halucinations going on. Bakshi's rotoscoping technique would have been ideal. Ironically, Terry Gilliam used to do the animated sequences for Monty Python's Flying Circus, as well as their movies. Funny how that works out.

Here's a little article:
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/review?oid=oid%3A101797

Whoa, I got kind of off topic there... um... I was gonna' talk about my other post where I discuss my purchas of a 16mm copy of Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs, directed by Bob Clampett. I explained why I bought it for it's historical significance, and it's legendary animation that made it what many critics call Bob Clampett's "masterpiece," and it is something to behold... unless you just can't keep the historical context in mind and not be offended. I don't blame you either, but these films still need to be preserved, because they're part of history.

Alright, that's my first post. I promise that future posts will be more focused. In the meantime, go see my pencil test for the project I'm working on... oh, I need to upload more of those...

Here it is: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ozyg6kstzRc