Leyendecker Kelloggs Commericals..

 

I took a sec and assembled some Leyendecker commercials for Corn Flakes. Great stuff that you don't see all that often. And, as blogger Charlie Parker asks, Is there such a thing as too much J.C. Leyendecker? Never.

Persistence of Vision

A few years ago, I met the great animator Richard Williams at the prestigious Annecy Film Festival.  He seemed to know my work and was a fan – so we became good friends and talked intimately about his career and great animation.

I knew he didn't want to discuss his long-lost feature “The Thief and the Cobbler” so I delicately avoided that contoversial topic.  However, there is now a wonderful documentary about that lost epic, it's called “Persistence of Vision” by Kevin Schreck.  I saw it last week at the DOC NYC Festival.

Even though the reclusive Richard refused to be interviewed for the film, there are a lot of interviews with artists and friends of the Oscar-winning director.   Plus, there are wonderful vintage interviews of Mr. Williams as he's in the process of making the film, and he talks about his frustration in raising the money to finance this masterpiece.  Also, there are great interviews with Hollywood animation legends Ken Harris and Art Babbitt.   

The consensus is that Mr. Williams was robbed of his magnum opus by Warner Brothers and the Completion Bond Company.  Yet I don't believe it's that simple.  I feel that Richard must share some of the blame. He promised to finish the film by a certain date, and he knew that if he failed to deliver, he would lose his masterwork. Those are the rules of Hollywood and he chose to play by those rules.

I've heard rumors that he may be receiving money soon to restart his production.  

I do hope that's true, because the version released by Miramax, called “Arabian Knight”, was a travesty.  

I give the documentary a B+.  If it plays near you, rush out and see “Persistence of Vision”.

PERSISTENCE OF VISION - Trailer #1 from Kevin Schreck on Vimeo.

David Johnson Portraits..

David Johnson has launched a Tumblr blog on which he is posting a series of the portraits, titled A Portrait a Day Keeps Myself Sane. The portraits are mostly, though not all, literary figures, and Johnson is posting them accompanied by relevant quotes.  As always, thx Charlie Parker:)

Experiment with Classics..

An art student at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts who lists himself as bENCE hAJDU on Behance has posted a short series of images in which he has used digital image editing to remove the people from some classic paintings and fill in the backgrounds where they once existed. Makes you appreciate the space!

[Via NewsWorks]

Drawing Hands..

Hands were my least favorite thing to draw. I simply hated them, and I was so awful at drawing them. I found them an immense challenge, but I also realized how vital they are to an expressive drawing.. so I taught myself how to draw them. Now they are my favorite thing to draw. I've found that if you concentrate on learning the thing that challenges you most, it very often becomes you're specialty.
Let's start with why I sucked in the first place, it goes back to Preston Blair's designs and pretty much the traditional "cartoon" hand.. studying designs like this will only lead to bad habits and a lack of anatomical understanding. Instead, I would study Milt Kahls hands for Merlin in "Sword and the Stone", (great collection from the film above) .Milt managed to find a perfect blend of cartoon and anatomical design.. interesting side note, the hands in "Iron Giant" are also a great study. My buddy Randy Meyers told me that the Sword in stone designs for Wart were a huge influence on Hogarth.

From there, I would suggest looking at how the great illustrators rendered hands. Leyendecker's studies are filled with beautifully illustrated, and dynamic hands.
There are several books, most out of print, that are amazing as well. I would suggest the little green manual titled "How to Draw Hands" by Oliver Senior. It can be hard to find though. It was first published in the 40's. This series of books includes a lot of other great little "how to's", everything from drawing cats to wild flowers, no joke. My favorite is "How to Draw Fishing Crafts". so random!
Furthermore.. Some of my colleagues like Burne Hogarth's "Drawing Dynamic Hands" (above).. However, I find it to be too stylized, I think I learned more about how to draw tree trunks and vines with this book... hence very difficult to learn from, but others swear by it.

Perhaps the most effective way I learned was to sit down and draw a solid page of hands in my sketchbook. I'm talking 50-75 hands per page.. make as many mistakes as you can, just repeat. I also think it helps to draw in ink, makes you commit to the line and draw quicker over all, which is of course very useful to an animator.

Lu Cong female portraits..

Denver artist Lu Cong pays homage to 18th Century Romantics, yet is unmistakably contemporary. His portraits do not simply capture the physical and emotional state of the subject but rather they establish the complicated psychological interactions that ensue when one comes face to face with the sensual, inexplicable, and unsettling. Great stuff.

Oscar Shorts

 It's Oscar time and last week I went to the Academy's New York screening

of all the eligible animated shorts. There were a record number of 57 films - in

fact, so many films that we had to watch them over 2 days. There were a couple

of interesting developments; almost all of the films were shown in digital format

(DCP) and only 7 films were projected on 35mm.

This year, apart from one or two really bad shorts, they were all pretty

good. In fact, I counted a number of films that, to my mind, could win the Oscar.

One film, "Hybrid Union" by Seguei Kouchnerov, is a wacky race between

whimsical machines against a rain cloud.

"Tram", by Michaela Pavlatova, which won the grand prize at Annecy, is a

very erotic tale of a sex-obsessed trolley driver.

"Adam & Dog", written and directed by Minkyu Lee, is a beautifully

animated short about the first man's relationship with a dog. Glen Keane and

James Baxter were associated with the film. However, it seemed I was the only

person who really appreciated the beautiful draftsmanship - no one else liked it.

"Oh Willy" is a puppet-animated short about a boy who loses his mother

and is adopted by a Sasquatch. The film had a lot of buzz after.

"Fresh Guacamole", by the legendary PES, got the best reaction after the

screening.

And one of my faves, "Junkyard" by Hisko Hulsing, the dutch animator

of "Seventeen", is a real tour de force of illustration.

And lastly, "Paperman" a beautiful love story by John Khars, from Disney

Animation studios. The film has a huge push from the Disney Corporation and

can be seen in front of "Wreck-It Ralph".

I apologize for the big gap in my blogging schedule. Blame it on Sandy

(The Frankenstorm). I lost power for almost a week so I was preoccupied with

keeping my hands warm.

Be sure to check out my Cheatin' production blog. Here's a new episode! 

Cheatin' Production Blog - Episode Eleven - Animation - Part 2 from Bill Plympton on Vimeo.

See ya next week.

a gif't for you..

sometimes people just deliver. anyone know who did this piece?

here you go.. the whole thing..

David Jon Kassan ..

Brooklyn artist David Jon Kassan has some very impressive realist work. By immersing himself into his subject matter, Kassan is able to infuse his painting with life and realism. Kassan’s direction of realism follows the philosophies used by the Ashcan School of American Realists. Kassan cites Robert Henri and John Sloan as his primary influences on philosophy and subject matter. As for style and technique he cites Antonio Lopez Garcia, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline and Clyfford Still as influences as well.

 

Epic Sketchbook: ENRICHO CASAROSA..

Enrico Casarosa. Big fan, especially of his girls. I bought his sketchbook Fragments years ago (he published with Ronnie del Carmen, another genius), and it remains one of my favorites. I was lucky enough to be in Monkeysuit anthology so long ago with him, this was the closest brush with the master i got!