Daily post 04 Aug 2009 07:42 am
Beckett, Babbitt, Kentridge & Puppies
- On Monday, August 17, at 8 p.m, the West Coast branch of the Motion Picture Academy will present a salute to Adam Beckett at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood.
Beckett died in 1979 at the age of 29. He had already done a number of independent and surreal animated films prior to working in the industry as a Special Effects artist. His theatrical work includes films such as Star Wars and Piranha.
Hosted by effects artist Richard Winn Taylor and Beckett biographer Pamela Turner it will include screenings of six Beckett films, in addition to an onstage panel discussion with his colleagues and friends. Scheduled guests include Oscar-winning visual effects artists David Berry and Richard Edlund, animator Chris Cassady, and filmmakers Beth Block, Roberta Friedman and Pat O’Neill. The films to be shown include: The Beckett films to be screened are Dear Janice (1972, top photo), Heavy-Light (1973), Evolution of the Red Star (1973), Flesh Flows (1974), Sausage City (1974) and Kitsch in Synch (1975).
My only real contact with Adam, personally, came back in 1976 while working for the Hubleys on Everybody Rides the Carousel. John Hubley was keen on using a couple of young firebrands in the film for a couple of short sequences. Adam was one of these artists who did, I think, four scenes. I inked and colored his animation – all surreal scenes of desks and other office equipment floating about in a long complex cycle. I spoke with Adam on the phone once about the fielding of the scene; it was a short conversation though I do count it as a sort-of meeting.
I was a bigger fan of the the other Independent artist who worked on the film. Fred Burns, whose work was unfamiliar to me, did a knockout seqeunce on the roller coaster of relationships. An animated POV shot of a roller coaster ride. Great stuff.
This past weekend, Dina Babbitt, the former wife of Art Babbitt passed away.
She was a holocaust survivor and was actively trying to push the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and State Museum to return some of the paintings she did in the concentration camp.
There was a 2007 interview with Ms. Babbitt which has been posted on YouTube. I’ve linked to her obituary in the NYTimes.
Karl Cohen has an extensive article in AWN about the William Kentridge exhibit currently touring. The show which opened at the The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will move to NY at the The Museum of Modern Art, Feb. 28 -May 17, 2010.
There’s a recent weekly piece in the NYTimes that Bob Blechman is illustrating, Ed Smith is animating and my studio has been compositing.
The Puppy Diaries by Jill Abramson is the series and
part 1 is here,
part 2 is here.
Animated illustrations: how can the newsprint issue compete with that?
on 04 Aug 2009 at 3:30 pm 1.Richard O'Connor said …
Illustration, like newspapers, has been searching for “relevance” for some time.
Moving illustrations like these are good for both illustration and flagship print publications like the Times to find meaning in the digital age.
Economically, we’ll see how it turns out for animation -as most venues want to pay illustration scale, often even less for web use.
I imagine a new generation of illustrators who can do what traditional spot artists do with an added touch of motion will somehow bridge the gap.
on 04 Aug 2009 at 4:01 pm 2.Michael said …
The budget for these spots is, in my mind, less than nothing. Paying in the dozens of dollars is embarrassing to my way of thinking when you’re dealing with such talent as Blechman & Ed Smith.