- This final post featuring the work of John Wilson and his company, Fine Art Films, covers many varied film projects. Unfortunately, I found relatively few images available for posting especially considering the amount of film done.
The Sonny and Cher Show was a long running Variety program on television in the 70s. Most weeks featured an animated music video as done by John Wilson. Some examples of this include:
Helen Reddy’s song “Angie Baby”
Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”
Sonny Bono’s version of “The Candyman”
The Kinks song “Demon Alcohol”
Fine Arts Films also did some movie titles and trailers. We saw, recently, the long theatrical trailer done for Irma La Douce. Here are a few stills done for the main title sequence for the 1978 musical, Grease.
storyboard sketch for Grease.
Produced and Directed by John Wilson
Story and Layout by Chris Jenkyns
Music by Barry Gibb
John Wilson also directed a number of short films which appeared on television on the NBC program, “Exploring” between 1964-1966.
“Casey At the Bat”
Narrated by Paul Frees
“Johnny Appleseed”
Narrated by Dan Blocker
“The Fish and the Burning Stones”
Narrated by E.G. Marshall
Finally, for MTV’s “Liquid Television” in 1992 John Wilson directed some of the 10 episodes of a series called “The Specialists.”
- I’m not much of a football fan. I am a New Yorker. So when the hometown team goes to the Super Bowl, I have to admit it means something. It meant I had to check into the game every few minutes to see what was going on. Just the same, I was more interested in “Downton Abbey” last Sunday than in any of the car commercials.
Then there was the ticker-tape parade on Monday. It barely affected me. However, I received a slew of photos from Steve Fisher, who decided to take it in. It feels like a couple of months ago, now, but these are Steve’s photos. The comments are his as well.
It was such a beautiful weather day today, I decided
to brave the crowds to attend the ticker-tape parade
celebrating the NY Giants Superbowl victory on Sunday.
This is the scene that greeted me upon my arrival to downtown Manhattan.
It took me twenty minutes to maneuver my way one block
toward Worth Street, but this was as close as I could get.
While waiting for the ‘heroes’, the happy, rather well-behaved fans
provided some entertainment of their own, climbing trees…
And other things, including one idiot who tried to climb a building.
But don’t worry about crowd control, the police had it covered.
When do you think this kid will have to start shaving?
When the float carrying the Giant players finally drove past, this is all I could see.
This is perhaps the only glimpse I had of one of the Giants, although
without his uniform with number and name, I really couldn’t swear to it.
And while I did not get anywhere near the “Canyon†of Broadway
where the ticker-tape must have been very impressive,
I still saw a small taste of the effect.
As the festivities wound down, the last marching band
threaded through the crowd, but the only way I could
see it was watching someone’s phone.
The only thing left to do besides getting all the Mannings out of the trees . . .
. . . was to set fire to a Jets cap belonging to an unthinking person
who wore it into enemy territory.
But the highlight for me was this Giants fan.
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Finally, that’s over. Now, it’s time for BASEBALL – onto my Yankees !
- The past week saw little Academy action. We’d seen the Documentary features last week. (Five films within six days.) I found none of them earth shattering. Two were very good: Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory by directors Joe Beringer and Bruce Sinfosky was one I’d expected to be a drag. I wasn’t interested in the subject. However, I found it absorbing and quick moving. The story of three men who’d been sent to prison for murder. This film, the last of a trio of films, proved the innocence of the three and ultimately got them released from prison after 17 years. Pina is a 3D film about the work of the dancer/choreographer Pina Bausch by filmmaker Wim Wenders. I found it exciting and exhilarating.
This week, the Foreign films are screening. They started Thursday night, but that was Heidi’s birthday, and we weren’t about to take in a movie. I started viewing the films last night and will continue this afternoon with another. They’ll continue through Tuesday.
Heidi and I did go to see the play, Look Back in Anger. It was absolutely great. The best play I’d seen in the past couple of years. The director, Sam Gold, limited the stage. The actors have the length of the stage to move, but there’s a black wall cutting the width of the stage to about four feet. It really drives home the claustrophobic apartment the characters inhabit. The lead actors, Sarah Goldberg and Matthew Rhys are decidedly stars in the making. The show was just brilliant. I found the mostly negative reviews a bit puzzling. Michael Feingold, in the Village Voice, seems to explain the reasoning behind that mystery. He writes about the British scene coming upon this play back in 1956 and how it broke through their class system and marked the changes that they were facing in heir Country. The US had gone through something similar earlier marked by shows like Streetcar Named Desire. (“Stella!”)
Just the same, I got what this version of the show was doing and felt that Sam Gold had pulled John Osborne‘s play into the 21st Century taking the Kitchen-sink drama and dragging it through Beckett’s Theater of the Absurd. Great stuff and very inspiring. Just a bunch of actors and not much more. But very moving.
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- I love that the dimwitted Rick Santorum won the Republican caucuses/primary on Tuesday. (Boy is this guy a turkey; he’s still living in the 18th century.) The Republicans are just showing that they’re completely at odds with all of the candidates available to them. The clown show will continue until their convention this Summer, and, by then, we’ll all be exhausted with the incessant lies and vitriol these guys throw at each other.
Sorry, I’ll get back to writing about animation.
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- The Oscar nominated shorts are being shown at the IFC Center – as of now. They make for three good programs. (Actually, I think the animated shorts program is the best of the three.) Here’s a review from the Village Voice.
Info on the screenings: Documentary Shorts Live Action shorts Animated Shorts
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- Bill Peckmann has been contributing artwork to other blogs. On Joakim Gunnarsson‘s great site Sekvenskonst there is a great piece featuring many self-caricatures of a lot of cartoon and comic strip artists. We used one of these self caricatures on our Thursday piece about Rowland B. Wilson. Everyone from Roy Doty to Chester Gould to Basil Wolverton to Mort Walker to Tom Morrison to Ernie Bushmiller is represented and plenty more.
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- Here is a well written paragraph from AO Scott‘s NYTimes generally positive review of Chico and Rita, which opened yesterday at the Angelika Film Center. (Directors Fernando Trueba & Javier Mariscal will be doing Q&A’s following the 7:40 PM shows Sat & Sun, Feb 11-12. )
“Chico & Rita,†nominated for an Academy Award as the best animated feature, is a reminder not only of the aesthetic vitality of hand-drawn, two-dimensional animation, but also of the form’s ability to provide entertainment and enlightenment for adults. A costume drama or a documentary would not have been as charming or as surprising. It would be hard to get cameo appearances from Charlie Parker or Marlon Brando, and the dutiful literalism of historical filmmaking would have dampened the vitality and killed the magic.
and here’s a couple of lines from Lou Leminick‘s NYPost review:
Complain all you want about the Oscars (I certainly do), but give the academy major props for bypassing a clunker like “Cars 2†and handing a Best Animated Feature Film nomination to something as wonderful as “Chico & Rita.â€
“Chico and Rita’’ beguiles first and foremost as a bebop romance that evokes a bygone era as well as, or maybe even better than, “The Artist.â€
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Finally, I wanted to write a couple of notes about the Annie Awards ceremony.
For years I’d read about the awards, without having attended, and have only been able to think about it in comparison to the ASIFA East awards, which are a small celebration of animation by the local members of the NY chapter of ASIFA. Ours is almost clublike in its ceremony. Very non-formal people dressed in street clothes, which means predominantly jeans and dress-down wear. The shaggy student awards. The idea that ASIFA Hollywood dressed up for their event made me immediately put it on a higher pedestal. I hadn’t attended one of the Hollywood ceremonies, and only by seeing the streamed version of the awards could I get an inkling of what it was.
Having Patton Oswald host the event was only a positive in my mind. He’s such a quick-minded comic who would do well at the podium. A real professional. However, hearing no feed back of audience laughs (there obviously was no audience mike for the program), made it seem like all his jokes were falling flat. There were also plenty of flubs on the stage as presenters were presented with the wrong envelopes, and winners learned of their wins a full category before their turns.
From the home audience it seemed like a train wreck had been occurring in front of our noses. I honestly couldn’t imagine how tedious this must have seemed to the live viewers. But then they had a bar and drinks and friends to laugh with in the nearby seats. Very different than watching a show on a computer at midnight. Rooting for something like Phineas and Ferb over something else like Prep and Landing 2 at midnight on a Saturday night, just doesn’t quite make it.
The awards went to deserving people, I’m sure. I recognized many of the names, and it was nice to finally put some of the faces to those names I’d only known from credit rolls. And I congratulate them for their well-deserved awards. However, to most of the world these are unknown people. There was a limited audience for this program. Me and a couple hundred others who’d sit out the slow slog.
I suspect that until I can see the Hollywood awards live, I’ll sit out future streaming telecasts. But then, I’ll probably change my mind at the last minute next year and watch it again.
- The following are a collection of rough sketches that Rowland B. Wilson did in creating illustrations for TVGuide. These come from the extraordinary collection of Bill Peckmann. I’ve been searching for final, colored images to match these but haven’t successfully found any as yet. You’ll have to look at them for what they are: rough prep drawings for finals. In the past I’d posted a number of these with some of the final cartoons, so you can go there, if you like, to see how he built up from the initial sketches.
In all, I find it enormously informative to see the process from the beginning from such an artist as Rowland B. Wilson.
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Here is a self-caricature from 1987. (It’s from R.C. Harvey’s wonderful book
“A Gallery of Rogues: Cartoonists’ Self – Caricatures”
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This card shows a number of the TVGuide illustrations
that were done by Rowland B. Wilson. Notice #14
is the last one on thias card. Unfortunately, this
is the largest size I have of the color version.
To close it out, I have this image from Suzanne Wilson, from an original of a RBW TV Guide illustration:
Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for the hard work in putting this post together, and thanks to Suzanne Wilson for the final image.
Bill Peckmann continues to open up his collection of Rowland Wilson artwork. These are illustrations he did for a couple of magazines, predominantly, TV Guide. Bill’s comments follow with the images.
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This is a self caricature, circa 1970.
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When Rowland came back to NYC after his stint at Richard Williams in
1975, he did this mailer when he was at Phil Kimmelman & Associates.
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Here are the first of the TV Guide spreads
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Sadly, I should have craved/saved a lot more of Rowland’s TV Guide illustrations
than I did but alas, when you’re young and stupid you just assumed there would
always be a TV Guide and there would always be a RBW illustration in it.
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A slight break in the RBW action to give then TV Guide art director, Jerry Allen,
kudos for using the great illustration and great cartoon talent that he did.
(Applause, applause!)
Here are a few of them.
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First Charles Saxon. (After seeing this illo, you have to
wonder what a Sesame Street book would have looked like if Saxon had
illustrated it. The characters wouldn’t have been 100% on model, but that
book would have been one of the most beautiful on the bookstore shelves!)
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This is Bob Weber
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This is a Jack Davis spot.
The following are 8 of Rowland’s illustrations for the second New England Life campaign.
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This is for those of us old enough to remember -
Unfortunately with their second ad campaign New England Life switched from
selling life insurance to pushing financial planning and the gags lost a lot their edge.
Combine that with stifling “hands on” art direction they also lost a lot of Rowland’s
design sense. RBW didn’t have an easy time of it but he persevered.
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Even though Rowland did this New England Life illustration long before
he worked at Disney, I always felt it had a Disney charm about it, and
it was around this time that he was setting his sights to get a gig at
the mouse factory. It just didn’t happen right away.
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For Popular Mechanics Magazine.
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Logo design for animation studio.
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Tomorrow, a number of rough sketches for TV Guide spot illustrations.
- Here is the final part of Scene 45 from 101 Dalmatians as animated by Milt Kahl. When this scene was loaned to me, it took less than a mezzo second for me to recognize it. I love it and have studied it frame-by-frame off the video (first a VHS then the DVD) many times. It’s a seminal scene for me. Just gorgeous.
I’ve always loved the first fifteen to twenty minutes of Disney features (at least up through Sword in the Stone.) Their intelligent introductions of principal characters usually comes in those first few minutes, and it’s always done with class. I think of Pinocchio, Gepetto, and Jiminy Cricket or Dumbo’s birth or Lady as a puppy or Bambi’s birth and discovering the world of the forest or Peter and Tink meeting the Darling children and “Off to Neverland.” These moments are thrilling to me, and usually the rest of the film doesn’t hold up to this. 101 Dalmatians doesn’t fail to deliver in this respect. Exposition and introduction are done so beautifully.
The animation is, for the most part, on twos. There are a couple of ones at the very end ot the scene as Roger shakes his wrist. If you want to visit the first two parts go here for Part 1 or here for Part 2.
We start today with the last drawing from the second post.
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The legs move to their own level at this point.
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A drawing is skipped here (to be inbetweened.)
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A drawing is skipped, needs inbetweening.
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The following QT includes the entire sequence
which includes all drawings posted.
The registration is a bit loose. Sorry but, these are copies of
copies and there’s plenty of shrinkage.
If you click on the right side of the lower bar
you can watch it one frame at a time.
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For more on 101 Dalmatians check out the animator drafts on Hans Perk‘s great and resourceful site,A Film LA. Hans has also posted Bill Peet‘s story treatment for the film several years ago. See it here.
For a look at the art direction of the film including some beautiful reconstructions of the BGs as well as some of the BG layouts go to Hans Bacher‘s great site One1More2Time3. Andreas Deja has one of the more extraordinary blogs to visit. He just posted some beautiful drawings by some of the key animators on 101 Dalmatians as they set about to find the characters. See them here as well as a comparison of Milt Kahl‘s characters against Bill Peet‘s version. here
For those who own Fraser MacLean‘s excellent book, Setting the Scene, you’ll know that on pages 182-188 there’s an extensive discussion of this opening sequence from the film with plenty of beautiful images of the set.
- Last week I linked to a post that Gene Deitch offered covering the Centennial of Jiřà Trnka‘s birth.
That got me to look back on some of the material I have featuring this exceptional artist. One of my favorite pieces appears in Graphis Magazine published in their 1947 edition. I’d posted this article in 2008 and am offering it again. I’d cut a few pages, which I’ve restored, and have also done a better scan of the pages.
It must be remembered that this article was published before any of the great Trnka films: The Hand, Archangel Gabriel and Mother Goose, or Midsummer’s Night Dream. Much of the piece is about his illustration work.
Regardless, it’s amazing how many beautiful images appear in his earlier films featured in this article.
(Note: Graphis is printed in three languages; all of the English is included.)
- Don Marquis‘ book, Archy and Mehitabel, garnered fame quickly and not least because of the extraordinary illustrations of George Herriman, the creator of Krazy Kat.
The first book was published in 1927 and others followed in 1933 and 1935. It wasn’t until the third book that Herriman took over the characters created by Marquis in his book of short stories, developed mostly, in poetry. An on-again off-again love affair, the story had two principal characters: a cat, Mehitabel, and Archy, cockroach. (You can read these poems on line here.)
In 1953, writer Joe Darion along with composer George Kleinsinger (the creator of Tubby the Tuba) wrote a musical theater piece. Tenor Jonathan Anderson played Archy and soprano Mignon Dunn was Mehitabel. At about the same time a recording of the showtunes was recorded with Carol Channing as Mehitabel and Eddie Bracken as Archy. The record was a success.
With the help of the young writer, Mel Brooks, they were able to get their show to Broadway in 1957, but it was now named Shinbone Alley. After 49 performances, the show closed, but the original cast album was recorded that same year. The songs stayed in the permanent repetoire of Carol Channing and Eartha Kitt.
In 1971, John Wilson directed an animated feature starring the voices of Channing and Brackett and using the songs from the musical. The love affair between Archy and Mehitabel was penned by Archy, the cockroach; his poems tell their story.
The film suffers from its music. The songs are simple and sound as if they’re written for children, but the lyrics pull from the poems which are definitely designed for adults. It gets a bit confusing, as a result, and is a bit picaresque; the poems are short and illustrating them in animation would take more adaptation than seen here.
John Wilson had developed his studio, Fine Arts Films, on the back of the weekly, animated, music videos he did for The Sonny and Cher Show, an enormous hit in the early 70s.
These music videos were loose designs animated quickly and lively around the songs Sonny & Cher would schedule each week. There would always be one or two of these pieces, and they were highlights in the weekly one-hour musical/variety program.
The graphics of Shinbone Alley aren’t too far from these Sonny & Cher videos. Loose design and animation with a design style not too far from the Fred Wolf’s made-for-ABC feature, The Point. This was the first feature made for television and featured the songs and story of Harry Nilsson, although Shinbone Alley featured a wilder color pallette.
Jules Engel, Corny Cole and Sam Cornell all worked in design on the film. The long list of animators included Barrie Nelson, John Sparey, Spencer Peel, Eddie Rehberg and Jim Hiltz. Mark Kausler was an assistant on the show.
The film wasn’t an enormous success, but that was probably explained much by the limited distribution and the poor marketing of the film. I saw the film when it came out; I was living in Washington DC at the time (in the Navy). I was very disappointed. The animation is very limited and the style was a real let-down having known the George Herriman illustrations from the Don Marquis book. We’d already seen those limited animation Krazy Kat cartoons from King Features, so I knew the style could be done adequately – even on a budget. The style in this film just seemed a little too Hollywood cute, at the time, and it felt dated when it came out. I don’t feel too differently about it watching the VHS copy I own.
the film’s poster
Here are some frame grabs from the first 1/4 of the film:
We’re introduced to Archy right off the bat as he
flies out of the river onto the dock. He realizes that he,
the poet, tried to kill himself and was sent back as a cockroach.
He soon finds a typewriter and goes straight back to work.
Mehitabel is a performer – with Carol Channing’s voice.
The two meet cute.
She has another boyfriend, voiced by Alan Reed,
who is also the voice of Fred Flintstone.
A song video takes us outside.
pan down.
Another music video brings us into Peter Max’s style.
Life in Shinbone Alley.
Part of this post was originally on this Blog in February 2010.
Here’s a favorite post from 2009. A repost, if you will. All of these food carts are still in the same places, and the piece could have been photographed yesterday.
- Paddy Doyle’s novel, “The Van,” made me realize that we had a lot in common with our British and Irish friends. The travelling food sellers are a common dressing though the cuisine sold, I’m sure, is different.
A major part of the look and feel of New York is in the food carts that are standing everywhere. In the past, my childhood, the carts were basically hot dog vendors. Then they added the salted pretzel, and things started to develop.
With the new immigrant class in the city, lots of new foods entered the picture, and in fact, I believe, they’ve taken over. Today it’s almost impossible to find a hot dog vendor. I’ve searched for one in the last week and was coming up empty-handed until I saw one late last night. A vendor was wheeling his cart home after what was, obviously, a long and tiring day. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera.
They still sell the hot dog and the pretzel, but you can add “Halal” foods to that menu. Shish-ke-bob, sausages, and so much more have been added.
This is what carts look like today. They come in larger sizes and smaller
sizes. They sell everything from shish-ke-bob to hot dogs to pretzels.
Their prices are usually a good deal, if you trust the sanitation.
Many of these carts sell sandwiches, bagels and breakfast pastries in
the morning. Sandwiches in the afternoon. They usually are established
locations and the same people occupy a space for many years.
Here’s that very same cart as the vendor sets up in the morning –
I shot this at 6am. This same cart has been here for at least 12 years.
In the wee hours of the morning, carts are delivered to the requisite areas.
Oftentimes, if the cart is small, you’ll see the vendor pushing it himself.
This one is setting up early morning across from
Madison Square Park on 23rd Street and Broadway.
Stocking the shelves with pastries, preparing coffee and icing juices.
Getting ready for the morning rush about to start.
Another similar cart, in the Village, all ready for the crowds. This one has an
overhang, to protect patrons from the rain, and a external cooler with drinks.
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This guy is parked outside the IFC center downtown.
As you can see his menu is quite varied and ethnic.
Quite tempting.
You can also find fruit vendors around town. The prices of various fruits is about
half what the local supermarkets charge, and the quality is generally good.
Here’s a virtual travelling store. This truck is set up daily on 28th Street
off Madison Avenue to serve breakfast. They’ll cook the eggs for you.
Later in the day they move around the corner to Madison off 28th St. to serve dinner.
They’re open all night with lines of taxi drivers waiting to buy food from them.
I have to admit, I’m always tempted but haven’t tried it yet. After all,
can all those taxi drivers be wrong? The vendor must be doing
something right.
I also caught this truck downtown and wondered if they were
establishing a spot on Bleecker Street. But they never set up.
On the move.
- Thanks to its Oscar nomination, Chico & Rita, the 2D Spanish, animated feature film will play in New York & Los Angeles. The distributor, G Kids, will bring the film to the Angelika Film Center starting Friday, February 10th for a week.
Directors Fernando Trueba & Javier Mariscal will be doing Q&A’s following the 7:40 PM shows Sat & Sun, Feb 11-12.
Angelika Film Center (18 W. Houston Street, 212-995-2570)
Friday, February 10, daily at 11:00, 1:10, 3:20, 5:30, and 7:40.
Screenings in Los Angeles will be Mon, Feb 6 at 2 PM (Linwood Dunn Theater), and Mon, Feb 13 at 9:20 PM (Samuel Goldwyn Theater). These are designated as Official Academy Screenings.
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Annies Live
- The Annie Awards will take place tonight, Saturday, in Los Angeles starting at 7pm (Pacific Time) which is 10pm (Eastern). The awards will be available on line via streaming through a number of different sites. These include: Animation Guild site, Hans Perk’s A Film LA, Tee Bosustow’s Animazing site, and of course Cartoon Brew. If one has problems, go to the next.
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- The brilliant abstract animator, Paul Glabicki, is going to have an exhibition of his art March 15 to April 14th. I’d encourage you all to see this show; his work is always smart, exciting and worth the little effort it would take. He’s also an East coast animator and deserves our support. Here is the press release for the exhibition:
Paul Glabicki ORDER
We are pleased to announce Paul Glabicki’s second solo exhibition at the Kim Foster Gallery. His new ORDER series explores expressions of “order†as image, concept, construct, and language – and the organization and potential ambiguity of information, communication, and language within complex and concurrent data systems.
Each drawing begins with an Internet search of the word “order.†Hundreds of images, interpretations, demonstrations, and associations are generated by each search, arranged in a hierarchy of relevance determined by the search engine. Each search becomes increasingly customized to the searcher, often branching off into intricate or obscure expressions of the word, its multiple meanings, or practice (specific arrangement, sequence, command, rank, importance, by discipline.) Each drawing is a selection and orchestration of these hierarchies of order systems and applications, filtered through the artist’s response to the information collected in each search.
The process engages the artist’s own creative compulsion to organize and compose images. The first element of each drawing is deliberately placed at random, initiating a process of response, modification, and overlay. New imagery/data is added in a sequential chain, and in response to the placement of each previous element. Each drawing is rotated as new imagery and information is considered and assigned to the developing space; with its final viewing orientation established as the accumulated imagery satisfies the artist’s own personal impulse to impose “order†and closure – but only momentarily, until the process is carried on to the next piece.
Each drawing is a result of a chain of events, choices, and decisions generated by the initial, specific, finite fragment of data. The process plays with notions of causality, the desire/impulse to find, recognize or impose organization, response to (and interpretations of) vast sources of available data, and the complex interactions of image, language, communication and meaning in the representation of information.
The work of Paul Glabicki continues to be involved with time and sequence, and an obsessive process of evolving images and complex compositions generated by an intimate examination of a finite word or found object.
All of the imagery in his work is drawn by hand (Graphite Pencil, Prismacolor Pencil, Ink, and Acrylic on Paper.)
Paul Glabicki is best known for his experimental film animations that have appeared at major film festivals, as well as national and international museum exhibitions. His animation work in film has been carefully crafted by means of thousands of hand-drawn images on paper – each drawing representing both a frame of film and a unique complete work on paper. His film works have been widely screened at such prestigious sites as the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center, the Cannes Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of Art in New York (Whitney Biennial), and the Venice Biennale. He has received numerous awards, grants, and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Film Institute, and several grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
KIM FOSTER GALLERY
529 West 20th New York, NY 10011 212-229-0044
www.kimfostergallery.com
info@kimfostergallery.com
Paul Glabicki ORDER
March 15 – April 14, 2012
( Tuesday – Saturday, 11 am to 6 pm)
Reception: Thursday, March 15, 6 to 8 pm
Just prior to the opening, I’ll remind you of the dates.
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Trnka Centennial
- Gene Deitch has hit another home run on his blog this week. He posts a piece about the great puppet animator and artist, Jiřà Trnka. Deitch tells intimate stories that make me feel closer to the man, Trnka, than I’ve gotten from many other books about the master’s work. (Just look at the image to the left from Deitch’s site. We see not only that Trnka was left handed, but that he couldn’t stop smoking even in the middle of painting during a photo shoot!) We learn about an aborted collaboration between Deitch and Trnka and several of the drawings Trnka did are posted on the site.
Deitch also gives us a good report with photos on the recent memorial in Prague celebrating the 100th anniversary of Trnka’s birth. This is a fabulous read.
Of course, there are many other articles equally as good on this site. Another recent post is on the artist, Jiřà BrdeÄka. He was just as great a force, in many ways, as was Trnka. This is a wonderful site and should be regularly followed.
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Robot Puppet Porn
Michael Sullivan photographed by Tom Hachtman
- Michael Sullivan is a New York animator/effects wizard/actor/artist who gets little attention.
He’s amassed years worth of puppets, dolls and small artifacts which he develops into his characters for the eccentric films he produces. Currently, he’s been making a film about robots – actually, a pornographic film about robots. This has been chronicled into a short film documentary that ran at the recently completed Sundance Film Festival. Titled, The Meaning of Robots, the doc is by filmmaker, Matt Lenski. There’s a trailer for the doc here and articles about the film here and here.
Watch part of Michael Sullivan’s work here.
Thanks to Tom Hachtman for the good word..
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- Finally, the news that Don Cornelius had died this week, as a result of suicide, made me want to take another look at the opening title animation to Soul Train. There are no good quality copies on YouTube, but I found this small sampling of the show and felt that something was better than nothing. The titles were produced by Jim Simon with his company, Wantu Animation. I think I remember Dan Haskett telling me that he had done some animation on it. He did do a lot of work for Jim Simon, so it’s likely. Regardless, the titles are worth a nod. I haven’t seen any other animation site point it out.
Jim Simon/Wantu Animation for Don Cornelius Productions
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