unfrozen

Via Art of Darkness’ Shadow Manor Blog, we learn that after sitting dormant for the past twenty years, the online presence of Gary Larson’s The Far Side (previously) was recently subject to a major new announcement, teasing its return. The curious are advised to stay tuned for further updates.

little matron

Via Nag on the Lake, we are treated to a playful stop-motion short from award-winning Dutch-Canadian filmmaker Jacobus Willem “Co” Hoedeman. “Matrioska” (1970) was one of his first commissions for the National Film Board of Canada—having immigrated there in 1965 on the hope that the esteemed institution might hire him on. After producing several films including a treasury of Inuit folktales, Hoedeman went to Czechoslovakia to study puppetry and currently serves as an advisory member of the board and animation consultant. Explore more of his works at the link above.

Matrioska, Co Hoedeman, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

ub iwerks

We enjoyed this interview with the heiress of an immense entertainment conglomerate who has been campaigning that the ultra-wealthy be made to pay their fair burden in taxes so that workers can earn a living wage and that the public institutions and infrastructure that we all rely on and benefit from can be fully-funded.
No progress ever happened by people advocating for their own self-interest alone—as is the natural inclination of lobbies that fight to retain every last cent they’ve made off the efforts and sacrifice of the individuals in their employ, but rather, “Things really change when people are traitors to their class, and my class needs some really good traitors these days.” Read or listen to the whole interview with All Things Considered at the link up top.

6x6

misirlou: celebrating the life and genre-forming stylings of Dick Dale (RIP *1938 – †2019) and the Del Tones

the people have spoken: voters of a Massachusetts town remove and re-elect their mayor on the same ballot

scarlet letter: Monica Lewinsky on public shaming and cyber-bullying

caturday: a 1986 feline calendar on the Internet Archive—previously

the professor and the madman: preview for a cinematic adaption of the story of one of the Oxford English Dictionary’s foundational contributors

マンホールの蓋: a photographic safari for the most colourful manhole covers (previously) in Japan  

merrie melodies

As a coda to this day’s events, our faithful chronicler, Doctor Caligari, directs our attention to the story behind the animation studio United Productions of America (UPA), which originated over striking animators under contract with Walt Disney (who infamously denied the guild the right to organise) and a sense that animated works weren’t meant as a medium for anthropomorphising nor a reflection of the constraints—however well executed—of real models and ought to forward and promote an air of abstraction and cartoon physics. Outside of the studio system, UPA could undercut the competition and garnered contracts to relay the education and training syllabi (within budget) and established itself as a foil to the cinematic realism and didacticism of Disney fairy-tales.

6x6

black mirror: a local Chinese business woman is publicly pilloried when an AI misinterprets an ad on the side of a bus as the jaywalking CEO—via Slashdot

cover art: vintage, non-fiction paperback jackets animated by Henning M Lederer

drainspotting: a memory-match game played with decorative Japanese manhole covers (previously here and here)

wallflower: Cecilia Paredes camouflages her subjects against bold floral patterns

l’anis del mono: artist Omar Aqil models Pablo Picasso’s abstract paintings in three dimensions with everyday objects

christmas evil: White House continues the decorating tradition of transforming the residence into a nightmarish hellscape

i am elmer j. fudd, millionaire, i own a mansion and a yacht

During what could be characterised as the height of the Red Scare in post-war America, fearful over the brittle state of the capitalist model—executives with General Motors commissioned a trio of propaganda cartoons from the creative cast behind Looney Tunes, which marked quite a departure from the usual antics and took a decidedly classroom tone to inculcate impressionable minds.
It’s hard to say how seriously they took their assignment and perhaps only did so as to not draw undue attention to their studios. “By Word of Mouse” (1954) told the tale of a German country mouse, Hans, visiting an American city mouse cousin who lived in a fashionable department store called “Stacy’s” and mostly features Hans being dazzled by the abundance and selection of inventory available to the common worker, with a professor mouse explaining that free market competition of “Rival Department Store” drives prices down to the benefit of both producers and consumers. “Heir Conditioning” (1955) features Elmer Fudd acting as a financial advisor to Sylvester the Cat after inheriting a large sum of money, encouraging him to invest it rather than sharing it with his fellow alley cats. Learn more and watch all the cartoons on Dangerous Minds at the link above.

7x7

secret garden: Google Earth leads a team of researchers to an untouched mountaintop rainforest in Mozambique

ultima thule: on its encore mission, Pluto probe beams back its first image of its next target

comnenian period: an exploration of Byzantine architecture from draughtsman Antoine Helbert, via Kottke

amos rex: a subterranean museum opens in Helsinki  

seven points of articulation: a visual history of the past four decades of LEGO Minifigs (previously)

drainspotting: a tour of the manhole covers (elsewhere) of Massachusetts  

hyperpolyglot: what the people who’ve mastered dozens of languages can teach us, via Digg

pepperland

Building off the incredible success of the release and lasting reception of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts’ Club Band album the year prior, animation producer George Dunning enlisted the singing talents of the Beatles and created the feature-length Yellow Submarine. Adored by audiences and critics, it lent credence to animation as a serious art form and brought more interest to filmmaking within this genre, the movie premiered in London on this day in 1968.

well you know my name is simon

Via Kottke, we quite enjoyed being introduced Ralph Ammer through his easily digestible and assayable sketching exercises, parsed as gifs rather than video, a format that does not leave much to the imagination and probably not the best mode of instruction. The looping repetition seems to be a really effective way to impart the process and elements of drawing, regardless of one’s aspirations of the moment.

0.1% pure elation

Having enjoyed his gentle and perseverant comics for quite some time, we were pleased to learn that illustrator and humourist Grant Snider had recently released a collection of his panels as a book called The Shape of Ideas with an abundance of valuable insights on the creative process. There is of course an idiosyncratic aspect to routine and ritual and the only superpower that Nature bestowed on humans was grit, stamina and the ability to stick with what works, and we appreciated the invitation into how Snider begins his day and not being overwhelmed by a day-job and can relate to the struggle and accomplishment of keeping things in perspective. Be sure to check out the whole review from Hyperallergic at the link above and to follow Snider on all the things.

full fathom five

Our morning mediations come courtesy of Fancy Notions with a calm but catchy introduction to the cinematography and scoring of a pioneering New Zealander named Len Lye. Combining experimental film with kinetic sculpture and travelling widely through the South Pacific, Lye became a student of Aboriginal cultures and was one of the first European settlers (pākehā is the Māori term for such an outsider) to appreciate and incorporate their art.

This highlight reel from his 1936 animated short “Rainbow Dance” was filmed in Gasparcolor—one of the forerunners along with Dufaycolor, before Technicolor became the industry standard. You can find a wealth of his other works (including the above titled musical composition, which might have a familiar ring to it) curated by the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre, your local library or via your trusty search engines.

main street, usa

The crusaders over at Muckrock remind us of the close friendship that Walt Disney and founding FBI director J Edgar Hoover (with mutual fringe-benefits including earlier indoctrination surveillance state, routing out talent with Communist-sympathies, plus free park passes for visiting agents and their families) and also how a still unnamed Washington, DC socialite in the 1950s had tried to leverage their relationship in an attempt to get the animation studio to produce Christian-based cartoons, convinced that such programming would combat juvenile delinquency.
At that stage in the career of the studio, Disney was venturing into television, nature documentaries and wholly live-action films. Rather than intervening on behalf of this mystery woman, the FBI director’s surrogate who met with her suggested that she present her pitch to Disney directly. I wonder who this was and why her name is still redacted.  Read the entire dossier over at Muckrock, which seems to include an entire, unsolicited spec script. Though there are no overtly biblical stories from Disney, there are arguably allegorical references peppered throughout but in truth that’s a bit specious (Easter eggs and alleged subliminal messaging seem far more likely) as fairy tales like religions tend to embrace universal themes.

a tinmouse production

I have been a faithful listener of the podcast Rex Factor, whose first series examined and then rated all of the kings and queens of England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom and spin-off that looks at the Scottish monarchy with some notable, bonus departures, since I was first introduced, but after an epic effort at catching up with back episodes am forever a few weeks behind. That lag excuses my missing the Easter weekend premiere of the remastered original show presented in animated form. What a fun way to learn history and to introduce a new audience to the franchise.

drainspotting

Unlike in most other places where the æsthetic of manhole covers tends towards purely utility and economy, in Japan it’s a matter of community engagement with some nineteen thousand designs reflective of local industry, culture and history. Visit the link up top for a tour of the Nagashima Imono casting factory where many of the manhole covers for Japanese municipalities are made.

imprimatur

Colossal showcases some of the newest apparel from the Berlin-based art collective Raubdruckerin (whom we’ve admired previously) produced by the commandeering of street elements in order to lift, create prints for shirts and accessories. The group is currently on a tour European cities, amassing more improvised and impromptu designs.

animatic

The Calvert Journal has an interesting profile of the lesser scrutinised art form, relegated to children’s entertainment, of animation and the role that allegory communicated through this medium played in protest movements in Eastern Europe and Soviet satellite states, particularly in Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The study with a gallery of examples (not the ersatz Itchy and Scratchy pictured) from the 1950s onward demonstrates the parabolic reach of the message (the animatic being the synchronised storyboard) considering that in most cases the state was the lone patron of cartoons, looking into the past when puppet theatre and other antecedents could be as covertly subversive, plus how contemporary artists are rediscovering animation as powerful form of commentary.

latch and locker

Hyperallergic features a nice appreciation of the overlooked Pop Art artist Dorothy Grebenak, active from 1950 to 1970.
Though she never quite owed up to being attached to that particular genre, Grebenak’s creations were as iconic as those of Roy Lichtenstein or Andy Warhol. Possibly relegated to a secondary status due to her medium of choice—almost exclusively working in hooked rugs meant to be displayed on the wall like a tapestry—Grebenak’s work made it into some prestigious museums but got no further than the gift shops, until being championed by one collector and gallery owner. Find out more about this forgotten artist at the link up top.

frame-rate or walk-cycle

Via Everlasting Blört we are treated to more crisply animated loops (read more about the history and development of the graphics interchange format here) by South African digital art and typography studio MUTI, which has quite impressive portfolio. Check out the last of the links to see more of their work and perhaps inquire about a commission.

5x5

i’ve been asked to say a couple words about my husband, fang: the Smithsonian is appealing to the public to transcribe the tens of thousands of jokes and one liners in Phyllis Diller’s card catalogue 

robothespian: a stage play in London pairs human actress with a cyborg protagonist, via Marginal Revolution 

the horsey-set: luxurious, marbled-floored equestrian club outside of Shanghai

nixie tubes: understand how a microprocessor works through this oversized model

moonwalking with einstein: tried and true memorisation technique may cause enduring changes to the one’s neural architecture