Imagine my delight when Adult Swim approached me and asked if I could create a talking eyeball for them.I was experimenting with animating various ways in Harmony, sometimes using keyframing and digital tricks but it was more fun drawing the animation straight ahead like this.Once I had my rough layout poses registered in Harmony, I just went ahead and drew each animation drawing one at a time.I
July 13, 2011 07:42 PM
Arguably the greatest British landscape painter of the Romantic era was John Martin. He liked religious themes inspired by The Old Testament and Milton's "Paradise Lost."
Romantics interpreted his pictures as depictions of the landscapes of the inner mind, along the lines of what would later be associated with Freud and Dali.
Here (above) Martin depicts Macbeth but for some of his contemporaries he seemed also to convey the majesty and tumult of the inner mind. How, reasoned the Romantics, could man ever be happy as a slave or as the victim of a life of quiet desperation when his true mission is to heroically wander the vast inner landscape of the mind?
That sounds like an Eastern concept...did Indian philosophy affect the West in the 19th Century? I guess it did...look at Schopenhauer.
To judge from the pictures, Martin unconsciously sees man as a tragic, Wagnerian figure. We're warriors who will spit in the eyes of the gods if need be, and that's why they're interested in us.
It's odd to think that a hundred years after Martin's lifetime the pendulum would swing the other way and man would in some places be perceived as a hapless statistic, possessing only an outer life.
Here's (above) a picture that influenced Ray Harryhausen. Ray was a huge fan of Martin and Gustav Dore.
Americans will no doubt react to Martin with the feeling that they've seen that kind of statement before. Well, that's because they have. Our high style of Western painting derives from American painters like Thomas Cole, and Cole was a pupil of John Martin's, Over here Martin's grandiose style was put to the service of awe-inspiring landscape and the extreme Romantic philosophy was deleted. This adaption is a style that perfectly fits the American wilderness.
By the way, the picture above is by Bierstadt, who I assume was a pupil of Cole. As with most of the pictures in this post, it would benefit from a substantial enlargement. I wish I could have found a larger, high res version.
July 13, 2011 12:24 PM
Here is a color key painted by the very talented Vicki Jensen in 1984 or so.It's from a layout I drew for a cartoon show presentation called "Rockin' At The Rim". It was a show concept created by some rich guy's kid and his swarthy lawyer. These two guys ran into cartoon writer Charlie Howell at a bar and told them their idea for the greatest show in the world and asked if he would develop it. He
July 11, 2011 05:12 PM
What do you think of this three minute clip from "The Well Tempered Clavier?" I love it! The clarity, the sensitivity to what Bach seems to be saying, the fun...it's a terrific recording! The thing is, the Canadian pianist who made it is believed by the police to be a crook!
It's alleged that he used a Ponzi scheme to cheat investors out of 27 million dollars. He runs a printing business and is accused of telling investors that he had big contracts that never existed. He might have gambled the money away playing internet poker. The case was never brought to court because the state couldn't afford the resources it would have taken to prosecute it. Amazing!
Well, the guy's personal life doesn't seem to influence his playing. Give a listen to this fast, Glenn Gould-style rendition of an earlier part of the Well Tempered Clavier. It's incredible! For me this is a must have CD.
July 11, 2011 07:33 AM
Thanks for all the comments concerning my computer problems. It's nice to know that I'm not the only one who has them. I just finished a fix and it seems to work better now. I'm too tired to post but just so I don't appear to be dead.....here's a doodle of me as Oliver Hardy. Whaddaya think?
July 11, 2011 07:17 AM
I'm a little out of practice but I just had to comment on the ever changing standards of beauty in American culture.Have you noticed that low hairlines, beetling brows, thunder thighs and balloony buttocks have become the latest fashion in female beauty? It's like the cavewoman is back in style.Of course there is the alternate beauty ideal: the grizzled beef jerky look.Standards in male charisma
July 07, 2011 01:19 AM
Ever the friend of our fellow cartoonists, the Theory Corner staff once again presents a tableau of thought-provoking models to draw. Let's start with Richard Widmark (above) who was a terrific psycho villain when he was young.
A skinny, giggly sadist with a weird hat, a low class dark shirt, and a loosely hanging raincoat...what's not to like? Widmark enjoys intimidating people, and even though he's a sociopath you grudgingly like him...well, in a way. He enjoys his work, and that makes him magnetic.
Basil Rathbone (above) was a great Sherlock Holmes, but he was an equally great villain. To judge from the picture above, he had it in him to play psycho-villains of the Widmark type. The look on his face seems to say, "Thanks for the favor, Pal! I come into your office to rub you out, and you save me the trouble by backing away, right out an open window. You even leave me your cigarettes!"
It's fun to draw women sitting (above) when they're wearing short skirts. Most women in this situation don't know what to do with their legs, and they try to hide them under purses and couch pillows. It's kinda cute.
There's one pose that's that all sitting women try to avoid, and the lady above has just taken it. It's the deadly fork pose where the legs descend in open parallel, and from an angle that makes them look oddly small and out of proportion. They look like marionette's legs.
I like the seam on the couch.
This wise woman (above) avoids the fork by taking a deliberately stylized, closed leg stance, with body thrust forward.
Poor Victor Mature got stuck with this puppet suit (above) in one of his films. Man, one faux pas like this undid all the image building cultivated in his last half dozen gladiator films.
In real life I love to draw conversations between two people who seem to come from different worlds (above). The clash of human types is one of my favorite themes.
July 06, 2011 09:18 AM
Not me, but George Liquor who represents the highest pinnacle of iconic Americanism.George is my tribute to the American spirit and culture that I think was at its most influential and impressive in the mid-2oth century.He is an ultra conservative that enjoys the freedom, innovations, easy living and cultural achievements of a nation forged and built upon by generations of radical thinkers,
July 04, 2011 07:45 PM
