Don’t know about you, but I’m excited about the new season premiere of LOST coming up (Tuesday, February 2, 2010 at 9PM EST, in case you didn’t know). Designer Ty Mattson of Mattson Creative can’t wait either. In fact, while designing an invite to the premiere at his home, he came up with several cool retro-style poster designs. I’d love to see some of these available as actual printed posters.
Here’s Wes Anderson’s acceptance speech at the National Board of Review on January 11, 2010. I found this highly entertaining. The same goes for the film itself. Loved it.
UPDATE: Someone had their cellphone ready and shot the speech as it played at the event:
Several years ago, animation historian John Canemaker wrote an exhaustive and very informative two-part article on the life and career of John Parr Miller, aka J. P. Miller for the ASIFA magazine, “Cartoons”. I’ve had the great pleasure of owning the two issues that featured this article and for a long time had the notion of sharing it somehow with others. Well, no need to now. NY animator Michael Sporn beat me to it and now you guys can see both parts of the article on his blog:
There’s some wonderful early work of Miller’s that Canemaker was able to show us, including this portrait of Mary Blair, whom J.P. traveled with (along with other artists) to South America during Disney’s “Good Neighbor” Tour of 1941.
Children’s book illustrator extraordinaire Dan Santat was inspired by old 1960’s Japanese monster movie posters and vintage sci-fi magazine covers when he created the cover for his soon-to-be-released book OH NO! (Or, How My Science Project Ruined the World). Dan talks about the cover (which turns into an actual movie poster if you take the jacket off and turn it over!) in depth on his blog. A very fascinating read for a very fascinating cover. Here’s a spread from the book. Looks great. Dan says:
The intent was to make the artwork resemble an old Japanese 1960’s science fiction movie so I added dust, and film scratches with an aged feel around the edges. I had originally proposed to have Japanese subtitles underneath the text but that was shot down.
Click image above to view larger.
I love how he drew himself and the writer, Mac Barnett as people in the crowd, running away. Dan, with the evil professor eye patch, of course.
Yello! from Smashbox Studios had a chance to interview Where The Wild Things Are storyboard artist Federico D’Alessand. Read it here. Fascinating read, with images of a sequence storyboarded out.
I love pencil tests. If you’re unfamiliar with what pencil tests are, think of early rough sketches you create for a particular job. Then multiply that by tens, hundreds, and set the drawings in motion. That’s a somewhat lame attempt to describe what pencil tests are, but for me, it’s like watching the intricate workings of an animator, a “peek behind the curtain”. Seeing the numbers and arc notes in the corners are like a drug to me. To witness the capturing of the soul of a character, early on, in the embryonic stage of development is intoxicating, especially if you’re watching the work of a master. So, if you dig pencil tests as much as I do, then you’re in for a real treat. Animator Jamaal Bradley has searched the internet far & wide for rough animated sequences from various movies and TV shows and has started to put them all under one roof (blog): Pencil Test Depot. As he says on the blog, “instead of going to various place to find them, I hope to add many tests here from some great animators…” From Glean Keane, Ollie Johnston, to Milt Kahl, the tests he’s posted so far are more of the Disney variety, but that’s fine by me. I’ll definitely be checking back to see what else he’s posted. If you have some uploaded on your site or blog, be sure to contact Jamaal.
Apparently this was a school assignment made by Swedish animator Tomas Nilsson to reinterpret the old fairytale of Little Red Riding Hood. Nice. (Via Geoff Wagner.)