“One morning Nayah is playing hide and seek with her big brother Baidi, when suddenly the room is destroyed and Nayah has disappeared. Baidi sets off on a wild quest in a fantasy world.”
Teaser for the animated series created by Charles Lefebvre / Thierry River / Slimane Aniss
One of the most impressive illustrators working in film production today is Rodolfo Damaggio.
Damaggio worked as a comic book artist for DC in the 1990’s before moving on to do concept art and storyboards for such summer blockbusters as MI3, Lemony Snicket’s SoUE, Hidalgo, Indiana Jones 4, and Fantastic Four “Rise of the Silver Surfer”, among many others. Pouring through Damaggio’s website will leave you feeling a little overwhelmed by his stunning sense of cinematic perspective – not to mention his rock-solid drawing and painting skills. This guy is good.
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’m not sayin’ that Hollywood doesn’t know how to make good movie posters anymore (because they obviously still do), it’s just the the Ghanaians seem to have perfected the art. In the 80s, when VHS technology became affordable and bootlegs of lousy horror and action films were plentiful, the resourceful folks of Ghana would travel from town to village setting up “mobile cinemas” with nothing more than a TV, a VCR and these spectacular hand-painted posters.
“In order to promote these showings, artists were hired to paint large posters of the films (usually on used canvas flour sacks). The artists were given the artistic freedom to paint the posters as they desired – often adding elements that weren’t in the actual films, or without even having seen the movies. When the posters were finished they were rolled up and taken on the road (note the heavy damages). The “mobile cinema” began to decline in the mid-nineties due to greater availability of television and video; as a result the painted film posters were substituted for less interesting/artistic posters produced on photocopied paper.”
If a trip to Ghana is not in your itinerary, then please wander over to Ephemera Assemblyman or the Affiche Poster Museum to gaze upon more of their glorious godawful goodness. And if you’d like to actually display one of these works of cinematic art in your own home or hovel, then why not stock up over at Ghana Movie Posters? Christmas is just around the corner and you know how much grandma loves her Tiger Cage 2!
Viz has released a translation of The Art of Ponyo – the art book for the animated feature film which hit North American theatres this month. As with all the Studio Ghibli art books, the highlights are the watercolours by Hayao Miyazaki himself.
Everyone knows about the Monster Cereals, right? They’ve been a part of the fabric of our childhood (well, at least, for me), along with their classic animated commercials for decades now. The commercials left such an impression on me, I’m surprised General Mills won’t revive the characters for any new spots. This totally perplexes me. Andy Cage sees the potential here and has started up The Monster Cereal Blog for everything and anything related to the iconic sugar frosted characters of Franken Berry, Count Chocula, and Boo Berry. Earlier, he posted fan art featuring the trio (as well as lesser knowns Fruit Brute and Yummy Mummy) throughout the entire month of May. (The image above was done by Saxton Moore.) There’s even a Facebook page to support the cause.
Lucasfilm asked a variety of artists, designers, and celebrities to craft blank Mighty Mugg figures into their favorite denizens of the Star Wars universe. The resulting creatures, critters, and Jedi are being auctioned by the Make-A-Wish Foundation. You can see them all here, but hurry: there are only two days left to bid.
Get a closer look at the entries and read interviews with the contributors (including me) here.
Jeu is one of my favourite animated shorts of the last few years. Paint-on-glass animation is a technique for animated films by manipulating slow-drying oil paints on sheets of glass.
This film is a series of nine animated cycles composed of 400 paintings that “destroy and reconstruct” themselves like a set of Russian matryoshka dolls. The director’s son, Louis Schwizgebel-Wang, performs the accompanying piano piece (Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto).
After the jump, you can watch an interview with Georges Schwizgebel where he talks about the techniques employed in his films.
Really classy short video portrait of designer, Milton Glaser, by Hillman Curtis.
Lots of other great short films about artists on his site.
Also of interest:
Video: Milton Glaser, Chip Kidd and David Eggars
We just put Leonard Maltin’s Animation Favorites from the National Film Board of Canada online. You can watch it here.
This feature-length film is comprised of a compilation of NFB films presented by Leonard Maltin. Included in the collection are Begone Dull Care, Mindscape, Log Driver’s Waltz, Getting Started and The Street, among others.
Maltin is a big fan of animated films and animation history and in 1994 he and the NFB put together this compilation of animated shorts he loved from the Board’s history.
Malcolm Sutherland has posted a ton of his great animated films to Vimeo. Including the full version of his latest film – The Astronomer’s Dream (previously) – which you can watch above. His stuff is full of beautiful, surreal, hilarious dreamscapes. The man is also ridiculously prolific – it’s kind of annoying.
Check out another one my favourite Sutherland films, The Tourists, after the jump.
Like many of us, Jonny Quest was among my absolute favourite shows when I was a kid. It’s one of the few that still holds up (well, to a point anyway) over four decades later. Alex Toth’s and Doug Wildey’s stunning designs and storyboards, along with lush adventurous musical scores by Hoyt Curtin, put it in a class all its own. (And do not mention that “other” Jonny Quest show from the late 90s because la-la-la-la-la-la-la-I-can’t-hear-you!)
So I was delighted when a friend pointed me to this wonderful (fan-made?) Jonny Quest documentary. It’s a bit of a mystery exactly who made it, other than that it was “supposedly made for a one time screening at a private function.”
The whole video clocks in at about 2 hrs and 20 minutes, broken down into 27 short chapters on YouTube, and assembled into this single playlist (two chapters are missing). It’s the perfect way to spend next Saturday morning while you enjoy your Pop Tarts and coffee in bed!
If you’d like to create a single file, you can download all the clips from Chris Webber’s blog (he’s the fellow who posted the work on YouTube, but not its author) and assemble them together into a single file. (If you do, and manage to upload it somewhere to share with others, please let me know and I’ll add the info to this post.)
About the video, Chris says:
The original creators of the documentary have given me permission to share this unique documentary but ask once again that if you do download it and decide to copy it or share it, please do not sell it or in any way create profit with it. This was their sole requirement for posting it on YouTube and now here on this blog.
Posted images are the property and copyright of their respective creators and/or owners.
