The Boundaries of Fantasia

Ken's iPod Shuffle

2008-07-14T23:06:00.000-07:00

In response to my friend Meeka's recent post, I thought I would see what my iTunes Shuffle came up with while plundering away at course-writing this evening, for no other reason than to reveal my musical tastes and prove how either cool or dorky I am.

Step 1: Open your iTunes or other lesser MP3 player.
Step 2: Put all of your music on random.
Step 3: Write down the first 30 songs it plays, no matter how embarrassing

Honey Pie - The Beatles
Standing - Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Once More with Feeling
Call Me When You're Sober - Evanescence
Ob-la-Di Ob-la-Da - The Beatles
Where Are You? - Spamalot Soundtrack
What You Own - Rent
Fat Albert Plays Dead - Bill Cosby
Kodachrome/Maybelline - Simon & Garfunkel
I'll See You in My Dreams - Giant
Synchronicity II - The Police
Violin - They Might Be Giants
Laker Girls Cheer - Spamalot Soundtrack
Screaming in Digital - Queensryche
Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) - Eurythmics
The Intermission - Spamalot Soundtrack
Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me - Elton John
Wings for Marie Part 1 - Tool
Lucifer Sam - Pink Floyd
Maze - Phish
Making Christmas - Danny Elfman
Is There Anybody Out There? - Pink Floyd
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life - Spamalot Soundtrack
Mary - Oingo Boingo
When Are You Coming Home? - Makkafroi (my friend Brandon's old band)
The Invention of Basketball - Bill Cosby
Ben's Death - Star Wars Soundtrack
Prophecy - Queensryche
Beside You - Queensryche
Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon & Garfunkel

Whattya got on YER pod?

WALL*E Little Golden Book

2008-07-05T21:56:00.001-07:00

I picked up the WALL*E Little Golden Book at London Drugs today, and as with the other recent film adaptations, really enjoy the illustrations. This page in particular made me laugh, due to the random cameo appearance by Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

Kinex Images and more...

2008-07-01T18:21:00.000-07:00

As I've been working on a puppet-building module for my course, it's caused me to collect some screen-grabs for the history of stop-motion puppets.

This is one frame of the Kinex Short Crossing the Alps, where the animator’s arm was accidentally captured on film! Who is this mystery person? Perhaps it could be Orville Goldner, who worked at the studio and years later worked on King Kong. The world may never know for sure, as there is little known documentation on the mysterious Kinex Films.

I've uploaded a bunch more stop-motion history stills here.

Walking on Water

2008-06-30T15:31:00.000-07:00

WALL*E

2008-06-30T09:03:00.000-07:00

Click here for my latest Hollywood Jesus review for WALL*E.

Happy 7 Years!

2008-06-30T00:12:00.000-07:00

Today marks 7 wonderful years being married to my best friend and creative companion Janet (Jay)! I'm so proud of everything we've accomplished together, especially the birth of Ariel and the love and friendships with others that we have nurtured and welcomed into our marriage. I'm so grateful that God brought us together.

To celebrate the occasion, we present the online debut of the little "music video" that I secretly edited together as part of my marriage proposal to her, partially updated and re-mastered from the original version. I woke her up from her sleep by sticking a post-it note on her head telling her to follow a trail of candles to the TV where this video was ready to play...and the Jack & Sally serenade at the end was literally my little song to her.

Happy Anniversary Sweetie! I sure love you!

Ariel Loves Otters

2008-06-23T23:17:00.000-07:00

Ariel has taken a real liking to the animated film I worked on with BigFott Studios, Do Unto Otters, to the point where she's been repeating the word "otters" (both to us and to herself) all night long. This is just too precious for words.

Random Weekend Post

2008-06-22T19:05:00.000-07:00

Today is Sunday. After church and the Ladner market, I slept all afternoon. Now I'm awake and full of ribs, cake and coffee. This shall be a random post of stuff I've been experiencing and discovering.

First, some pictures of Ariel I'm particularly proud of, as she is obsessed with the Muppets, loves Kermit and calls Rowlf, Piggy and Fozzie by name.

A few days ago I had a random memory flash of some childrens' books I remember from my younger days, which are now on my radar for seeking in used book stores or if I find a good deal online someplace. There was a Little Golden Book at my grandparents' house from the 50s called A Dragon in a Wagon which had some great modern illustrations in it...some of them posted here.

and a book which I had a love/hate relationship with, The Man Who Lost His Head.

I loved the story and thought a couple of the illustrations were funny. So much so, my dad decided to blow them up and hang them on my bedroom wall. Then I got scared of them and we had to cover them up.

And finally, Jay showed me this hilarious site today: garfieldminusgarfield.net

...and this. All I can say is BRILLIANT! (Be sure to watch all the way to the end)

Humphrey the Bear

2008-06-16T12:02:00.000-07:00

While capturing clips for my course I captured & posted this clip just for kicks, and sent it to my dad for father's day. It's a little sequence of animation of Disney's Humphrey the Bear which always made me & my family and friends laugh in younger days. I still think it's one of the funniest animation bits ever.

Daddy's Day

2008-06-15T14:27:00.000-07:00

So Jay lovingly woke me up this morning with waffles & coffee, and a surprise utterance by Ariel who learned how to say "Happy Daddy's Day," and also put this video together for me. I am very touched and proud to be Daddy today!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Breath of Life Animation Festival 2008

2008-06-08T20:53:00.000-07:00

Well, what can I say, after having this vision in my head for several years, it's surreal to think that it actually happened...and better yet, it happened quite successfully! The first Breath of Life Animation Festival was held at Cedar Park Church in Ladner, BC on Saturday June 7.

Here's the registration table that welcomed people in, with demo animation tables behind.

The display for Create Art with Brenda Breuls, who did a lot to help organize and plan this event. This is all artwork created by kids who she teaches in her after-school and summer art camps.

The crew gathers in the morning for a briefing on the day...

Some worms created by Robin Carpenter and "Clayman" Paul Moldovanos for the Claymation Worm Race.

Soon-to-be-newlyweds and VanArts grads Blake Standard (EA Canada) and Nicole Tremblay (Atomic Cartoons) prepare for Animate Your Face!

The crew grabs lunch in the calm before the storm...

Here they come! On-lookers check out VanArts student Fernando Nobrega and Disney's Calvin Leduc (behind) working on some 2D animation...

Gerard De Souza and Ryan Esau showed everyone how to draw cartoon characters...

...while Amanda Emery and Heather Trevis demonstrated how to make their drawings come to life with flipbooks!

The Claymation Worm Race!

Animate Your Face!

Pixilation Central, where kids are being attacked by a living set of bongos! Apparently the kid moving the bongos was wondering, when asked to move out of the frame, "But how are the bongos going to move if I'm not there to move them?" Eventually I think he got it. Shane Holmes (Nerdcorps Animation) and Peter "Leon" Roy directed these kids.

The Doodle Room was a surprisingly big hit for all ages, including the younger set...

...and Ariel.

The snack room gives everyone a chance to re-fuel.

Brenda gets her caricature by animator Sujan Chowdhury.

...and so did Ariel...

...and me, convincing me that I really need a haircut.

Everyone gathering in the sanctuary for the 4-o'clock Short Film Program! (If you look closely you'll see fellow movie reviewer Peter T. Chattaway sitting in the blue shirt with his little boy Thomas!) The screening consisted of films such as Librarian from the Black Lagoon, Monk and the Fish, The Creation, La Traviata, Next Door and a few more surpises...followed by all the animation from the day's workshops!

A big highlight for me was opening the program by sharing Disney's "Sorceror's Apprentice' on 16mm film!

Ariel joined me on stage to applaud with everyone at the end as I thanked everyone who made this day possible!

Here is a video of all the participants' animation!

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

and....

MORE PHOTOS on Flickr!

Jay's Blog

Facebook Photo Gallery by Jay

Facebook Photo Gallery by "The Clayman" Paul Moldovanos

Overall the reaction to the event was fantastic, everyone had a great time and are poised to do it again next year, so I think we've started something special!

Festivals, Movies, Comics and Sketches

2008-06-01T21:04:00.000-07:00

So let's see, what's been going on...last week I was asked to participate in a meeting with some members of the local Vancouver SIGGRAPH Chapter to begin brainstorming ideas for the SPARK Animation festival coming up in September. Not too much to say about it at this point, as it's all in the very early stages, but I'm incredibly honored to be a part of it. The time is ripe to develop an event like this in Vancouver, so I'm super excited. By the way, the next local SIGGRAPH event is about the visual style of Ratatouille, followed by a screening of the film.

Plans for my own festival coming up this Saturday are also coming together nicely...this is going to be a VERY busy week!

Friday night Jay & I had another movie date to see the highly-anticipated Sex and the City, which was very good. And no, I wasn't the only guy there. Another review for Hollywood Jesus has resulted here.

I've recently caught up with Chris Sanders' blog and his online comic Kiskaloo. It's the funniest thing I've read in a long time and reminds me alot of Calvin & Hobbes.

Today I watched "101 Dalmatians" DVD special features plus the movie itself with Ariel...she kept saying 'DOG!' I figured she would enjoy it.

Each year for Ariel's birthday, Jay and I write a story about her and get it bound into a book (through MyPublisher.com), so we're trying to brainstorm ideas as they come over the next month or so. I sketched a few design ideas...I haven't drawn that much in awhile so my first attempts are pretty rusty, but it's a start.

A Week of Pop Culture Exposure!

2008-05-24T23:11:00.000-07:00

In addition to my visit to the Krazy! exhibit this week, in between work & projects I've also managed to soak up some more entertainment. Saw the new Indiana Jones movie...despite any flaws I was quite pleased and thoroughly entertained! Basically I felt it was like George and Steven pulling out some of their "greatest hits" with nods to many of their earlier films, including American Graffiti, Close Encounters and of course the other Indy films, and just having fun with it! You could almost guess which ideas belonged to who...the corny jokes were most likely George and Steven...well, if you've seen the movie it's pretty obvious. I don't care what you say...it's not Raiders but I had a good time.

Picked up the recently-released Muppet Show Season 3 and was quite intrigued by the Muppets on Puppets special included in the bonus features. I'm a little annoyed by Disney's lazy attempts to track down the missing audio bits though...there is a disclaimer at the beginning saying that at certain moments the audio drops out because that's how the original source material was....however I've seen (and heard) some of the silent footage in other Henson documentaries so it must exist someplace. Anyway, the production values of the show were incredibly cheap but it's a fascinating time capsule into seeing the masters at work and quite funny. Don Sahlin has the exact same voice as Frank Oz...it's kinda creepy. Lots more info on the special here.

The rest of the DVD set has kept my little Muppet fully entertained. I couldn't be more proud!

Jay and I got tickets to the upcoming Vancouver run of SPAMALOT, so we're pretty excited for July 27...yet another date with my sweetie...awww....

Other news, today's Delta Optimist ran an article on me for the upcoming animation festival. Click here to read it.

...and finally, today's evening walk resulted in getting a good deal on Raisin Bran.

Krazy!

2008-05-24T21:54:00.000-07:00

Tuesday after work I went down to the Vancouver Art Gallery to check out the Krazy! exhibit for animation, comics, manga & video game art. It's pretty huge, and I recommend anyone in the nearby woods to see it before the summer's out. Most of the larger wings of the exhibit are focused on comics, anime, manga and video games, with a slightly smaller wing dedicated to animation art. Included there I got to see original Lotte Reiniger shadow puppets, and original storyboards, concept art, cels & animation drawings from Gertie the Dinosaur, Dumbo, Wallace & Gromit, Over the Hedge, Toy Story, Gerald McBoing McBoing and Marv Newland's Black Hula. There are a few TV screens on the walls looping these films there as well. It was quite inspiring to see 4 flat screens grouped together simultaneously playing, clockwise from the top left, Gertie, Prince Achmed, Gerald and Dumbo's Pink Elephants sequence...like a tapestry of moving history! Nothing short of awe-inspiring!

The original Dumbo drawings were surprisingly small...at least a 12-field size paper or seemed like 10-field even. Most feature animation drawings I've seen are at least 16-field, but Dumbo was a smaller picture after all. The original Krazy Kat comics, both the original inked Herriman artwork plus printed ones from the Baltimore American newspapers were also quite amazing to see. After drooling over the exhibit I checked out Marv Newland's presentation on the history of animation in Vancouver and retrospective on his work. Marv is a great storyteller and spins hilarious yarns in the same dead-pan manner that his animated characters display.

Some points of interest and amusing anecdotes...

-animation in Vancouver was established first and foremost by Al Sens in the late 1950s, primarily because he had a few cameras which many other filmmakers were able to use, and they are still around! One of the cameras lived temporarily in the old arts & crafts building on Seymour Street which "felt like the bowels of the earth even though it was up six floors" due to the heat.

-Al Sens employed the "spit technique" of shooting animation by drawing on a cel with a grease pencil, spitting on it, wiping it clean and then making the next drawing.

-early studios in Vancouver included Canowest, Sync Pop and of course International Rocketship...lots of commercials done, some for Japanese TV spots and Hudson's Bay Company.

-Rocketship employed artist named Bill Schwartz who was on welfare, and he spent his first paycheck on a giant inflatable Godzilla to hang from the studio ceiling.

-Another animator Dan Collins would show up at the studio, sit for an hour waiting for someone to make coffee, get up when the last drop was ready, drink some coffee and then leave for the day.

-Black Hula was based on a 1929 Hawaiian record...Marv liked it because the music was "happy melancholy" and nobody understands the language. He pretty much animated the film straight ahead making it up as he went along. He says the only storyboarding or concept art he did for it was what was on display in the exhibit, which was only about 2 big drawings.

A big thanks to all who put on this exhibit!

King Kong Presentation

2008-05-20T12:53:00.000-07:00

Several months ago I hosted a SIGGRAPH presentation and Q&A with King Kong (2005) animator Brett Purmal on his experience working on Peter Jackson's version and reflections on the impact of the original film.

Fellow animation correspondent Jason Vanderhill has finally posted the footage he took of our little chat, as a YouTube PlayList.

And I just have to post Jason's animation of his original Colargol puppet, which he did in my stop-motion course a few years back. This was lots of fun!

Weekend in Narnia

2008-05-19T22:44:00.000-07:00

It's been a much-needed long holiday weekend, consisting of teaching all day Saturday followed by family gatherings, catching up on sleep, course writing, coffee drinking, compiling films for the festival, and a welcome return to Narnia.

The latter event has also resulted in my latest review for Hollywood Jesus.

New Bigfott Films!

2008-05-16T18:54:00.000-07:00

This week I finally got a copy of I'm Dirty!, the short film I got to animate on for Bigfott Studios. It turned out great, and many of the other animators' scenes made me laugh out loud. I had only seen a few of them in pencil test format so it was great to see how everything worked together in the final product.

More details on the film, and a trailer here.

To order the film, here.

Also available now is another film I contributed a hand-drawn animated sequence to, Do Unto Otters!

More details...trailer here.

Order it here.

Animation Festival coming up...

2008-05-16T18:50:00.000-07:00

Young Animators!

2008-05-13T23:20:00.000-07:00

Today I had a really enriching experience teaching a fantastic group of kids about animation. I was a "guest artist" at a Create Art class put on by our friend Brenda, who runs this weekly program at her home. Today was partially a "test run" for the upcoming animation festival we're organizing for June 7 at our church, to see how these various workshop activities will pan out with the kids. Good to work out the kinks a bit and try it on a smaller scale, especially since this is relatively new territory for me, but something I'm hoping to move towards doing more. They had such a great time and created some amazing stuff.

I started by talking a little bit about the early history of animation and how film animation was discovered, showed them some strips of film, explained how many drawings it takes to create just 1 second of animation, and then fired up my 16mm projector onto the wall for a screening of Mickey Mouse in GiantLand (1933). As I was planning the night before, my original plan was to then show them how to draw Mickey, since he's basically all built out of circles and very appealing. But I second-guessed myself and thought I would instead plan on showing them how to draw SpongeBob Squarepants, as I figured it was a "modern" character they might identify with more. But they seemed so taken with the Mickey cartoon and were asking if we would be drawing him, so I presented it to them as a vote, and Mickey seemed to win out! One of the kids remarked that he already knew how to draw SpongeBob. It was a real eye-opening lesson, that the classic characters are not "old" to these kids and still have that universal appeal, more so than I imagined. So Mickey it was! Can't beat him!

Next we created simple two-page flipbooks...when I demonstrated it the first time their eyes just lit up, and these kids went to town!

Next we did a Claymation Worm Race, which pretty much speaks for itself. Most of the time they managed to stay clear of the camera, but couldn't resist themselves near the end. (If we had more time, I probably would have done some pixilation with them as well, but this shall be weaved into the festival as another work station.)

So if today was any indication of what we're in store for in another month or so, I think it will be an exhausting, chaotic but ultimately INSPIRING day for many young animators. More details to come soon...

In other news, Ariel made her television debut today on local Delta cable. I added some fun titles to this video capture to point out where she is. Next thing you know she'll be doing the weather!

Back to the Weekend

2008-05-11T22:38:00.000-07:00

It's been a bizzy week! I went to Edmonton & Calgary for a couple days to give info sessions for VanArts. The funny thing about flying back from Calgary is that it's an hour ahead of BC, and it's a one-hour flight, so on paper I landed at the same time I took off...time stands still. Weird.

We had a visit from our friends Meeka and Ren from Ottawa and it was really nice to catch up, look at bizarre childrens' books, watch videos and just hang out. Ariel enjoys company too...

and Meeka made her a little friend.

Back to teaching two classes on Saturday again...both 2D and Stop-Motion, so expect another 'creature comforts' dialogue exercise posted here in about 3 months. Today was Mothers Day and I made Jay an animated card...

This afternoon I also posted some rare footage of Rowlf the Dog on a 1960s TV show called "Our Place." Also includes an early version of the "Pops Orchestra" sketch. Enjoy!

On a Book Kick

2008-05-04T21:37:00.000-07:00

This has been a weekend for inspiring illustration art! As Nana & Papa (Jay's grandparents) are preparing for moving out of their house, there is always the opportunity to un-earth lots of history and some neat stuff. Jay let me have these two books from her childhood. This one is great, and I remember having this myself in a smaller book/record format:

This one I had never seen or heard of before...it's from the 70s and by an illustrator named Gyo Fujikawa, who I will have to research more because I really like her style.

What I've found so far indicates she worked for Disney for awhile. Makes sense, as there is a slight Mary Blair flavor to some of her work. Jay grew up with this A to Z Picture Book which I just fell in love with today. Lots more where this came from, but here's a sample of some of my favorites (click to make bigger):

I scanned these to send to my friend Ward as I knew he would appreciate them...they are from The Golden Treasury of Myths & Legends illustrated by Alice & Martin Provensen.

This book originally belonged to my mom and somehow found its way into my book collection because I also grew up looking at it quite often, particularly in 6th grade during my Greek mythology obsession. Again, just a few samples of my favorite pages. To this day, whenever I hear Pandora's box mentioned, my mind immediately jumps to this image:

And now from the sublime to the ridiculous, another random occurence from a lazy Sunday evening...Ken decides to break out his Muppet Show records and have some giggles with Ariel.

Disney Stuff

2008-05-03T23:16:00.000-07:00

Today I cherished my last free Saturday for awhile...it's looking like my part-time animation courses may have enough students to run starting next week, at least so far, so we shall see what happens. Was up late last night watching 'Juno' with Jay so we slept in right to the moment we said we wanted to be out the door. Had a lovely family breakfast at Ricky's and then dropped Jay off at the spa for her massage (my birthday present to her)! There was a bookstore next door so naturally I took Ariel there to explore, which was short-lived as Ariel proceeded to pick up books (she says "book" now) and then just leave them in random places. I did manage however to snatch up a few gems...a hilarious childrens' book called A Birthday for Cow and the following Disney finds (click on these to make them larger)...

I've found a Mickey Mouse book like this recently as well, at Michael's of all places. They are re-prints of books published by Disney in the 1930s-40s, printed on a textured linen material. Quite an interesting historical curiosity; more information on the original books (at quite hefty prices) I found online here at Foundling Books.

These particular volumes are a strange mix of decent art and crappy off-model art. They say these books were created by artists at the Disney studio, but some of the drawings make you wonder exactly who at the studio would have done them. (Such is the case with most of the crappy DVD covers they still release today.) The way the text is written is also a little bit funny.

I like this page...today in the book store I tried reading this book to Ariel (until she squirmed away) and got to at least teach her the names of the 7 Dwarfs and have her repeat them back. She did well with "Doc" and "Happy"...the rest were typically "Ho-vo" which is usually her word for "my mouth can't quite figure that word out yet."

This one starts the book off and has some strange text about Grumpy, as if there is some sort of riddle we're supposed to figure out.

An interesting reference here to the deleted bed-building scene...

...and then the final page of the book, which focuses just on the dwarfs' relationship with Snow White and leaves the queen out completely, all of a sudden sums up the whole wrap-up of the story in the text but doesn't actually show us the happy ending. Some kid looking at this book who couldn't read would possibly be very mis-led and think that she just died at the end.

The Pinocchio book is even more bizarre, including some pretty badly-drawn illustrations where Jiminy looks really strange...

...and a cannonball being fired at Pinocchio as he escapes. Does anyone know, was this deleted from the film?

And speaking of rare Disney items, the latest post of some awesome rare records by fellow blogging animator Ward Jenkins inspired me to scan an image of a neat record I found at my favorite record store in Langley a couple years ago.

I was intrigued to pick this up when I found it, because it appears to be very rare and makes me wonder if it was only available for purchase at Walt Disney World. It's both a record and book (pages of the book are all displayed smaller on the back of the record), and it's all based on the Mickey Mouse Revue, an animatronic attraction which I remember seeing at DisneyWorld in Florida in 1979. Someone graciously posted some awesome footage of it, and I love watching it because it's almost like watching Disney cartoons in stop-motion. Sadly it's no longer in the US but currently resides in Tokyo.

Anyway, other events of my last free Saturday included working on my animation course, buying new pants and shoes at the mall, and getting together with my friend Brenda to work out some plans for the upcoming "Breath of Life Animation Festival" we will be holding at our church on June 7. More details to follow!

Spot the Looney

2008-05-01T22:41:00.000-07:00

I love this picture. (Click on it to make it bigger...go ahead!)

Girl in the Red T-Bird! Notice the sign on the windshield. Remember that Monty Python sketch "Spot the Looney?"
I rest my case.

Today was my wife Jay's birthday so we are all full of good food. It was a really nice family outing. Happy Birthday my love!

Damn! Lucky me.

San Francisco: Last Day

2008-04-25T21:58:00.000-07:00

Today was my last full day in San Francisco shooting the last few demos for my course. More hard work animating puppets under hot lights...quite tiring but lots of fun. Today I was visited by none other than the tech editor for my book, Lionel Ivan Orozco, armature-builder for Nightmare Before Christmas and countless other productions, and master stop-motion guru behind StopMotionWorks! We have corresponded by e-mail for years but had never met in person before today, so we had very animated conversations over lunch about stop-motion and I signed his copy of the book. Very nice guy, and we got some nice pictures with our puppet creations (his are the beautifully crafted ball-&-socket armatures.)

Having done my job and ready to relax, my original plan was to get over to see the Pacific Ocean, but was advised that it would be way too cold in the evening and would take a very long time to get there and back. I was a bit disappointed at first to change my plans but was happy to end up at Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf instead. After all my hard work I treated myself to a nice seafood dinner followed by just wandering around the shops and soaking in the scenery. The pictures speak for themselves...I really want to come back with my family here someday. That was the only good thing missing.

San Francisco: Mel's Drive Inn

2008-04-24T20:26:00.000-07:00

Today's shooting went well, despite some wrestling with the software I think it went OK. I was pretty exhausted afterwards; it's a lot of hard work teaching to a camera! So tonight I figured I would treat myself to my major destination for this trip...

The inside walls of the diner were covered with American Grafitti stills and George Lucas production photos...

...and classic ads & memorabilia.

Of course I had to stick with the classic 1950s All-American Mel-Burger, fries and a REAL Cherry Coke! Holy crap it was DAMN good...and I enjoyed it sitting right next to one of the little jukebox machines, continually popping in quarters for Sixteen Candles, Little Darlin, Green Onions and all my other favorite songs. I enjoyed myself thoroughly...this was the Shangri-La of all 50s diners!

Thanks George! My Cherry Coke and I salute you!