Inspiration.... Animation

Many times when I am in need of inspiration to get down to my own illustration, I turn to animations. But not just any modern animation... I look back to Fleischer Studios. Oh sure, I have many disks from Warner and Disney but nothing has the pleasing effect of the Fleischer touch. In particular are the Superman short films from the early 1940s.

I actually spend more time watching the backgrounds than the action in front. These are tremendous, well rendered pieces of art that mimic the true value of distance. Even a piece of paper has the subtle shadows that make it appear to have been folded. Leaves in trees actually looked like leaves in trees. Great attention was paid to detail. The cartoons made for TV in the sixties almost made me gag. Everything was flat with no shadow or substance.

Fleischer's animations were filled with camera pans and dissolves between scenes that gave them a cinematic quality. He was inventing new ways to make animations and was the only true rival to Disney at the time. The backdrops to Superman and the early Pop-Eye films were so realistic they almost looked like a world you could step into. With a few exceptions, todays animations while high in special effects, don't have that realistic feel of any place you could visit.

When Paramount first came to Max Fleischer to make the Superman films he turned it down. When asked why, he told Paramount that it was just too expensive to make the kind of film they wanted. Back then the average short cost $10 to $15,000 to make. The Superman short films would cost $90,000 to make. Paramount agreed and put up the money.

It's truly amazing that these nearly 70 year old animations can still rival anything made today. Production costs what they are, I can see where they would want to cut corners, Only the action seems relevant today. While all the studios make some very fine action animations that are very eye catching, I can't help looking beyond what's going on in the foreground and sneeking a peek at what's out back.

It truly is all in the details.
This link gives further insight into the creation of Superman in the animations.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E01KqT6RURs

Incumbents Need To Go!

The masses have spoken! They will hear no more of this type of change! They stood shoulder to shoulder, spoke their piece and had their way. The GAP will not remain with the new logo but will return to the original. What did you think I meant?

If only the voters could be as passionate about who speaks for them in government as they are about the name on their shopping bag. The GAP heard the people loud and clear and took action. Why can't voters speak just as loud and clear to their representatives? Mid-term elections are in a few weeks and it's time to make choices... serious choices.

It's time for the career politicians to be shown the door, the pink slip, to be sent packing. Mayors, Governors, and the President of the United States are subject to term limits. They can only hang around and be ineffective for a short period. But those who have introduced these rules and enacted them have no intention of having limits imposed on them. There's too much money to be scraped into their pile by hanging around and convincing the voter they are doing him a favor by picking his pocket. There is a solution.

Go to the polling place and vote them out. There is a growing trend to vote out the incumbents. Ask yourself if that career politician has really helped the masses or just the already rich. Have they done all they can to get peoples jobs back or just secured their own? Decades of ineffectuality are just a waste of our time and tax money. Just because he's a "Good Old Boy" is no reason to keep him around.

We are at a point in time where we need more rapid solutions to this countries problems. All Congress seems to do is keep everything in Committee while they fight over the legitimacy of each proposal. And when a solution is passed it's held up by all the legal wrangling.

But, don't we need these career people because of their experience? Ask yourself how all this experience let this country fall so deeply into the hole it's in. Ask yourself if any one of them lost their home, lost their savings or lost their health insurance. We know none of them lost their job. Now it's time they did. But don't grieve for them. They've got an ironclad pension that we'll be paying for forever.

Incumbents need to go! The next person may be all wrong for the job but he'll be an incumbent.... and we know what to do with them each and every election year.

Facebook changes.....again

In the news, yesterday they announced more new changes at Facebook, ostensibly to make your usage of the social site more enjoyable and easier to use. One of the upgrades mentioned was that you could now download every post you ever made right back to the day you first signed on. It reminded me of a post by one person who asked, "When I delete any of my posts are they completely erased?" Apparently, this person had some dubious posts that now, in hindsight, were illadvised. I replied, doubting that anything was completely erased. It had to be on some server, somewhere in their archives; you just weren't able to see it anymore.

So, allowing my Conspiracy Theory writers mind to drive, I came up with a scenario. Knowing how the NSA listens in on everything in the cyberworld, looking for terrorists, it was clear that Facebook or Twitter or any social site, or even blogging sites like this one, would be a good place to go trolling for baddies. Also, knowing how some members like to talk in code, either song titles or passages from literature or quotes from famous people past and present, would this not pique the curiosity of these covert listeners. Maybe not, but it might get you on the radar of some listener who thinks everyone is out to overthrow the Government. How long would they be tiptoeing through the tulips of your public passages before they decided you were harmless. Or would they ever decide you were harmless; especially if some sting in your local area were to flush out a hive of felons dedicated to breaking the law or sending info to foreign governments? For that matter; will this post have them looking at me?

I've often advised people of giving TMI (to much info) online. Where they live or what they own; even when they will be on vacation and the house will be empty. They might as well hang a sign on the front door, "Come in and help yourself".

So, all I can say, (again) is don't say anything online that you will regret later because deleting it is not going to get it erased. It will always be recorded somewhere so that some dedicated savior of the nation can connect you to the local terrorist cell. As for me........ I got nothing to hide.

Oh great! That'll have them knocking on my door by sunrise.

New GAP logo - Who cares?

With all the tragedy, loss of life and property, the furor today is over the new logo for the GAP. The elongated Times Roman type inside a large blue square is replaced by the bland "Impact" type with a small blue square in the corner. I can see a lot of thought was used to come up with that. I say... what difference does it make? Will shoppers be unable to find the store in the local mall, now? Not a chance. They'll still be running in to plunk down their plastic to get the latest, whatever, fashion. If they can't accept change maybe they should save their old shopping bags to use on their next visit.

I say, if they want to use a new logo with some, impact, they should enlarge a close up of Michael Strahan's teeth and use it as a background for the newest logo.

Christmas Gift To Myself

On Sunday, December 14th I ordered a gift for myself. A brand new Canon digital camera. It's got all kinds of great functions that make taking better pictures extremely easy. Why a new camera when I rarely take pictures? Listen up while I explain.

I haven't sold any of my writing in years and haven't made a nickle on my artwork in some time but in this epoch of layoffs and business closings I'm determined to make some extra dough by selling stock photos. I'm not about to make a career of it but one never knows. I do intend to make it a source of rainy day insurance.

My everyday job looks to be secure for now and if my employer continues at the current pace and can weather the storm I should be okay. Still, one can't just sit around and hope everything will always turn out okay.

I'm well aware that taking pictures is not just a matter of pointing the lens and clicking the shutter. Content and composition are paramount. I've got a lot to learn but I'm convinced my artistic talents will guide me as I set up shots. I intend to take the advice I gleaned from various blogs by successful photogs and carry the camera with me at all times. You never know when that perfect picture will reveal itself. I'm prepared to take dozens of shots from as many angles as I can think of in order to get that one perfect picture. Practice makes perfect in anything you do.

I'm compiling a list of types of shots I want to watch out for and where I might have to go to get them. This is not going to be a hobby but rather a way of life. Pursuing this is going to get me out of the apartment and away from the glare of the television. One side affect could and should be a stimulus to get me to jump start my artistic talents. It's already gotten me to write in this blog which I haven't done in some time.

I envision taking a number of floral pictures at first or "crowd" shots of interest, local sports or playground shots. I may end up chasing a few fire engines to get news shots or of an accident or two or something of human interest that may see print in local newspapers. Who knows... maybe in a couple of years I may be jostling for the optimum position with other shutterbugs for that perfect shot of Britney Spears cleavage? Yeah, right! Dream on sucker.

Timely Service... Forget it!!!

On August 28th at 4:30 PM my phone service went dead. Along with it went my DSL service from Verizon. Since I'm not an owner of a cell phone and don't care to own one there was little to do at the time. There's been a lot of remodeling going on in my apartment complex and a wire could have gotten accidentally yanked loose.

At work the next day I went online to Verizon to request repair service. The request form is not set up for people who don't have cell phones. It asked me for an alternate phone number so they might call me if they had to. No help there but it wouldn't take my request without some phone number there so I put in the one that's dead. Naturally the dumb machine took the useless number. I was also asked for my e-mail addy. I put it in but without the phone working I've got no DSL and as a result no e-mail. After it tried to see if my line was working it told me they couldn't send out a repairman until Sept 3rd. What! Seven days without service. They got to be kidding!

So now I have to take a day off from work to wait for the repairman because he will be around anywhere between 9AM and 8 PM. Nice of them to be so specific. If I'd had some serious ailment or was an invalid they would have made the effort to get to me right away. Sometimes being healthy is a drawback.

Since I'll be without service for a week do you think Verizon will offer me 25% off my bill this month? Yeah! When pigs fly.

But all is not lost. My new PC that I bought last February has a WiFi connection and it has been telling me of signals it detects in the area every time I turn it on. I've ignored it but now I was interested. I expected to be asked for some password to sign on and I was correct but the machine has detected half a dozen signals so I kept trying and what do you know. One allowed me to connect but it is an unencrypted source. I'm online again. The signal is a little week and drops out at times and I'm not going to be doing any online banking soon. I've got to check out the encrypted provider and see what they want for their service. Unless their transmitter blows up I'm not likely to be without service again. And it works a hell of a lot faster.

The Incredible WALL*E

Since I had no where else to be yesterday, July 4, I went to see a couple of movies. The first was Wall*e, a tongue in cheek love story between two robots. A too long alone trash recycling robot left behind on the Earth to clean up the mess left behind by the Earthlings taking a cruise to the stars and a sleek, clean, ultra-powerful probe sent back to Earth to see if it's worth returning to.

After it gets over its fear of being destroyed by the ultra-powerful probe, it's love all around for Wall*e the bumbling little trash recycler. Wall*e follows the probe, designated Eve, to the stars by hitching a ride on the outside of the ship sent to retrieve her/it. They are taken to the cruise ship Axiom where humanity has been in space for 700 years. Having grown fat and lazy the humans are waited on hand and foot by automated robots.

The movie is full of sight gags and inuendo and the facial expressions of the robots trigger the same emotions in the viewer. I couldn't help but laugh and feel sorrow for the little robots as the situations changed. A film well worth seeing again and again.

The second film was The Incredible Hulk. This sequel is far superior to the first installment. Ed Norton did a far better portrayal of Bruce Banner than the previous actor. And William Hurt made me believe he really was Gen. "Thunderbolt" Ross. Even though the action was between the Hulk and the super-powered antagonist, the battle was and always has been between Banner/Hulk and Ross. Each with their own separate ideas of right and wrong.

Even for all his brutality and blind rage the Hulk has a sense of right and justice. He does nothing more than defend himself when he is attacked. It's his enormous strength and lack of control that makes him appear to be a brutal, rampaging savage and killer. If left alone or ignored he'd just go away to be by himself. Clearly, Thunderbolt Ross is the true cause and is ultimately responsible for all the carnage done by the Hulk.

Given this new adversary, the Hulk is pitted against his equal, physically and far outmatched by this creature that has human intelligence and reasoning. But the aversary has ego which is his weakness while the Hulk's strength is and always has been his blind, insane, rage. This seering rage and to some extent, virtue, keep picking the Hulk up after he has been beaten down and should stay down. The gamma loaded adrenaline that courses through his veins magnifies the Hulks strength transforming him into an unstoppable juggernaut. Unstoppable except for the influence of one slim, unassuming, beautiful woman... Betty Ross. Somewhere, deep in the recesses of the Hulks brutish, manic-depressive brain resides a spark of humanity that is Bruce Banner's undieing love for this woman. She alone can calm the flames of his insane anger. While, on the surface, this may appear to be a weakness, it's actually the Hulk's greatest asset.

This movie was superbly put together graphicswise. The computer generated hulk actually looks like he is right there interacting with the other humans and his surroundings. The movie is an adrenaline rush from start to finish with just enough oases to let the viewer catch his breath.

Films such as this one don't get nominated for the best picture Oscar but this one needs to be considered by the Academy.