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.