Animated Thoughts: Bakshi and Brenda

So for years now I've watched Ralph Bakshi dipping into his vault of production material and offering it for sale on eBay. I vividly remember being at Ottawa thirteen years ago when Ralph was brought in as a guest. Back then, I paged through a beautiful binder of cels and production drawings from his films like Hey Good Lookin', Lord of the Rings, and Wizards, all for sale. Sadly, they were out of my price range--at that time, I wouldn't be free from my student loans for another two years. Still, I kept an eye on his eBay account while slowly buying DVDs of his films for my personal collection.

Still patiently waiting for Spicy City to be released on DVD.

Well last month, Ralph pulled out a gem that I couldn't ignore: a production drawing from Wizards which was created and signed by Brenda Banks. Now back in February, I had noticed his post about this particular drawing on his Facebook account, so I knew to keep my eyes open over the following weeks.

As far as historians know, Brenda Banks may be the first African-American woman animator. And in a special features video on the Wizards DVD, Ralph states a few facts about Brenda and how they met, as well as some recollections about working with her--specifically her work on animating the Goons, these characters that we see in her production drawing.

So when it went live on eBay, I quickly bought the drawing and had it shipped to Michigan. Now when you buy a cel or a drawing, Bakshi Productions offers to have Ralph autograph them before delivery. But I politely declined, making the request that the drawing be delivered in as close to original condition as possible since I would be having it framed and using it as a visual aid in my animation history class.

Turns out, this struck a chord with Eddie and Liz Bakshi (Ralph's son and wife). Turns out Liz had attended Michigan State University back in the '60's and when she saw my Michigan address, she decided to do me a solid. Liz and Eddie took a couple photographs of the production folder from Wizards that contained the drawing I had just purchased. It had Brenda's name written on the front under "Animator"--a little something extra to authenticate its history.

A week later, the drawing arrived in a full-sized priority shipping box. Inside, it was sealed carefully between two sheets of cardboard which were taped to the box's interior in such a way that it wouldn't rattle around during transit. At Bakshi Productions, they really go the extra mile to ensure that these works of art from the history of animation arrive in mint condition. And there it was, under the Goons at the bottom of the page: Brenda's signature.

Why did I need this treasured piece of artwork in my permanent collection? In my animation history class, I have no small number of African-American women who want to be animators and graphic designers. When I talk about Brenda Banks in my class, they always sit up a little straighter and furiously scribble notes. I honestly don't know how many of them dig into Brenda's history after my class is over. And there's not a lot of information out there, Brenda was apparently a very private woman who seemed to prefer letting her body of work speak for itself. But I've wanted to have something special, something tangible on hand to inspire those ladies, something that would help connect them to their cultural heritage. I see how the other ladies in my class light up when I bring in an actual oil painting from Helena Smith Dayton (as far as we know, the world's first woman animator). So I hope that when I show them this production drawing in all its glory, it will inspire them not just to watch Wizards for the scenes that Brenda animated, but that they will be inspired to make their own artistic dreams happen, much like Brenda did.

Know your history. Find your voice. And tell your own story.

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Animated Thoughts: 2025 Academy Award Nominated Short Films

Well, the Academy Awards have come and gone. And I'm still rejoicing over the fact that Flow rightfully won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. It was well deserved. I'm not one of those anti-Hollywood studio types, but it always feels good to see a superior film get the recognition it deserves, especially when it's not a big-budget production backed by hundreds of millions of dollars.

As for the animated shorts, while I usually drive down to the Detroit Institute of Arts to see the shorts program at the Detroit Film Theater, this year was different. As my car has passed the 300,000 mile mark on the odometer, I'm trying to be a little more selective with my day trips--both to stretch out the lifespan of my car for as long as I can but also to shuffle the money saved into a new used car fund.

You can imagine my joy when I discovered that the animated shorts program was being shown by a local theater chain about a ten minute drive from my home (thank you Studio C). So, with popcorn and soda in hand, I settled in to watch this year's program. Felt a little wistful that I didn't get to spend the day soaking in the beautiful works of art at the DIA, but I was very appreciative that I had a good crowd at the theater for the screening. There were only nine of us, but once the lights dimmed, we all forgot about the outside world and were drawn in to a magical world of animation. There were no smartphones lighting up the theater, no one talking to each other, just us and the art of the moving image. Pure bliss.

Onto my thoughts from the screening.

Beautiful Men (directed by Nicolas Keppens)

Beautiful Men is a very thought provoking film. I've seen it three times now at different venues and each time I discover something new in the story, be it an enormous realization or a small nuance. From this third viewing, the plight of the three brothers finally left me with a moment of clarity. After the events of the story, Stephen and Koen want things to go back to the way they were. Whereas Bart is haunted by the irrevocable change in their relationship--his hair being a constant reminder of what was lost instead of a source of joy. If this short ever gets released on DVD, I'd definitely like to pick this one up for the collection--hopefully as part of something like Ron Diamond's Animation Show of Shows. Beautiful Men is a slow burn but tells a surprisingly deep story. Rating: A.

In the Shadow of the Cypress (Directed by Hossein Molayemi, Shirin Sohani)

This was a well executed, well animated film. Good animation quality, character design, cinematography, and color choices. Not much more to say. Decent film, but I just didn't find it memorable in the way that the other films were. I do think it's worth a second viewing. I'd like to go back, watch it again, and see if there's something there that I missed. Sometimes it's just not the right time in your life to connect with a film. Rating: B.

Magic Candies (Directed by Daisuke Nishio)

Not going to lie, I didn't like the character design. The boy looked ugly in an "uncanny valley" sort of way that made me cringe and look at other areas of the screen--which led to being able to really appreciate the lush backgrounds in this film. But I really liked the story as well as Dong-Dong's character growth arc as the lad learned, through the magic candies, what his impact on his little world really was. This was a story of growth and maturing and it was handled rather well. Rating: B+

Wander to Wonder (Directed by Nina Gantz)

Another film I've seen several times in different venues. This is the tragic tale of three doll-sized humans (faeries?) who are struggling with the loss of their caretaker--and the loss of the world as they knew it. This is a solid piece of stop-motion animation with an equally solid, very well executed story.--especially how they told the events leading up to the story's driving conflict using old VHS recordings as a flashback tool. It's well worth the time watching. Rating: A.

Yuck! (Directed by Loïc Espuche)

 
Yuck! was cute. It's another story about kids growing into maturity--this time where they are starting to make that shift from finding physical affection (kissing) between adults as something gross to one where, quoting the Princess Bride, "Someday, you may not mind so much." Like Magic Candies, Yuck! was a film where the character design really didn't do it for me, but the art design, color choices, and the animation were very competently executed with an engaging story and a heartwarming payoff. Rating: B+/A-

In the end, this was a pretty good selection. Personally, I was rooting for Beautiful Men or Wander to Wonder to take home the Oscar, but all the films in this year's line up are worth watching--and I hope you do, whether they're released on the net individually or as part of a festival program.

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Animated Thoughts: A surprising find in a surprising place

This past weekend, I flew to New Orleans for my brother-in-law's 60th birthday party--what we all were calling "John Con 2025" by the end of the weekend. Hadn't seen that side of the family for a while and John is a great guy, so when I got the invite, there really was no decision to make, just a little shuffling of cash from one account to another to pay for the plane ticket and hotel.

My sister, ever the planner, had a series of "group" events set up for everyone to celebrate John's birthday but there was also some free time available where we could wander New Orleans by ourselves and do a little exploring.

Fresh beignets

Well, true to form, she selected our first meetup at the Café du Monde on the north side of town. Not the one by the waterfront where I had been before, no, this was the one a five minute walk from the New Orleans Museum of Art. So after getting sugared up on beignets, it was time to get moving and walk off some of that breakfast. The pre-planned walking tour of the French Quarter wouldn't be until the early afternoon, so I had time to walk across the street to the New Orleans Museum of Art.

The first surprise was seeing a Claude Monet painting that I've never seen in person before. 'Houses' is a bit of a departure from the flowing pastels that I'm used to. But it's a welcome one as it still displays Monet's signature brushstrokes and stylization.

Houses on the Old Bridge at Vernon, c. 1883

Another exhibit I really enjoyed was their special exhibit on the history of glasswork. There were multiple examples of ceramics and glasswork all around the museum, but this exhibit was a more expansive history of glasswork from around the world with examples spanning a wide range of techniques and styles. If you're in the area, it's worth checking out. As I took the photos, my mind was going a mile-a-minute figuring out how I'd model them in 3d CGI.

"Tumble-up" cup and decanter, c.1860

Decanter, c.1880 - Uranium glass

Necklace with 19 minature Easter Eggs from
the workshop of Carl Fabergé

But the surprise of the visit was seeing a painting by artist Wayne Thiebaud.

Salmon Rose, 1966

On the placard, it stated "Disney animator", though my cursory research only revealed that he was an inbetweener for Disney during one summer before going on to producing commercial art, achieving a Masters degree in art history, and teaching at the University of California, Davis (among other accomplishments). [1]

Although I'm clearly biased here given the subject, I still think that it's the mark of a really good display that causes you to want to learn more about the artist, the art style or movement, or what influenced the artist when they were creating said artwork. Yes, I admit it, I'm one of those weirdos that you see in the museum, sitting down and looking at their smartphones while surrounded by priceless works of art. Well, more often than not, it's because I've seen something that sparks an interest and I want to know more about the artist or the times that they lived in. So rather than look it up later, I prefer to do my research immediately. If I take a couple pictures and promise myself that I'll do some research when I get home, well, more often than not life does tend to get in the way so better to capitalize on the moment.

So, I'd like to give props to the NOMA and their curators for putting together a very interesting collection of artwork. I wish that I would have had more time to enjoy their museum and sculpture park, but NOMA is now on my list of museums that deserve a return visit when I'm back in the area.

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[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20110428144554/http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Wayne-Thiebaud-is-Not-a-Pop-Artist.html

Animated Thoughts: Art Comes in Many Forms, pt. 6 - the "end of year" edition

I had hoped to end the old year and begin the new with some art and peaceful introspection. The Flint Institute of Arts did not disappoint.

Now I'll cop to it, looking at the main art museums in the Mid-Michigan corridor (Grand Rapids/East Lansing/Flint/Detroit), I vastly favor the Detroit Institute of Arts. But the smaller art museums here in Michigan have their charms. The Frederik Meijer Gardens has their yearly butterfly and orchid events as well as a wonderful outdoor Japanese garden. I haven't yet been to the Grand Rapids Art Museum, though I do hope to change that oversight later this year. The Broad Art Museum is a quick five minute drive from my home with a basement area housing older works of art and a video installation--and it's a quick walk from the MSU Library, good for research. Detroit has the DIA as well as the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village--all three had been invaluable resources when I was writing my animation history class. 

But the Flint Institute of Arts has some really appealing qualities, not the least of which is a 45 minute drive from my home (as opposed to the hour/hour-and-a-half to the DIA, depending on traffic). They've also got a well-stocked library with comfortable chairs and a sofa for reading.

"The Sheltered Path", 1873
Claude Monet

The decision of where I would spend my day was resolved almost immediately when I checked the FIA's website and discovered that they had a painting on display by my favorite artist: Claude Monet. Turns out, "The Sheltered Path" was on their visiting artwork list and would be on display until February.

As I stared at Monet's painting, I was struck by the impermanence of digital. There I sat, looking at a painting from 1873. The colors may not be as vibrant as when it was first painted, but still a beautiful work of art that, if properly handled, would still be there long after I am but a memory.

Over the past thirty years, I've witnessed countless works of art brought to life through computer software. I've been there during software releases and upgrades, and yes, witnessed software once touted as the 'latest and greatest' denoted as reaching their 'end-of-life' before being relegated to the dustbin of digital history. 

3d CGI, polygonal modelling, NURBS, metaballs, texture mapping, bump mapping, non-linear video editing, Corel Draw, Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop, Painter, Kai's Power Tools, Director, After Effects, Future Splash/Flash, Moho, Bernoulli drives, iOmega Zip Drives. I was there for much it. Oftentimes on the sidelines, sometimes in the trenches.

The march of technology is relentless. It's partially why I maintain a number of old computers with obsolete operating systems that are still capable of running some of this older software--so I can still access old copies of animations and imagery that I produced during my college and grad school days.

The computer has brought us works of art that were hitherto undreamt of. I doubt that even the old masters could have conceived of what is being produced by contemporary digital artists. I have to wonder, how constrained were their imaginations by the technology of their time? Thought for another day.

Back when I was in grad school at R.I.T., I had been playing with a freeware 3d rendering and animation software package called POV-Ray. It was a text based system where you'd plot everything out on graph paper using the Mark I pencil, then create a text file containing all the objects, their coordinates, and their properties for your scene. I was big on stone textures back then, so spent a fair amount of time making marbles using the various texture settings. This would serve me well when I needed objects to animate in my basic animation classes--like learning the squash and stretch principle by animating bouncing balls using Macromedia Director.

Squash and Stretch assignment

Since then, I have tinkered with lots of 3d modelling and animation packages like Alias Wavefront/Maya, Ray Dream Studio/Carrara, and Blender. But while useful and entertaining, none of those programs produce anything of permanence. I do still like to walk through museums and look at sculptures--mostly those of stone and glass--and think about how I would recreate them using 3d CGI software. It's a fun thought exercise and it adds an extra dimension to museum visits that makes them more enjoyable for me.

"Hadros", 2006
Petr Hora

Sculpture, paintings, celluloid film, animation cels, photographs from the early 1900's, even the hand-drawn paper cels from my MFA thesis, they will all outlive me. My thesis film is digital. Unless I do a transfer to celluloid film stock, one day, it will likely be gone with only the hand drawn cels and a couple printed images in my thesis paper as evidence that it ever existed. If care has been taken to preserve them, one hundred years later, we can still watch films from the 1920's. One-hundred and fifty-two years later, I can still spend an afternoon looking at one of Claude Monet's paintings hanging there on the wall. Over five hundred years later, we can still travel to Florence and appreciate Michelangelo's marble sculpture "David".

"Still Life with Fruit", 1855
Severin Roesen

I have to wonder, five-hundred years from now, will people even know about all the art we created in the late 20th/early 21st Century? Or will there be this huge cultural gap where art was being produced in physical format up until the 1980's and then it largely ceased. What will the museums of 2525 say about us? Will they even remember that we existed or will we just be a footnote in history, this big black hole of nothing called 'the digital age' where very few items of cultural significance survived to be appreciated by future generations?

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Animated Thoughts: Art Comes in Many Forms, pt. 4

So while the weather was still good, late last month I drove out the John Ball Zoo. It was one of the final weekends for their 'Dinosaur Hunt' event where they had this big open-air display containing life-sized animatronic dinosaurs, along with a number of others scattered around the rest of the zoo. 

They did a decent job with the interactivity. There were motion-sensors and pressure-sensors near some of the models. And when you passed by or intentionally moved into one of the sensor fields, the dinosaurs would come "alive".

It was all relatively basic motion, head and tail movement, mouths opening and closing, stuff like that. We're still dealing with the limits of the technology, you know? So it didn't bother me. And all the kids running around still thought that they were pretty cool. I could've done without the background music though. Got tired of hearing the Jurassic Park soundtrack real fast. But, that's what headphones are for.

As I wandered through the exhibit, I pondered some of the advice I received from the R.I.T. professor who taught me 2d hand drawn animation: former Disney animator Jack Slutsky.

One of the exercises that Jack had us do back then was go to a public place, sit down on a bench, and do multiple gesture drawings of people.

Later on in life, I would expand his advice to doing size comparisons at museums and zoos. It started with figuring out how a normal-sized human compares to a dinosaur skeleton. Then finding size-comparable animals at the zoos and observing how they moved. Obviously, there's a big difference between a T-Rex and an elephant. However, you can get a feel for certain things--like how their muscles would deal with gravity when they're moving all that body mass. Or how fast they might be able to move. I don't have a project that requires such knowledge right now, but it's a good thought exercise and I'm glad to have in my back pocket just in case I need it in the future.

Afterwards, I couldn't leave the Zoo without taking some photos of the flowers while they were still in bloom. Winter will be here soon enough.

And the critters at the John Ball Zoo are always interesting. I spent a fair amount of time watching the new lynx enclosure. Apparently though, Mom wasn't in the mood to play.

Then there was this chubby chipmunk outside of the lynx enclosure.

The Otters also decided not to play while I was watching them, but rather they got snuggly for an after-lunch nap.

This visit to the zoo left me with a lot to think about. I have to admit, once again I was more interested in how the technology worked than the novelty of the exhibit itself. Might look up motion and pressure sensors and see how they operate--more to the point, how they could be tied into animation installations. Chapter 24 in Maureen Furniss's book deals with animation in art and it does cover animation installations--like the ones Elainie Lillios and Bonnie Mitchell used to bring to KAFI back in the day. Would be fun to set one up for my students to experience once we get to that chapter. Even moreso to show them how it's done. Another tool for their animator's toolkit.

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Animated Thoughts: Back to the classroom

Well, fall is here and with it the fall semester at CMU. Once again, the College of Art and Media graciously invited me to teach the History of Animation. This year, I did a number of things differently, foremost among them was starting my revisions in April.

As we've moved the class from a 300-level to a 200-level, there are more freshmen and sophomores taking my class. The rationale was to get this information to potential animation students as early in their academic career as possible--providing them a much larger toolkit of knowledge and skills at a time when it would provide them the most options for projects in their future classes. So a lot of my supporting material is geared towards teaching them about techniques: how Joan Gratz invented claypainting, how the multiplane camera works and its evolution into the CAPS system at Disney, what a "setback" camera setup is. Things of that nature.

To that end, I scoured eBay to find some interesting visual aids for the class, most notably a vintage Magic Lantern (around 100 years old) and a Chromotrope from the 1800's. Am still looking for an affordable phonograph in order to play some of my Edison Amberol cylinders in class. Playing the music on MP3's just doesn't have the same feel to it.

Of course, there was some housekeeping that needed to be done. Years ago, I purchased Moustapha Alassane's DVD so I could show his film Bon Voyage Sim. Downside is that they didn't include subtitles for 'Sim'. So I had the dialog translated into English. Should resolve a lot of those "I don't understand what's going on here" comments.

And as I continue to locate and purchase the highest quality prints of these films to show my students, this year I bought a used Laserdisc player. Showing the Harmon and Ising film Tale of the Vienna Woods has been on my list of things to do. But the only copy I've ever found is on a four disc LaserDisc set. So, before plunking down the cash on the Happy Harmonies LD set, I had to make sure I had something to play it on. Thank you again, eBay.

The class still isn't where I want it yet. Future plans include building working scale models of Max Fleischer's setback camera and Disney's multiplane camera... as well as a working model of Oskar Fischinger's wax-slicing machine... and possibly an easily portable setup whereby I can show a "hologram" projection of Hatsune Miku... but those are projects for a future class.

Best part of starting all this work early is that I now have a little extra time on my hands. So I'm going back and watching some films that are on my 'to do' list, like Walter Ruttmann's Berlin, Symphony of a Great City, Bambi, Fantasia, some of the Noveltoons and Happy Harmony shorts, and the old Alice Comedies that Walt Disney produced back in Kansas City.

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Animated Thoughts: Art Comes in Many Forms, pt. 3

After swearing up and down that I probably wasn't going back to Gen Con any time soon, or if I did, it would only be for a day, I ended up biting the bullet and buying that 4-day pass.

It was the 50th Anniversary celebration of Dungeons and Dragons and there was going to be a plethora of historical panels with the folks who made the game. 

My plan was to drive down to Indianapolis, stay overnight, say 'hi' to some friends, do a little shopping, and then drive home. But, as fate would have it, I had enough cash saved up to do three days in Indianapolis so decided to make the most of the experience.

Gen Con is one of those places where the artwork takes center stage--even to all the games. You could have the best game out there, but if the artwork is 'meh', well, it's hard to catch the eye of potential players (customers). So, I set out with camera in hand and a willingness of spirit to soak in all that wonderful sci-fi/fantasy artwork.

Catalyst Game Labs had some nice treasures in their display case but "The Battle for New Avalon" was the theme for the annual CamoSpecs diorama. If you look closely, you can see the the Republic of the Sphere forces backing up the Davion Guards against the Sword of Light. 

As always, the detail on those miniatures is always top-notch! Wish mine looked that good.

There was a fair amount of interesting art at the con--lots of it was on banners.

I'm not into Pathfinder, but Paizo's artwork is always top-tier.

The 50th Anniversary of D&D "museum" was both overwhelming and underwhelming. Given how the Con pulled out the stops for the Gen Con anniversary back in 2017, I was expecting more than a number of display cabinets with some D&D artifacts--back then they built a facade for the Horticultural Hall and had tons of historical artwork and gaming books and artifacts from the history of gaming. 

Now, a lot of the books and papers they had in the display cabinets "were" pretty cool. And I did like the "D&D by the versions" display. Overall I think Peterson and Kammer did an okay job with what they had, but it was not what I expected given the enormity of the anniversary of D&D.

Every year, there's group art project. Not much to say here, I just thought it was pretty neat.

Was a real treat to meet Gary Gygax's son Luke (and his wife Bouchra) during the "Growing Up Gygax" presention. Real quality people. Would love to talk to them again.

Spent some quality time looking at the miniatures competition. 

Am truly humbled by the skill and the patience it takes to produce work of this quality and on this scale. 

Not a lot of statues at the con this year, but there were a couple good ones in the dealer room.

Heh. The annual balloon sculpture turned out to be a promo for a Gnome game.

As I left, I had to say 'good bye' to the life-sized UrbanMech that has become a mainstay of the Catalyst Game Labs experience at Gen Con. Don't know when, or if, I'll be back. I still feel the siren-song of that bucket list trip to all the great art museums of the world. But Gen Con will always hold a special place in my heart.

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