Enchanted by the Flint Institute of Arts

So my housemate discovered a fantasy exhibit close to town. Over at the Flint Institute of Arts, they had an exhibit titled "Enchanted: History of Fantasy Illustration". I was busy, and it never seemed to be the right time, but over Thanksgiving break, I finally had a short block of free time so off to Flint I went.

I have to say that while I enjoyed the exhibit thoroughly, I must admit that I was hoping for a little more Frank Frazetta. An exhibit on fantasy illustration and only one Frazetta painting? Well, I guess that this just means I need to plan out a trip to the Frazetta Art Museum in Pennsylvania or the Frazetta Art Gallery in Florida.

The following are a couple of my favorites from the exhibit.

"Rose Red", 2013
Dan Dos Santos

"A Princess of Mars", 2012
Mark Zug

"Maelstrom", 2015
Eric Velhagen

"Mulan", 2018
Eric Velhagen

"Conan and Red Sonja", 2022
Bob Layton

"Dungeons & Dragons", 1977
David C. Sutherland III

Definitely need to visit this exhibition again. There was so much to see that I don't really feel like I had to take it all in. Perhaps on my birthday...

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Animated Thoughts: Time off well spent

Well, vacation is over and it was very productive. 

After I found my original set of polyhedral dice earlier this year, I started rebuilding the vintage D&D collection that I had back in the early 1980's. Part of that was the solo module "Maze of the Riddling Minotaur". So I rebuilt two characters that I remembered from back then and finally completed that adventure... after thirty years. It was such an enjoyable experience that I framed the map for posterity's sake--and hung it on the wall of my gaming room. But, in order to not be the classic example of the shut-in gamer, I also made it a point to be a little social by doing some miniature wargaming with friends.

Later on that week, I took some reference photos of the emu and the kangaroos at the local zoo for later sketching. Then visited the Detroit Institute of Arts and explored the history of a couple artists while looking at their paintings (Otto Mueller and Joan Miró)--as well as learned something new about puppetry that I have integrated into one of the assignments for my History of Animation class.

"Bathers" ~1920, Otto Mueller

In order to keep my time off 'animated', I caught up on some animated shows, short films, and a feature. Wrote a treatment for a short film and dusted off an animation that I'd like to complete over the next year.  And I made the obligatory "OIAF 2022" cupcakes. I couldn't be in Ottawa in person, but I was there in spirit.

Being in the area was a good thing though. My housemate is currently helping with end-of-life care for one of his friends and he needed a little time off. So after being gifted a pair of tickets to the Renaissance Festival from a friend, we got to walk around and relax at the Festival. We then ended the week walking around Meijer Gardens, enjoying one of the few remaining warm and sunny days of the season (and taking lots of reference photos of flowers, fish and landscapes).

Now even though I was "technically" on vacation, I still taught my History of Animation class at Central, and I made it a point to let the kids know that I was on vacation and what I was doing with my time. I ended up putting it all into a handout--some of which reads as follows:

So, this leads into the question: during class, why did I make it such a point to mention my plans about taking some time off? It's because "burnout" is a real thing. Most, if not all of you are preparing to enter a very competitive field where you will make your living off of your ability to be creative. If you're not careful, instead of working on your given assignment, you'll find yourself staring at a blank canvas (or computer screen), unable to form a coherent thought. And both the inspiration and the steady stream of ideas you once relied upon are nowhere to be found. In order to combat this, I encourage you to develop an outlet where you can recharge your internal batteries. And it doesn't have to be related to your field of study--as you can see, mine just happen to be mostly art/animation-related. And it doesn't have to be an expensive activity. Two of my close friends from Grad School like to "get away from it all" by doing the Walt Whitman thing: spending time outdoors and in nature whenever possible. Steve was distance runner in High School, so he'd go jogging around campus on a regular basis after classes. Then once a week, he'd have a pint of Guinness at the pub and just hang out there and talk to people. To this day, Steve still walks to work through the countryside in Norway. Glenn, he likes hiking the Adirondack Mountains over in upstate New York and posting nature photos on Facebook. When I was in graduate school, my activity was sketching animals. To keep it affordable, I bought a yearly pass to the Seneca Park Zoo. Then, almost every Saturday, I'd spend a couple hours walking around with my sketchpad and drawing the animals. Now that I've graduated, I like to do art and animation-related events--whether it's spending a weekend learning an old animation technique or watching an animated feature here in town or driving down to Detroit and spending an afternoon looking at art.  It's these breaks that will help you decompress from the stresses of work and feed your soul. Often, when I feel like I've got brain fog, I find a couple hours at looking at art and letting my mind wander is all it takes to get the ideas flowing again. These periodic breaks give you something to look forward to when it's been a tough week at work and it's a good way to reward yourself for when you've stuck it out and finished your tasks for the day, the week, or the month.  And again, they don't have to cost a lot of money. It costs Glenn and Steve nothing to walk (or jog) through nature. When Fathom Events brings first-run anime features to Lansing, tickets are around ten dollars. An afternoon at the DIA costs $14 for admission to the museum and $7 for parking. And only ten dollars when I want to take my sketch pad and go drawing at the local zoo--even less if I buy a yearly pass to the DIA or the Zoo.  Maybe you played a musical instrument in High School. Or you like to play a sport. Maybe journaling is your thing. Or you'd like to try urban sketching. It could be an activity you enjoyed when you were younger or something new that has always interested you. I encourage you all to explore your interests outside of your field of study (or your career) and find an activity that you enjoy, something that you can make your own and which will help you get away from the stresses of your job. Finding out what works for you, what activities help you recharge and recover, is one of the keys to longevity in your future career as a creative.

A week later, one of my students came up to me before class and thanked me for that particular handout. Turns out that as she was entering the last year of her degree, she was experiencing significant burnout and my advice spoke to her right where she was at.

I won't say anything trite like "it was a teachable moment" or anything like that. I was just happy that I was reaching a student where they were at and that my advice helped them solve a very real problem.

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Animated Thoughts: Fear of Missing Out...

The 2022 Ottawa International Animation Festival is next week and their schedule of events, talks, screenings, and retrospectives went live on their website in August.

This year's screening and event schedule had I been there.

Part of the fun for me is looking through all the events and screenings then putting together my personal OIAF schedule--taking care to ensure that I get to see and do everything on the list but still setting aside time to eat and sleep.

While there are always a lot of good films to watch, my favorite events have to be the four panorama screenings: Canadian, World, Canadian Student and World Student. It's those screenings that seem closest to my tastes and still have a wide variety of techniques and narrative structures.

However, given that Canada is still restricting who can enter their country, 2022 will be the second Ottawa International Animation Festival that I've missed in the past twenty-eight years. My first OIAF was in 1994 when I was a newly minted grad student at R.I.T., but the first one I didn't attend was in 2005. That was the year that the OIAF went to a yearly format. For several years before that, they had been running their Student Animation Festival in the off-years between their traditional biyearly Ottawa Festival.

This has turned out to be a similar situation to my Gen Con experience. As we've been travel restricted for the past two years, I've been attending the virtual events: Ottawa's online festival and Gen Con Online. Even though we couldn't be there in person, people didn't miss out as everything went virtual through streaming services and third-party websites. This year however, I attended Gen Con Online because even though the convention was held in-person in 2022, there were restrictions imposed by the convention that prevented a lot of us from attending. But, at least they still had online options. Ottawa is now going back to their fully in-person format. And as I can't cross the border into Canada, I won't be there.

It wouldn't be an issue if they still had an online offering of screenings and presentations like they did over the past two years. But, for whatever reason, the OIAF won't be doing a split-format this year. And I'm not getting down on them. Festival Artistic Director Chris Robinson and I have spoken in the past about how an online festival is far more work to pull off than you'd expect. Given what hoops we had to run through to move our ASIFA Central yearly retreats online, I don't doubt the fact that the Ottawa festival's efforts are exponentially greater. Personally, I think that they're making the right call doing either one or the other. It's been a tough two years and they need to make the best decisions possible for the long-term viability of the festival. I'd honestly rather miss out for a year than see an attempt at a hybrid online and in-person event with limited resources and end up losing the festival entirely.

But it still aches. I look forward to visiting Canada every year. Throughout the year, I'd work extra jobs and save money so I could spend a couple days relaxing in Toronto, visiting with friends, and soaking up the culture. Some years I'd search through the used book stores for those rare, out-of-print treasures. Other years, I'd visit multiple cultural and artistic centers, like the various museums and the zoo where I'd take lots of photographs and videos for reference material all while doing some sketching in my sketchbooks. And then there was meeting up with friends in town and discovering some new restaurants as well as enjoying others from trips past. And there were always opportunities for personal growth. During my last trip to Canada in 2019, I confronted my fear of heights and did the CN Tower Edgewalk. After being energized by the short respite, I'd drive the remaining five hours to Ottawa and spend the next five days watching some of the best animated films the world has to offer all while talking to colleagues and enjoying the rich culture of Canada's capital city.

For Gen Con this year, since I couldn't be there in person, I attended their Online events but also made my own convention experience by playing some games with friends at my local game store and rebuilding a portion of my vintage gaming collection that was lost to the sands of time. This year, I plan to do something similar for Ottawa.

Instead of spending money on food, travel, hotels and the occasional souvenir in Canada, I'm going to save money for next year by doing things in the area that are relatively inexpensive.

I still plan on following the Festival on social media and watching the trailers and bumpers that they post on YouTube. But I'll be putting together my own schedule of films to watch during that week's vacation--I'm looking at you Evangelion:3.0+1.01 (Thrice Upon A Time) and Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf. Then there's the Netflix relaunch of Bee and Puppycat which went live on September 6--which I've been saving for a binge-watching session. And the latest episodes from season 6 of Rick and Morty... I'm definitely going to get my money's worth out of those streaming services. I'll also be ordering a couple program guides and t-shirts from the festival for my collection, just like I did in 2005. So I'll still have an unbroken series of program guides and festival readers running back to 1994. If I'm feeling up to it, I might even make a batch of "OIAF 2022" cupcakes for my "evening screenings". And since I'll still be in Michigan, there's no reason to take a vacation day from teaching at CMU. Nothing says "animation" like spending a day instructing students about the rich history of animated film and watching some cartoons with them.

Will also have to fit in a trip down to the Detroit Institute of Arts to soak up a little culture (I already have a yearly membership). And a visit to the zoo should be in order (I really need to dust off those sketchbooks and get some drawing time in). I've also got a copy of one of the last books Bendazzi wrote before he passed away, called 'Twice the First: Quirino Cristiani and the Animated Feature Film' which I'd like to read. And Chris Robinson has an article on the state of Canadian animation which he published in August that I need to review. Should be a full week.

Interestingly enough, Fathom Events is bringing back Studio Ghibli's Howl's Moving Castle for a limited three-night screening during my vacation--starting on the last day of vacation. 'Howl' is one of the few Ghibli movies that I don't like. However, last semester, a student of mine wrote a term paper talking about 'Howl' and I have to admit that her paper was so well researched, so engaging, so interesting that it has awakened the desire to take another look at this movie with new eyes. Would be a nice endcap to the week off of work. So, all things considered, my vacation time can be enjoyed for very little in the way of out-of-pocket expenses.

I think though, one of the better uses of my vacation time will be to take a second look at a film that I've been trying to work on for a couple years now. The first step will be a quick viability study -- making sure that I have the time and the resources to complete it before next June. Then I'll do some quick thumbnail storyboards and see if the story still holds up. After that... who knows. Maybe I'll have an entry for 2023's festival.

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Howl's Moving Castle image from GKIDS Presskit and is © 2004 Studio Ghibli - NDDMT