Animated Thoughts: Surrealism and Afternoon Tea at the FIA

So I've been keeping my eye on events at the Flint Institute of Arts. No matter how much I enjoy an afternoon at the Detroit Institute of Arts, the FIA is a little closer and while both the collection and the building are smaller, there are still very interesting things to see and do.

Case in point: this past month, they had two exhibits that were of particular interest to me. The first was "Beyond Dreams: Surrealism and Its Manifestations", an exhibition of surrealism in art. The second was "the Art of Refreshment", examples of cutlery and ceramics in food service.

Surrealism for me is one of those on-again/off-again interests. Dali always seemed pretty odd to me, but in a darkly good way--especially the short film Destino that he worked on at Disney. Man Ray's work was always visually thought provoking. And I spent a fair amount of time looking at the work of René Magritte as I was forming ideas for the visual style of my MFA thesis film. I ended up going in a different direction for my thesis, but I remember making a 3d animation using Electro-GIG 3D-GO with a distinct Magritte feel to it. The reference to Magritte is still there in my notes from March 21st, 1995. The animation was of a guy built out of simple primitive shapes that was running across a blue cloudy plane suspended in space against a blue cloudy backdrop. The "primitives" guy was also textured with the same blue sky and cloud pattern. I remember sitting there trying to finish it before the deadline with fellow animation grad Leah Bosworth sitting beside me and pointing out controls on the interface that would've taken me hours to figure it out had I been working on my own.

I've also come to enjoy watching abstract animated films--mainly as a result of instruction by Marla Schweppe and through the films and instruction of Stephanie Maxwell and Skip Battaglia. So whenever I see an exhibit like "Beyond Dreams", I like to review those old lessons from my time at R.I.T. as I appreciate the artwork.

One of the things that I thought was most useful was that the curators had put up a 'Glossary of Surrealism' listing that defined several terms which were applicable to this art movement. Just a little something extra there to educate some and refresh the memories of others. It was appreciated.

As I walked around the exhibit, unlike last year's fantasy art exhibit, I had no real goal other than to look at whatever caught my eye. "Metronome" was one of those images that I just found enjoyable. There was nothing profound about it, it was just visually appealing, especially with it's use of light and shadow.

Metronome, 1990
by Scott Fraser

This one, "Moving Skip Rope" by Harold Edgerton was of particular interest given that I'm an animator--and I really wish that I had been able to get a better picture, the lighting and the glass just worked against me. "Moving Skip Rope" is a photograph taken using a stroboscope flash which produced an image that was reminiscent of Muybridge's motion studies. The resulting artwork below is a dye transfer print.

Moving Skip Rope, 1952
Harold Edgerton

Then there was "Personnage" by Man Ray. This was another one of those that appealed to me as an animator. It reminded me of those early 1980's CGI animations where all the characters were made out of basic primitives (or the assignment that I produced back in '95).

Personnage, 1975
Man Ray, 1890-1976

Afterwards, I sauntered across the hall to view the "Art of Refreshment" exhibit. There was a lot of beautiful glasswork in this exhibit but also some ceramics and some metal, ivory, stone, and silkwork.

There really weren't any moments that provoked epiphanies in this exhibit, I just found it enjoyable. You could see that there was a lot of thought and skill put into making these mundane objects remarkable.

Some of the ones that really caught my eye were the following.

So, while my trips to Flint may not be the events like what I experience in Detroit--a day of appreciating art along with a nice meal, followed by some drawing in the galleries--but what the FIA does have over the DIA is this luxurious library of artbooks with chairs and sofas that you can lounge in while reading. I'm reluctant to share photos of it because it's one of those 'best kept secrets'. I closed out my trip by spending an hour paging through books filled with historical pictures of Chinese and Japanese brushwork. Lots of food for my imagination.

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Animated Events: Capital City Comic Con

Well, C4 has come and gone. As I was running a tabletop miniatures wargame at a local store, I didn't get to be there as long as I would have liked on Saturday but the time I was at the con over the whole weekend was time well spent.

Back in the day, like 2002-2004, two gentlemen ran a local gaming convention called "Foundation". My brother and I would run wargames at the con and for those two years we were a top draw with some showcase events like tournaments, how-to-play events, and a paint-and-take table. Well, sadly Foundation came to an end but years later one of them joined up with some other friends and started the Capital City Comic Con (C4).

I'll admit it, I really enjoy the convention experience: looking at the artwork, doing a little shopping, playing some demo games, but my favorite activity is attending panels and lectures to learn more about my field of study. There's just something special about being able to talk to people who are out there forging their own paths and willing to share their knowledge and experience.

This year, the two foreign comics panels were especially interesting. There's some fascinating history about comic books that you don't often hear about. The first panel was more about valuation, rarity, and pricing for the collectors market but the second was a more in-depth history of the foreign comic book market running back to around the 1930's and '40's up to the present day. It's probably due to a fair amount of myopia on my part, but I was surprised to see how the foreign market had a lot more nuance than just simple one-to-one translations of existing books. Apparently during the '70's, when Marvel was just trying to survive, it appeared that foreign writers and artists had a lot more freedom to make changes to the content of the books and covers. There were also changes made due to foreign censorship and sensibilities--and word translations that work in English but not in other languages.

One of the more interesting things I noted was how the German imprint for the Amazing Spider-Man was called "Die Spinne". Y'see, back in 1986, Marvel published the Spider-Man vs. Wolverine one-shot crossover with the "High Tide"storyline. In it, Peter Parker and Logan team up while in East Germany. As he didn't bring his black bodysuit, Peter has to buy a Spider-Man costume from a store. On the back of the outfit, in the middle of the spider logo, are the words "Die Spinne"--English translation: "the Spider". At the time, I was never able to figure out why it was there. And the suit actually showed up years later in another comic after Peter and Mary Jane got married. She moves into his loft apartment and they start paring down the extra costumes so she can have some room for her clothes. The first suit they pull out of the closet is the German suit from the crossover issue.

So, some thirty-plus years later, after learning about the German imprint of Amazing Spider-Man, why the suit from Spider-Man vs. Wolverine had the words "Die Spinne" printed on the back all made sense. And I have to admit that it was a pretty neat Easter egg at the time for all of those in the know back then.

Another standout for me over the weekend was the indie comic production and self-publishing panels. These weren't as well attended as I they should have been, but the small numbers did lead to some very interesting interactions between the crowd and panelists. In both panels, they were very interested in hearing about my animation work, as much as I was in their graphic design and publishing experience. Still, I would gladly have sacrificed some of that interaction if it meant that more kids who want to get into comics would've been able to hear some of the great advice and experiences that the panelists were giving away.

Well, as with any convention nowadays, the cosplayers were out in force. I found one of the X-Men walking around: Cyclops, from the early 1990's--one of my favorite periods of time where Marvel was producing some of the best written, best drawn issues of the series; due in large part to folks like Chris Claremont, Mark Silvestri, and Jim Lee.

And you know you have to get a photo when you purchase a poster for Arcane and you walk around the corner just in time to come face-to-face with K/DA Ahri! As much as I love to see K/DA or True Damage characters from League of Legends, I have to admit that I'm a little crestfallen that I don't see more people cosplaying the characters from Arcane. You see Jinx and Vi every so often, but the costume design was so amazing, I'd love to see a Jayce or Mel Medarda walking around in formal outfits.

"I'll show you what I'm made of
Rise to the occasion
Got fears, but I face them, oh-oh"

While it's my policy to purchase something from a vendor or two and some art from the independent artists/writers if at all possible, I did stick to my budget for the con. Though I have some regrets when I saw some of the amazing artwork that was for sale at the silent auction. Think I'll set aside some extra cash during the year just to bid on an illustration or two next year. Or, maybe spring for the VIP ticket and attend the "Drink-and-Draw" event to do a little creating of my own.

"Yep, He is Groot!"

In the end, Capital City Comic Con is a great example of a local convention. With so much attention going to larger cons like Gen Con or San Diego Comic Con, it's refreshing to see local cons like C4 who are able to provide an excellent experience in our home towns. I'm already looking forward to next year (and planning out my budget).

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Animated People: Erik Timmerman

The Blue Cactus Bar & Grill

One of those Ottawa International Animation Festival experiences that remains near to my heart is when I bumped into Erik at the festival back in 1996. He was going to have lunch at the Blue Cactus Bar & Grill with graduates Ted Pratt, Bill Trainor, and a young lady whose name I don't recall.

I do remember that while taking the graduate computer animation program classes, she moonlighted as one of the models for the figure drawing class to make a little extra cash. She rode a motorcycle and she kept calling Erik "E.T.". Both she and Bill were working at Xerox at the time. At the festival's closing day party, she and I sat outside the building and talked for a little over an hour -- well, she talked mostly. Nice enough girl, but hard to get a word in edgewise. Lot of life experiences packed into a few short years, that one.

Bill was wound a little tight but a decent enough guy. Didn't talk much, seemed lost in his own thoughts most of the time. He was the Grad Lab Supervisor before me and had helped me recover and distribute a Director Lingo script that allowed students to automatically export Director image frames from the computer to an optical disk recorder. Oddly enough, I still have the script file in my archives. 

Strangeness in the Night by Ted Pratt

Ted Pratt was a good guy (still is, afaik, we haven't talked in a couple of years). When Erik introduced us, I immediately recognized his name from the R.I.T. demo reel that the department sent me during my senior year at Taylor. It was a VHS tape that had Ted's student graduate film Strangeness in the Night, among others. At the festival's closing picnic, Ted was very encouraging, reassuring me that "yes, there were jobs out there for graduates and I'd have no trouble making enough money to pay off my student loans."

Shadowpuppets by Chuck Gamble

I still have that VHS tape and ended up digitizing the films for my R.I.T. archive project years ago--including films like:

• Chuck Gamble's Shadowpuppets, which was the first ever computer animated student film shown at the SIGGRAPH Electronic Theater; 
• Christopher Walsh's Uaguzi. He went on to animate the flying dagger in 1994's the Shadow after graduating from R.I.T. and still works in the VFX industry;
• Hikmet Safuoglu's trippy film within normal limits, which was animated to the equally trippy song 'I Robot' by the Alan Parsons Project;
• Elouise Oyzon's beautiful first year film conjugations. She went on to teach at R.I.T.'s School of Interactive Games and Media. I still see her occasionally at the class reunions;
• And the delightful Ignorance is Bliss? which M. Shan Yeung animated to look exactly like a Chinese ink painting.

Ignorance is Bliss? by M. Shan Yueng

I once asked Elouise if she had a copy of her graduate thesis that I could show at a class I was teaching. She said that it was all on an old computer. She wasn't even sure if she could recover the film anymore. And while I was sad for her, I was doubly glad that I had preserved that VHS tape. I have to wonder, how many people will get to see these beautiful student films from the early years of computer animation (1990 to 1993)? I once tried to get copies of these films uploaded to RIT's student film archive "SOFAtube". Unfortunately my efforts were unsuccessful, a victim of university politics.

conjugations by Elouise Oyzon

Each one of these films was produced by students in the graduate computer animation program that Erik founded at R.I.T. Each of these films has Erik's fingerprints on them. How many students entering R.I.T.'s graduate animation program will see that plaque on the wall with Erik's name on it and wonder who he was or what influence he had on the films we produced during his tenure?

Back to Ottawa: 

As the five of us sat there at the Blue Cactus, it wasn't about work or school or imparting any great lessons about life or anything like that. At that moment, Erik wasn't just my professor or my mentor, he was my friend. He talked to all of us as you would talk to friends. A couple days later, we'd all go back to Rochester and fall back into those roles of professor and student, but for that moment, we were just a couple of people sitting at a pub talking about animated films like we'd known each other our whole lives.

When Erik was undergoing chemotherapy, he didn't want any of his students to see him or the toll that the treatment took on him. But fortunately, Ted Pratt didn't listen. Since he lived a short ways away from where Erik was convalescing in Berkley, Ted drove out there to see him. While I knew Erik was sick, I had no idea to what extent. He didn't talk about it much. I tried to keep in touch with him and sent him a 'get well soon' basket of fruit and veggies, which he appreciated. He had moved out to California by then. His college girlfriend was taking care of him during his chemotherapy and Erik wanted to be closer to his children Erica and Kristofer. While still in Rochester, I helped him translate a computer program he had written in BASIC to something that would run on a PowerPC. He wanted to update a film he had made years earlier. It was all about spirograph drawings animated to a jazz soundtrack. He and I never finished it. Producing an experimental animated film while he was on chemo was a tall order, but I still feel like I failed him. We could produce the images he wanted, no problem, but we just couldn't get the PowerPC to talk to the optical disk recorder. Erik left for Berkeley shortly thereafter.

That was some of the last contact I had with him. We exchanged a couple e-mails after that but I got busy with life over those two years and Erik was undergoing a regimen of treatments and healing. Then, a couple months after messaging me that his cancer was in remission and he was feeling optimistic about the future, I got the e-mail from Marla about Erik's death.

To say that her message hit me like a ton of bricks is an understatement. My friend was gone and I was left with only six years of memories. Now don't get me wrong, I'm very thankful for those six years. But the point of my rambling is this: the things that we thought were important at the time more often than not end up being inconsequential when compared to every lost moment that we could have spent with our family and friends.

Social media has brought many evils, but it's also done us a great service by allowing people to transcend time and distance in order to reconnect. Physical letters are fine and all, but they cannot compare to the conversational nature of an e-mail or instant messaging. So I encourage you to savor those moments in the now where you can talk to people you care about. And take a moment to contact those who have drifted away, even if it's just to say 'hi, how have you been?' Some day, you may find yourself longing for those precious moments where you can hear your friend's voice one last time.

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