keyleedaud (REAL ESTATE)

(Click any image to enlarge.) As the semester draws to a close, I'm getting buried with grading, which is why I haven't updated this blog in a while. Without time to really write something, I'm just going to mark time for a bit. I bought this drawing at Gallery Lainzberg in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1979. At the time I was working at a small animation studio in Waterloo, Iowa, and every few months animators Bob Haack, Bill Barder and I would go to the Gallery. This drawing was obviously fished out of a wastebasket. There are all kinds of notes jotted around the image that have nothing to do with it. It was also folded in half. Clearly, Moore discarded the drawing and then used it for scrap before trashing it. Somebody liked it enough to remove it and take it home. The same day I bought this, Bill Barder bought a drawing from Avery's Dumb Hounded . I tried to buy it from him multiple times, but Bill wouldn't part with it. I was pretty sure the centaurette drawing...

My sentiments, exactly. I just watched the new DVD release of Sleeping Beaut y. It’s the first time I’ve seen the film in over a decade and maybe two. It has never been one of my favourites, but watching it now I’m struck by how poor the story and characterizations are. If not for the high production values and the presence of artists that I know to be more than capable, I would say that Sleeping Beauty is a poor imitation of a Disney film. I am not a fan of Eyvind Earle’s artwork. I don’t have any insightful reasons for that; it just leaves me cold. Beyond Earle’s design style, I’m also not one who is impressed by detail. For me, all stories are about people and if the visuals don’t support a worthwhile story and characters, they are wasted. It’s no different than the common refrain that a particular movie isn’t very good, but the special effects are great. If a movie isn’t very good, I don’t care about any of the elements. The story of Sleeping Beauty is ludicrous. An evil fairy i...

This is the climax of the film where Cruella and the Baduns attempt to stop the truck carrying the dogs back to London. While it is an exciting sequence, what strikes me is how little the dogs have to do. They have been active characters before this - searching, fighting and avoiding capture - but there's nothing left for them to do. Except for Perdy catching a pup by the tail as the truck tilts dangerously, the dogs are literally just along for the ride. While the audience has been asked to identify with the dogs as protagonists, now the audience is stuck rooting for a truck driver who has no history with the audience and no idea what's really going on. It's a bit of an odd turn for the film to take. It's also something of a disappointment that the bad guys are the authors of their own misfortune. Again, after the dogs have worked so hard to rescue the puppies and return home, why not give them the opportunity of striking the final blow? Instead, the bad guys can...

Richard Williams (left) and Ken Harris Spline Doctors has an audio interview with Richard Williams where he talks about his experiences with animators Ken Harris and Milt Kahl. Williams also talks about the creation of his new instructional DVD series. (link via Alan Cook .)

Emru as I remember him. Emru Townsend passed away last night after a lengthy battle with leukemia. I can't remember how and when I first "met" Emru. He was probably the one to contact me in the days when the internet was mostly usenet groups and email lists. He approached me to write about the production of Monster By Mistake and I was grateful for the opportunity. He was the editor of fps , a Canadian magazine devoted to animation and my TV special was an early example of an all-cgi half hour. He gave me another chance to publicize the show when it went to series and I continued to write reviews for fps thereafter when it migrated to the web . Emru and I were also members of Apatoons , a private publication about animation that's been going on longer than The Simpsons . I only met Emru face to face two or three times, and I think that all the meetings may have taken place at the Ottawa Animation Festival. The one thing that struck me about Emru in person was h...

Here is a CBC news clip from 1961 where Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna explain the production process for making TV cartoons. It's a shame that the clip is in such poor shape. One of the interesting things is the casual sexism. "Girls" do ink and paint, but a "man" paints the backgrounds. Welcome to the era of Mad Men and Wilder's The Apartment . If you can identify any of the artists who appear on screen, please comment. (Thanks to Chris Walsh for pointing me to this.)

I've updated the template to this blog so that "older posts" appears at the bottom of each page. This has also allowed me to add links to the mosaics of 101 Dalmatians and Pinocchio . Previously, only a portion of those entries was accessible through the tags and now all of them are. Thanks to Alan Cook for pointing me in the right direction, even though it took me weeks to finally get to this. I've also added a category called "Favourite Entries." Right now, the only thing there is the major research paper I wrote for my Masters degree. Other items will eventually be added. I regret that Blogger puts the most recent entries first. If you're interested in following the feature mosaics or my paper, you've got to start at the bottom and work your way to the top. I've added all my old links and tested them, but if you note any problems with the new set-up, please leave me a comment and I'll do my best to correct them. Clay Kaytis at The...

Over at popmatters.com , there's a review of Madagascar 2 which includes this interesting take on modern family films: Many know it as the Fox/Dreamworks design, and it goes a little something like this: hire yourself a group of recognizable voice actors, preferably from mediums (TV, music) that provide some conceptual crossover appeal; take your spec screenplay and strip it of anything remotely resembling complicated characterization or narrative; insert multiple examples of lame pop culture quipping, everything from tempered Top 40 hits to fame whore in-joking; offer up a few mindless musical montages; and don’t forget the borderline offensive toilet humor and bodily fluid/noises jokes. Wrap it all up in a ribbon of riot act ridiculousness, a level of ADD inspired attention spanning that will leave the underaged spent and the adult feeling they got their Cineplex-inflated money’s worth, and you’ve got a F/D derivative. And a big fat hit, probably. At Cinematech , Scott Kirsner ...