In his brief stay on this world, Egon Schiele managed to overturn many cultural and social notions of painting and art. Schiele’s work is raw and erotic- even by current standards. In the early 1900’s his paintings ended up landing him in prison for “obscenity”. I find his work wonderful- particularly the oddly skewed nature of the figures. I wish I could more eloquently describe it for you, but perhaps just looking at the work will do a better job:

Self Portrait with Hand on Cheek, Egon Schiele, 1910

Seated Female Nude with Raised Right, Egon Schiele, 1910

Self Portrait with Winter Cherry, Egon Schiele, 1912

Striding Torso in Green Blouse, Egon Schiele, 1913

Sinking Sun, Egon Schiele, 1913

And my favorite:

Seated Woman with Bent Knee, Egon Schiele, 1917

As some of you may know, I am working on an animation that reflects legal jurisdiction issues. The animation uses a metaphor of squirrels living in a big tree…

The audio levels need to be messed with, it’s a bit quiet. And the voice will be slightly higher in pitch.

In any case, I have to animate like a madman if I want to pump out 2 and a half minutes this week. So here is my first whack at the animation- The first segment of the film:

I’m fairly happy with it. I’d love to make the branch shake and such, but I may have to go back and do it later. For now I need to get a bare-bones version done for next week.-Tom

Recently, a friend of mine came across the blog of animator Chris Harding. After a few minutes of reading the blog out-loud (in a less-than subtle way of catching my attention) my friend aroused my interests and I began to read the blog, too (sometimes out-loud as well).

Chris Harding is quite an inspirational animator. His approach to animation as the vehicle of an idea yields work with thought and direction- rather than being some aggregation of punchlines and plot twists. Here is one of his films:

View Harding’s animated short: Learn Self Defense

I’d also like to share some passages of his that I found particularly insightful:

The only way for me to motivate myself is with ideas. If I’m in love with an idea enough, and I can’t communicate that idea by any other method I feel the strong need to animate it. -Cold Hard Flash Interview

What are animated shorts good for in the world? Maybe they make someone laugh for a couple seconds, but so does an ill-timed fart. I hope in the long run there’s a little bit more value to this work than a puff of gas and noise. If not, we should all go be paramedics and put ourselves to better use. - Present Magazine

If you know me you’ve probably heard me quote this from Bertolt Brecht:

Organization

Mr. K. once said: ‘The thinking man does not use one light too many, one piece of bread too many, one idea too many.’

And here is Chris Harding’s take:

The whole goal with short films is to distill an idea down to its essence without being simplistic. So you keep honing until you’re left with all the necessary information, and not one speck more.

So as you see, I was right all along… Well, at least another person out there sees things similarly. I’m thankful that Chris maintains a blog and I hope to see more work from him in the future.

If you want an inspired laugh, read Chris Harding’s About page. It is quite fun (and delightfully satirical).

-Tom

There is one particular story in Stories of Mr. Keuner that I want to put up here. I wrote about Bertolt Brecht’s book of short stories in an earlier post, but I forgot to mention one of my favorites:

Mr. Keuner and his niece’s drawing

Mr. Keuner looked at the drawing his little niece had made. It depicted a hen flying over a farmyard. “Tell me, why does your hen have three legs?” asked Mr. Keuner. “Hens can’t fly, of course,” said the little artist, “and so I needed a third leg to give it a lift.”

“I’m glad I asked,” said Mr. Keuner.

There is something quite breathtaking about the way children think. I often find that when I am speaking to a child, my brain has moments of complete upheaval- a very healthy exercise I believe. The last toddler I spoke with told me she was a horse. I asked her what kind of animal I was- she told me she didn’t know. I offered a suggestion: how about a raccoon? She told me that I could not be a raccoon, because horses are allergic to raccoons and, obviously, she wasn’t having allergic reactions.

After that she proceeded to bludgeon me with a pillow.

-Tom

This is a cover of Tumble and Fall by Feeder.

It’s not the best cover, but its a really fun song to sing.

Here is the video:

Lalalala…
-Tom

So I have this tattered copy of “Scary Stories” by Alvin Schwartz. I’ve had the thing since I was very young, and to this day it grips me with fear.

I don’t recall ever actually reading it… (maybe one or two stories, but I thought they were boring- for very young children).

The reason the book is so memorable (and the reason I am writing a post about it) is decidedly due to a man from St. Paul, Minnesota. His name is Stephen Gammell… and he terrifies me. I think the first time I opened the book (probably in Kindergarten) I turned to the page below and curled up into a ball.

But despite not having the courage to open the book again, the small toddler version of me bought the damn book- so that I could take it home and be too scared to open it there.

Eventually, I did open the book again. And found the illustrations still terrified me. But I also found that the illustrations were magnificent. Here are a few more of Stephen Gammell’s drawings:

This next character appears in multiple pages throughout the book. I’m not sure if there is some particular significance to him, but here he is eating some bloody looking cereal:

I am very intrigued by the way strands of goop seem to stretch off of every mark. The drawings become very tangible- like I might get some on me if I brushed my hand over them…

Stephen Gammell has had illustrations in a number of other books. He won the Caldecott Medal for his work in “Song and Dance Man” by Karen Ackerman. I highly recommend checking out some of his other works (They aren’t all so gruesome).

Sweet dreams,
-Tom

I’m lucky enough to be working with Dr. Browne to possibly be publishing a set of animations to accompany a 1700 page book his wife is writing. I am going to be representing the choices involved in going between Federal and State court- all with squirrels.

I’m really excited for the project- I love the idea of taking dry academic material and making something engaging with it.

So here are some of my drawings of the squirrels. I tried to really break it down to shapes.

My rough squirrel concept:

Stern Squirrel:

Beaming Squirrel:

Eating an Acorn:

Walking:

Running:

Hope you like it,

-Tom

I’ve been really interested in After Effects lately. I animated the following piece in After Effects using the push-pin tool in about a day. It is a fairly intuitive tool.

Here is the vid- no sound- (It is a freelance piece for some online show about losing weight):

-Tom