A Quick Note About Animation

I reactivated my Tumblr blog to begin posting my finalized comic, and one post explained how North American 2D animation seemed to flourish in the 90s before it suddenly stopped. 

One blogger explained they didn't understand as a child viewer, but after working in the arts and speaking to peers in the animation industry, they learned one of the main reasons was: unions. The European and Asian animation industries continued to put out innovative products while North American animation's lack of unionization stunted its growth.

I have been reading Japanese Anime/Manga magazines since the 90s, and learned that even in Japanese animation, how toxic the profession is to its animators, even when a studio does well in bestselling/award-winning titles. Even when a series grows an international fanbase. 

More endless reasons for why the creative/performing arts continue to be defunded and/or underfunded...

Because Society LOVES its arts to consume, but won't LOVE its creators to enough to sustain them.

Got Back Into BL(Boy's Love)

I'm really glad I'm getting more into the Boy's Love(BL) genre now. Because years ago, there was a lot of problematic elements in it being worked through and even the genre's fans pointed them out. Probably being a newbie to this medium, I may have taken those problematic elements for granted and unfortunately, may even have adopted them into my own works. 

MY LOVE MIX-UP!(2021) [1 season/10 eps] based on the manga series by the same name "Kieta Hatsukoi" by Wataru Hinekure Watch the series on Viki now! Or on YouTube!

MY BEAUTIFUL MAN(2021) [6 eps] adapted from the novel "He, Who Is Beautiful" by Nagira Yuu Watch the series on Viki! Or on YouTube!

Animate Your Life

I watch a series called "Anime Supernova" which showcases rising star animators in Japan. I still like cartoons and animations as an adult. I also like overseas and foreign cartoons/animations.

I had an art teacher in middle school whom I couldn't stand. She wouldn't really teach us and she let the bullies run the classroom. I often got in trouble with her, not because I was a bully, but because I dared to stand up and fight back those bullies.

With Mother's Day was coming up, that's when she was teaching us how to use a kiln and make our own pottery. I wanted so much to make something but the jerk told me I was in trouble again and allowed the idiots in the class to make drinking mugs for their mothers while I had nothing for my own mom.

The experience hurt me so much that I shied away from pottery for a long time. The only good thing that moron teacher did for me was have us watch a lot of foreign animation shorts. A lot of my classmates were bored by this, but I ate it up. She did this instead of actually teaching, but I didn't care. While in that darkened classroom, I could escape. Dream. There were no troublemakers. And no bad teachers. Only imagination.

Years after I moved on, that teacher gave my dad a message that I must keep in touch with her. I refused. Anyway, I got better art teachers for 11th and 12th grade as well as in community college.

Imagine Nation (Pop culture TV show)

Imagine Nation is a show on NHK World TV's channel (a Japanese news' channel for English-speaking viewers) that deals with anime, manga, animation, video games, cartooning, and speaking to industry insiders. The show is less than half an hour and I'll talk about it in another post. Right now, I want to bring up a quote I wrote down.

"There are things I don't want others to know about me. And there are things about people close to me that I wouldn't want to have disclosed either. I feel the same way about characters. I mean, not everything has to be revealed to the readers, because it's more beautiful when some things are left unsaid. I think the readers will appreciate it more." - Reiko Shimizu (mangaka)

This is an important quote to a writer from a comic writer. I don't know how to better place this in the context of the life of writing. The best I can understand from this quote from Mangaka (Comic writer) Reiko Shimizu is that a writer, not even the creator of whatever given media can absolutely know every bit and detail about one's characters. These clues may only be revealed in the process of writing. While in the moment of writing one's story can the stranger become the friend. The unfamiliar becomes the familiar. What is the mystery can only be understood and revealed through the active process of WRITING.

To learn more about "Imagine Nation" the show:

Imagine Nation official site

Imagine Nation On Demand

Imagine-Nation on NHK-World on Facebook

Random Rant That I Have Given Much Thought To

I'm a college lab tutor and so my students are from FOOHS (Fresh out of high school) to their 50s.

Many of my early 20s-30s students tell me how their families harass them for being 'nerdy' and preferring to: read manga/comics, watch anime/cartoons, and even *gasp* dare I say it? Play video games!

My students confide in me and when I hear these laments over and over, I get irate. There are so many temptations in this world.

I asked a student why were her parents so angry at her for staying in on a Friday night? And for staying in to read MANGA!

As a late teens to early thirties, there are so many temptations in this world, so many bad things to be involved in. One can be addicted to drugs, sex, alcohol, or even run away to join a cult! Instead, one's LARPing? Playing D&D, doing podcasting...

And these aren't considered by parents and guardians to be the healthier alternatives!? I'm confused.

I'm one of the guests on a podcast!

Check out @LEXFactorShow's Tweet: https://twitter.com/LEXFactorShow/status/752156438584176641?s=09

Happy New Year!

'Have A Happy New Year' From 'Rudolph's Shiny New Year': http://youtu.be/ghQI-3MGt5A

Dreaming with Winsor McCay

I just found a veritable treasure on OnDemand: "The Cartoons of Winsor McCay" for Turner Classic Movies.

Winsor McCay was a prolific creator, producing significant works on paper and on screen. In the TCM film, his friends would challenge him to do the impossible and he would always deliver!

Other works included How the Mosquito Operates (1912), The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918 - his cartoon is the only recording of one of the worst disasters in recent memory -- after the Titanic) Bug Vaudeville (1921) Dream of the Rarebit Fiend (1921) and more. 

More famously known for Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) and Little Nemo In Slumberland (1911 - he penned both comic strip & cartoon), McCay's works were so innovative and revolutionary that his contemporaries, other animators of the day, could not replicate what he did.

While working on a project, McCay would experiment and invent techniques to maximize the beauty of his drawings and enhance the storytelling. He literally was 'making it up as he went along'! 

Unlike the animation of the early 1900s, 1910s, and the 1920s, McCay's cartoons were naturalistic and his ink work smooth. 

I thought Disney's "Fantasia", which helped to cement my love of centaurs, was a pioneering piece, and it was. But among completed works and fragments, McCay had made a 'centaur story' BEFORE Disney, called, what else? Centaurs!

Upon viewing the films, Winsor McCay's stories are whimsical and dreamlike, while being rooted in the modern world. 

In the Rarebit Fiend, while both in bed, a husband is admonished by his wife for eating the cooked rabbit meal so close to bedtime. The wife tells him, 'you get such queer [strange] dreams!' To which he replies, 'But I can't help myself! I just love rarebit when it's cooked so well!'

The story that follows 'Rarebit Fiend' shows the wife's dreams this time. The husband has made their house flying-ready, with the help of an engine in its attic, wings on both sides, and a propeller through the front door. The house then flies about the city, causing mischief, even dumping the local water tower's water on a temperance meeting [please look that up]. 

In Bug Vaudeville, after receiving a hand-out from someone in the neighborhood, a hobo [homeless man] decides to take a nap under a tree that's beside a lake, and starts dreaming about dancing insects.

In The Pet, a stray puppy is taken in, until it starts to grow so fast, that it devours furniture, the family parrot, and even outgrows the neighborhood once ingesting rat poison bought by the husband from the local druggist [that's pharmacy to us].

Dreams and dream haze play prominent in McCay's storytelling, but he doesn't sacrifice concrete details for the sake of whimsy.

In How the Mosquito Operates, a mosquito --incorrectly made male by its Stetson hat, jacket and briefcase --goes to 'work' on a hapless sleeping man. McCay shows the man to have wrinkles, sagging jowls and fat rolls at his head and neck, such attention to reality in such an absurd story! 

Winsor McCay-biographer, John Canemaker, is an authority on animation and films as well as a lecturer at New York University. He is also a watercolor artist.

During the airing of "The Cartoons of Winsor McCay" he co-host the feature with Robert Osborne, host of the TCM channel.

McCay would continue to push the envelope in animation and be its pioneer. That is, until a certain young man known as Walt Disney came along...

I watched "Frozen"!

[SPOILER-FREE "FROZEN" REVIEW] 
Ok, so Mom and I finally saw "Frozen" over the weekend. We also plan to see Mr. Miyazaki's "The Wind Rises", but that later.

First, if you're like me, Disney had begun to get on my nerves for several reasons: their lack of diverse character ethnicity, stereotypical ideas of gender roles, annoying sidekicks that you wanted to choke, and the nauseating musical scores that seemed to pop up at the most inopportune times.

For those that may not be in the know, "Frozen" is a loosely-based adaptation of Mr. Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen" for a contemporary audience.

"Frozen" is the story of two sisters in Norway, Elsa (the Queen) and younger Anna (the princess). There are the prerequisite dire circumstances that bring about dire consequences, but, Disney has arrived, mature, sophisticated and worldly.

The characters act as real sisters: one was beautiful, demure, insecure and reserved, while the other was cute, socially awkward, self-deprecating and hyperactive. Yet, they resembled physically enough to look like siblings and had similar interests though they came about those interests in unique ways.

The songs were not the mind-numbing, noise pollution of old, the bane of many musical animations.
Each song in "Frozen" rose organically. "Do You Wanna Build a Snowman?" is the song that not only shows the emotional dynamics between the sisters, but, sets them up for a fall later.

Next are the men, Hans and Kristoff. Hans is a prince and the most well-developed character that no one expects in a Disney film.
Kristoff is an everyman, with his prerequisite animal companion, a reindeer named Sven (I don't think many of Disney's animals constitute as 'pets'. They've moved beyond to an almost symbiotic bond with their human counterparts).
Wait for the inside-joke Kristoff says when he introduces his reindeer companion.

Olaf is a snowman and the required 'Disney Sidekick' or 'schtick'. Don't hate him. Don't judge him. He is adorable, and amiable enough to the other characters, and Disney gave him the showmanship of the actors of old (Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland) and other stars from the 30s-50s. 
He sings and dances as if in a famous MGM Musical during that studio's golden age. The animators even make his lips quiver as he belts out part of his songs! Olaf wasn't annoying, he didn't screw up any plans, but was actually of help and meaning to all the cast. In his naivete', he still possessed wisdom.

"Frozen" is also PRETTY. It's just enough to make one reach towards the screen to touch someone's cheek. The snowscape becomes its own character in the film. The level of detail makes "Avatar" look like a 2-D animation. Sorry, this film was just pure SUGAR COATED EYE CANDY, and for Disney animators to have used such a limited palate of cool colors (blues, greens, whites, grays), this was an impressive feat of design indeed.

Also, I had mentioned on YT that there were so many references I picked up on, and I know it will be like reading a book again: you will see more that you missed the previous times.

Wait for Olaf's singing "In Summer". There is a reference to the "Coppertone" ads and the more obvious MGM musical feats.
Lastly is Anna singing "For the First Time In Forever", there are Disney versions of actual paintings in the palace ballroom. As an Art Major, I recognized a few. See if you can spot them.

And, did I mention the humor? The humor was mature and worldly. Wait for Kristoff's take on life and how he interacts with Sven. Wait for Anna's self-deprecation. Wait for Olaf. No juvenile fart-jokes to be heard here. Disney animations have FINALLY grown up. And they still retain their child-like qualities to be fun for everyone. Bravo Disney. Bravo "Frozen". You've restored my faith in your studio.

Oh, how can I NOT mention the pre-feature? Adorable. Cute! Also, please wait until the credits to see a little surprise at the end.

Early influences..Part 2

I've wanted to read "The Secret of NiMH" since I watched the Don Bluth animated feature back in 1985.

When I lived in Jamaica for a couple of years with relatives, the film had captured most of my schoolmates' imagination as well as their parents' pocketbooks - at the time, a graphic novel based on the animation sold like hot cakes on the island. When I borrowed a classmate's, I was a little disappointed by the illustrations, even noting that characters were often disproportionate to their portrayal on film.

Mind you, 8-year-old me didn't think this, it just seemed off, but then age and experience made me realize what I just told you.

I feel blessed that often, many of the animated features I watched as a child, I later read the book.
For example, "The Last Unicorn", "Watership Down", "The Return of the King", and "The Hobbit".

Right now, in my 30s, I made it a point to read "The Secret of NiMH" which is actually "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NiMH" (the original title!).

And get this: Author Robert C. O' Brien, who wrote the original book, his daughter, Author Jane Leslie Conly, ended up creating two books based on the first!
So I ended up reading her "Racso and the Rats of NiMH" and "R.T., Margaret and the Rats of NiMH" before reading the original story!

This story helped to perceive animal stories as true literature, and not simply as 'kiddie fiction', though there is nothing wrong with that as long as the story is written with the best of intentions.

Early influences..

NOTE: Originally written on Dec. 29, 2009

At 6, 7, or 8, when I watched "Star Wars", the animated "Lord of the Rings" and "Watership Down", I didn't know, at the time, that it would foster my 4 biggest interests: Animation, SF, Fantasy, and Anthropomorphic.

All those 70s Disney nature movies, as well as the phenomenal "Wild America", and public TV nature shows, plus all those children books with talking animals, including Saturday early afternoon's "Storybook", would be the clincher that made me love writing and drawing animal characters.