Sm;)e

This makes me smile. Mona Lisa is seen through the eyes of 6 and 7 year-olds and a few grown-ups. Another great project from illustrator Marion Deuchers, with animation by studio aka in the UK. The book makes me happy too. 

Some of my favorite Mona Lisa smiles. More can be seen here. 

See a whole crowd of Mona's here.

The Lost and Found

This post goes out to my friend Tom Boucher, who gave a memorable "Tom Talk" to my experimental type class several years ago. He spoke for an entire hour about finding a bell hanging on a hedge and in short, relating it to a philosophical approach to design; to always be open to wonder, and to discovery, as this can lead to creative solutions.
     Historical fragments are found everywhere, just as illustrated in this lovely animated poem. This video fragment was found by way of Peter Mendelsund's site, Jacket Mechanical. It is the animation work of his new right-hand man, Pablo Delcán. The two minute video, Historical Fragment was written by Éireann Lorsung and included in her book of poetry entitled Her book (real name, no kidding) from Milkweed Editions. With story credits by Pablo Delcán and Brian Rea (who also has drawing credits), this animation is a lovely story about finding cards; or that lucky charm and historical fragment which ignites wonder. Designers take note: this should be a lesson and reminder to continually explore; be receptive; and be a vessel for new discoveries; as you just never know what juju will fuel creativity.
     Many years ago, I stumbled upon this juju on a wooded trail in my neighborhood: two different series of trading cards. One with Christopher Reeve as Superman; Man of Steel, Man of Action and Man of Lycra, issued by DC Comics in 1978, and another of 1977 Star Wars cards with a puzzle on back. Both series were originally part of a Topps Bubblegum package of photo cards which included ten cards, one sticker and one lousy stick of bubblegum. While they never triggered any creative solutions—yet—there is no reason they couldn't. I may yet design a series of trading cards for Letterology. Who knows? And to whomever discarded these lost or stolen trading cards; I surely hope you enjoyed the stick of bubblegum.  

Turning to other serendipitous fragments just discovered as I write: For those of you in my hood...the poet, writer, and designer Éireann Lorsung will be doing a reading from Her book at Seattle's Elliot Bay Bookstore in Seattle this Tuesday, July 30th at 7pm. Find out more details about this event and other readings here.
     Designer Pablo Delcán's recent work is also not to be missed. As one of his first exercises at Pantheon Books, aside Peter Mendelsund, Delcán took on Vladimir Nobokov's The Tragedy of Mr. Morn with great success. Read more about it on Jacket Mechanical where you can follow links to many more fascinating fragments.  


      

Paper Revolution

A stop-motion animation by UK photographer Chris Turner and crew who performed magic to illustrate the vital lifecycle of a drop of water. This one minute and forty-five second short took nearly one year to make and involved over a thousand stills of pure paper engineering pleasure by Helen Friel. Animation by Jess Deacon.
::From Colossal via faith is torment


An animation of Helen Friel making her book Revolution.

Lettering Works

I'm back to work after a sunny break in Arizona this week and featuring the lovely lettering work of NYC artist and designer Jeff Rogers. His lettering work looks a lot like play. 

Old Skull

Old school next to graveyard finds new life. From Master YY.

Book Surfing

That does it. I have got to learn how to do stop animation. This imaginative work by Salon Alpin, is as much about surfing as it is about books and taking on life's new challenges. It had to be an incredible challenge just to make this story about a bookmark who takes up surfing on the pages of an open book. The team Alpin folks have to be surfers, as every wave, every crest, every splash and nuance of the surfing is spot on. Even the glare of the sun on the curl of the wave brings me back to the beach. After you watch the original, you can learn how it was done here, here and then here. Truly a delight.   

The Man With the Beautiful Eyes

This five minute animated poem is the result of a beautiful collaboration between producer Jonathan Hodgson, gifted illustrator Jonny Hannah, and the poetry of Charles Bukowski (1920-1994). There is not one wasted word, line, nor brushstroke in all of it. The Man With the Beautiful Eyes was produced in the year 2000, and has collected countless awards including the BAFTA (British Academy for Film and Television Arts), for short animation. After featuring the Bukowski poem narrated by Tom Waits here last week, I happily discovered this jewel, and had to add it to the mix. So much of Hannah's illustration work includes hand lettering with roots in 19th century styles. Watch closely for Hannahs' strokes of lettering genius dash across the screen. This is the kind of work by which all others will be judged.    

Tom Waits Reads Bukowski

A short animation of Charles Bukowski's poem, The Laughing Heart, read by Tom Waits. Produced in 2011 by Bradley Bell for a student project at the Chelsea College of Art and Design. For another take, you can watch Waits read this same poem in 2008, along with another by Bono. 
::H/t to Mix

Is Nothing Original?

Seattle artist, and friend of Letterology, Drew Christie, hits another one into the bleachers with his latest animation short, Allergy to Originality. It was featured on the New York Times Op-Docs site along with his story about the making of his animation. { Read and watch the short over here! } Very timely, as misrepresentation, plagiarism, and the declaration of originality has been much in the news of late.
      Something very familiar struck me as I watched Drew's video: his drawings of the theater box office are direct copies of the iconic Neptune Theater in Seattle. Illustrated point taken! I was slow to his Hall of Mirrors portrayal of originality and the creative process, but I love his sense of irony! Not only is his animation chock-full of unattributed images and literary references, he claims the two main characters are modeled after famed Russian filmmakers, Andrei Tarkovsky and Sergei Eisenstein. In the process of animating this short, Drew copied images and photographs and traced innumerable drawings, and then photocopied these to further illustrate the concept of derivative works. Below is a look behind the scenes at some of his work on this animation. Drew is most definitely an original!

Words of Mystery

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "every word was once a poem", but where do these words come from? Independent filmmaker Jessica Oreck unfolds some of the etymological meaning of words in her new animated mini-series, Mysteries of Vernacular. Each word is skillfully constructed within the pages of old books, then animated in a 90 second short, often taking 80 hours or more to create. When complete, the Mysteries' shorts will contain 26 installments of word origins in alphabetical order. By day, Oreck produces documentary films on such topics as Russian folktales against a backdrop of war in The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga, and Arctic Cowboys, about reindeer herders in Finnish Lapland. The Mysteries mini-series began as a fun exercise in more immediate gratification, in contrast to these lengthy documentaries. To date she has completed three shorts, for the words Clue, and Pants, and Assassin, however three more word stories are said to be in the wings and should be posted soon.

::Via A Little House in the Clouds

Imagine That

 A compelling case about ideas; how they happen and how they can be learned, as author Jonah Lehrer so creatively demonstrates in his new book Imagine, How Creativity Works. Lehrer also writes a great science blog, Frontal Cortex, which is included in the Wired Science network of all-star science blogs, and is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and Radiolab, the radio show about curiosity and ideas. His own website is somewhat like a real mindmap. Oh, and the fun live drawing in this video? It is done by cartoonist Flash Rosenberg.
:: Via the Curious Brain

An Alternate 3D Univers

Second year design student Sean Loomis takes on a 3D Univers, and deconstructs all 26 letters of the alphabet with hand-cut and folded paper for his recent experimental type project. Using stop-motion animation, he films the distorted uppercase letters with a revolving motion until each one comes into vision, closely resembling Adrian Frutigers' original designs for Univers 59 Ultra Condensed. Nicely synced with a soundtrack by the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, (Ok, Across the Universe might have been too obvious a choice), Sean's alternate condensed universe is a great experimental adventure.

xType on Center Stage

Each year about this time I feature the work of many of my Experimental Typography students which happen to be some of my favorite posts. After five years of teaching this class (it took a vacation last year ;), I am happy to say my students just keep raising the type bar. This time around, I would like to introduce the video Alphabemation, which was created by second year design student Brie Elam. This was her first attempt at animation, and it is a remarkable piece of work with over 1300 images she created with clay letters and compiled into a stop-motion video using Adobe Premiere and iMovie. The music which is so beautifully synced with it is by the Cinematic Orchestra. Any animation is a leap of faith until the final editing and assembly is completed, and I am so delighted with the outcome of Brie's ambitious work. The xType assignment (a technical type term I coined for this experimental class) was just one among many, many which she and other students had to complete this Winter quarter. Now their work deserves to take center stage. Many more of my students' various xType projects are waiting in the green room for their cameo appearances. Please stand by.

And The Oscar Goes To

The Envelope Please

I am going out on a short limb here with my prediction for tonight's Oscar winner of animation short. Last year my prediction of Shaun Tan's The Lost Thing, won this category rightly so, as it clearly stood out from the pack. Last week I watched all of this years' nominees for animated shorts and I feel there is another film short which really is a knockout: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, created by William Joyce and crew at Moonbot Studios in Shreveport, LA. Mr. Lessmore is a story about books and our hold on them, but this is not the entire reason it is my first choice. It is also the story which inspired their story and the production which went into making it.  
      I am so impressed with the work of all of these animators and the importance of the stories they tell. For years now I have been watching the work of Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis of Montreal. Their fabulous short Wild Life—also an Oscar nominee—is a very strong contender, but their storyline is not as moving as Mr. Lessmore. Twice this past year I have posted about the fantastic Mr. Lessmore and this may not be the last. I won't go on, but you can watch trailers of all tonites' contenders and judge for yourself. I'm just sayin'.

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . 
Post-Oscar-Script:
Well this is a very sweet ending to a tale inspired in equal parts by Hurricane Katrina, The Wizard of Oz, Buster Keaton and the redemptive powers of storytelling. Mr. Dumpty will now have even more reason to smile when he shares a bookshelf with Mr. Oscar. ;)

Drawing on Local Talent

Some Crazy Magic: Meeting Harry Smith from Drew Christie on Vimeo.

Local Seattle artist Drew Christie continues to surprise me. From his shiny new website comes another one of his endearing animations, fully illustrated in loving detail. This is a strange little story about a strange little man, Harry Everett Smith (1923-1991) who was an American archivist, ethnomusicologist, student of anthropology, record collector, experimental filmmaker, artist, bohemian and mystic. Even more strange, he was also a gifted magician. In one of the many bios about him, it states: Smith's broad range of interests resulted in a number of collections. He donated the largest known paper airplane collection in the world to the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. He was a collector of Seminole textiles and Ukrainian Easter Eggs. He also considered himself the world's leading authority on string figures, having mastered hundreds of forms around the world.   
      Drew enjoys stories and music and this one is like a 3 minute novel told to him by noted musician and filmmaker John Cohen. Not only that, but Drew can seriously draw and hand letter. He also performed the music soundtrack to this short. Check out his blog and store featuring posters, books, original prints and DVDs of his animations. (I featured his lovely animated music video for a Moondoggies song >here< in October 2010). You can also place a custom order or subscribe to the Drew Quarterly and receive a surprise package 4x a year! 

      Serious sidenote: Drew's crazy nice website was designed by my 2 former students Andrew Nedimyer and Barry Sevig of Camp Doug. I cannot claim any credit for their fine digital doings sadly, but they are also a digital design duo to put on the To Watch List! I'm quite proud of them both!

The Curative Power of Storytelling

A wonderful story about books brought to us by author, illustrator and animator William Joyce and the team at Moonbot. The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is full of detail and theater with many book-related themes going on in some of the backgrounds of the story. Check out a previous short about the iPad version of this story I posted here earlier.

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore available in the iTunes App Store for $4.99. You can even get a Moonbot case for your iPad that looks like the cover of the book.

An Animated Sentence

Another stunning illustrated short from local Seattle artist, Drew Christie for electric literature, promoters of writers and the short story. Inspired by one selected sentence, Drew animated a short for Nathan Englander's story, The Reader, about a discouraged author haunted by his one remaining reader. Combined with the moody music of Michael Guggino, his short animation sets the tone of a haunting landscape and I wonder if Englander's story can measure up to this dreamy sneak preview. Drew is an amazing talent of many skills and comes by his first name quite honestly. He is a prolific artist and would often turn out drawings on every page of old discarded books for his animated shorts. He tells stories by drawing on historical events such as the assassination of Lincoln which took 12 entire paperback books to complete. His lovely music video for the Moondoggies song, Empress of the North, is a must see. I posted it here a little over a year ago. So is History is Us, his short animation for the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI) in Seattle. To see far more of Drew's drawings, check out Democracy for the Cartoons. Some mighty fine work there!

The Fantastic Flying Books Bedtime Story

From the hand of legendary author / illustrator William Joyce of Toy Story and A Bug's Life comes the iPad app for The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. Joyce teamed up with his friends at Moonbot Studios to create this interactive iPad book-app around the story and animated film that accompanies it. There are many twists and turns you can take in this narrative bedtime story that blurs the line between books and animation. Every page is supposed to have some delightful animated cue built in to navigate. This is what eBooks are designed to do best. Of course it doesn't hurt to have the Emmy award-winning animation of William Joyce to produce it all. John Pavlus over at Co. Design has a wonderful write-up on this iPad app by Joyce and company today. The app is available in the iTunes App store for $4.99.

Forgetfulness

Forgetfulness - Billy Collins Animated Poetry from smjwt on Vimeo.

You can view a better quality version of Forgetfulness and watch many more shorts of Billy Collins animated poetry here—each animated by a different artist. Collins poetry together with the animation of Julian Grey of Head Gear is enough to brighten any day! Thanks Sam!