"Beauty is the New Ugly"

An article written by my esteemed colleague Zachary Franzen.

Zach works at Portland Studios as blog administrator, writer, and art production assistant.

Behold, an excerpt:

There’s an Albanian story about a guy who comes to New York City. His friends enthusiastically guide him to the Empire State Building. “The Americans constructed it in the 1930s” they say, “It is 1,454 feet tall and it cost over 24 million dollars to build. They built the whole thing in one year and 45 days.” The Albanian looks the building up and down for a moment. He is unimpressed. He puts his hand to his chin, then shrugs his shoulders and says, “We could tear it down in a day.”

Destruction as a creative act is the unimpressive center of contemporary art. When ordinary middle class people look at a modern exhibition and say, “my kid could do that,” they say it in a lowered voice–the voice reserved for secrets. You wacky bourgeoisie, it’s no secret! If you were to tell one of these exhibitors, “I don’t see any beauty in your work,” they would look at you and say, “I don’t see your point.”

Most folks perceive Beauty and art to be intertwined–Shakespeare, the Sistine Chapel, Beethoven’s ninth, and all that. However, the aristocracy of contemporary art (read: NYC gallery curators) sees art and beauty as completely opposite, if not opposing, elements.

Here's is the article in its entirety.

The above bird man is completely unrelated. Never mind him, please.

EXPOSÉ

Submitting more work for another book, EXPOSÉ. This one is comprised entirely of digitally created art.

From their site:
About Ballistic Publishing We are dedicated to producing books of highest quality celebrating the talents of digital artists worldwide. Ballistic Publishing is an independent publisher based in Adelaide, South Australia, with offices in Melbourne (Victoria, Australia) and Tampa (Florida, USA).

This is a little different because you can see what everyone has submitted. It is a minefield. Proceed, if you must, with caution.

The deadline is tonight, so enter already!

royal buffet

Royal Buffet. A Chinese restaurant? Almost, but better!

It's my sister-in-law Annie's blog/site. And my beloved just wrote a post for it. I guess she is now what you might call a contributing editor.

And she's the prettiest contributing editor I've ever heard of.

---

It is really fantastic blog/site all about painting, design, textiles, fabrics, jewelry making, etc.

It's sort of like a "Drawn!" for the aforementioned painting, design, textiles, fabrics, jewelry making, etc.

Enjoy!

trolls from the past.

Trolls from --you guessed it-- a year ago. I looked in the February 2007 archives and found a lot of boring stuff. But there was this. Which probably made it worth the click. Probably.

thumbnail of it.

O Captain! My Captain!

Happy belated birthday and President's Day, sir.
An older one that seemed appropriate today. One of a series of book covers I did a while back.

blood, sweat, and registration lines.

Earning the sticker.

We've had a sticker on the door to our studio for a while. It reads (as you might imagine) PORTLAND STUDIOS. But below that there are three other words: Illustration, Design and Animation.

We've had illustration covered since the beginning and design came along shortly after but animation?

Animation was just a sticker on the door for a long time. It was a wishful thought comprised of vinyl and some form of adhesive stuck to the glass thing that you open to get into the office.

But no longer.

Portland Studios steps boldly into path carved by the hands of those pencil-testers, key-framers, and in-betweeners who went before us. We fight and we build. We have nothing to offer but blood, sweat, and registration lines.

We are making hand-drawn, 2-D animation.

And lines are moving.

valentimes.

I made a valentine for a friend at work who deserved it. Here it is for your enjoyment:

Here is a sound of it for your enjoyment also.

Setting, interior of Tantive IV
Nerd pt. +1 for Cory
for not having to look up the name of the ship.

The Hows and the Whys:

I had a good comment on my post about the Zune Arts film Le Cadeau du Temps:

While I spent the majority of that earlier post talking about the “how” of the piece I didn’t really get to too much of the “why” or the storytelling or the theory behind it.

Here's the comment, then the why.

Hey! Visually, a beautiful piece of artwork, kudos and congrats on your continued success.

Questions:

Though you say this is the best story done so far, it's still pretty weak in all honesty right? It wasn't clear on first pass why HE was chosen to receive this elixir? Also, the reasoning behind him sharing the elixir (his loneliness) seemed rushed and unclear to me, along with the reason he shares it. I guess it's because he's lonely but it seems, logically, razor thin reasoning though I guess it gets the job done...

Here's my question, you're obviously a wonderfully talented artist, how much input, story wise, where you able or asked to change? Was this a freelance thing sort of setup or was this a directing gig straight up where you had some more leverage in changing the story as you saw fit? Also, did you have any issues with the story and how did you resolve those?

Thanks for any questions answered in advance, again, just looking for info, great work!

_________________________________________

I thought through these questions a lot and spent more time than I meant to formulating a really long, cumbersome answer. Enjoy.

_________________________________________

Thanks very much for your questions. While I spent the majority of the post talking about the “how” of the piece I didn’t really get to too much of the “why.” You’ve raised some legitimate questions and ones that I think merit some thoughtful answers. I’ll address them in order:

Concerning the story: A way to explain it might be, as a friend of mine said recently, and I think pretty obviously so,

“Fairy tales are different from Russian novels.”

You could apply that thought here—a short film about sharing (or not sharing, in this case) isn’t interested in trying to be another Dostoevsky or Tolstoy; it’s an impressionistic and romantic vision of the world—in a nutshell, it’s a fairy tale.

With regards to the “reason” for the gift:

It’s an intentionally dialogue-less piece. Early on the idea of (like the silent film I took visual cues from) incorporating title cards of text came up. I wrote up about 7 or 8 ideas and edited them into the reel. For a two and a half minute piece of animation this took up a lot of time. An early version had a card that read something like, “I am come down to give you a good gift.” This was all like a lot of things, nice, but not necessary for the piece.

I wasn’t interested as much with the “why” he got the gift, but the consequences of an eternal youth potion. Maybe he got it because he’d proved himself worthy in some way earlier in life, maybe it was a test given by a higher power, or maybe (and what I think most likely) it’s along the lines of the old fairy tales of the poor woodchopper who’s just getting by chopping wood in the forest. A beautiful creature explodes into his life and he’s met with an extraordinary vision. His life is changed forever by the appearance of the vision. In the fairy tale the woodchopper is given three wishes. What keeps us reading isn’t the back story of the woodchopper, that’s all assumed, what keeps us reading is what on earth is the man going to do with three wishes.

Ultimately, these were all fine things to have in the back of my head but I didn’t, and still don’t, believe there needed to be an explicitly stated reason why the old man received the potion. I think the viewer with can imagine for his or her self what is the reason. What I want to see, and what I hope the viewer wants to see as well, is what is the man going to do with eternal youth.

As for him sharing the potion, the ideas went back forth. We needed something to communicate instantly and settled on remembering his friends. Traces of the world he knew remain, the bench for example, but though the place is same, everything is changed. In an early draft, (and you can see in the storyboard reel I posted) there was a sequence I loved but unfortunately I had to cut for time. The old man goes home and hides the potion away. We see a family, his family, gathered around the table. All their shadows dance across the wall. We’re fixed on their shadows. We see our protagonist’s shadow and his unmistakable beard join them. Slowly the figures and shadows lengthen all the way up the wall (signifying the progression of time) yet his shadow remains the same. Their shadows stretch and become tombstones. He remains. One version then showed him alone at the table. Another version transitioned to the old man in the graveyard. (Both of these instances were operating under an earlier idea of the potion as an “age-stopper” not a youth potion.)

All that to say, simply, there wasn’t time for this sequence and connecting the man, now old again at the end, with the bench and his friends appearing just felt right. Coupled with what I’d imagine as the weariness of living forever made him want to “make it right.” Obviously he can’t bring his friends back— (even thought it worked to stupendous results in “Los Corazones” ) he’s alone.

The final version of the film has the old man shuffle into the future next to the bench. And while I believe this was the best solution of expressing his loneliness and isolation (while the geographical location is the same he is no longer apart of that world), an earlier draft had him fall to his knees and cover his face. In his desperation he looked up, saw the fountain, and took his chance to give. This sentiment remains intact but is more understated in the final film. It’s not a self-fulfilling, bombastic, operatic moment—it’s the soft fall of piano keys and the realization he’s made a terrible mistake.

The arc of the story follows the blessing, selfishness, journey, and atonement of our protagonist. The concept of sharing is beautiful, but what I like about this story is that it attempts to show selfishness, the reverse of sharing, and its consequences. It’s ultimately a piece about an old man seeking redemption.

In the end he wanted to make it right and share. Loving a gift isn’t complete until it’s shared. And that’s what Zune Arts films are all about—Sharing.

* * *

In answer to your questions regarding input, I was given an idea about the story. As I said before, 72andSunny came up with this idea: a man who finds this magic potion which either keeps him from aging, or makes him grow younger. He doesn't share it. He travels through time, maybe hundreds of years. He comes to a party, seeing friends dancing he is lonely and pours the remaining potion into a punch bowl. He then lies under a tree and sleeps.

Up front they told me that any ideas I had about the story they wanted to hear. They are the real professionals. I was challenged to figure out how the old man got the potion, what the “walk through time” looked like, the mechanics of the potion, etc. I brought up the idea that maybe in the end the old man could pour the potion into a fountain and make the Fountain of Youth. I wanted to the bench to be an emotional anchor throughout the piece; the starting point, the realization point, and the end.

72andSunny gave me the chance and the challenge to really make something. There was open discussion and a free-flow of ideas about every aspect of the film. There were times they asked serious questions about things as seemingly insignificant as color choices in the backgrounds. And I had to defend those choices. Their allowing me to really own the piece gave me a degree of personal attachment and commitment that I’ve only ever felt with my own private work. This was a client piece unlike any I’ve done before. I wanted certain things to look certain ways but I needed good reasons to be able to keep them. There were things I had to let go (the family sequence, for example) but ultimately I was allowed by the producers to influence the film to, I feel, a significant degree. They were fantastic with editing certain parts and keeping things moving along (just compare how slow are some of the places in the first draft of storyboards, especially the star falling.)

I was very happy with the story in the first draft and thrilled with the end product.

Making this short film was an experience I won’t forget easily.

More Minos.

The bull-man. In progress.

Mino

Here's a pretty stylized Minotaur. I had to get it out of my system or I was going to blow up

And here's a really bad quality picture of the real one I 'm working on.

test

This is a simple drawing test done from a photograph of my little cousin Christy. I took the picture of her and drew it 4 times them duplicated them. I'm starting some work with rotoscope animation and this is what I did yesterday afternoon. There's no real movement here, just a pencil test, but I thought it might be interesting all the same.

CODY 2!

Everyone's favorite spy is back in action! Behold the second installment of The Adventures of Cody Webster. The new short is to be released within a week or two, I'm told.

For you enjoyment, here are links related to the first installment as well as the storyboards. Click on the image below.

figure doodles

Here's a handful of loose figures. These are some of the doodles around the edges of a couple other pieces, larger in scope and scale, and hopefully more significant things I'm working on. I'll post more on that in the future sometime.

It dawned on me the other night while working that I either need to seriously improve my figure drawing or quit. Everyone makes up little crutches to hide problems with their drawings (except Michaelangelo) and I've got a ton of them.

The worst part is though, in the end it takes longer to invent these shortcuts and eventually getting around to fixing them than just working hard in the first place.

So, here's to figures.