The future is now

When I was visiting my friend Pier in New Jersey we road the train into the city and went to the Guggenheim.  This was areal treat for me as, being a confirmed "California Savage" it was my first time in New Yawk and I had never been.  There was a small exhibit of Frank Lloyd Writ that Pier wanted to see but the Major exhibition was THE ITALIAN FUTURISTS, a group who I had never heard of (except perhaps in passing) but whose work I found inspirational.

I have always had a "thing" for the 1930s, heck my son is sort of named for Nick Charles after all, so that put this exhibition right in my wheel house.  Additionally, I have always had a "thing" for Italian sensibilities (and women, but we will skip over that).  Finally I have always been a designer trapped in an animator's body.  Put them all together and man, you're in for a internal creative loveliest that is just short of Warhol's dreams.

The artists who stood out most to me was Fortunato Depero, his work just seemed to be animated even when it was stationary.  His ability to make solidly resolved graphic shapes seem to be in motion made me want to experiment with the same ideas in After Effects and MODO, perhaps with a sprinkling of Toonboom for seasoning?

Many of the Futurists stared out as "Turn of the Twentieth Century idealists" but eventually evolved into Mussolini Facists, sort of like starting out sharing a loft with Warhol and eventually becoming a lapdog for the Koch foundation.

I don't know the politics, despite knowing the history, because I never lived in their shoes.  What I do know is that I have always had a fascination for art that is intended to tell a story to influence the underclass and convince them that their despotic leaders really have their "best interests in mind.  From the German and Soviet schools to the "LIFE Magazine glazed doughnut School" this art who central precept, storytelling, has been twisted to a darker cause.  In the futurists though, as in all things Italian, the artists did what they intended but they did it with a style, grace and  sense of humor that was beyond their teutonic brethren.


Italian designers are like that.  At the start of the second world war the Teutonic geniuses from the Black Forrests had the ME-109 as their primary fighter.  Built on an assembly line with subsystems spread all over the Reich (to make sure that ALL the people had a vested interest in their manufacture).  The Italians had the Macchi C.202, whose immediate predecessor had been made of wood like a sailboat.  It was beautiful, agile, light and they could never make enough to keep up...manufacture apparently cut into the workers real lives too much.

At the same time Depero, with typical Italian Pragmatism, moved to New York. Fascism was not his thing but his brothers and sisters in the Futurist movement were becoming affiliated with it.  Depero, who had already been working for Capari (his design for their Soda Bottle is still in use today) and Cinzano.  Depero expanded his work to include Vogue, The New Yorker and Moviemaker magazines.  I think this is where I was originally exposed to his work as much many of his designs are still used to teach Graphic designers to this day.The irony I find in all this is that a designer from the beginnings of the last century, who draped himself in the banner a movement called "The Futurists" produced work a hundred years ago that is still fresh and inspiring today.

Additionally, the art itself seems to have the potential for a new life in the modern tools I use everyday.  For the next few days I am going to be working on a Fly Fishing web side for my pal/patron Wade Lady and I have my catalog of the Futurist exhibit on the bed next to me.  When it gets further along I will post a link.  My goal is to create a site that seems alive and in motion (and looks as far from anything made in WORDPRESS as is possible, I am going to be writing about WORDPRESS soon).

Oh and Pier never got to her Frank Lloyd Wright exhibit, but later that night she took me to Brooklyn and scared the crap outta me so that makes us even.

Take another road

Sometimes it is just a good idea to take a break from what you are doing and...well try something else.  To that end, considering I get more requests for Web Development than for animation these day, I am looking for ways to combine the two.

In the same way that a camera needs to move inside a shot to maintain interest so should a web site change (subtly) around the message, rather then spending its entire existence in a state of permanent "lockdown".

I will let you know when I have some new "internet toys" online...

...and now for something completely different...

Morning all, let me get some coffee to offset the headache from "Grimm Night" at Jim McLeod's place...

I posted this over on FACEBOOK and just called Terry Gilliam a "Major Influence of mine", which hardly covers it but what the heck.

The man on the mountain

There is this story I once heard about a man who lived on a mountain. He was a very clever man but prone to isolation.  He grew his own food and traded with other people very little and kept to himself.  He also spent a lot of time in his workshop.  Most of his life he was working on a fabulous machine, all brass and and pipes, that he thought would change the world.

As he got along in years he finally got his machine to work just the way he wanted it tow work.  He also felt compelled to share it with the rest of the world.  So he packed his blueprints and some sandwiches and started down the mountain to the one shop where he had traded all his life.  He told the shop keeper of his marvelous invention and the shop keeper, not quite sure what the old hermit was babbling, said that there was nothing he could do about it but that if he went down to the end of the road he could get to the big city.

The old man thanked him and made his way down to the end of the road where he had never been. When he arrived he was stunned by the sight of a great glistening steam locomotive pulling into the station. He was at once amazed and heartbroken.  He turned on his heels and headed back up the mountain.  You see he had spent his entire life living apart from his fellow man and because of his isolation he did not know that what he had toiled so hard on, the steam engine, had already been invented.

So I will start the revived Blog off with an old video I just reposted.  I did the basis of this piece in Toonboom Animate, the platform I used before I upgraded to HARMONY and this was a test of using the internal cameras.  The character is based on a guy I worked with at a VW shop in Sacramento, Louie, who was a bit of a back alley philosopher and funny as a summer day is long.  The voice is me because, well I am originally from So Cal and a lot of my friends and their families sounded like this.  Since I have been an auditory chameleon all my life it just figures that something would linger.

I Took this DOWN from YouTube because I had met a woman on a dating site who told me it was racist...as well as one of my other animations of Jefe's Girlfriend Carman for which she branded me a Mysoginist. Why the hell I gave a damn what this stranger thought of my work is a conversation for another day but in the end I like the character and piece in general.

When my son Nicholas was growing up I used to amuse him my array of "Silly Voices" that I have done.  It was a skills he did not inherit directly and he envies, he asked me why I thought I could do this.  After consideration I believe it is because I come from a time where it was OK to be different, that ethnicity wasn't something to be sneered at but also something not to be forgotten. In short, it's wrong for someone in one ethnic group (usually white sad to say but which also can be from other ethnic groups) to demean a member of another group...not cool.  At the same time though it should be OK to celebrate the amazing diversity of the human community.

So what do you think?  Am I a racist or just an animator doing a video about a (late) friend to celebrate what a cool dude he was?

Comments welcome below...

Welcome back...

One more time...THIS TIME with FEELING.  Ever since my old BLOG was hacked by sweaty men in Eastern Europe (the better to sell timeshares to seniors in red states I expect) I have been a trifle "gun shy" about re-entering the blog-o-sphere...but here goes.  I have some new animations that I am working on to post and some new ideas about dealing with the world to share so for those of you who remember the OLD "Revolution Will Be Animated"...welcome back

I am somewhat unclear on the ramifications...

I have begun to sleep with my Camera. As of right now we do not have a carnal relationship but everything has happened so fast between the two of us one never knows.  If I had any close friends, the type I confided in, they might be concerned about this affair but since I walk alone no one wonders...

She came into my life so quickly, one minute an empty box at the check out stand at COSTCO, the next minute the object of my affection, central to my dreams and compliant to my every whim.  She isn't simple, you just have to look at the size of her manual to understand that, but their are so many subtle nuances to her that she never cease to either fascinate or amaze me.

I have gotten smutty with her of late, and she likes it.  At night, when I am alone, I surf the web for toys for her.  I look at the RED ROCK MICRO site and think how sexy she would look in one matte box or another or how a certain set of handle might set off the glint in her one, smooth alluring eye. The eye through which she shows me the world not so much as it really is but how I want it to be.  We both look through her unblinking eye at a world that is both terifying and mundane at once.

Then at night, curled up together, we plot how we will change it for the better...

This is what I have always wanted to do.

...and I don't mean drink whiskey

Put up or shut up

In 1985 I bought an Air Force Compressor and an IWATA HP_B airbrush, the first of many IWATAS.  I had a head full of 80s imagery from the pages of PAPER MOON and ideas from the pages of William Gibson, who I had recently discovered and who I thought was a prophet of the coming age of technology.  I had been dabbling with airbrush art but had suffered from a dearth of quality tools to work with.  With the purchase of the Compressor and the airbrush I had no further excuses.  I had board, I had paint and I had the tools.

It was time to put up or shut up.  I launched on 5 years that shaped the face of my life to date, it led from a duplex on Arden Way in Sacramento to Skywalker Ranch.

I have a secret though, I never really wanted to be an artist, I wanted got be a filmmaker.  I want to tell stories.  Specifically I wanted to be a Documentary filmmaker.  Like everyone else with these inclinations at the time though I got distracted by VFX, then by a career in computer games.  Then to the transition of Computer Game development from Geekdom, to Rockstar to multinational commodity, the guts of it simply off-shored.

Fast foreword through a lot of years I would rather forget to the present day.  I am working eveyrday now in the field I actually went to college to study..when Carter was President.  I now have a camera I can hold in my hand that will shoot feature quality work.  After years of working for other people though, years of abusing my body, years of fighting demons and holding onto things from my past I should have let go long ago I am only missing one thing.

I am missing a place to point my Camera and I am missing a story to tell.  So what do I do?

After all, it is time to put up or shut up.

Taking a breath

I have worked as a production artist all of my professional life.  Right now I am using all of that experience at my latest gig with a Marketing Start up here in Petaluma.  Long days seem longer though with my body in such horrible condition.  I find myself frustrated that my desire to do the work, coupled with my excitement about actually to do what I wanted to do (filmmaking) so long ago, run into the physical frailties I have foisted on myself.  I was given a great body and I ill used it.

Last night my boss made a joke about me becoming a real "9-to-5er" and I really have.  Up in the morning, in to the studio to work, home at night and the painful thing is he is right.