Catalogues from Mary Blair Tokyo Exhibition

"The Colors of Mary Blair" was an exhibition at the Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art held this past Summer. The exhibition closed just this month and, for those who were not lucky enough to see it, the exhibition catalogue will be available (if it is not already available) through the bookstore at the Museum of Cartoon Art in San Francisco. Contact Heather Plunkett at the bookstore for more information.

The catalogue text is mostly in Japanese, but there are a few preface essays - by Pete Doctor, John Canemaker, Charles Solomon, and some family relations - that are presented in English. This catalogue presents more of Mary's work more accurately reproduced to show original color than any previous publication of her work.

Michae Jackson's Life

A quote from an interview that Michael Jackson gave to RABBI SHMULEY BOTEACH:

"I am going to say something I have never said before and this is the truth. I have no reason to lie to you and God knows I am telling the truth. I think all my success and fame, and I have wanted it, I have wanted it because I wanted to be loved. That's all. That's the real truth. I wanted people to love me, truly love me, because I never really felt loved. I said I know I have an ability. Maybe if I sharpened my craft, maybe people will love me more. I just wanted to be loved, because I think it is very important to be loved and to tell people that you love them and to look in their eyes and say it."

Go HERE for the whole article

Digital Illustration for my new children's book

I've been working on illustrations for a book recently, using photoshop in a realist style that is very challenging, and something of a departure for me. The end result reminds me of Northern Renaissance paintings where every hairy imperfection is rendered faithfully. The composition and lighting both have to be strong to save the viewer from "texture overload". The end result is very engaging, though and invites scrutiny. That's why I've included a closeup version below.

CalArts in the News!

Here's a glowing article from The Huffington Post about CalArts for those of you interested in Arts education. I have to say that CalArts opens many doors for those who get their animation education there. Click HERE for the article. Although the school is famous for turning out great animators and film makers, it also has schools for music, theater, fine art, and dance. APPLY today!

Mary Blair at Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art

The Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art will host "The Colors of Mary Blair", a retrospective exhibit which expands upon the popular "Art and Flair of Mary Blair", the Museum of Cartoon Art - San Francisco exhibit which was so popular in 2007-2008. The exhibit will run from mid-April through mid-July of 2009. This will be the largest collection of Mary Blair's original work ever shown. The exhibit will show work from her early days as a recent alumnus of Chouinard Art Institute and proceed through her career at Disney, her advertising art in New York, and her final psycho-surreal mixed media works completed during her retirement years in Central California.

If you are interested in joining a tour group in mid-June to see the exhibit in Tokyo, please let me know before the end of April. You can email me at: fcline@me.com

The Art and Flair of Mary Blair Exhibit to Travel!

I have anxiously been awaiting the return of two watercolors that I had lent to the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum's "The Art and Flair of Mary Blair" exhibit which ran from October 2007 until its extended closing in May of 2008. Word is out that the exhibit may be traveling overseas next year! I think I'll wait until things are more concrete before I divulge the exact location of the exhibition. I know that Mary has a lot of fans in the country that will possibly host the show, so they should be pleased to see her works up close.

I have three of these large watercolors that appear to be illustrations from period classics such as Dickens' "Great Expectations", Wilde's "Picture of Dorian Gray", and Dumas' "Count of Monte Cristo". Two of these were in the San Francisco exhibit and the third can be seen in John Canemaker's book, "The Art and Flair of Mary Blair". My guess is that they were done for Mary's Chouinard class in illustration taught by Pruett Carter, or they were done for her portfolio immediatedly after art school and just about the time of her wedding to Lee Blair - I say this because she signs her name, "Mary Robinson Blair" on all three pieces and she shortened her signature to "Mary Blair" not long after she was married. If you look at some of Pruett Carter's illustrations, such as the ones he did for stories in Ladies Home Companion and other magazines, there are some remarkable similarities in the compositions and mannerisms.
The image above is one of Carter's illustrations and a few similarities that struck me were:
1. The tipped lower floor plane showing pattern in both the floor and the striped chair. In Mary's vertical composition above, she shows pattern in the carpet to better advantage by tipping the ground plane down in an exaggerated manner similar to the Carter image.
2. The elongated figures - in an almost El Greco-like or Thomas Hart Benton-like manner, the figures in both Carter and Blair's work are impossibly thin and tall. This would have been standard in many illustrator's work at the time and I'm sure Carter would have brought this preference to his student's attention.
3. The halo of light around the figure's heads/faces. The values are carefully modulated so that the lightest light and the darkest dark in the composition are found at the main character's head; the focal point of each composition.

All three of these points would be common in Mary's work in the years to follow. I am really fascinated by how these pictures show the beginnings of Mary's personal style.

Vance Gerry pitching to Woolie Reitherman, Larry Clemmons,
Milt Kahl and Ken Anderson

Memories of Vance Gerry

Vance Gerry was a soft-spoken man. He had opinions, of course, but he never felt like it was his constant duty to express them (some of us, however, did feel that way). I never saw him angry or frustrated (others have, but they will acknowledge that it was on a rare and justifiable occasion). Here was the appearance of a man who had mastered life and had found contentment. He spent a lifetime drawing storyboards and personal illustrations, but he never lost his youthful enthusiasm for his own work and the good work of others. He did some of the best feature storyboard work I had ever seen.

I worked with Vance and Walt Disney Feature Animation during a time when many young artists were depressed with the quality of films that were in production – immediately prior to the success of The Little Mermaid. When artists much younger than he were complaining and expressing cynical opinions about the future of Disney Animation, Vance reminded the anxious young artists around him that there was never a time he remembered when everyone at the studio was happy and secure about the quality of films that were being made.

Vance, by example, showed those around him that there was never an excuse for doing less than your best work. He proved that good work can elevate average material and that this was the definition of a true story artist. While others would complain and stress about their work, Vance would quietly turn out sketch after amazing sketch that provided strong direction for the rest of the crew - for character acting and for the mood of the environments. I can’t say that it was the best drawing technique I had ever seen, his drawings were kind of simple with dough-y shapes but at the same time, terrifically charming – and the staging and lighting indications were always, ALWAYS wonderful.

He loved to dress up certain drawings with a simple color wash or some crayon – and he used the most humble, stupid “little kid” sets of watercolors and crayola crayons that you would find in any drugstore (shaming those who think they need the best materials in order to create their best work).

Vance was an inspiration to the younger artists around him. He was passionate about watercolor and loved the work of the California School of Watercolor. Many of those artists had worked at Disney or had some relationship to Walt and the studio; Millard Sheets, Phil Dike, Lee Blair, Art Riley, Ralph Hulett, Elmer Plummer, and many others had either worked at the studio or taught at Chouinard and then California Institute of the Arts. Vance would accompany some of the younger artists (including myself – a twenty-something neophyte at the time) to paint watercolors in the parks and other locations near the studio during lunch hours. I have one of his lunch hour watercolors - we traded one day after one of our painting trips.

Vance Gerry watercolor painted on his lunch

hour at Bette Davis park in Glendale, CA

He also was a fan of Jack Miller, an artist who worked in the Character Model department during the 1940’s and 1950’s. Vance had made a book from photocopies of Jack’s studio work – pirates from Peter Pan, caricatures of his co-workers, etc, and it was obvious that Vance’s drawing style owed much to that of Jack Miller.

Occasionally, I will look though my files and find copies of Vance’s wonderful work – and I still learn things from viewing his drawings. And then I miss him. So this blog entry is my tribute to the memory of Vance Gerry.

Zookazoo!

I am working at a fun place called Zookazoo - an online virtual community for kids. Games and other fun are designed in our Burbank studio - just up the street from the big mouse! The official launch is March 1, but you can check it out today. Tell everyone you know about the new place on the web where they can play games, create an avatar, have a condo for their avatar, and meet fun people masquerading as robots, monkeys, aliens, toilet paper rolls (really!) and other fun characters. Click HERE to go to Zookazoo.com!
Image © 2008 KD Learning. All rights reserved.

My Brilliant Other Career

Well, not exactly. Although I have sold a few of my watercolor paintings throughout the years, I have approached them as a personal pressure relief valve from my work in film. I became involved in watercolor when I was a teenager - when I first met Lee Blair - one of the guiding lights of the California School of watercolor which made national news back in the 1930's. I was so impressed with both the technique and the subject matter of those early California Style paintings. The technique was direct and spontaneous - unlike the East Coast and English Schools which are basically drawings that are then carefully tinted with watercolor washes. The Californians put it down quickly with broad strokes and very little preliminary drawing. The subject matter was considered ugly by some. Lee was especially famous for genre scenes of life in Southern California - sometimes showing the tawdry side of life. Some critics have classified these images within the "Social Realist" school.

My friend Steve Moore publishes "FLIP", an incredible monthly web magazine that just so happens to feature me in the month of January. I discuss my work in watercolor, what kind of thought that I put into each piece, and how my work in watercolor differs from my work in the animation industry. The images above are a couple of my favorites, and there's more at "FLIP":

http://flipanimation.net/

Robot Chicken Storyboards

This summer I spent some time with the wonderful people at Shadow Animation storyboarding on Robot Chicken. This is one of the shows aired around midnight on Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" programming block. The pace is fast and furious putting out a show on a very small budget. One of the pleasures of working on the show was that production moved so quickly. The animators would begin working almost immediately on things that I storyboarded just a couple of weeks previously. The format of the show is sketch-comedy with some of the sketches being lengthy and some sketches playing as short as one or two seconds. Click HERE to see one of my favorite sketches from the Christmas episode.

The Transformers Movie worthy of the Big Screen

I liked the Transformers movie. I wasn't planning to go see it as I was never a fan of the toy or the 1980's animated series, but a friend of mine wanted to go and I tagged along. The film has an impressive scale which is easy to appreciate on the big screen. Home TV screens get bigger and bigger, but certain films still require a theatrical viewing and this is one of them. Michael Bay treats the audience with an appreciable degree of respect and he avoids the current trend of throwing in fleeting pop culture jokes that amount to cheap laughs and limit the appeal of repeated viewings. There are a few moments of robot-homiletics that take the viewer into dreckland, but the bulk of the film is dominated by exciting, large-scale action motivated by clear goals.
Shia LaBoeuf does a good turn as Sam, the geek-turned-hero of the story. I think LaBoeuf has become a fairly good actor and is definitely ready for some juicier roles than can be had on the kid's network shows where he earned his acting chops. The animation was outrageously good - the weight implied in the movement made the giant robots believable and they are well integrated with the live-action world. The technical challenge of designing the machine transformations was done with incredible showmanship.
Its the action of the film that seduces you. If you're looking for heart-tugging emotions from these machines, you will find a few attempts withing the course of the film, but you will most surely be disappointed. The film's running time is indulgently long, so hook yourself up to a catheter before you enter the theater or you will be leaving to visit the restroom halfway through. Yes, the use and promotion of General Motors products is blatant, but I've grown numb to that aspect of the business - it's there to stay. At lease the GM product placement caused me to forget that the Transformers are a line of toys available from Hasbro.
The story is what I would refer to as "serviceable" - it gets the job done and provides a framework for the entertainment. You will definitely find films with better, more original story lines and deeper characters and just about everything that we've always been taught is necessary for a successful film. But you can get all of that in books as well as anywhere else. The big screen of a cinema should deliver the thrills and chills of a good circus, and for sheer spectacle and fun The Transformers Movie is one of the greatest shows on earth (for the summer, anyway).

Hansel and Gretel in Stop Motion

CLICK IMAGE FOR CLIP
I saw this stop-motion version of Hansel and Gretel when I was very young and it burned itself into my brain. It's kind of crude by todays standards, and sort of unintentionally nightmarish.

There is a great entry from last year (June 6, 2006) on Michael Sporn's Blog regarding this film.

Another Preston Blair TV Graphics masterpiece

Remember when they used to “pause, for station identification”? If you don’t, then you missed items like this which were used to sex up local TV stations and make them look cool. Sorry about the quality on this. I improved it the best I could. Click HERE to view.

Preston Blair's Air Force Recruitment Spot

Preston Blair did some amazing motion graphic spots for television through the New York animation house TV Graphics, Inc. They are mostly station identifiers (WOR-TV New York, etc.) but this one was for Air Force Recruitment and uses music from the Air Force Jazz Band. Click HERE to view.

More Betty Boop Movie Designs

As per Mitch Kennedy's request, these images show more of the surreal animation ideas that were in the script for The Betty Boop Movie. They were individual moments, though rather than setpieces, so these images were done more quickly and are less well-designed than the others. Koko would have been the wildest character for animation with his ability to morph/stretch. Betty was kind of a sexy muse that would "animate" the world around her - so she would end up dancing with/being chased by/being serenaded by - things that would "come to life".

Mary Blair Meadow Gold commercial

In the early 1950’s, a Little Golden Book was published entitled, “I Can Fly” by Ruth Krauss with illustrations by Mary Blair. The book was popular and caught the eye of someone who thought the little girl and the graphic style would be good for a Meadow Gold advertising campaign. So in the mid-1950’s, a few commercials were made by TV Graphics, Inc. of New York (owned by Mary Blair’s husband, Lee Blair). I have two of them - they are both similar but one is for milk and one is adapted to advertise ice cream. Click HERE to view the commercial.

My First Live-Action Film

"The Civilization of Maxwell Bright" is my first effort at production design for a live-action film. It was one of those low budget "labor of love" projects where the director mortgages his house to raise the budget capital, etc. Although it won some awards, including a Grand Prize at the Florida Film Festival and a Best Actor award for lead actor Patrick Warburton at some other festival, it's hard to find a place to see it. I don't think it is out on DVD yet. A Vancouver BC company called Industry Works is the distributor. Click HERE to view the trailer. The following is the synopsis from the Austin Film Festival:

"Boasting standout performances from Warburton and Roberts, the film tells the story of electronics salesman Maxwell Bright. His relationships with women are explosive and cruel, so he resolves to find his fantasy woman: demure, submissive and obedient. Ultimately he decides to buy a Chinese mail-order bride. When Mai Ling arrives, she attempts to awaken the peaceful Buddha in Max while he introduces her to American luxury, carnality and freedom. Max's entire world spirals out of control when Mai Ling suddenly becomes his only foundation."

Betty Boop...the Movie!

Here's three images I did for the aborted 1993 project, "The Betty Boop Movie". Betty is still in high demand as a licensing character and considered a top producer of revenues in that arena - even without any new animation to keep her image fresh for the public. Betty Boop is one of the largest classic cartoon merchandise items in the world with over 400 licensees in 38 countries. As recently as the 1970's or 1980's, a court returned the Betty Boop copyright to the Fleischer family.

Max's son Richard Fleischer saw an opportunity to create a new movie for Betty, so he and the Zanucks (Richard and Lili) were Executive Producers, Jerry Rees and Steve Leiva were Producers, Steve Moore was Director and I was Production Designer. The negatives that I heard aimed at the project were that it was too sophisticated for kids and too childish for adults – or something to that effect. That just seems to me like a negative way of saying that it has a broad appeal for a general audience. Anyway, here's three of my favorite pieces. Let me know if you would like to see more. The project was aborted during the development process when Frank Mancuso replaced Alan Ladd at MGM.
(note to Frank Mancuso: Just make the movie anyway!)

Peace On Earth

On the eve of the U.S. involvement with WWII, the United States had a peace policy desiring to keep us neutral regarding the war in Europe. This cartoon by Hugh Harman, produced in 1939 while he was at MGM, supports that general sentiment. It is available at dailymotion.com through the following link:

http://www.dailymotion.com/shawshawshaw/video/
xuiut_mgm-cartoon-1939-peace-on-earth

The following is the obituary for Hugh Harman from the New York Times. It notes the Nobel Prize nod for Harman's "Peace on Earth" cartoon from 1939:

New York Times
Hugh Harman, 79, Creator Of 'Looney Tunes' Cartoons
AP
Published: November 30, 1982

Hugh Harman, the Oscar-winning creator of the ''Looney Tunes'' cartoons, died Thursday at his home in Chatsworth after a long illness. He was 79 years old.

Mr. Harman, a self-taught animation pioneer and one of Walt Disney's first collaborators, also created the ''Merrie Melodies'' cartoons that gave the world such memorable characters as the catand-mouse duo Tom and Jerry, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Sylvester and Tweetie.

Mr. Harman and his partner, Rudolph Ising, won the Oscar for their 1940 cartoon ''The Milky Way.'' The partners had seven Oscar nominations between them, and Mr. Harman also was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his 1939 antiwar feature, ''Peace on Earth.''

Mr. Harman, who started his career in 1922 at Disney's studio in Kansas City, Mo., later worked as an independent producer for Warner Bros. and then went on to M-G-M. He is survived by his son, Michael; two grandsons, and a nephew, Fred Harman 3d.

You Didn't Rake the Joints!

I wanted a patio built outside of my dining room. There was a space between the dining room and the garage and to get some privacy for the new patio, I needed a wall built to enclose the space. I wanted something integrated to the house - using the same materials so, in the end, it would appear as if the patio were original to the 1947 California ranch style home. To get it done right, I hired a landscape architect. Luckily, I found one with talent, but he was just starting out on his own so he wasn't yet commanding a huge fee. The designs were drawn featuring a flagstone wall and patio with steps up to new french doors that would lead into the dining room. I hired a contractor who assured me that he had a very good mason to do the flagstone work. This was important to me because I had something very definite in mind. I am a fan of Frank Lloyd Wright and the attention to detail that he put into each of his buildings. My house is no "Fallingwater", but I did furnish my contractor with a photograph of the masonry found on that iconic structure. It featured horizontal limestone with random stones set out from the face of the wall to cast interesting shadows and add visual variety to the surface. Another feature of Wright's designs is the "raking" of the mortar between the stones. Raking refers to the process of removing the still-wet mortar at the front spaces between the stones so that the joints between stones are set back about 1/2 inch from the stone face. This makes a space for shadows when the light hits the surface of the masonry.

The raked joints were visible in the photo that I provided to the contractor, but you would have to look for them and appreciated the idea that they existed in order to notice them. When I arrived home from work one day, I was disappointed to find that the mason had indeed set some of the stones forward in a random manner, he did not rake the joints as I had anticipated. It seemed to be a big deal to me at the time, and fortunately I did not express myself by losing my temper and criticizing the mason's work. It was, after all, not his fault that I was not more specific in describing my desire for raked joints. I had just assumed that, because I wanted them there and because they were visible (albeit small) in the example photo, that they would appear in the mason's finished work. The contractor assured me that the pilasters and wall would be stronger for lack of raked joints. The scale of my masonry masses was considerably smaller than Wright's work, so the additional mortar would only make the wall stronger. That idea placated me somewhat.

The whole story reminds me to be thorough when I give direction and to be grateful for the good aspects of the work that is done. The stones were laid straight and the cuts showed an appealing variety of shapes. An amateur would not have done the job this well. I've received may compliments on the patio wall over the years and no one is aware that I originally wanted raked joints. I can imagine the sadness and anger I would have caused if I overlooked the good stuff and launched into a tantrum about the raked joints. Thank God for self control. This story might not serve as a profound metaphor for other situations in life but, then again, it might.