Back when i started working as a concept designer in the late 90′s this particular company i was at didn’t think i needed a computer, so i did all my rendering by hand. But renderings on black material often didn’t reproduce well (the light would go through the pigment and be absorbed by the dark substrate, as opposed to a rendering on white materials where the light bounces back from behind the pigments). And you couldn’t use markers on black paper obviously – which was a preferred method of coloring.

The solution i found was to illustrate in negative color and then make color copies using the “negative” setting. This resulted in super-dark blacks and great saturated color. To help, i made an inverse color guide showing what each Prismacolor lead would look like when reversed. But boy using photoshop would have been a lot easier.

Also, this is probably my last post.

http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/?p=2159

Although I’ve been described as animated, I am not a cartoon. Yet over the years I’ve seen and sympathized with the struggle of the inked and painted – every day, finding yourself drawn into another situation: Your robot maid malfunctions, your pet dinosaur runs away, an evil wizard is out to eat you. Your relationships don’t grow, your waist won’t shrink, and it seems you’re always wearing the same thing. You feel stuck in a rut and powerless over your own life.

Now what if I said rearranging your furniture will change all that?

Sound crazy?  Well, say hello to the new ancient Chinese art of feng shui.

This is the introduction to a book I pitched that will likely never get made so I’m putting some of the pages here. The concept was obvious – apply feng shui principles to fictitious 2-D environments = funny. And i thought it’d be fun to render modern cartoon characters’ homes in an old Chinese woodblock print style.

But there’s always more going on. My other book, Obscene Interiors, makes fun of the decorating found in online male personal ads – but it’s really about how current ideas of masculinity are in contrast to the entire concept of decorating, and how men struggle with this. (I won’t digress into queer theory here.) Point being – i like my projects’ core to contain a significant issue or concept, which is then presented in an entertaining and appealing format as a means to reach a larger audience. I could have kept Obscene Interiors as just a series of images shown in a gallery – which I did – but it’s audience would have been incredibly limited. By adding the captions and making it entertaining, it became a book that would be seen and enjoyed by thousands of people, without diluting the underlying message. Also, people really do need help decorating.

With Feng Shui for the Cartoon Home, the deeper idea was to consider how when one feels lack of control over their life/world they often turn to supernatural beliefs that offer some explanation – or idea of control – over their destiny. I don’t mean to explain the joke but, if the Simpsons say, used feng shui to fix their problems, and it worked – well – then the show would cease to exist because it wouldn’t be entertaining. (And we’d all be putting a plant in that corner there and getting a raise.)

Anyhoo – this book was pitched to all the publishers that I thought were the best match for it and they all passed. Which I find really lame because it’s a cute book and if SEVEN books on feng shui for cats can get published…   I could have kept pitching this until eventually someone somewhere printed it, but really, I get bored. And I have like a million other ideas I’d rather mover forward on. That’s the weird thing about being creative and getting older – is realizing you will never get to produce all your ideas – not even a fraction of them – so you have to get very selective with what you’re going to spend your time on. This can drive people crazy when they see me walk away from what they see as a perfectly good, profitable idea.

But also, i hate being a salesman. Especially when I’m selling my own product. Self promoters gross me out. I’d rather focus on making the product than selling it. So if you’re not into what i’ve got I don’t push it. I’m into projects where people call ME and say omg we have to do this thing – because those are the projects that always happen.

I have this 34 x 11.5″ gauche painting by Harper but I can’t figure out what it was for. Harper worked as a set designer for Warner Brothers in the 40′s then worked on several Disney projects including Art Directing 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (which won an Oscar for the design), and later, after Disney, the famous Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and The Fantastic Voyage. If you have any clue what film had a scene like this set in North Africa or someplace with moorish ruins occupied by British? soldiers – let me know. I can’t find anything.

UPDATE: As the commenter below noted it MIGHT be from the 1936 Charge of the Light Brigade – watching the trailer suggests the same costumes and the same settings. But Harper would have been about 25 at the time, and would they have rendered color illustrations for a B/W film?

UPDATE: NOT from “Charge of the Light Brigade”. I watched it. BUT, based on suggestions, I did watch “Ten Tall Men” (1951) – and I’m certain this was a set design for that film. There’s also a scene that seems to be the inspiration to the begging prisoners scene from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

Here’s the whole book, originally published in 1965. Also see his “The Witch’s Catalog.” And send him a message on Facebook, he loves hearing from fans – the man was born in 1928 people. Although famous for his Clifford the Big Red Dog series, via email he mentioned “The Witch Next Door” was one of his favorites and that it was once used in a Sunday school class to teach tolerance of others. O how times change.

This was a design for another project that didn’t happen but I always liked it and now that I have a fancy iphone I had a reason to make it into my screen wallpaper. All the other wallpapers I found ignored the iphone graphics that get overlaid on the BG image so I wanted to design one that incorporated the clock and slider bar/buttons. DOWNLOAD the wallpaper here.

I’ve also been converting some Disney mp3s into iphone ringtones to go with this theme. Here’s The Haunted Mansion Crow, The Haunted Mansion Coyote, The Haunted Mansion Bells, The Big Thunder Mountain Coyote, The Spinning Teacups, and the one I’m using that’s from the Disneyland Paris 15th anniversary celebration (I guess). When it goes off it’s like ULTRA-MAGICAL!!!, or SUPER GAY!!! which are sort of the same thing.   

The iconic facade and sets of Disneyland’s It’s a Small World attraction were designed in the late 1960′s and bear the unmistakable markings of that time (and the couple proceeding decades). But I wanted specifics. What had Mary Blair, the attraction’s main designer, been exposed to that may have inspired the famous styling of that ride? Here’s a sampling of what I found:

Top image below: Mary Blair, Small World concept art, 1965. And below, two pieces by Auguste Herbin, 1951 and 1950, that are undeniably similar to Blair’s work.Below is a collage by Ray Eames in 1949. Besides a similar styling to Blair, the collage technique and use of transparent layers was something Blair would later use in many of her Small World collages.Below is another Blair illustration, and below that, a Paul Klee painting, Burg und Sonne, 1928I saw many similarities between Klee and Blair, like the three images below. The first image, Klee’s Landscape with Yellow Birds, 1932, uses leaf shapes seen in the Blair piece below it. The third piece is also a Klee and has some subtle similarities to the work above it.The Small World attraction debuted at the 1964 World’s Fair with a an enormous kinetic sculpture at the entrance called the Tower of the Four Winds (second image below). Designed by Rolly Crump but I see inspiration in an unproduced Do Nothing solar-powered kinetic toy designed by Charles and Ray Eames in 1957 (first image below).And lastly it seems It’s a Small World continues to inspire others, like perhaps Rex Ray (second image below) whose work possesses the same sense of retro-whimsy seen in Blair’s art for the finale scene in the attraction (below).SEE ALSO MY: Patty Wickman Paints Women Wrestling and I’m All Hey that’s from Epcot

Due to the response from the brilliantly designed 1970’s Walt Disney World shopping bag seen in my previous post, I’ve dug out this beauty. If you, like myself, were an aesthetically astute child who visited Disneyland in the 70’s, then you’ll remember how captivated you were by this print and how you didn’t care what souvenir you got as long as it came in this bag. Because I like you, I’ve scanned and created a big desktop wallpaper version of it.

The 1976 Norman Bridwell classic revisited.