Character Design Lesson!
I have started watching this CHEN YI CHANG video … (I wish I had more time. It runs for 3 hours!)
Chen Yi Chang was the acclaimed character designer for Disney’s Mulan (and others). In this streaming video presentation he talks about “character designing for animation” and shares his thoughts, tips and techniques. This guy is a genius.The best part is watching him draw(!) as he talks about principles of good character design.
MEMO TO SELF when in L.A…
Memo 1:
JIM TYER TERRYTOONS Screening at The American Film Institute/Ted Ashley Screening Room. 2021 N Western Ave, L.A. March 29th. 3.00pm.
There are some cool Jim Tyer animation clips HERE.
Jim Tyer is a manic animation legend and inspiration.
As my hero animator, Jim Tyer, used to say, “Hey Ralph, stop worrying. Everything moves, so put it down, have fun and go home.” Yeah, Jim had fun, more fun than any animator I knew at the time. He distorted, he drew off model — yes, off model, and threw shapes around like he was Jackson Pollack, the animator. He had fun. The rest of the guys stared at Disney and cried, “If we could only do that, boo-hoo.” Jim would walk around the inking department — yes, hand-inking with Crokille pens — telling the inkers, “Don’t worry about where my line is, don’t stiffen up the animation, keep it loose. The color will hold it together. Have fun. It is just cartoons.” This, compared to another guy who would scream, “You wiggled the nose on that cel! What are you doing ruining my animation that way!”
- Ralph Bakshi in “Draw What You Want To Draw”
Memo 2:
ANIME and MANGA EXHIBITION at the LA Japanese American Cultural and Community Center/Doizaki Gallery. 244 South San Pedro Street (between 2nd and 3rd Streets) Little Tokyo. April 6th – June 1st. It’s Astro Boy’s birthday celebration on April 6th, 2pm.
Memo 3:
BUY THAT GENE DEITCH BOOK! Jazzy cartoon art by Gene Deitch (Animation Blast link)
Memo 4:
Super Dragon/Revolution Pro lucha event somewhere in L.A. on April 12th. …Must get full details from KR.
That’s it for now. Anything cool we can do in L.A.? (this question is directed to the f*ak blog’s American readers) Let us know! 
NO “W” TODAY
The Logic Of War
National Public Radio: “All Things Considered”
Thursday March 13 2003
The deliberations at the U.N. over possible military action in Iraq have included thousands of pages of documents and hours of debate. But after all of that evidence and discussion, commentator Peter Freundlich says he’s still having trouble making sense of it all.
“Alright, let me see if I understand the logic of this correctly.
We are going to ignore the United Nations in order to make clear to Saddam Hussein that the United Nations cannot be ignored.
We’re going to wage war to preserve the UN’s ability to avert war.
The paramount principle is that the UN’s word must be taken seriously and, if we have to subvert its word to guarantee that it is, then, by gum, we will.
Peace is too important not to take up arms to defend.
Am I getting this right?
Further, if the only way to bring democracy to Iraq is to vitiate the democracy of the Security Council, then we are honor bound to do that too, because democracy as we define it is too important to be stopped by a little
thing like democracy as they define it.
Also in dealing with a man who brooks no dissension at home, we cannot afford dissension among ourselves.
We must speak with one voice against Saddam Hussein’s failure to allow opposing voices to be heard.
We are sending our gathered might to the Persian Gulf to make the point that might does not make right, as Saddam Hussein seems to think it does; and we are twisting the arms of the opposition until it agrees to let us oust a regime that twists the arms of the opposition.
We cannot leave in power a dictator who ignores his own people, and if our people, and people elsewhere in the world, fail to understand that, then we have no choice but to ignore them.
Listen, don’t misunderstand.
I think that it is a good thing that the members of the Bush administration seem to have been reading Lewis Carroll. I only wish someone had pointed out that “Alice In Wonderland” and “Through The Looking Glass” are meditations on paradox and puzzle, and illogic, and on the strangeness of things, not templates for foreign policy.
It is amusing for the Mad Hatter to say something like ‘we must make war on him because he is a threat to peace’, but not amusing for someone who actually commands an army to say that.
As a collector of laughable arguments, I’d be enjoying all this were it not for the fact that I know, we all know, that lives are going to be lost in what amounts to a freak, circular, reasoning accident”.
There’s a Tag Team called MUCHA LUCHA!!! Wonder if one of them has ”The Pulverizing Pinball” as his signature move… 
Link: NeoSpirit Pro
We were too late and missed 24 Hour Party People last nite. Ended up seeing City of God (read EW review) – this was an AWESOME and GRIPPING film. The cinematography, the music, the intensity … It was disturbing to see little kids running around with guns and killing each other throughout most of the movie; even more so that this happens everyday for real.
Eddie: This was one of the best movies I have seen in years. It’s a mark of a good movie when two hours later, you could still keep watching. It was totally enthralling from the opening montage.
OK. Back to work.
Urban Latino Magazine with the ML article/interview is out at newstands. I think this is the full version of the interview published at MiGente.com. Luz Maria has mailed us a copy, but it may not arrive before we leave Sydney…
Today Eddie asked: “What is the difference between ‘Hispanic’, ‘Latino’ and ‘Chicano’?” We both realized we had no idea, and we didn’t know which was the politically-correct and most appropriate term to use to describe our (Mexican-American) ML characters and friends in America. We had been loosely interchanging the terms as if they all meant the same thing…
In Australia, we don’t use these terms. Our Spanish-speaking friends have never call themselves “hispanic” or “latino/latina”. They identify themselves by their parents’ and grandparents’ nationality (Spanish, Argentinian, Chilean etc.)
So, I did a search on the terms Hispanic, Latino and Chicano, and found these writings:
This is what we learnt – The term “hispanic” is the most politically-loaded. It was a term used by the American Census Bureau to classify all brown-colored people who speak Spanish. Although it is socially-acceptable to use it, it’s not really politically-correct or accurate. Seems it’s not a cool term to use in the media. I suppose it’s like calling someone “Anglo” regardless of whether you are Scottish, American or Australian. It is an old-fashioned term with colonialistic inuendos.
The term “Latino”/”latina” is considered softer and more politically correct, and refers to Latin Americans. It has also been argued that this is another super broad descriptive term that doesn’t acknowledge that there are so many Latin American nationalities. Guess it’s like being called “Asian”, which doesn’t really mean anything. “Asian” is a nebulous term. You could be Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Burmese, Indonesian, Filipino… (and we don’t all look alike or talk alike, do we?)
The term “Chicano” comes from the Indian pronunciation of Mexicanos – Me-shee-ka-nos. “Chicano” the term was used by Mexican-American activists in the Brown Power movement of the 60′s/70′s. The usage is often in a political context, and one that refers to cultural pride.
There you go. We learnt something else about America today.
Newsflash: Dreamworks Ready to Roll a CGI Rocker
An animated rock odyssey? “I’m vewwy afwaid” - eddie
Gallery of Incredibly Strange Wrestling. “Totally dumb-ass. Real lucha libre is funnier.” - eddie
The John Howard Blog. (parody)
We have our travel dates for L.A. finalised. We’ll be staying in Sherman Oaks and working in a large mall-sized animation studio with hundreds and hundreds of people. Our lives will change as we head into the mad world of Hollywood politics, “glamour” and intrigue…
I spent the day backing up files, making lists of things to do and take. There are post-it notes all over my desk. Soon we will bid farewell to our studio (sigh) and the familiar crazy routines of the Fwak! lifestyle. We might even miss the Chinatown foodcourts where we have lunch everyday. We’ll definitely miss the vespa.
How does one know what to pack for a 2-month trip? Which books, videos, CDs, clothes to bring? We have one week to get our shit together.
OK, a list of positive things about this trip to LA, besides being able to have an impact on ML production:
FWAK! STUDIO PICS – Part 1
I have tried to do this several times. For some reason this browser keeps crashing. Here goes for the tenth time …
These are photos of our studio taken randomly over the last couple of months:
Starting with what you see as you first enter our animation studio.
BELOW: That’s the “admin desk” behind the filing cabinets where Peter sometimes does the accounts; the lounge is on the far right, and a Rikochet maquette (early design) on my messy desk on the left.
Our lounge/TV area. We have Cartoon Network on during the day, taking in as much as we can, as we can’t get Foxtel at home. This was taken at night, obviously.
Another view of the lounge, shows you our mini tiki-bar…The “glowing waterfall” picture above the fridge stopped “flowing” a week after we bought it. Pity. It would have been cool.
Some stuff we got in Hawaii:
Behind the lounge – Our bookshelves and lucha mask collection:
From the upper left bookshelf: Judo Bendy, Goldberg, Jesus and Rey Misterio Jr. wrestle it out.(Rey wins of course)
To be continued…
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