Wan Brothers

鐵扇公主 - Princess Iron Fan (1941): China's first feature length animated film, directed and produced by the Wan Brothers in Shanghai under Japanese occupation.

[Its influences were far-reaching; it was swiftly exported to wartime Japan (in 1942), inspiring the 16-year-old Tezuka Osamu to become a comics artist and prompting the Japanese Navy to commission Japan's own first feature-length animated film, 1945's Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors (the earlier filmMomotaro's Sea Eagles is three minutes shy of being feature-length).]

Musical Roto

Rotoscoping in KLAATU's, A Routine Day (1979), with the "boil" under control.

Rotoscoping

Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trace over footage, frame by frame, for use in live-action and animated films.^[1][2] Originally, recorded live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator. This projection equipment is called a rotoscope, although this device was eventually replaced by computers.

In the visual effects industry, the term rotoscoping refers to the technique of manually creating a matte for an element on a live-action plate so it may be composited over another background.

The technique was invented by cartoonist/illustrator/writer/inventor Max Fleischer, who used it in his technologically groundbreaking, Out of the Inkwell (debut: 1915) animated series. The live-film reference for the series' main cartoon/animated character, Koko the Clown, was supplied by one of his brothers (Dave Fleischer) -- performing choreographed movements while dressed in a clown outfit. Max Fleischer patented the rotoscope method in 1917.

Fyodor Khitruk

Fyodor Khitruk's, The Story of a Crime (1962)

Follows friendly and humble accountant as rude neighbors drive him to commit a crime - can selfishness and domestic disruption destroy society?

[When Nikita Khrushchev in 1956 proclaimed the end of the personality cult of Joseph Stalin, he started a process of political and cultural renewal in the country. Even though animators still needed a while to free themselves from the long tradition of "Éclair", from the 1960s onwards, animation films gain completely new qualities. The starting point for this was Fyodor Khitruk's film The Story of a Crime (1962). Not only had he changed the animation style to something that resembled what the United Productions of America was doing, but for the first time since theavantgarde years, he was able to tackle a contemporary story.]

Walt Disney

Though painfully dated, a look at cel animation and film history in its own right.

[Generally, the characters are drawn on cels and laid over a static background drawing. This reduces the number of times an image has to be redrawn and enables studios to split up the production process to different specialised teams. Using this assembly line way to animate has made it possible to producefilms much more cost-effectively. The invention of the technique is generally attributed to Earl Hurd, who patented the process in 1914. The outline of the images are drawn on the front of the cel while colors are painted on the back to eliminate brushstrokes. Traditionally, the outlines were hand-inked but since the 1960s they are almost exclusively xerographed on. Another important breakthrough in cel animation was the development of the Animation Photo Transfer Process, first seen in The Black Cauldron, released in 1985.]

Новый Гулливер (New Gulliver) 1935

Clip from the first feature length animated film conceived in Russia, by Aleksandr Ptushko in 1935.  

[He was a trained architect, but earlier in his life had worked in mechanical engineering. In this field, he is known for the invention of an adding machine that was in use in the Soviet Union until the 1970s (an example of it can be seen in Fyodor Khitruk's first film as a director, The Story of a Crime of 1962). When he joined the puppet animation unit of Mosfilm, he found an ideal environment to live out his mechanical ambitions as well as his artistic ones, and became internationally renowned with the Soviet Union's first feature-length animated film, The New Gulliver (1935). This film mixes puppet animation and live acting. It is an explicitly ideological retelling of Jonathan Swift's novel. It nevertheless is considered a masterpiece of animation, featuring mass scenes with hundreds of extras, very expressive mimics in close-ups, and innovative, flexible camera work combined with excellent scenography. ]

Yuriy Norshteyn (Юрий Норштейн)

The fog effects were created by putting a very thin piece of paper on top of the scene and slowly lifting it up toward the camera frame-by-frame until everything behind it became blurry and white.^[2]

Hayao Miyazaki considers Yuriy Norshteyn "a great artist"^[3] and cited Hedgehog in the Fog as one of his favorite animated films.

Tezuka Osamu: 13 Experimental Films

Given by some the esteem of "best" graphic novelists and comic illustrators of our time.  I stumbled upon his animated series while sifting the internet for footage of illustrators outlining story panels.  

Animation, to start

Back to journal a bit, and keep track of things that I'm looking at now.  Animated and graphic narratives may be the next few steps.

some new pieces from the series, these from Golden Dynasty in Elyria





and from Qin Fen, also in Elyria

Pao Houa Her

Pao Houa Her is a Hmong refugee from Laos, arriving in the US in 1987. I pulled these images from Ahorn Magazine, where they are featured with a poignant statement in her series entitled, Coming of the Metal Bird. These pieces are so eloquent

google

Curated google streetview images in a tumblr, surprising and beautiful - check it out

New Project

Here are some pieces from the project I'm working on now. Chinese food restaurants throughout northeast Ohio











and more to come...

Taryn Simon

I saw one of Simon's pieces over the summer at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, set up within a small exhibition about food in art. When I visited her website, it was clear that her work (especially her piece in the Getty) encompassed far more. I am in awe of this project!

(Below the images are her statements)

Cryopreservation Unit

Cryonics Institute
Clinton Township, Michigan This cryopreservation unit holds the bodies of Rhea and Elaine Ettinger, the mother and first wife of cryonics pioneer, Robert Ettinger. Robert, author of “The Prospect of Immortality” and “Man into Superman” is still alive.
The Cryonics Institute offers cryostasis (freezing) services for individuals and pets upon death. Cryostasis is practiced with the hope that lives will ultimately be extended through future developments in science, technology, and medicine. When, and if, these developments occur, Institute members hope to awake to an extended life in good health, free from disease or the aging process. Cryostasis must begin immediately upon legal death. A person or pet is infused with ice-preventive substances and quickly cooled to a temperature where physical decay virtually stops. The Cryonics Institute charges $28,000 for cryostasis if it is planned well in advance of legal death and $35,000 on shorter notice.

Research Marijuana Crop Grow Room
National Center for Natural Products Research
Oxford, Mississippi The National Center for Natural Products Research (NCNPR) is the only facility in the United States which is federally licensed to cultivate cannabis for scientific research. In addition to cultivating cannabis, NCNPR is responsible for analyzing seized marijuana for potency trends, herbicide residuals (paraquat) and fingerprint identification. NCNPR is licensed by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and also researches and develops chemicals derived from plants, marine organisms, and other natural products.

White Tiger (Kenny), Selective Inbreeding
Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge and Foundation
Eureka Springs, Arkansas In the United States, all living white tigers are the result of selective inbreeding to artificially create the genetic conditions that lead to white fur, ice-blue eyes and a pink nose. Kenny was born to a breeder in Bentonville, Arkansas on February 3, 1999. As a result of inbreeding, Kenny is mentally retarded and has significant physical limitations. Due to his deep-set nose, he has difficulty breathing and closing his jaw, his teeth are severely malformed and he limps from abnormal bone structure in his forearms. The three other tigers in Kenny’s litter are not considered to be quality white tigers as they are yellow coated, cross-eyed, and knock-kneed.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Contraband Room
John F. Kennedy International Airport
Queens, New York African cane rats infested with maggots, African yams (dioscorea), Andean potatoes, Bangladeshi cucurbit plants, bush meat, cherimoya fruit, curry leaves (murraya), dried orange peels, fresh eggs, giant African snail, impala skull cap, jackfruit seeds, June plum, kola nuts, mango, okra, passion fruit, pig nose, pig mouths, pork, raw poultry (chicken), South American pig head, South American tree tomatoes, South Asian lime infected with citrus canker, sugar cane (poaceae), uncooked meats, unidentified sub tropical plant in soil.
All items in the photograph were seized from the baggage of passengers arriving in the U.S. at JFK Terminal 4 from abroad over a 48-hour period. All seized items are identified, dissected, and then either ground up or incinerated. JFK processes more international passengers than any other airport in the United States.

The Central Intelligence Agency, Art
CIA Original Headquarters Building
Langley, Virginia The Fine Arts Commission of the CIA is responsible for acquiring art to display in the Agency’s buildings. Among the Commission’s curated art are two pieces (pictured) by Thomas Downing, on long-term loan from the Vincent Melzac collection. Downing was a member of the Washington Color School, a group of post World War II painters whose influence helped to establish the city as a center for arts and culture. Vincent Melzac was a private collector of abstract art and the Administrative Director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.’s premiere art museum.
Since the founding of the CIA in 1947, the Agency has participated in both covert and public cultural diplomacy efforts throughout the world. It is speculated that some of the CIA’s involvement in the arts was designed to counter Soviet Communism by helping to popularize what it considered pro-American thought and aesthetic sensibilities. Such involvement has raised historical questions about certain art forms or styles that may have elicited the interest of the Agency, including abstract expressionism.

Avian Quarantine Facility
The New York Animal Import Center
Newburgh, New York European Finches seized upon illegal importation into the U.S. and African Gray Parrots in quarantine.
All imported birds that are not of U.S. or Canadian origin must undergo a 30 day quarantine in a U.S. Department of Agriculture animal import quarantine facility. The quarantine is mandatory and at the owner's expense. Birds are immediately placed in incubators called isolettes that control the spread of disease and prevent cross-contamination by strategically placed High Efficiency Particulate Air Filters.Before each quarantined bird is cleared for release, it is tested for Avian Influenza and Exotic Newcastle Disease.

Here is more of her work

In China

These are some images from the time I spent traveling in China and Southeast Asia during the Spring of 2010. The images document in some ways my experience as an American woman of Chinese descent, traveling through a space in I feel suspended, both grounded and out of place. The work has led me to a new project back in the US.








A short piece I wrote about this work:

When I visit my relatives in Southern Ohio I am visiting a place that is a second home,
though I am undeniably out of place as a person of color and particularly of East Asian
descent. My relationship with this family embodies my relationship with the
American landscape, one that is close yet the complexity of which I have yet been able
to fully articulate and personally navigate. In a way more abstract, my relationship
with China is parallel. In the early 1960’s, a time when China and Chinese people
occupied a peculiar space in the United States, my grandmother immigrated to the
Michigan with her three sons, and from her personal experience soon came to
understand that complete assimilation appeared most beneficial to their ability to
succeed in this country. Now grown the three of them feel a bold line connection to
their racial, ethnic, and cultural heritage as it has defined them in many ways within
the United States. Despite this, they have never felt the capacity to ably legitimize that
connection. Although I am second generation American, my Chinese family in
Southern California has passed to me this rather knotted sensibility. More than ever I
felt the conflict of impossible legitimization during my studies in China, being an
outsider as a person of foreign birth and distancing assimilation, yet simultaneously
and conversely accepted for my roots. These pieces are demonstrations manifesting
my experience in both landscapes through which I travel as an outsider and a native,
and an attempt at locating the points at which those concepts are harmonious.

More to be uploaded...

Julie Cockburn

These images appeared in Issue #13 of SEESAW Magazine, a part of her series,
"Filling the Cracks with Ceiling Wax."

And many more cut up works at Cockburn's website.

Josh Keyes

Perhaps once you've spent this much time in Alaska, you start
catching animals doing things like this.

Roar, 2009

Shadow, 2010

Last Kiss, 2010

Burst, 2009

"Eighteenth-century aesthetics and philosophies, particularly those of the Neoclassical and Romantic movements, shape his work. Keyes is drawn to the clinical and often cold vocabulary of scientific textbook illustrations, which express the empirical "truth" of the world and natural phenomena. He infuses into a rational stage set many references to contemporary events along with images and themes from his personal mythology and experience. These elements come together in an unsettling vision, one that speaks to the hope, fear, and anxiety of our time."

Aaron Louis Fowler

I suppose I like Fowler's images because they're simple, and still deform the body in an uncanny way that I can't seem to tear my eyes from.

images from his series, OCEAN

Halloween

This year, I decided to keep my camera out on Halloween. I stationed myself at what I was told is the busiest house in town - trick-or-treaters run up to the porch and leap over the garden to the next house as soon as their candy hits the bag. I met many ghouls on that patio...

Later that night, college kids gathered at the 123 house to celebrate impersonation...