March 11, 2012
March 10, 2012
The Art of Heinrich Kley
Heinrich Kley (1863 – 1945) was a German caricaturist, editorial
cartoonist and painter. His drawings comprised quick, loose, pen-and-ink sketches that captured an amazingly realistic and robust form. He was an inspiration for a number of early Disney productions, notably Fantasia, as Walt Disney himself was quite a collector of his work.He started out as an illustrator and a painter of murals, focusing on portraits, still lifes, animals, and landscapes. By the turn of the century Kley’s interest changed to modern industrial life, including factories, blast furnaces, ship docks, industrial buildings, machinery, and architectural paintings.
With his move to Munich he mostly gave up painting to concentrate on drawing with pen and ink. His work was imbued with his sarcastic wit, and he quickly became famous for his darkly humorous and jittery pen drawing work that appeared in the magazines Jugend and Simplizissimus.
In 1937 the new Coronet Magazine in the United States published Kley's drawings in three consecutive issues, and he became wildly famous with American audiences. Three years later his work inspired the Disney artists who created the film Fantasia. According to Disney animator Joe Grant, both Kley and T.S. Sullivant were enormous influences on the look of the film.
March 09, 2012
Flying Over the Earth at Night
Many wonders are visible when flying over the Earth at night. A compilation of such visual spectacles was captured recently from the International Space Station (ISS) and set to rousing music. Passing below are white clouds, orange city lights, lightning flashes in thunderstorms, and dark blue seas. On the horizon is the golden haze of Earth's thin atmosphere, frequently decorated by dancing auroras as the video progresses. The green parts of auroras typically remain below the space station, but the station flies right through the red and purple auroral peaks. Solar panels of the ISS are seen around the frame edges. The ominous wave of approaching brightness at the end of each sequence is just the dawn of the sunlit half of Earth, a dawn that occurs every 90 minutes.
Video Credit: Gateway to Astronaut Photography, NASA ; Compilation: Bitmeizer (YouTube);
Music: Freedom Fighters (Two Steps from Hell)
Ernest and Celestine
Here are new stills from the french animated film "Ernest and Celestine" in theaters next December, directed by Benjamin Renner
March 08, 2012
The Staff of 'Tiny Toon Adventures' - 1990
Check out this snapshot of the modern golden age of animation; the staff of Tiny Toon Adventures, drawn by Bruce Timm in 1990. Timm and Paul Dini would, of course, go on to create Batman: The Animated Series and, subsequently, the DC Animated Universe, which is still going strong, and others in this crew would later work at Spumco, Pixar, and on The Simpsons.
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