Animation Archive

Wow, I just found http://animationarchive.net/ ! What a great resource, especially the interveiws and animation magic sections. These lecture notes look great.

Summer Sketches

So, I'm slowly learning to draw. Right now I seem to be best at drawing cluttered spaces and messy rooms (see my desk) Now that I have a working scanner I'm going to try painting some of my drawings digitaly.

mushroom world

This is a URU inspired sketch I did quite a while ago.

Death by trees and other things

"...and the loss there was great on that day, twenty thousand... The battle spread over the face of all the country, and the forest devoured more people that day than the sword."

End of the battle of Helms Deep right? No! It's actually 2nd Samuel 18:7-8 Amazing similarity though. My dad pointed it out to me this afternoon.

Lately I've been listening to this amazing lecture by Peter Kreeft on language and beauty and the beauty of language and the language of beauty, etc. It really encompasses a lot of things I've been reading and thinking about lately. I listened to it 2 and 1/2 times and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Also been listening to the Animation Podcast which is by a Disney employee who has access to lectures from the 70's and current Disney directors. I especially enjoyed his interveiw with Glen Keane. Very inspiring.

How Strange the Grammer of God

God says "Let us make Man in Our Image" and once made, we say " We are made in His image." That which He spoke as singular (man) we speak as plural. What he spoke as plural (Himself), we speak as singular.

This is not wrong that we do this, it is merely or perhaps wonderfully mysterious

Painting on the computer has the advantage of free materials, no smell, no mess, saving, but unfortunately, if the computer locks up, as mine often does, the only way to save what you just did is by taking a picture of it.

Art should be didactic as the sky and stars are didactic.
Paintings should be exactly as preachy as trees.

Stained Glass Urbanism

Check it out.
Via Gideon Strauss

my swedish doppelgänger

No that's not me, but it looks just like me, apparently it's my swedish doppelgänger as shown in this article written by someone named (oddly enough) Stephen Henderson. Found by google image searching my name.

Surprising and Inevitable

Over the past few days I've been thinking about how the plot of a good movie or story is always feels at the same time surprising and inevitable. It's a wonderful paradox: If the story is inevitable, why does it feel surprising? If the story feels surprising, how can it be inevitable?

It was inevitably surprising (sorry) then, when I came across this passage listening to Aristotle's Poetics:

"Such incidents have the very greatest effect on the mind when they occur unexpectedly and at the same time in consequence of one another..."

So... it all goes back to Aristotle. Well, I've finally got around to the classic work on storytelling, and I've found it not very dry and not seeming like it was written 2500 years ago (though it was)

I'm listening to the recording at Librivox, which as usual is excellent. I've also been listening to their large and well read poetry collection.