Lines and Colors – Page 667

Lines and Colors is a blog about painting, drawing, sketching, illustration, comics, cartoons, webcomics, art history, concept art, gallery art, digital art, artist tools and techniques, motion graphics, animation, sci-fi and fantasy illustration, paleo art, storyboards, matte painting, 3d graphics and anything else I find visually interesting. If it has lines and/or colors, it’s fair game.

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Koji Morimoto

January 2, 2007

Koji Morimoto is one of my favorite animators and directors working in the field of “anime” (essentially just meaning Japanese animation).

Morimoto is well respected in Japan, but not well known in the U.S., possibly because he has directed mostly shorts and short segments of films rather than feature length animations.

I first noticed him as the director of a segment called “Franken’s Gears” in Robot Carnival, a collection of short anime devoted to the subject of robots. There was just something about his handling of light and detail that made his segment stand out above the rest. At the time I didn’t think to try to find more about his work, and didn’t notice him again until years later when I came across his work in another collection.

Contrary to popular belief, there actually was a good sequel to the original movie The Matrix , it just wasn’t one of the theatrical releases. In 2003, there was a DVD release called The Animatrix, a collection of short animations by various directors, mostly anime directors, dealing with subjects within the Matrix setting.

The best of these was a wonderful short called “Beyond”, about a girl who goes looking for her lost cat and finds a “haunted house” where the normal rules of physics are broken. It’s a terrific short piece that is well written, beautifully drawn, luminously colored and smartly directed. As soon as I saw it, I said “Wow! Who was that?”, immediately played it again and looked to see who had directed it — Koji Morimoto.

I then found out that in addition to directing several other shorts, Morimoto had, in fact, worked as an animator on a couple of of my favorite anime, Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira and Hayao Miyazaki’s Kiki’s Delivery Service (see my post on Miyazaki).

Morimoto has directed a number of memorable, imaginative and very different short animations.

I don’t think he has an official site, but there is an extensive and professional level French site (that I assume is unofficial) at kojimorimoto.net. The English version isn’t online yet, but the French version isn’t too difficult for English speakers to navigate.

I found the version of the site not in a popup easier to deal with. Once you enter any of the interior pages, you will see a link at lower left for the site map (“plan du site”) that opens in a convenient little pop-up window. Go to any of the sections under “Panorama” to see images and information about many of his shorts.

Each section for an animation features a short video clip, preliminary drawings, scene backgrounds and screen caps; enough to get a feeling for the beauty and imaginative variety of his work. In particular, check out Beyond, Noiseman Sound Insect, Tekkon Kinkurito and Magnetic Rose (images above, top to bottom).

There is also a page on Catsuka.com where you can download clips and trailers of Morimoto’s work.

www.kojimorimoto.net (FR)
Trailers on Catsuka.com (FR)
Interview on intothematrix.com
Bio on Pelleas.net
Videography on IMDB
The Animatrix (website) (Amazon link)

Categories:
Anime & Manga, Illustration
Sergei Bongart

January 1, 2007

Sergei Bongart was a Russian painter who was born in the Ukraine, studied at the Russian Academy of Arts in Kiev, and went on to paint and study in Prague, Vienna and Munich. He emigrated to the U.S. in the middle of the 20th Century, lived, painted and taught in Idaho and then in California, where he established the Sergei Bongart School of Art and administered it for many years.

He is admired for his richly colored and emotionally expressive landscapes, still lifes and portraits. He was best known as a colorist, working in exaggerated color, using dynamic but carefully controlled color relationships and extolling the virtues of approaching painting as “color first, subject last”.

There is a book, Sergei Bongart by Mary N. Balcomb, that you can read excerpts of here and find more information about on Balcomb’s site.

Bongart’s approach looks like an intersection between Russian impressionist style painting (see my previous posts on Russian galleries in the U.S. here and here) and Cézanne’s oblique path into the distillations of modernism. Bongart’s brusquely applied strokes of vibrant color create representational images, but you can tell that it is not the objects but color itself that is the subject of his paintings.

Link via Art Notes – Interesting Art Stuff

Site for Sergei Bongart by Mary N. Balcomb (15 images)
Post on Art and Artistry (several of the same images)
Excerpts from Sergei Bongart by Mary N. Balcomb
Artnet (3 images)
Old Utica Art Company (3 images)

Categories:
Color, Gallery and Museum Art
Happy Leyendecker Baby New Year!

December 31, 2006

There are traditions that seem as though they’ve always been in place. Some of them have origins that are obscured by time, but others can be assigned to a particular time and person. The tradition of representing the new year with the image of a baby is one of the latter.

In addition to helping codify the modern image of Santa Claus (see my recent post on Illustrators’ Visions of Santa Claus), the great Golden Age illustrator J.C. Leyendecker originated the idea of using a baby to symbolize the birth of the new year.

Starting with a Saturday Evening Post cover in 1906 for which he painted a winged cherub that was close to the idea, he began using an actual baby in the December, 1907 issue to welcome in 1908; and continued to represent the coming year that way on New Year’s covers of the Post into the 1940’s.

Leyendecker was the Post’s major artist in the first half of the 20th Century, and was routinely given the assignments for the important major holiday issues. It was only years later that Norman Rockwell, who considered Leyendecker his artistic ideal, began to take on those duties. (See my previous post on J. C. Leyendecker.)

Curtis Publishing, publishers of The Saturday Evening Post, provide a nice archive of their covers, often arranged by artist or subject, including a two page gallery of Leyendecker New Year’s Baby covers. (The images are linked to larger versions. It’s easy to miss the link to the second page at the bottom of the first.)

It’s a treat to look through them, not only as great illustration, but as a fascinating chronicle of 20th Century history. Leyendecker would play with the idea of the New Year’s Baby to conceptualize the political, social and economic concerns of the day, be it stock market worries, balanced budgets or the looming shadow of war.

Layendecker New Year’s Baby covers for The Saturday Evening Post
Leyendecker New Years covers second page
My previous post on J. C. Leyendecker
Leyendecker artisle and links on DT&G design

Categories:
Illustration
Annibale Carracci’s Book of Portraiture (?)

December 30, 2006

I have to admit I’m not quite sure what this is. I came across it from a link somewhere (and have unfortunately forgotten the connection), and bookmarked it under “cool drawing resource”.

Carracci was a 16th Century Italian master renowned for his beautiful frescos and paintings, and credited with inventing caricature in the modern sense. It is his drawings I have always noticed, though; they stand out even among other great masters of the time.

The pieces on this site are from a book that looks like it may be a drawing manual based on Carracci’s drawings, featuring both light outline drawings and finished renderings, presumably by a later French artist, of faces, facial features, hands, feet and other items related to drawing people.

Though not as beautiful as Carracci’s delicate and subtle drawings in red chalk, these engravings are particularly interesting for the contrast between the lightly rendered and fully rendered versions, and the instructive array of eyes, ears, mouths and other features. It should be as useful to artists today as it was 400 years ago.

www.bmlisieux.com/galeries/carrache/carrache.htm

Categories:
Drawing, Gallery and Museum Art, Illustration, Prints and Printmaking
Andy’s Early Comics Archive

December 29, 2006

OK, I’m going to divide you into two groups for this tour.

Those of you who think you don’t like comics (possibly because you associate them with bland newspaper strips and endless arrays of costumed superheroes), please get on the bus labeled “Quick Tour”. You should at least take a peak at this, even if just out of curiosity. You may find that your image of comics is unnecessarily limited and discover some wonderful visual art you’ve been missing out on.

I will suggest those of you who love comics, but limit your appreciation for them to modern superhero comics, join the first group on the “Quick Tour” bus.

In the other group are those of you who love comics and revel in the wide spectrum of accomplishment in this amazing and unbounded art form, along with those who are simply adventurous in terms of your appreciation for visual art.

I will ask those of you in this group to pack a lunch, sign a waiver releasing me from responsibility for exposing you to a major time sink, and get on the bus labeled “Magical Mystery Tour”.

Both groups may find their eyes opened about what “comics” are, have been or can be, and may allow themselves to be dazzled with some of the oldest, weirdest, and finest examples of this wonderful medium.

Andy Konky Kru (Andy Bleck) has compiled an amazing archive of “early comics”, hosted on the site of Bugpowder, a collaborative weblog devoted to the UK independent comics community.

If, like me, you think of “early comics” as being the wonderful work from the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, you will be amazed and delighted to find that Andy’s collection begins in 300 A.D., and includes examples of “comics” (which has been defined as images in sequence, often combined with words, that tell a story) from the dusty centuries of the dark ages, the flowering of the Renaissance, through the 18th and early 19th centuries and up to the early 20th. He leaves off at around 1929.

For those of you on the Quick Tour, don’t miss the transcendently amazing work of Winsor McCay (see my previous post), George Herriman (and here), and Cliff Sterrett .

You might also want to check out modernist artist Lyonel Feininger and wonderful oddities like Gustav Verbeek and Hubert Crowley.

Those of you on the “Magical Mystery Tour” will find prime examples of favorites as describe above, the expected landmarks like Wihelm Busch, Rudolph Dirks, Frederick Opper, Richard Outcault, Frank King and others, but you may also encounter surprise treasures like Harry Grant Dart.

Aficionados of the great illustrators will find unexpected examples of “graphic stories” by such luminaries as Howard Pyle, Gustav Dore, Augustus Egg, Heath Robinson (and here), A. B. Frost, John Held Jr., Ernest Shepard and John Tenniel.

Wow.

There is a handy chronological index at the top of the pages. The index page has a more descriptive listing of the periods.

My only complaint is that, in what I assume is an effort to make them easier to read on web pages, Andy has taken the liberty of rearranging the panel layout of many of these comics and placing them in vertical stacks, sometimes missing their titles. I would much rather scroll around if necessary to see them in their original layout, but this is a minor quibble and pales in the light of what a tremendous service he is providing with this archive. Here’s an opportunity to see these gems on the web, large enough to be close to their original size in early newspapers and book printings, and you can search them out in their original form elsewhere once you find yourself fascinated.

While the archive isn’t complete, and is weak in some areas (E.C. Segar for example), I assume this is a work in progress; and on the whole, Andy has picked superb examples of these artist’s works. It’s an amazing resource and an absolute delight.

(Images above, top to bottom: Winsor McCay, George Herriman, Cliff Sterrett, Harry Grant Dart, Heath Robinson.)

Andy has also provided articles on speech balloons in cartoons and comics and an index of comics without words in his archive. He also provides listings of books with reprints of early comics and over 500 links to comics resources.

If that weren’t enough, Andy’s own paintings, drawings and travel sketches (and here) are quite nice and worthy of a visit on their own.

Whew! I’m glad I had you sign those time sink waivers.

http://bugpowder.com/andy/index.html

Categories:
Comics, Illustration
Simon Rodgers

December 28, 2006

Simon Rodgers is a concept artist for the film industry. Aside from that I know very little about him.

I know from a mention on John Nevarez’ blog that he worked with Nevarez on Disney’s Tarzan project. (See my post from last year on John Nevarez.)

Rodgers’ blog features mostly quick (but wonderfully realized) studies and concept sketches for personal projects, speed paintings and other work done primarily for fun or exercise. There are occasional concept illustrations, though, for an unspecified “Conan project” (image above, bottom) that looks fascinating from the scale and imagination conveyed in his images.

There are also hints of several personal projects of his, including a children’s book, that I hope see completion, just because the concept illos look so cool.

Maybe Rodgers will eventually add a little bio to his blog, so we know more about who he is and what’s he’s worked on, but in the meanwhile he’s giving us some tasty eye candy.

Link via ArtDojo

http://www.sim-r.com/

Categories:
Concept & Visual Dev.