Richard Hogg

This is really funny to me.

Sunday Announcements

On my personal blog I started posting the doodles I do on the Sunday Announcements Program at church and so I've decided to move the segment to this blog. It seemed more appropriate.

Water Brain

Water Brain Complete Edition（16：9） from Johann.Poo on Vimeo.

We have here a Chinese made 3d animation by Ani7ime Studio and it is just terrific. The movie has a deliberate sense of beauty that just plain delivers. An entirely weird family with strange little kids and strange parents would really enjoy this together. I know some have slapped a steampunk label on this one for obvious reasons but its a lot more than that, this is about China. I really liked this one.

Artist Patrick Lee

I was in a small gallery in tokyo today rummaging through the art store inside and found a series of portraits called Deadly Friends by artist Patrick Lee. It wasn't until I read the description until I realized they weren't photographs.

McCormick

Some people ask me why I read Kanye West's blog, and that's because who ever writes it posts cool stuff like this sometimes.

McCormick from Boxlab Crew on Vimeo.

When the Day Breaks (1999)

very pretty. thank you canada
Amanda Forbis Wendy Tilby
Interview
Early Rotoscoping. Its legit.

Civilization - Brambilla

Civilization by Marco Brambilla from CRUSH on Vimeo.

This video is a composite of over 300 video clips seemlessly put together to create an elongated piece that is to be viewed in the Standard Hotel's (NYC) elevators. As the passengers go up they reach heaven and as they go down they reach hell.

The quality of this work is phenominal. And you all ought to visit his site.

My first video

Just doing a little reflecting on the past year since I first started video to where I'm now and I feel like I'm coming along at a steady pace. There is still a lot to figure out. I just re-watched my first video after not seeing it for a while and I remember when I presented it in class, it wasn't received so well and my professor said maybe if you look at it in a month or two you will have a clearer picture of things you would change. And watching it now I don't feel like I would change a thing. I really like my first video. Its refreshing to me and not convoluted with "concept". At the heart of the story is fellowship and belonging. It feels innocent. I believe innocence is the pathway to true wisdom.

Come On! from Torlando Hakes on Vimeo.

A Hunger Artist

I am very excited about this post. The reason for this is because I finally have jumped through the proper compression hoops to upload my and dear friend Erin Robinson's last video art piece from our video class last semester. We started the project around spring break time and finished in late april. We primarily worked in Adobe AfterEffects, and also used Flash, Photoshop for coloring, and Premiere Pro CS4 for the final edit. My good friend DM Stith provided the music from his album Heavy Ghost on the Asthmatic Kitty Record Label and he also portrayed the Hunger Artist himself. The story was inspired by Franz Kafka's short story "A Hunger Artist". Enjoy.

A Hunger Artist from Torlando Hakes on Vimeo.

Oldies but Goodies

When I was a kid, one of my favorite things to do was to stay home sick from school. I seemed to do that a lot during the second grade but then my mom sort of made me stop doing that. But there were two things I really enjoyed about this. First, watching "The Price is Right". It is too hard to catch the price is right with that 11:00 time slot. My second favorite part was watching old style cartoons. Merry Melodies and Tom and Jerry. To this day I will get down on some Tom and Jerry. (To see the cutest cartoon duck on earth click here.) One of my younger siblings shares my love for old cartoons. My parents would try getting her new ones but they could never quite hold her attention like an old 50's toon with very little dialog. This was pretty convenient for them because you can find loads of DVD's at walmart for a dollar that have old cartoons on them.

So my visit to the Drawn! blog today was a nice surprise.

Todd Schorr

Today on Drawn! I watched the short video spotlight on Beverly Hills artist Todd Schorr. He does acrylic paintings that look like oil, but they seem a little more matte finished which is because of the acrylics. They are calling his genre pop surrealism, namely because of the 50's style cartoon and monster themes. He's having an exhibit at teh San Jose Museum of art Saturday, June 20, 2009 through Wednesday, September 16, 2009.

Internet perusing.

over at Blink Productions website I found a few strange videos. One of them was a Peter Bjorn and john deal called nothing to worry about. It had all these japanese rockabilly dudes dancing in a park that looked a lot like the park that is right outside of my hotel in Osaka. With the going ons in that park I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same park.
Click here for video...

Wesley Allsbrook

The Leviathan is a good looking comic. It's a quick 14 pager by Wesley Allsbrook. Head to Tor.com to peep it. She loves the retro thing it seems, but not withstanding its too pretty to ignore, especially for comics available on the web. Toward the end I started to not understand what was going on, but within 14 pages who really cares. I mean, that's how actual retro comics are. (especially the soap-opera strips in the sunday paper like Rex Morgan M.D., who gets those?) But the leviathan is a lovely comic.

Illustrations and website.


Wesley Allsbrook. These are some good illustrations. I normally don't like that retro comic, all flat colors thing because generally the choice in color palette is too vibrant for me and too "lipsticky" which is a term I'm making up that doesn't really make sense. But I'm referring to comics like the old swamp thing or hulk, its just too bright and basic. But its what they had and its what they could do and thank goodness for digital coloring. But this chick is really picking the right color.

Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America

Hank Willis Thomas from Brooklyn Museum on Vimeo.

What a loaded title. Artist Hank Willis Thomas digitally removes all logos and design from a series of black advertisements from 1968 to 2008.

With some reluctance I share this particular video because its about "the first time". But we're all adults here right? Its done by jonas odell, he's a pretty talented animator from sweden. "Never like the first time" won the Golden Bear in Berlin back in 2006. This video reminded me of a time, when I couldn't resist asking a friend if after getting married, you know, if "it" was all she hoped it would be and I'll never forget the response. She said "if you are a man then yes, if you are a woman then don't get your hopes up." This video and another video of his called lies, are documentaries, I feel, more than animations. I mean they are animations of course but documentaries are very rich to me because there is no illusion of reality, it is reality. But when they are told through animation, I feel like they connect to the viewers' imaginations. So where as before, maybe you have a hard time imagining what it would be like to be in the person's shoes of who you are watching, but now you are almost forced to imagine it because the visual story telling is only an abstraction of what really happened.
An additional animation different from the first two is called Revolver and I also recommend watching this if you can stand 7 minutes of straight streaming mayhem.

Clockwork

Clockwork from David Prosser on Vimeo.

This is one impressive animation. Done in After Effects by David Prosser from Royal College of Art in London England. I've only just started thinking about using after effects in a similar way, which is to construct 3D environments and buildings importing what looks like inverted pencil drawings from photoshop and then using the 3D layers to construct the dimensions. One thing he utilizes well in this is the camera mode which allowed him to pan and track and do all of those interesting swoops. The 2D drawing gave the whole thing a nice handmade feel which I think is a big thing in the digital art world right now. Cool stuff.

Floating tower of Babel

I'm working on a video piece right now, its coming along fairly well. The concept is drawn from the old testament story of the tower of babel where the people tried to build a tower to get to heaven and God punished them and destroyed the temple. I want to bring it to the present/slash future by incorporating the massive amount of consumerism that goes on in big cities. I almost feel like instead of people trying to get to heaven, they are trying to build their own idea of heaven on earth, and forget all about the prospect of what happens after.


Above I put one building over water, which in this context doesn't represent purification, but instead the sins of the world and also the idea of not being built on solid ground.


Above here I decided to put multiple buildings as some what of a surveillance or big brother type of system. My favorite book is 1984 by George Orwell and so with this video there is definitely even more of a science fiction feel to it. Even though scifi is not my intention, sometimes I think of religion as just a little science fictiony. (I sort of feel bad for saying that.)

My professor compared it to "Castle in the Sky" by Hayao Miyazaki, which for some reason I hadn't heard of and Jerry Ueslmann
who I also hadn't heard of. I sometimes really suck about not hearing about things.
I normally don't do many religious pieces but I thought it was interesting. The stills of the first video will be displayed in a museum in the Osaka Maritime Museum here in Japan this coming week.

I will post the videos when they are done. So check back in for them.

May your miles be full of smiles.

japanese kid on subway rockin a vols T

Right now I am very messily eating a bowl of raman that I bought while I'm here in japan visiting. And the thought came to my mind on how much I don't like writing in my journal but that I feel compelled to do it. So I've decided to renew my comic from a year ago called Miles of Smiles. Miles because of my middle name and smiles because it rhymes. I'd like to separate this blog from my other blogs by lending it exclusively to Miles of Smiles, my tentatively titled frogman or frogkids comic and other art or illustration projects I do and maybe blogging about other peoples stuff. And hopefully by the end of the summer this blog will attach itself to a more fully formed website.