IF: Grow

An un-democratic gem

I started watching some Cheburashka clips with Yehuda. It wasnt what I remembered. What I remembered was a really cute animated character, and what it was was claymation with titles that kept on translating Cheburashka as "gremlin". Is that true? Wouldnt have mattered if he was cute - but Yehuda got scared of Genya the chrocodile. Called him "monster man" and wanted to turn it off. After I told him that it wasnt a monster, it was a crocodile- he called him "crocodile man" which wasnt much better and very oxymoronic, like this guy might just turn around and start eating himself.

So we turned it off and started looking for other soviet animation. I know theres good stuff out there. Ive had this book of Soviet Animation for as long as I can remember - maybe since I was 3. It immigrated with us - and the stuff in it was gorgeous - if only because it was (and still is) what I base my dreams on.

So we came across this:
There Once was a Dog (1983)


Why do I like this so much? Well, I guess anything foreign seems more exotic. Its just about a friendship... an equivalent American Animation would have rubbed me the wrong way - so I really have no solid reasoning on this- it just seems to have more levels to it. Levels that dont hit you over the head. The friendship is about 2 imperfect characters. They are both the same species w/ very different things expected of them. Yeah thats it - theres layers.

Sometimes democracy i.e. creating for the market, produces really crappy results for animation - maybe for the arts in general.

IF: camouflage

often it takes more than clothes to camouflage someone different.

IF: citrus

I started thinking about that vintage dubonnet poster (it turned out completely different ofcourse)... the guy without his citrus would have, well, just a drink and as a result (more likely the other way around) he'd be kind of unhealthy and depressed... then theres the citrified guy... who's more like the Miami lady's man - contagiously happy!

cookies into words

My son's been having handfulls of alphabet cookies. He's in his terrible twos - but really not so terrible. Here was my thinking: Ill let him have rediculous amounts of cookies... he'll get sick of them sooner ...and then we can move on to broccoli ;-)... then, to go with the delussional theme...I imagined him eating these little cookies with letters on them, and as they entered his "head" they formed into words and as soon as he was done chewing he'd spit out intelligent conversation. Anyay, thats what this picture is about.

A few minutes ago he took interest in lettuce.

IF: topic I Spy

just catching up on some Illustration Friday topics.

Illustration Friday first submission

This is my first entry for Illustration Friday and the first entry in this blog. Theme is "Neighbors". My relationship with my neighbors is not at all contentious, but for some reason the word "neighbors" brought competitiveness to mind. Here are two neighbors having a friendly morning cup of coffee only to size each other up. (if it looks like something different let me know.