#101 One Hundred & One

One Hundred & One

 #101 One Hundred & One
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Do you see spots?

The idea for Amper­Art #101, One Hun­dred & One, was eas­i­er than giv­ing a dog a bone. After strug­gling with a con­cept for #100, this one was fun & easy.

One of my fond­est child­hood mem­o­ries is sit­ting in the Alex The­ater (Glen­dale, Cal­i­for­nia) with my fam­i­ly, enjoy­ing this humor­ous, enter­tain­ing, upbeat movie by Dis­ney, One Hun­dred and One Dal­ma­tions. We sure laughed at the antics of ever-​hungry Rol­ly, the chub­by dal­ma­tion pup­py. Even as a young­ster, I could tell there was some­thing unique & con­tem­po­rary about the styling of the ani­ma­tion. It was sketchy in a con­tem­po­rary fash­ion due to the first-​ever use of scan­ning the pen­cil sketch­es direct­ly onto ani­ma­tion cels with the Xerox process. The col­or was still brushed in by hand between the lines, but the tedious trac­ing of the ani­ma­tors’ pen­cil lines with pen & ink was removed from the process. 

This process could eas­i­ly have been used as an exam­ple for the pre­vi­ous Amper­Art #100, Mile­stones & Goals. But the movie itself is the mile­stone, so I saved the art­work for #101 One Hun­dred & One.

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 Incongruent styles.

One Hundred and One Dalmations Movie PosterI was intrigued by the inno­v­a­tive Xerox process & the sketchy style it ren­dered for this movie. Not only did the rev­o­lu­tion­ary process cre­ate effi­cien­cy, it ren­dered a whole new style of art­work. Research­ing the let­ter­ing for the movie title, I was not so impressed with the col­ors for the poster. While the movie’s styling of char­ac­ters & back­grounds was snap­py & con­tem­po­rary, the poster was not. It was all pri­ma­ry col­ors & a less-​than-​cohesive assem­blage of visu­al ele­ments. But I did go ahead & trace the let­ter­ing (orig­i­nal­ly hand-​drawn) & designed an amper­sand to match, for the Amper­Art #101 One Hun­dred & One edi­tion. The edges of the spots & shad­ows are just slight­ly blurred, to retain the most­ly hard-​edge style (due to tech­ni­cal lim­i­ta­tions) of the period.

If you wish to study the styling of the dal­ma­tions & oth­er char­ac­ters, this thumb­nail will enlarge to a size­able image.

Image shown for ref­er­ence & edu­ca­tion­al pur­pos­es only. ©Dis­ney 

Sacrilegious?

Many crit­ics boo-​hooed the rough-​hewn look of Dis­ney’s One Hun­dred and One Dal­ma­tions. They said the lush­ness of hand-​inked line had van­ished. Well, yes, it did. But it was replaced by a snap­py new look, akin to jazz vs clas­si­cal. They each have their place, & they each have their fans & fol­low­ers. I real­ly like the look of this film, & the new Xerox process made ani­mat­ing all those spots pos­si­ble. It was the per­fect sto­ry con­cept to make use of the inno­v­a­tive imag­ing tool.

Who is to say ani­ma­tion must be hand-​inked & hand-​painted? Some of the finest ani­ma­tion today has nev­er been near a brush, pen or even acetate cel & it blows away the crude ani­ma­tion of even the finest ear­ly Dis­ney clas­sics. I will admit, though, that I will always pre­fer to watch the orig­i­nal 1938 Snow White & the Sev­en Dwarfs to the most incred­i­ble CGI remake.

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chaz sez ...

Check out the new “chaz sez” blog at Des​i​moneDesign​.com, my com­mer­cial graph­ic design web­site. It’s most­ly about design, typog­ra­phy, print­ing, pub­lish­ing & mar­ket­ing, but on occa­sion I’ll divert to a side­ways top­ic that just can’t escape my rant­i­ng & raving.


Production notes for #101 One Hundred & One:
Original size: 20x30 inches

Programs: Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop
Lettering: Traced from original movie poster
Ampersand: Designed to match style of original movie poster lettering
Credits:
Movie poster: ©Disney (shown for reference & educational purposes)
You may repost the AmperArt image. Please credit Amper​Art​.com.
To download a full-​size high-​resolution 11x17-​inch poster, click on the image.

For pro­fes­sion­al graph­ic design, please vis­it Des­i­mone Design.

Desimone? Damn good!

#74 Creak & Quake

AmperArt 74 Creak & Quake


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Greet­ings, mortals.

This mor­bid install­ment of my Amper­Art series could have been enti­tled “Crypt Doors & Tomb­stones” but I chose the just-​as-​eerie verbs over the nouns “Creak & Quake.” These words are all from the first stan­za of Grim Grin­ning Ghosts, the theme song per­me­at­ing Walt Dis­ney’s Haunt­ed Mansion. 

Truth be told, I’m still only 99% sure that the song starts with 

When the crypt doors creak & the tomb­stones quake…” or
“When the crypt goes creak & the tomb­stones quake…”

Why? Because after vis­it­ing sev­er­al web­sites to make sure I got the lyrics right (even though I’ve heard the song hun­dreds of times, it’s not embed­ded into the skull like “It’s a Small World”) there were dis­crep­an­cies. The first site which sound­ed like an offi­cial lyrics site is what threw me off: It read “…goes creak” which was sur­pris­ing, as I’ve always heard, so I thought, “When the crypt doors creak…” The orig­i­nal song­writ­ers — Bud­dy Bak­er, melody, and lyrics by Xavier “X” Aten­cio, the Dis­ney leg­end — were list­ed, along with dates and oth­er infor­ma­tion.  So I fig­ured that was what they wrote, and every­one just adapt­ed what they thought they heard. 

Until I vis­it­ed a few more sites. Every­where else the song goes “…doors creak…” which sounds so much bet­ter; is part of the Dis­ney fans’ venac­u­lar; and what I chose to use in my piece of art­work. (It’s prob­a­bly the cor­rect choice.)

William Shake­speare & his poem, Venus & Ado­nis, influ­enced the title of the Haunt­ed Man­sion’s theme song:

Look, how the world’s poor peo­ple are amaz’d
At appari­tions, signs, and prodigies,
Where­on with fear­ful eyes they long have gaz’d,
Infus­ing them with dread­ful prophecies;
So she at these sad sighs draws up her breath,
And, sigh­ing it again, exclaims on Death.
Hard-​favour’d tyrant, ugly, mea­gre, lean,
Hate­ful divorce of love,’ — thus chides she Death,—
Grim-​grinning ghost, earth­’s worm, what dost thou mean
To sti­fle beau­ty and to steal his breath,
Who when he liv’d, his breath and beau­ty set
Gloss on the rose, smell to the violet?

The tomb­stone and grave­yard in this piece real­ly do exist: The Gra­nary Ceme­tery, Boston, Mass. Well, almost. The top and bor­ders of the tomb­stone are authen­tic (except for the icon­ic “D” under the skull); I elon­gat­ed the entire mon­u­ment and replaced the somber inscrip­tion with sil­ly lyrics. So much for rev­er­ence. I wish to give cred­it to an incred­i­ble pho­tog­ra­ph­er, whose image I came across on the Inter­net and used as ref­er­ence for this piece. Her name is Del­la Huff. Her pho­tog­ra­phy is spec­tac­u­lar. See it at http://​del​lahuff​pho​to​.zen​fo​lio​.com/ I had no idea such mor­bid tomb­stones actu­al­ly exist­ed. The grave­yard, though heav­i­ly dis­tort­ed by my twist­ed mind, is among many won­der­ful pho­tographs I found at https://​www​.flickr​.com/​p​h​o​t​o​s​/​m​b​d​e​z​i​n​e​s​/​s​e​t​s​/​7​2​1​5​7​6​0​7​8​5​7​0​0​8​0​82/


listen up!

As much as I detest innacu­ra­cy (why can’t oth­ers do a lit­tle research like I did, even though it took longer than the art­work?) it led me to sev­er­al inter­est­ing haunts:

I dis­cov­ered alter­nate, high­ly enter­tain­ing ver­sions of Grim Grin­ning Ghosts; a great video for the kids (and the grown-​up kids); and of course it was haunt­ing­ly won­der­ful to hear the orig­i­nal sound­track again (where I could swear they enun­ci­ate “doors”). Here are those sites:

Turn off the lights and turn up the sound:

Enter­tain­ing a capel­la from VoicePlay:
https://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​j​p​w​0​y​Q​p​v​b_c

Here’s the orig­i­nal sound­track fol­lowed by a cool alter­nate ver­sion (which seems to have been pro­duced by James Pres­ley) and some of the begin­ning and end­ing narrative:
https://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​X​S​a​q​SVi – Ms

The kids will enjoy this sin­ga­long video: https://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​e​a​v​o​0​8​I​X​duQ (I like it very much myself.)

And some­thing real­ly enter­tain­ing — spooky at first with organ and choir, then wild­ly zany with unique voic­es, and all sorts of oth­er sounds…produced by James Presley:
https://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​R​I​_​4​v​z​q​e​vLg


Production notes:
Original size: 10x15 inches
Program: Photoshop, Illustrator (for the dingbats)
Fonts: Willow, Eccentric, Harrington
Ampersand: Harrington (line shadow added)
Images:
Tombstone & graveyard  reference: Granary Cemetery, Boston, Massachussetts, USA

Della Huff is the photographer whose tombstone photo was used for reference and sampling by the artist. See her spectacular fine art photography at http://​del​lahuff​pho​to​.zen​fo​lio​.com/  Della’s original photo that made this AmperArt piece possible:
http://​www​.pbase​.com/​d​e​l​l​y​b​e​a​n​/​i​m​a​g​e​/​4​0​9​4​6​116
Graveyard background: mbdezines Image modified so extensively it does not resemble the original photograph…but the background would  not be “authentic” without this photographer’s contribution.
Artist discovered that crypts do have doors at:
http://​idiot​pho​tog​ra​ph​er​.word​press​.com/​2​0​1​4​/​0​5​/​2​8​/​t​h​e​-​c​r​y​p​t​-​d​o​o​r​s​-​o​f​-​r​i​c​o​l​e​ta/
Music and lyrics sites visited for reference:
https://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​j​p​w​0​y​Q​p​v​b_c
https://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​X​S​a​q​SVi – Ms
https://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​e​a​v​o​0​8​I​X​duQ
https://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​R​I​_​4​v​z​q​e​vLg

H u r r y  b a c k …

#10 Crazy & Different

AmperArt #10 Crazy & Different


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This is a high-​resolution pdf & may take a few minutes to download.
Find printing tips & framing ideas here.

Upon read­ing of Steve Jobs’ pass­ing, I felt almost the same way as I did on Decem­ber 15, 1966…

As I was fold­ing papers for my paper route, the head­line caught my eye:

WALT DISNEY DIES

I went numb and cried. Both Dis­ney and Jobs were vision­ar­ies, cre­ative genius­es, demand­ing per­fec­tion­ists, and they both died much too young.

My first lap­top was the very first Tita­ni­um G3 – it couldn’t even burn a cd, it was such an ear­ly mod­el. (I’ve since learned to wait for ver­sion 2 or 3.) I was so proud of that thing. It was the ulti­mate in styl­ish design. I didn’t even care if there was a com­put­er inside the case, it was just beau­ti­ful to look at. That’s what I appre­ci­ate most about Steve – he made every­thing with class, from the way it works to the way it looks and feels, even down to the mar­ket­ing and advertising.

Macskateer

M‑I-​C… See how insane­ly great this world is today.

K‑E-Y…Why? Because of vision­ary genius.

After Walt passed away the com­pa­ny stum­bled for awhile, but the “cast mem­bers” and fans of Dis­ney have so much soul that they got it back on its feet. We’ll always won­der what else Walt would have cre­at­ed had he lived longer, and sure­ly we won­der that about Steve. But just like Dis­ney, Apple has such a strong desire to be a class act and pro­duce class prod­ucts, sup­port­ed by its incred­i­bly loy­al fans, that Steve would prob­a­bly be proud of what his peo­ple con­tin­ue to invent and polish.

I designed this poster hon­or­ing Steve Jobs, as a spe­cial edi­tion in my Amper­Art poster series.

The words are straight from of one of Steve’s speeches.

No doubt Walt and Steve are think­ing up the next insane­ly great idea in vision­ary heaven.


Production notes:
Original size: 20 x 30 inches
Program: Photoshop (coulda used Illustrator — probably started out as an entirely different concept for which Photoshop would be required)
Font: Myriad (Apple’s marketing font family)
Ampersand: Myriad, sans one delicious byte