Hail the Brothers Quay

Funny how life sometimes feels like it is stuck in some stop motion world filled with hollow-eyed dolls, creatures assembled from your bones and that annoying hair that vibrates incessantly at the crown of your forehead. No. Well, stop taking those pills and let the Brothers Quay treat you in absentia. With porcupine needle in hand head on over to the AWN and stick it into Taylor Jessen's interview with the expatriot twins who were in L.A. for a lecture and retrospective of their work. If you do not know who Stephen and Timothy Quay are then get yourself to the sanitorium and frantically scribble 'I am a loser' until your fingers bleed and the dead opera lady sings. Here are some St. Quay relics that we put the token in to illuminate the leathery skin--IFFR wish I could see this!! Also, Jack and Diane and no do not think John Meloncamp but a movie they are doing some animation for starting this summer. All hail the Brothers Quay.

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Hyacinthe

Here is just a quick slice and splice of the winner of the best video award @ Annecy. Sébastien Cossett and Joann Sfar's underground eye popping strangle(r) hold of Thomas Fersen's "Hyacinthe". This is a nice cross breeding of Joann's graphical stylings set into motion to this slice of life story of Hyacinthe (lady of the house speaking!) and the Monsanto-like results that occur. So swap them factory farmed cows in for the genetically modified seeds of Joann Sfar and gang to take the vine downward into the disturbed ground. See what creature is spliced into the genetic strain to make up this modern day Frankenstein.

Annecy winners

I have rigged up a self-torture device that looks like some medieval Rube Goldberg contraption that would make Flaggellants bleed with envy as I bemoan the fact of missing out on going to Annecy this year. So, it is with tar and feathers that I parade out like the village idiot to happily announce this years winners:
The grand prize goes to a specimen that hasn't strayed too far from this curiosity cabinet--
Regina Pessoa and her short film A Tragic Story with a Happy Ending. Also, Run Wrake's Rabbit, which you can now view on the BBC film network, took a special destinction award!! There are many winners so go and check out the full list here. I will open up the door of the Iron Maiden to pierce your heretical soul and enlighten you to some of the saints and sinners of the biggest animation inquisition in the world. So put on that 'Mask of Infamy' and bring your tortured self back for a pagan dance on this cranial altar of sacrificial offerings.

Rob Sato

I have been toiling in the bunny patch so that I can grow my genetically modified army of cabbage patch drones. But then, I realized in so doing that I have neglected the propaganda crusade of unearthing delectable morsels to share with yous'all. Well pack your lunch and march in single file to bury those cut off crusty edges in the back garden with Rob Sato. I took shovel in hand to start the uprooting of what I consider one of the most overlooked comics of last year, Burying Sandwiches. Fortunately now Rob has his own greenhouse to showcase the fruits of his blackened thumb. With that check out his freakish flora form art that grows wild with seeded imagination. Also, the sample pages of his comic are ripe and ready to sink your canine teeth into. See why this beautiful yet simple story of anorexia is more subtle in tone than the black and white marks on the page.

Sunday Inspiration: Kara Walker

Yesterday, under the blistering gaze of the afternoon sun my shadow became long and agitated. It soon left as I sat and lazed unable to lift myself from beneath the burden of the struggle of labour. The shadow(s) play but underneath the silhouette it can convey a story of complex starkness. Unlike Peter, we get a chance to enter into the history of the South through magnifying lens of Kara Walker. Paper beats rocks but she doesn't cover the hardships of the past up with a white sheet but perforates it to reveal the negative spaces around it. Life-sized images of escaped silhouettes confront us with violence, brutality and murder in a playful punctuated tableaux. Just like in first year animation class where you have to convey action in an 'easy to read' silhouette, Kara captures the caricatured forms and unbridled actions of the cracked 'Song of the South'. We have already backlit the art and craft of Lotte Reininger and Michel Ocelot's shadow puppet animation. But unlike the elegant cameo vision of these two artists Kara uses the cut-out technique to free the idealizations and stereotypes and rewrite the visual language of this black and white imagery.
Kara has exhibited extensively and is included in the Art Now 2 book and the pbs Art:21. So play in the shadows and run the Races of the past as this bunny has already pulled the trigger.

A is for...

ANIMATION BLAST 9! This is for anyone out there that doesn't know about or just woke up from some deep hibernation or the icecaps melted to expose a new intelligable life form to the Darwinian proof of highly evolved animation magazine. Amid Amidi has been dragging his knuckles on this one for awhile now but it will finally stand tall this month to the chagrin of the Neanderthalic stone and chisel reporting news of some myopic organizations. So preview and then throw away that so called magazine of intelligent design and see who the Creator(s) really are!!! A stands for Annecy too. And Amid Amidi will also be the abomidable reporter from zee Amazing festival via the Cartoon Brew. Ack too many A's, eh! So while this bunny is getting over the passing of his kitty put on that beret and drink some whine cuz I wanna be in France. Bring back a t-shirt for me Amid:)