Hi Fructose Magazine has posted an online interview with Chris Reccardi. The interview not only discusses his upcoming gallery shows, but also his experiences working on Ren and Stimpy, his first animation job at The New Beany and Cecil Show, his storyboarding for Rob Zombie’s The Haunted World of El Super-Beasto, and some upcoming animation pilots.
Best Quote? Working on Ren and Stimpy was rewarding: “But rewarding like getting ten root canals, and then growing new super-teeth later.”
For additional info on Chris, see his own website. Hear his latest musical project, the psychedelic pop band Cosmopollus, at this MySpace page.
This cartoon short is The Interview (1961). The animated interviewee is Shorty Petterstein, a beatnik character/alter ego created by “sound artist” Henry Jacobs. Jacobs is an interesting and still rather obscure character who palled around with Lenny Bruce and Alan Watts, hosted one the world’s first “world music” radio programs, and experimented with audio collages and tape manipulation way back when such things were a time-consuming pain in the butt!
WFMU has posted MP3s of all the tracks from The Wide Weird World of Shorty Pettersteinhere.
Henry Jacobs has a website where you can purchase an autographed “Best Of” DVD. Listen to Henry’s 2005 interview for NPR here.
Ernest Pintoff directed The Interview; he’s best known in animation circles for his work at UPA, Flebus at Terrytoons, and his direction of Oscar winner The Critic —with voiceover by Mel Brooks. Len Glasser did the designs—he worked on Tom Terrific at Terrytoons.
Henry Jacobs also contributed to an early 70s oddball animated program called The Fine Art of Goofing Off, which used diverse animation techniques to illustrate meandering free association about the philosophy of pointlessness. 60’s counterculture figures including Alan Watts, Victor Moscoso, and comedy troupe The Committee also contributed to this artifact of Public Television’s early and experimental years.
After the jump, some excerpts from The Fine Art of Goofing Off: [Read more…]
“Fred4Change” by Jeaux Janovsky, from Channel Frederator, Episode #147
Everyone who watches Channel Frederator regularly is familiar some of Jeaux Janovsky’s great art. Now, New Yorkers will get a chance to see some of his art next week. Meet Jeaux in person(!) as part of the ART+ACTION=OBAMA 08 show at Toy Tokyo in the East Village, Thursday, October 17, 7-11pm. Be there and be square.
GAME OVER is just one of several art projects developed by the French-Swiss artist Guillaume Reymond, working with the NOTsoNOISY creative agency. The piece is a series of short films, each one based on a different early video game. Instead of pixels, we see humans in colored shirts moving from seat to seat in a theater.
Other films in the series include Pole Position, Pong, and Tetris.
The current economic crisis may be a bit tough to figure out. ABC News showed a great cartoon, created by Odd Todd, to illustrate the crisis in simple terms. You may remember Odd Todd from his very popular “Laid Off” cartoon.
While the economy has been better, and the stock market hasn’t had a great couple of days, at least an independent animator is making some money, and helping the rest of us put things in perspective at the same time.
This latest issue of Giant Robot Magazine (#55) has an article about Monkmus, who has drawn and animated music videos for the likes of Badly Drawn Boy (hug-fest “Year of the Rat” is seen above), Kid Koala, Death Cab for Cutie, and Los Campesinos. (The interview is not available online–you have to buy the magazine, and you should!)
His real name is Ken Wong. He lives in NYC and is represented by Hornet. You can peruse his Hornet bio page here. Wong went to RISD, animated for The PJs, in-betweened for Prince of Egypt and collaborated with J. Otto Seibold on a webtoon.
