a last minute note...

At the Bloor Cinema tomorrow Saturday, March 15th_08, 4 pm:

Frédéric Back will be speaking at a screening of his films:

TAIS (The Toronto Animated Image Society) will be presenting a program of 80 minutes of 35mm film prints:

All Nothing

Crac!

The Mighty River, 'Le Fleuve Aux Grandes Eaux'

The Man Who Planted Trees

Link here to more info on TAIS site.

Go! Saw 'The Mighty River' in Montreal last year. No words to describe the impact this film had on me on a small screen. I can't wait to see it up there on a full size screen.

Queen and Portland aftermath of the fire...

RIP Suspect
Originally uploaded by Jape Wisteria


queenfire!
Originally uploaded by nice+smooth ultramedia.

We don't normally post other peoples shots but this will be an exception. These pictures were taken by several Toronto Flickr members who were close to this 6 alarm blaze. Follow the image links to see more.

UPDATE Feb 28_08: Duke's Cycle is posting a running diary on their site of the day-to-day behind the scenes of getting back to business after the fire.

Some of what was lost:
Duke's Cycle shop (levelled. A great 90 year old family business. That's where I bought my last bike.)
Suspect Video On Queen (they still have Suspect on Markham, but a very large stock with many obscure and hard to find films were lost)
Preloved (they just got their lovely spring collection ready)
National Sound (40 years in business, one of the few shops in Toronto still repairing turntables)

Here's a stitched-together image of the block BEFORE the fire posted by Kevin Steele:

Saturday in the neighbourhood...

posted by Arna and John:

Concentration...

Posted by Arna. Ink on watercolour paper, coloured later in photoshop. He never looked up. Continuing on the theme of sketching on the subway:

Connections...

Posted by Arna:

I was sketching these two on the subway as they shared headphones and stared straight ahead. Then suddenly they hugged to say goodbye. The taller girl left the train and the one that looked like Kirsten Dunst sat down beside me, just as I closed the sketch book. I got up and started for the door. She slide over into my old seat and picked up my red reading glasses that I'd dropped on the floor and handed them to me. Thanks! I should have shown her the sketch.

untitled...

posted by Arna:

New Year's Morning...

Rain fell most of the night then changed to snow about 5 am. When we woke up we saw snow stuck to everything! This is our cherry tree in the backyard in Toronto Canada.

Oscar Peterson...

Posted by Arna:

Oscar Peterson the renowned Canadian jazz piano master died yesterday. He will be missed.

Here is an interview with Oscar Peterson from 1965, published in 'Seventeen & a half', which was my high school literary magazine. Good friend Lanny Salsberg was publisher of the mag. My friend and fellow classmate Robert Libman met Mr. Peterson at the Friars Tavern in Toronto, Canada. I did the portrait from a photograph.

Mewy Christmas to all...

Hair(less) The Musical!

Got the chance to see a terrific forty-five minute cartoon musical this weekend at the Royal Cinema in Toronto.

The RUBY GLOOM characters were all singing and all dancing. With a great music score by Ray Parker and Tom Szczesniak, (the same guys who created our COOLMAN! music), HAIR(LESS) sounded and looked gorgeous. Director Robin Budd and his crew pulled out all the stops. Pretty nice stuff for a television budget animated in Toon Boom Harmony. Why not release this on the big screen?

fatKiki

She's actually not this fat, but heck, she sure loves to hang out!

Moo Cards!

Got these a while ago. They are fun to share, sort of like our own personal trading cards. Yayyy for Moo!

Gladstone Late Afternoon...

Taken by John van Bruggen, on the way to Canzine 2007. Read more about the event here.

Here's more about the event, for Nick who asked :)

Artist Max Douglas was there (Arna's son), showing off his ambitious new book, THEREFORE REPENT (a partnership with writer Jim Monroe). We hung out with Max, (family day!) and picked up a poignant graphic trio of HUNG books by Shannon Gerard and a really funny little (really little!) book called Transit Tokens by John Martz (he of the called notorious TTC ANAGRAM MAP). We also got a trippy PINPAL PAPER DOLL. There was lots more to see and do- you could have a 'hate letter' written about you if you so desired, and read the latest SHAMELESS magazine. We somehow missed seeing the room installation by TARA BURSEY, but we heard it was dark. Tara's work always challenges the viewer.

Royal Winter Fair 2006

Here's a little sampler of shots we took during our visit with Daniela and James at the Royal Winter Fair last year. It's been a year and the Royal is on again. What a great place to draw.

But since we might not make it to the fair this year, we'll post this link to a fabulous set of Royal Winter Fair sketches by Drazen Kozjan. Delicious.

Dani and J are in San Francisco now, and from what we hear, life is good. You can visit their blogs here:

Daniela and J

Persepolis!!

Posted by Arna:

Here are some stills from the soon to be released animated feature film, Persepolis:

Based on the books by the same name:

On the first night of this year's TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) we saw Persepolis, the movie, and it was good.
A few facts:

-Approx. two years in the making.

-Based on the graphic novels 1 and 2 of the same name by Marjane Satrapi.

-Directed by artist and writer Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud.

-Created almost entirely in black and white in France, using traditional animation techniques with some CGI enhanced shots.

-Set against the fundamentalist Iranian revolution of the 1980's, the story follows writer artist Marjane Satrapi's life starting when she was a ten year old girl in an educated liberal family, to the time she was a young adult, living in exile in Europe. As Marjane Satrapi was careful to explain at the screening, this is a story based on her life, but not a true autobiography, since there are events that were altered from reality during the making of the movie.

-The version we saw was subtitled, but this movie will be dubbed in English and released later this year for the North American market. I hope that it will see a good size release in theatres. Certainly the audience at this night's screening reacted with genuine delight and much spontaneous laughter.
This style of animation is what is now known as ' 2D traditional'. Hand animated on paper, then in-betweened. And then in this case and most amazingly, the animated line was all traced by felt tip pen to give the look and feel of Satrapi's original graphic novel. For more on the technique, please check the nifty 'making of' documentary which you can watch on the Persepolis website. In order to create the felt tip traced line that you see on every drawing in this film, the filmmakers searched out a respected semi retired French hand-inker named Franck Miyot (or Miller...sp?) and asked him to train a young crew of approx. 20 artists in the art of hand-inking. As a result there is a group of talented artists in France who have brought this labour intense animation tradition back to life in that country.

Can't say anything bad about this film. OKAY maybe once in a while the score was a tiny bit too on the nose. Even so the music was workmanlike and better, and at often genuinely uplifting. Listen for a quirky and totally appropriate version of 'Eye Of The Tiger' sung in a raw slightly off-key style by the heroine. ~Woohoo! The song pulls you out of a sequence that focuses on the teen Marjane's mind-numbing depression, exacerbated (always wanted to use that word in a sentence) by a doctor's over-prescribed drug regime.

The film makers could have divided this story up into two parts, but maybe they thought that they'd get just one kick at the can. They'd edited the two books into one tale and told it well. The art direction of the film elaborates on the simple black and white style of the books, sticking mostly to black and white but adding shades of grey, laid down in richly textured washes. The look of the film sometimes feels like German expressionism... (a little Cabinet of Doctor Caligari perhaps?) in it's use of scumbled blacks and murky lighting. Or a reference to the Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez. Then during the battle scenes and historic sequences, there's a echo of the silhouette animation of Lotte Reininger, and you can see the influence of Goya during the riot/execution sequences.

Favourite characters:

Young Marjane. A bossy outspoken little girl, innocent and possessing faith in her world and her God... soon to be tested.

Grandma. Wise in woman's ways and Marjane's rock.

Persepolis will be screening at the Ottawa Animation Festival later this week. It's a great time to read the graphic novels before the English language version of the film debuts in December. Or re-read them, which I'm off to do next!~ Arna

Reviews of the film: Here, here, and here. Update: here's a new review on Michael Sporn's 'splog' and this review posts a video of the Persepolis trailer.

And here's Nick Sung's review of several TIFF films including Persepolis. Nick's review comes complete with watercolour illustrations!