Minnie's House in Disneyland is a destination I never get tired of. The skewered, wonky look of it would be too caricatured for everyday living. Even so, you wonder if some modification of that could be made to work in the real world.
Wonky or not, the house has a wonderful vibe and that's hard to achieve. Whenever someone succeeds with that they should get a medal.
Disneyland doesn't contain a reproduction of the home in "Alice in Wonderland," but I'll discuss it here anyway.
In this frame from the film (above) Alice is a little too big for the house but I can imagine a more practical scale that would still make the visitor feel tall.
I also like the scale of the stairs. They're the kind of stairs you see in split level houses as opposed to two story houses. In split levels the higher level is off to the side rather than on top of of the bottom level. That makes for a shorter staircase. It's an interesting idea.
Also, notice the slant of the ceiling....
From this view the film gives the ceiling a different height than it is in the establishing shot. That's okay, it's all about artistic license.
What a beautiful bedroom (above)!
I have to admit that most people would rightly rebel against the idea of synthetic trees in real neighborhoods. I'm only introducing the idea as a thought experiment.
Little old ladies shouldn't have to figure out these lighting schemes themselves. Professional designers should do it and install it before the first owners move in.
Gee, there's lots more to say about this, but I'm running out of space. I'll pick this up again in another post.
5 comments:
Hillary: I'll be happy to answer any question you or your son might have about old cartoons...if I can answer it. I'm no expert. Tell him to write whatever he likes as a comment.
OK. Thank you! In the post about German cartoonists you include this sentence: At the turn of the 20th century a lot of newspaper editors were convinced that only Germans could make good comic strips. American scouts scoured Germany for talent and succeeded in luring away some pretty heavy hitters, like Lyonel Fenninger (above).
This is very interesting information that I would like to talk about in my project. However there are very strict rules about my bibliography and I would need to include sources that back this up. Do you have any other sources that you could recommend that would provide more information on this?
Thank you!
Matthew
Mathew: The best source I know of is the amazing newspaper comics history blog called "Strippers' Guide." It's run by Allan Holtz and Alex Jay. They put up a good list of comic history sites that are worth following.
Bill Blackbeard's Smithsonian book on newspaper comics is a must-have source. Lots of libraries and used book stores have it.
I'm not a historian and some of what I say is an inference based on the writing of others. In the case of Feinenger I don't recall reading that scouts from America aggressively courted him, but it sounds like a safe bet. If they didn't then he might have been reacting to what he heard on the German "grapevine." I have read that lots of American editors courted German comic artists, but I can't remember where I read it. It seems to be common knowledge.
If you look at early newspaper strips you discover lots of German names: Opper, Dirks, Feinenger, Herriman, etc. Some are Dutch or English, some are Jewish like Milt Gross and Rube Goldberg.
The impression I get is that early European cartoonists looked to magazines like Punch and Le Rire for employment. The idea of cartoons strips in newspapers took fire mostly here, in America.
Eddie - Thanks. This is very helpful, Matthew
Something I noticed about the White Rabbit's house scene in Alice in Wonderland after multiple viewings. Alice grows while inside the upstairs bedroom of the house with her legs stretching all the way outside the door and side of the house. She's sitting down on the floor of the upstairs bedroom. But judging by the external shots of her trapped in the house, it looks more like she's sitting on the floor of the downstairs room of the house. Which means her legs grew ridiculously long to stretch outside the door and side of the house. Wonderland logic, I guess?
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