VAMPING TIL I GET TO KNOW HOW MAC WORKS

"Hi, everybody!  It's just me, Uncle Eddie!"

"This isn't my room, it's my son's. He's a baseball guy and a philosophy major."

"He's a stoic, so the decoration in the room is pretty minimal.  I begged him to let me decorate it! I'm an artist...think of what I could have done with it! We could have been in the LA Times! In Architectural Digest!!! This could have been a big deal!!!!!"

"But like I said, he's a stoic.  He likes Heidegger too. I can't stand Heiddeger!  At least he's not an existentialist.  That's such a shallow philosophy."

 

"Good Grief!!! My hand turned white!!!!!"

"Hmmm, can't go around with white hands! You know what I'm gonna do about that?"

 
"Yes sir... I'll tell you what I'm gonna do about that....I got the solution right here.  Lemme see....yeah, here it is...right...here..........."

"SMELLY SHOE!!!! SMELLY SHOE!!!!"

Sniff! Sniff!

"Good Lord and Tarnation!!!!!!!!!!"

"That was gross! Sorry! I kid! I kid!"

UNCLE EDDIE'S DAD ANSWERS THE MAIL!

"Um...hello! It is I who am Uncle Eddie's father!  John's dad answers his mail sometimes, so my son  thought I should do this thigamajig, too!  Heh, heh. My son's a card, no?"

"Ok,  let's take a look at these letters....."

"What's all this Mac vs. PC stuff?"

"I hate to tell you but my kid's converting to being a Mac fan!  Mac isn't always faster or better...but Eddie says it's more fun."

"I don't know, I don't get all this computer stuff."

"It's good for pictures of girls, though!  Some of them have two-piece bathing suits!"

"OK, that's all for now!"

"No, wait a minute!!!"

"I forgot to say that, according to Eddie,  there's another Mac operating system called "Camino." He said Camino's  a Linux-based system that's easier to use than Safari.  He'll try that out after he posts this."

"Well that's it for real this time! Be seeing you!  Eddie, if you're reading this, be sure to take out the trash!  Your place was stinky last time I was there!  Um...bye!

Eddie says:  Whew! This was my first post on my new Mac. It took me FOREVER to do this,  but I guess it'll get easier.

Also, a plug for ace girl-artist Katie Rice's latest ebay auction!  I'm afraid to link to her site  because I'm probably just one electron away from exceeding my bandwidth here.  I didn't know how to reduce my pictures so I posted them all huge.  Anyway, to see Katie's pictures, just Google "FunnyCute!"

WINDOWS XP BETTER THAN MAC LEOPARD!!!!!!

Sorry I don't have graphics to put up with this post. I can't figure out how to do that on my new  Mac.  With Windows you just go to your "My Pictures" and grab a picture. It's intuitive. With Mac....OK, I give up, where do you store your graphics? In the photo bin?

MAC SUCKS!  The default size of the Mac windows are thin and unattractive, and it's not clear how to widen them.  With windows you just pull on the sides.  The Mac welcoming screen should be called "the unwelcoming screen" because it's loaded to the gills with garish ads for Apple products, and the tiny sliver where you type in searches is lost in the clutter.  Making a picture larger or smaller on Windows is done with icons that visually describe your choices. I still haven't figured out how to do it on a Mac.

Confusing? Fear not! Mac has seen fit to answer questions on a free-for-all "forum" where you can mingle with random, confused users of all the Mac products and attempt to find something useful, if you don't die of exhaustion first. Dopey old Windows provides a manual, both physical and virtual, and it has an index.

My PC monitor had controls for brightness and saturation  that were on the front of the monitor, where everybody could see them.  You could use keyboard commands or just turn the knob. Ditto the volume knob on my PC speakers.  Not so with Mac. Mac even hides the on/off button.   

The set-up was alternately easy and confusing.  Mac wanted to know if I wanted to subscribe to .Mac but stupidly neglected to tell me what the heck .Mac was.  I was told I could get this mysterious, precious  thing on a free trial for 60 days, but I had to type in a password. The same password I use to log on?  Who knows?  It didn't say. I still don't know how to eject my installation CD.  With my PC I pushed a button next to the CD tray. 

So far almost every operation I've encountered, the ones that both Windows and Mac perform in a similar way, can be done more intuitively and with fewer steps on my PC.  Sorry, but there it is.  Probably I'll get used to the Mac system soon and will grow to prefer it like everybody else, but I want to record my first negative impressions now, before I forget them.

 

MY FAVORITE CARICATURIST

Here's some sketches by my very favorite caricaturist, Max Beerbohm. Beerbohm was part of Oscar Wilde's circle and is best known for his humorous essays. He's a terrific writer, very dry and understated: "A tense and peculiar family, the Oedipuses, were they not?" I imagine that I can see his influence on people like Noel Coward, Peter Cook, and Stephen Fry.

According to Wikipedia, Beerbohm's gifts bottomed out when he hit middle age. That's odd. You'd think a dry wit would hit a peak at that time of life. I wonder if he became a stay-at-home like Peter Cook, who's said to have spent his middle years in front of the TV set.

BTW, I may be off the net for a day or two. I just got a new Apple computer but I'm a Windows guy and it may take me a couple of days (or more) to get everything hooked up and running. I'll still continue to read comments, even if I'm unable to reply.

WERE SCRIPTS EVER USED IN ANIMATION'S GOLDEN AGE?

I'm not an animation historian and I've done no original research on the subject. If I had to make a guess I'd say some scripts must have been written because it's inconceivable that penny-pinching studio owners would have always, in all situations, resisted the common practice of live action, which was to use scripts. Also, just guessing again, I'd say that scripts couldn't have been very common. If they were, then where are they now? Why did books and articles written at the time (like "Art of Animation", above and below) emphasize story boards as the preferred way to write stories? Walt himself is on record in print and film saying that he didn't use scripts.

Bob Jaques says he owns a Fleischer script and Floyd Norman said he saw scripts being written while he worked at Disney's. Mike Barrier interviewed non-artist Bill Cottrell who wrote for Disney, and Mike put up Cottrell's script for "Cock Robin" on his site. Steve Worth was not impressed and says Cottrell's script was probably written after the storyboards were made, as a sort of handy synopsis or recording script. Mike disagrees and wants to throttle Steve, but Steve remains adamant. Here's an example of Cottrell's script, below:

It certainly looks like it was written after the story was already made and shot, at least as a Leica reel, but Mike says it contains things that weren't in the finished film, so it must have originated earlier. Maybe it was made from an early Leica reel. Gee, if a script this detailed and anal-retentive was written early, at the creative stage, it would certainly lead me to pity the poor animators whose creative input would have been zilch.

Steve says no scripts (meaning, I assume, creative scripts by non-artists that were more than just dictation) were written during animation's Golden Age. I winced when I heard that because there are exceptions to every rule, and I could imagine someone pulling out that exception from an attic somewhere. Mike says "Snow White" used scripts in addition to storyboards. Animation critic Charles Solomon says no scripts were used at Disney until "101 Dalmatians." I'm not an historian so I can't comment.

Myself, I think scripts are an absolutely terrible way to write animation, but I imagine that I can occasionally see the influence of non-artist writers in some classic films. "Lady and the Tramp" looked beautiful but the writing was full of cliches that are still used by non-artists today. "Aristocats" made after Walt's death, had an abundance of them. I simply can't imagine artists coming up with ideas as visually impaired as these. But maybe I'm wrong.

A BRUTAL, BRUTAL CARICATURE!!!!

Man, I should get the Mother Theresa Award for Taking IT on the Chin for Humanity. Why? Because nobody but a world-class altruist would ever share such a spectacularly withering and unflattering caricature of himself with the public! I do it to further the sacred cause of caricature, and to do penance for my sins.

The artist, of course, is John K. Click to enlarge.

BTW, I'm not offended and the reason is that the picture is so doggoned insightful. John's best caricatures always seem to ridicule nature even more than the person he's drawing. The picture shows someone who's full of self importance and doesn't seem to grasp that he's a shapeless bag of guts, doomed to live a pathetically short lifespan and turn to dust. The viewer laughs at the caricature then realizes that he himself is in the same boat.

ROD SCRIBNER & MANNY GOULD

Here's a picture of Clampett animators Rod Scribner and Manny Gould (click to enlarge). No doubt you've already seen it on Mike Barrier's site or, duped from Mike, on John K's blog. It's making the rounds, no doubt about it.

I reproduce it here out of gratitude to a friend who has a laser printer and who gave me a copy on the best possible glossy paper. The picture reproduces so big that it required four letter-sized prints to get the whole thing, which I promptly taped together to get one poster-size picture. During the week I'll find a nice frame for it.

I'm in heaven! A picture, beautifully composed, of the greatest funny animator and animation cartoonist who ever lived, Rod Scribner. It doesn't hurt to have ace funny man Manny Gould leaning over him. Gould's smile is radient. He must have been a real nice guy. Thanks, Mike, for putting this up!

http://www.michaelbarrier.com/

http://www.michaelbarrier.com/Home%20Page/RodScribnerAtWork.htm

While I'm at it, I should mention the "Pink Elephants" board (above) on Michael Sporn's site together with some Great Steig and Popeye (Below). And what about John K's recent post analysing the takes in "Tale of Two Kitties"? This is a great time to be on the net.

http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/

http://www.johnkstuff.blogspot.com/