WHY YOU LOOK BAD IN PHOTOS

Here's a recent picture of myself, taken in a bathroom mirror. It's not something to write home about, and it won't win any photography awards, but it's pleasant and it doesn't make me look especially old or fat. "So what?" you say.

What makes it worth posting here is that lately I am old and fat....well, sort of. Anyway, you'd think I was if you only saw pictures other people take of me nowadays. What I want to know is, how come I DON'T look that way when I take my own picture, and I DO when somebody else does?

Maybe you've had the same experience. Do pictures of you come out better when you take them yourself? If so, why? I'll take a stab at an answer. 

And here's that answer. What all the pictures in this post have in common is that they were all taken in front of my bathroom mirror. No wonder they look good. Like everybody else I've had years of experience mugging in front of bathroom mirrors, trying out angles and expressions that make me look good. When you take your own picture it's often in a mirror, so you're taking them in a medium you're already familiar with and know how to charm. 

Not only that, but there's usually an artificial light nearby and filtered sunlight coming through the window. If the bathroom has white walls then you have something approaching a photo studio.

Now let's look at your friends. They're handicapped right from the start. They're probably taking your picture outside with no nearby light source and no mirror to allow you to fine tune your expression. Outside you're just a statistic. You're a generic human who exists just to give scale to your environment. 

Even in a living room there's usually no nearby light and no interesting ambient light. Professionals have all sorts of equipment to get around this problem, but if your friend isn't a pro then forget it...he's not going to capture the real, philosophical you. He'd need a studio for that...or a bathroom mirror. Interesting, huh?

BTW, the bottom two pictures were taken late at night with only artificial light. They're grotesque but that's what I was aiming for. I like to imagine that I could pass for Long John Silver or Scrooge or Captain Hook or Uriah Heap (the Dickens character, not the musician). The raspy white crud on the bottom is the residue of post-it reminders. I wish I'd cleaned the mirror first.

Also BTW: How do you like the tiny hair near the tip of the nose? I better cut it off. I have to go to the dentist tomorrow and I'm afraid he'll become fixated on it. 

ON VACATION TIL WEDNESDAY!

'SEE YA THEN!!!!!!!!

DINNER AT THE BAD SEED'S HOUSE

THE BAD SEED: "Dinner's almost ready, Uncle Eddie."

THE BAD SEED: "Mom said I should remind you in case you forgot the time."

UNCLE EDDIE: "Heh, heh. Well, I'm not likely to forget the time, my dear."

UNCLE EDDIE: "You see, I'm wearing the SEIKO ROYAL MARINER / MARK V!"

UNCLE EDDIE: "This baby is synced to quantum fluctuations in the barium atom. When Greenwich wants the time, they call me!"

THE BAD SEED: "Really? You mean it's better than my Ren and Stimpy watch?"

UNCLE EDDIE: "Heh, heh. Let's just say that my watch's battery won't need replacement til the entropic death of the universe. The crystal was carried from Patagonia on the backs of perfumed donkeys with velvet booties." 

THE BAD SEED: "Does it have a beepy wake-up alarm like my watch?"

UNCLE EDDIE: "Sure! It's the Berlin Philharmonic in Dolby Surround Sound."

THE BAD SEED: "Is it water-resistant like my watch?"

UNCLE EDDIE: "It'll last a decade on the bottom of the Marianas Trench."

UNCLE EDDIE: "And did I mention the carbon fiber hour hands with inlaid mother of pearl? No?"

UNCLE EDDIE: "Or did I mention the watch band? Did I mention that it's made from flogged bumble bees that were humiliated under the full moon on humid, cricket-filled plains?"

UNCLE EDDIE: Yessir...I do like my little watch!"

UNCLE EDDIE (VO): "You'd just about have to kill me to get it away from me."

ANIMATION EXERCIZE

I had some random walking and sitting poses in a file and it occurred to me that some of them could be combined to make a nice little one minute pencil test film.

I'd start with a funny walk. Maybe the character leads with his stomach. Maybe he leans back and forth as he walks, as in the sketches above.

Anyway, start with a funny walk. The character gains through sc. [no offence to gays intended here...I just like the lead-from-the-hip walk].

Cut to a stool or a chair. The same character walks into sc., stops in front of the chair, turns and sits down. I'm sure the sitting motion above works fine, but why not try something more flamboyant?

Ben Washam said the sitting pelvis should act like a canon ball thrown into the chair, dragging the rest of the body along with it. I imagine the arms would be forward rather than backward as in in this Edward Lear-type pose (above), but this is a funny idea and I'd like to try to try it some time.

Sometimes sitting requires two seating motions: one to sit on the edge of the chair and a second to re-adjust to a more comfortable pose farther back.

Bad posture is funny. I can imagine a character that takes great care in his preparation to sit properly then unexpectedly flops into a slouch like the one above.

Maybe our guy breaks out of his walk cycle to kiss a girl then resumes walking again. Okay...this is getting too elaborate!

Note: none of the drawings or photos here are mine.

WHAT WILL THE FUTURE THINK OF US?

First of all, I don't think much of what we see around us now will survive to reach the future. All the plastic containers and ads, all the iphones and books...all that stuff will be incinerated by successors who just want to get rid of the clutter.  One thing that might survive, oddly enough, is hard wood furniture because old growth wood will become a luxury item as forests disappear. If you have a message to convey to the future you might consider carving it on the bottom of your wooden dining room table if you have a nice one.

I'm glad we have a Library of Congress and a Smithsonian but these institutions are vulnerable to fire and war, and to the apathy of the public if the culture no longer values what's in them. My guess is that most of what's in those institutions is sitting in Bekins Storage-type warehouses in the area around Washington D.C.  A fire in a single Maryland Bekins could wipe out a whole chunk of American history that's preserved there.

Then too, what the Smithsonian decides to keep is problematic. The history of a  powerful lobby like feminism might be secure unless America converts to Islam, but less powerful interests will go undocumented. We only have pictures of some of the great jazz musicians because a single individual decided to photograph them. The Smithsonian never photographed Spumco. The Savoy Ballroom and the Jitterbug weren't much covered by Smithsonian photographers. The dancing in Black clubs today is underdocumented in pictures.

My prediction for the future is that it will ransack the past for inspiration in every cultural area.  If you were to step out of a time machine in the future you'd see buildings benefiting from the latest technology to be sure, but you'd also see recreations of Fort Apache, old pagodas, the Parthenon and 50s "Googie" diners. The 20th Century will be well represented because epochs that creative are few and far between and the future will want to understand how we did it.

My guess is that the future will delight in imagining how we lived in our time. They won't hold our limited technology against us, they'll envy us in some respects. I picture levitating brains of the far future doing cosplay recreations of what it was like to be a cartoonist at Spumco. Wearing all wrong interpretations of the clothing of our time, they'll meet in clubhouses and try to recreate a typical morning at Spumco of the 1990s:

BRAIN #1: "Greetings Jun Krid-faal-lucy (John Kricfalusi)!"

BRAIN #2: Greetings "Veen-send Wahl-lair (Vincent Waller)! Let us have a Gog Session (a gag session)!"

The brains, dragging faux blue jeans from their undercarriage and wearing knitted Superfly hats, levitate to a room with a conference table.

BRAIN #1: "Okay, I have a gog that is quite humorous: The Ren dog gets into a sanitizing water container and furts (farts). Ha-ha-ha-ha."

BRAIN #2: "Er...what is a furt?"

BRAIN#1: "Um...I don't know, but a methane bubble is created."

BRAIN #2: "A bubble? Hmmmm. Let us have two bubbles to make it twice as good! Ha-ha-ha-ha."

And so on........

WHAT I'M READING NOW

I love gambits in storytelling, the way the better writers hook you in right away with an interesting beginning. Lesser writers liked to start with something blunt and stylized like, "Bang! The roscoe barked kerchow and lead creased my thinktank," or a keep 'em guessing/Who's Wally-type ploy like, "The caper went off without a hitch except that Wally got plugged."

James M. Cain was more subtle. He starts "Cigarette Girl" with: "I'd never so much as laid eyes on her before going into the Here's How, a night-club on Route one..." I wouldn't say that beginning is good enough to memorize, but I do like it. It starts with the promise of a love story, which is the kind of adventure most people can relate to, then ups the ante with "...the Here's How, a night-club on route one." The club has a primal name and is located in an island of light on a dark highway. You get the feeling that destiny is waiting for you in a place like that. 

Actually the opening takes a whole two pages to unravel. Read them (below) and see what you think.

I love the idea that she declines to take the tip, not "refuses" mind you, just declines. This girl has class. So does the guy who's hot for her. The bartender gets in his way and our guy respects that. After all, the bartender's just trying to protect her. He doesn't order horny guy out, but asks questions about his background. Everybody in this intro seems to be a nice guy, doing his duty.

 The villain hasn't entered yet, but we feel his presence and we already fear him. The people we've met are people with backbone, who wouldn't cave in to an ordinary bully. Whoever this mean guy is, he must be something special, something unusual. 

Cain sets up his good vs. evil theme with hints. He provokes you to use your intuition. The atmosphere becomes magical in the sense that mysterious forces we've never encountered before seem to be converging on this place. 

Interesting, huh?

AMAZING SNAPSHOT CAMERAS

I'm amazed at how good the average snapshot camera is these days. Even the cheap ones take great pictures. I've been experimenting with the settings and filters on my Elph and I can't believe what I get just by using the built-in presets.

Like this sepia setting, for instance. The picture above is Steve's kitchen. It's a nice cozy room with a good vibe, but you wouldn't expect to see it in Architectural Digest. With the sepia filter you get a version of the room that looks positively sophisticated. Chic, even. You feel that somebody famous must live there.

It's not just the sepia tone that accomplishes that, it's the camera's exposure computer.

Above, once again the camera set the exposure (above). I didn't have to do a thing!

 

Do you remember how frequently high end magazines used to use this effect (above)? Now it's a one-click option built into snapshot cameras. Haw! Now that everybody can do it the magazines will probably lose interest in it.

BTW, that's Auralynn and Jo Jo above, opening Christmas presents.

Auralynn took this photo (above) using the same filter as I used in the couch photo.

I forget what this filter's (above) called. It's monochrome with tints of just one color. It looks like it could use some tweaking in Photoshop, but I wanted you to see how it looked right out of the camera.

You can experiment with the aperture to get effects like the one above, and preview the result. There's nothing special about that, probably all digital cameras do it, but I grew up in the Kodachrome era and this commonplace convenience blows my mind.

BTW, I caught Jo Jo in the act of standing up and the awkward inbetween pose isn't very flattering. Sorry, man!

Wow! You can effortlessly do things like this (above) with a snapshot camera now! The future is here!

One last photo (above), but it's not mine. Steve shot this of Jo Jo with his hair messed up and with a five o'clock shadow. He put it up on his Facebook page and Jo Jo was inundated with admiring comments by girls.

You see? That's the power of photography. No. I'm not abandoning cartooning, but I think we should all be nice to Steve since he has the power to make us stars.