THE LATEST ASTRONOMICAL PICTURES 6/2015

This (above) should get an award for the best astronomy photo of the year. It's a jagged cliff looming over a gravel foreground on the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The part of the cliff we see in this picture is 850 meters wide.

Here's (above) Saturn's moon, Hyperion. Despite its 250 kilometer size, the spongey moon exerted very little gravitational pull on the probe that took the picture. It's mostly hollow inside, in the way that a sponge is hollow. The oddly-shaped craters are thought to be that way because the impacts that created them threw the ejecta into space rather than compacting it into the surface.

Here's (above) a creepy picture that's generating a lot of controversy. The star on the lower left is a supernova first seen a few weeks ago near the disk galaxy it seems to be associated with.

Calculations of the star's distance and brightness have led some to conclude that the great majority of energy in the universe is contained in the fabric of space itself, and not in galaxies and stars.

These computer-generated pictures show Pluto's moon "Nix" tumbling wildly around the common center of the double planetoid, Pluto/Charon. We'll know more about this in a month when NASA's Pluto probe passes these bodies.

MORE RANDOM EDDIE SKETCHES

Here's some idea sketches I did for various projects I worked on.

Haw! I like the idea of an inventor who's harried by his own inventions. Here Igor tries to impress his master by making everything user friendly, and then has to live with the consequences.

This (above) is an excerpt from something I did for Theory Corner. Normally I can't draw John but for some reason I don't have any trouble doing continuity about him. Maybe that's the secret of caricaturing hard to draw people...you do a comic about them and a different part of your brain kicks in.

Here's (above) a sketch from another strip. How do you like the short bell bottoms John's wearing? He doesn't really dress like that but he used to draw other people that way and I picked it up from him.

Here's (below) a fragment of a different continuity, also for Theory Corner. It's about an acting class exercize....

...well, it went on for a couple more pages. This reminds me that I seriously considered taking acting classes at one time. I didn't want to be an actor, I just wanted to see if doing that would make me a better storyboarder. I didn't end up doing it because I became interested in something else instead...stage movement.

By that I mean how an actor sits, walks, gestures, enters and exits and relates to other actors. There used to be lots of acting coaches who taught this sort of thing but they're a rarity now. I couldn't find one, and I live near Hollywood for Pete's sake!

I had to learn stage movement on my own, being mindful of the maxim that says "The man who teaches himself is taught by a fool."

LOW COST HOUSING: CLIFF MAY

The subject is Cliff May again. I thought I'd discuss May's efforts to create low-cost housing. We know May could build wonderful ranch houses when he had a decent budget and room to spread out. Now let's see what he could do with tract houses on small urban lots.

Here's (above) one of May's smallest living rooms. It looks large because a sliding glass door has been opened and the patio's been made to look like part of the living room. Both have the same floor color and similar furniture. To heighten the effect the board and baten outdoor fence is made to look like an indoor wall. A nifty idea, eh? Of course this open wall solution only works in the sunbelt where winters are mild.

By the way, that fire pit on the patio floor (above) is for real campfires. There's no fireplace. Maybe that would have cost too much.

Here's (above) a different Cliff May house and an even smaller living room. Here the kitchen, living room and dining room are all in one enclosure. Like I said, this is a small house!

The partition behind the couch is oddly high and intrusive. It dominates the room. I'm guessing it's there because May needed space for kitchen cupboards. He couldn't put them against the glass wall facing the yard because that would have violated his belief about the need to bring the outside in. I'll bet May regretted this decision.

One last comment: Maybe May went too far in his effort to cut costs. The upper wall above the fireplace, the area just under the roof, cries out for glass. Whatever the cost it would have been worth it.

In the color photograph above we don't see the wall opposite the sofa. I like to imagine that it looked like this one (the b&w photo above) from yet another May house: louvered wall panels that open up and out during the warm weather, and which can be easily lowered when it gets cold. In the "up" position walls like this can be made to look like extentions of the roof.

And how do you like the wide steps in the back yard? That's an interesting idea, too. It makes the yard seem larger. And are the lounges in the yard deliberately smaller than normal?

I absolutely love Cliff May's designs but I have to admit that he didn't really solve the low cost housing problem. That's okay, Frank Lloyd Wright couldn't solve it either. In fact, some 60+ years later we're still wrestling with it.

We do have one advantage that architects in May's time didn't have, and that's the availability of a wide variety of small, scaled-down furniture, like the kind in the IKEA promotion above. Maybe ours will be the generation that makes the low cost breakthrough.
   

THE EVOLUTION OF THE MODERN HOUSE

Here's (above) a 1950s-type Cliff May-influenced ranch house. They're not uncommon in Los Angeles, in fact they're so common here that they hardly raise an eyebrow. That's a pity because this city's ranch homes are much underrated. They so effortlessly combine modernism and tradition that we forget how hard won that synthesis was.

A little history is in order: 

  

Europeans created modernism but they couldn't make it work. Look at this bleak design (above) for a reconstructed Paris by Le Corbusier. Parisians can thank their lucky stars that he was prevented from putting this into effect. 

Here's a factory-style house by ex-Bauhaus teacher Walter Gropius. What was he thinking of? Who wants to live in a factory?

The public liked the modern look but only for business buildings. They didn't want to live in it. The race was on to tame modernism and make the new style fit for homes, and affordable. The first American efforts (above) were hideous.

Haw! So were the second efforts (above).

Sure, Frank Lloyd Wright (above) could make it work but he built for the well off. How do you make this sort of thing available to the common man?

Eventually a potentially low cost Wright-influenced look was achieved (above) but the look required a house that was big enough to spread out a bit, sympathetic building codes and readily available pre-fab parts. I'm also guessing that the designs, as good as they were, were perceived by the public as too drastic. 

  

During this period faux modernism proliferated. In the kind of small houses most people could afford it sometimes looked shoddy and tacky...something built for the convenience of the contractor rather than for aesthetic reasons.

The guy who finally made it work was Cliff May (above). His smaller houses weren't exactly cheap and they still required a certain amount of square footage, but they were simultaneously modern and traditional, conceptually simple, and they left the door open for further simplification.

Here (above) there's a gap in my knowledge. Some genius...was it May or one of his disciples?...created the synthesis known to Southern Californians as "The Yellow Ranch House." It's affordable, Cliff May savy, modern, comfortable, compressible, can be built on a small lot...and it's low priced! No reliance on esoteric materials; every component is made of parts that can be had at any large lumber store.

It's the perfect realization of the maxim: "it doesn't have to look modern to be modern."

Boy, Cliff came through for us! He was the Bob Clampett of modern housing!

I'm amazed by the versatility in the interior design of these yellow ranch houses. You can furnish them almost as modern as you like without contradicting the house's design.

A less modern decor (above) works okay, too.

In fact, I'll bet even funky furniture like the kind in this TV set would work in those yellow ranch houses.

Thanks, Cliff! You 'da man!!!!

FROM MY SKETCH FILE

Here's a few sketches from my sketch file. This (above) is a title card I art directed. The expert lettering was done by Ted Blackman and the great character art by Jim Gomez. 

I did this drawing (above), as well as the others below. What the heck was it for? I can't remember.

This (above) isn't continuity, it's just a doodle that has sentimental value to me. The sketch on the lower right marked the first time that I realized it was possible to break the rule about silhouette value.

Above, no continuity, just more breaking of the silhouette rule, this time on the doodle on the lower left. I went out of my way to put shapes inside of each other and it worked...in my opinion, anyway.

'Just fooling around.

Above, a couple of unused panels from Spumco's "Fire Dogs 2."

Haw! This (above) was an unused idea from the theme park level of the video game.

Above, Little Miss Muffit, my favorite Nursery Rhyme character.

TOMMOROWLAND: A REVIEW

I love this film. It's not without major flaws, and at times it veers too close to corporate hype, but the film has soul, and is a bracing manifesto for a positive future. Some people say it's a film Walt Disney himself might have made, and maybe they're right.

It even displays Walt's knack for picking out charismatic young stars. Raffey Cassidy, the girl in the film, has the same kind of magnetic appeal that the young Haley Mills and Annette Funicello had. Little boys are going to go nuts for this kid. But having the right star is only the beginning. You need a director and writer who know how to bring out that star quality, and Brad Bird was able to do that. He does a good job with George Clooney, too.

Now where can I find posters of that amazing futuristic city?

MEMORIAL DAY

Memorial Weekend is here and I thought I'd celebrate by reviewing the pledges people make in the different armed services. Some are beautiful and inspiring, others are less so and, in my opinion, could use a little help. See what you think.

I'll start with my favorite, the "Airman's Creed (above). I'm guessing that a professional poet wrote it. I love the romantic description of an airman as: "...guardian of freedom and justice, / My nation's sword and shield, / Its sentry and avenger."


Much less interesting is the Army's Non-Commissioned Officer Creed (above). It's hard to imagine any NCO getting misty-eyed over lines like "I will fulfill my responsibilities inherent in that roll," and vague terms like "moral courage" and the need to take "appropriate action." The creed feels like it was written by a bean-counter.

The Navy Seals' Creed (below), on the other hand, is full of inspiring ideas, it's just too long. It needs to be cut by at least a third:

All of the sentiments above are worthy, but a creed requires compression in order to be useful. I thought about drawing a line through parts I'd shorten, but that seemed disrespectful, so I thought better of it.

I do like the lines about "the ability to control my emotions and actions...sets me apart from other men." The entire last paragraph (above), the one beginning with "I will never quit," is wonderful. Anyway, here's (below) the rest:

Wow! "We expect innovation," "The success of our mission depends on me," "My training is never complete"...these are very interesting ideas!