A NEW ANIMATION EXHIBIT!

Here's Jerry Beck and I at the opening earlier this evening of the new animation exhibit at the Motion Picture Academy. Of course the camera was equipped with the usual fat-enhancing lens, which somehow managed to spare Jerry.

The exhibit was great! You wouldn't believe how much Mary Blair was on the wall, and there was some choice Jones art including layouts and backgrounds from "Rabbit of Seville" and "What's Opera Doc." Clampett was well represented with original model sheets, storyboards and story and gag synopses. You could read an early version of the story for "Piggy Bank Robbery" which included a number of gags and villains that didn't make it to the final film.

I even liked the live-action set design exhibit on the fourth floor. It's not enough to see stuff like this on the screen. You have to see it and touch it and walk around in it. When you do, you'll realize that you've lived your life wrong and that your own home is sad and pathetic and lacking in character.





Here's (above) a reprint of the fashion girl from the previous post. I put it up again because I realized that I missed something about it the first time. You know, this girl isn't really such a bad speaker. She talks too fast, and her references are too cliched and too ghetto, but she's not without skill.

I actually like the way she posits an imaginary opponent that her arguments are directed to, and I like the way she puts on a different persona when she talks to that character. I like her confidence (drugs?) and I like the way she uses facial expressions for punctuation. I also like the way she sees the world as being populated by goofballs and people who can't see the nose in front of their faces. That's classic storytelling technique. You create a caricature of the world then make fun of it.

All these are good techniques, she just plugs in the wrong words. She should caricature specific people.