Daily Drawing

Flyer for Poetry Night at WonderRoot 2/4/2010

Ben and Cameron asked me to do a flyer for their poetry night at WonderRoot. It was fun!

Daily drawing

I think Kelly Duane liked this one? The pointiness, especially, which is a little unusual for Fluidtoons!

Daily drawings

Since I forgot to post one yesterday, I'm posting two drawings today.

Give Me A Minute / Friday Jan 22 / 6-midnight

Ooo, yay!

I have a one-minute animated film in Amber Boardman's Give Me a Minute show in Brooklyn, NY!

Info:

GIVE ME A MINUTE

A show of one minute long films from around the world.
curated by Amber Boardman

Friday
January 22, 2010
6pm - midnight

47 Thames St. #306
Brooklyn, NY 11237
(off the Morgan L between Morgan and Knickerbocker)
theshirey@gmail.com
http://www.theshirey.com
347.369.4475

ARTIST LIST:

Adam Ansorge
Anita Arliss
Signe Baumane
Robin Bernat
Amber Boardman
Osborn Brown
Matthew Burge
Katie Cercone
Zoe Chan
Tre Chandler
Monica Cook
Brandon Davey
Kate Davis Caldwell
Tina Deramus
Paulo Dos Santos
Maria Jose Duran Steinman
Sarah Ferguson
Nicolas Fraser
Marysia Gacek
Bill Gerstenmaier / Michael Murrell
Ragnheidur Gestsdottir
Edgar Grana
Carrie Hawks
Theresa Himmer
Ryan Johnson
Mark Kessell
Gary Leib
Mark Leibert
Gregg Louis
Eric Lundquist
Stephen Maine
Justin Mata
Suzanne McClelland
Sean McCormick
Alexandra Mein
Michi Meko
Steven Mitchell
Brigitte Neufeldt
Amjad Olabi
PES
Todd Redner
Ondrej Rudavsky
Jes Schrom
Stacy Scibelli
Ronen Shai
Olive Shaner
Cameron Stuart
Brett W. Thompson
Curver Thoroddsen
Angeliki Tsotsoni
Yi-Hsin Tzeng
Yonatan Ullman
Kurt Gilbert Wahlstrom
Lee Xi
Shai Zurim

*This is a one night event
but can also be viewed by appointment
and online at: http://www.theshirey.com

Daily Drawing

I think I drew this one on a plane to Costa Rica for the Montezuma International Film Festival. I was totally having trouble with my paint markers semi-exploding, but I like how it turned out!

Daily drawing

I drew this one thinking about my dad doing his daily walk-up-the-stairs exercises, which he does to prepare for his annual week on the Appalachian Trail.

Daily drawing

Daily drawing

This was a music-based sketch I did for the possibility of hanging some art at Tree Sound Studios.

OAF flyer

I started this post by just putting that flyer up there that I made for OAF, and now I feel the urge to give some background!

OAF was a really important little group for some of us in college.

Maggie Ginestra, now living in St. Louis where she started a chapbook shop called Stirrup Pants, started OAF when we were in college at FSU and several OAFers are basically lifelong friends because of it.

The format was simple- each meeting started with a question (which was often off-the-wall or silly). Everyone had a title they could make up for themselves. Multiple titles were fine, too- Sean was like ten things. I was Animator then Historian/Archivist, and I think Cameron was Pilot. Then we shared art with one another- readings or drawings or music.

OAF is how I befriended Sean Jarrett, who did all the voices in my films "Chickenheads" and "Fluidtoons" and asked me to animate "Victory Remix" (see 'em at fluidtoons.com).

I also met William at OAF when I was transfixed when he read an excerpt from his "Scrap Cops" project. In William's reading he described a veteran cop (named "Big Hockey") showing a newbie cop a fully-assembled handgun in the bowl of a toliet in the men's room. "I ate that gun piece-by-piece and shat it out fully formed," Big Hockey told the newbie. The hilarity and bizarreness of that story has stuck with me since!! Was Big Hockey lying to the newbie to intimidate him, or was that kind of thing possible in the fictional William D. Tucker multiverse?

William lived in Atlanta for a little while and had a few gigs at Eyedrum, such as this one:



I also Graham Goodman through OAF! I already knew Bobby Z and Cameron from before OAF, but it was important for getting us closer.

Eventually we rented a house (Roberto found it), which had a shed in the backyard, and Bobby Z and Kevin and a few others cleared it out (it was totally full of stuff) and built benches and a stage. The Slusher St Theatre was born!



The plays we put on there were magical. There was "Prisoners of Gotham" (about Batman and the Joker), "Magnificent Forge", "Everybody Knows Time Machines are a Bad Idea", "Alcestis", Kate's musical... amazing.

We also had open houses, which were interesting- a mix of some amazing stuff and some regular stuff.

Eventually most of us left Tallahassee and turned the OAF house over to Tall Tom. Slusher St Theatre continued to be used, though no longer for poetry and plays but more for punk or rock shows.

One thing that I'm really proud of is Jean-Louis Costes performed his "Les Petits Oiseaux Chient" (Little Birds Shit) show at the OAF house in 2007! I caught it at Eyedrum in Atlanta and was blown away.





I drew on a wall in the bathroom- I'd intended to draw over all of the walls, but never did. Thankfully Diana sent me some pictures of it!

Here are a couple pictures I stole from the OAF house MySpace page:

Gram Goodman interviews Brett W. Thompson for The GRAMICLE.

Gram Goodman, a great buddy of mine from FSU and OAF (Organic Artists' Forum), has started a DIY publication called The GRAMICLE out in Texas where he's been working as a window washer, but he also makes incredible, energetic music (used to be available for free at grahamgoodman.com but it's been down for a while). He's also been doing some comics lately which I absolutely love. I might help him get some of his art back online in the future.

So Gram (sometimes known as Graham) interviewed me about ASIFA-Atlanta for The GRAMICLE; take a look, it was fun:

what is asifa-atlanta? tell us about the organization.

ASIFA-Atlanta is the local chapter of the worldwide animation society ASIFA, founded in Annecy, France in 1960. ASIFA's a French acronym: "association internationale du film d'animation".

Our particular chapter has been around for about ten years. We got started when a few female animators wanted to start a Women in Animation chapter. They approached Linda Simeksy (executive at Nick and Cartoon Network), whose reply was why not start a group for everyone first?

In 2005, the president of ASIFA-Atlanta, Lou Hertz, who had worked on Mr. Magoo, passed away, just months before I moved to Atlanta. Joe Peery, animation director at Turner Studios, heroically resurrected ASIFA-Atlanta, starting by picking up a cardboard box of ASIFA-related tapes and papers from Lou's.

Joe stepped down in Febuary 2008, though he still runs our weekly figure drawing class. I had already been running a few events at that point and been pretty involved, so I stepped up as president and have been doing it since then.

Now we have monthly screenings, weekly figure drawing, monthly workshops, and my favorite, monthly animation draws, where I bring light tables, stacks of paper, and markers to WonderRoot (community art center in Atlanta) and have people draw whatever they want, creating animation. It's on YouTube, actually- search for "ASIFA-Atlanta animation draw".

where are other hot spots for animation around the world?

ASIFA-Hollywood is our biggest chapter at the moment. They have an incredible thing there called the Animation Archive- they have a physical space, open to the public, in Burbank, where they have digitized over 5,000 films (most not available on DVD or VHS) and scanned over 50,000 animation-related drawings.

I was most excited about the long collection of thick binders that held all the storyboards for Ren & Stimpy, though. They welcome anyone to just stop by there and watch films and study drawings or storyboards. We're hoping to replicate the archive in Atlanta eventually but we need funding for it. They post samples at http://animationarchive.org/

They also do something called the Annie Awards, which is like the Oscars for animation, and actually influences the Oscars I think.

There are strong chapters all over the world, though, and most of us exchange films with one another for International Animation Day on October 28th. Israel, Brazil, Japan, Korea, France, and Greece have sent us really amazing, beautiful films. There was an animation from Bosnia- with a dragon rapping about drugs or something, totally not in English- that I particularly loved. We almost didn't put it in but I begged for it.

So Hollywood's the hot spot for commerical animation, but there's great independent animation coming from all over. New York City seems to have a higher-than-normal collection of extremely talented independent animators, though: Bill Plympton, Nina Paley, John Dilworth, Signe Baumane, Rauch Brothers, etc. NYC has a fantastic scene, and I was even going to try to move there because I wanted to work on Superjail! so badly with Christy Karacas and Aaron Augenblick.

how is asifa funded?

Great question!

I think most chapters stay alive via their membership dues. Our dues are pretty cheap and we don't have a ton of members, so we have to make money other ways- actually, tonight we have a big art opening / music show / party that should raise some funds. We do this every year and it's our biggest money-maker.

Last year we had our annual art show / party at Eyedrum and the parking lot was completely packed, which to me means it was a success. We're having it at WonderRoot this year, which is a lot smaller, so I hope it works out! WonderRoot has been tremendously helpful- I didn't have to do nearly as much work this year, which was a huge relief, because last year was a bit difficult to put together.

Sometimes we make a little bit of money from screenings, but it's almost just as likely that we'll lose money from a screening. I actually really like to put on free screenings- we don't charge for International Animation Day at the High Museum of Art, for instance, and I like that.

I'm working on getting us non-profit status, though, so we'll be eligible for government grants and tax-deductible donations. It's just taking forever.

I believe some of the other chapters get government grants; Europe in particular seems to be more supportive of the arts, which is lovely and makes me want to move there. Their festivals don't usually have submission fees and they'll give filmmakers grants to make films. It's amazing.

what are animation artists that you like?

I just discovered the work of Phil Mulloy thanks to my girlfriend Hannah. I think his "Cowboys" series is hilarious and brilliant. You can find some of it on YouTube I think.

I admire Nina Paley so much- her feature film, "Sita Sings the Blues", is free, as in, released under Creative Commons (www.sitasingstheblues.com). So anyone can show it and even charge for it. She's made about $50,000 in donations, merch, etc, which I think is incredible. It's actually amazing that she animated a feature film by herself in the first place, really.

I also admire Don Hertzfeldt for working on paper and for making a living doing independent animation without being accountable to a client or big corporation.

I really love Nick Cross' work too, he has a delightful old-cartoony look. He worked for John Kricfalusi years ago I believe.

where do you see the future of animation?

This year there were three stop-motion animated features released: Coraline, Mary & Max, and The Fantastic Mr. Fox. I'm not a huge fan of the perfection of CGI, so I'm hoping that animation that makes use of real stuff will continue to grow. Mary & Max in particular did almost everything in-camera. It's a beautiful film.

I'm also hoping that there will be more people like Nina Paley who will create independent films on their own. Big budget features can be great, especially for employing a lot of people, but I wonder what kind of film one of those guys who's just a cog in the pipeline might make on his own.

With Flash and YouTube, I think it's leveling the playing field a bit, so someone can make something like a funny gay unicorn cartoon and have it seen by tons of people. I think this is exciting- not only do you have gay unicorn cartoons, you also have films like MUTO by BLU, which is breathtaking- you might have seen it- crazy animation on walls, like on the side of a building at one point. Bobby Z called me up immediately when he saw it for the first time!

how has animation evolved in your lifetime?

Great question, Graham!!

When I was a kid, I didn't see a lot of independent animation, though I did see Jan Svankmajer's "Darkness Light Darkness" on PBS, taped it, and watched the shit out of it. Today I've recently gone to France, China, and Portugal for animation festivals where they show all kinds of stuff. When I was a kid, there was the TV, movie theater, or video store- I didn't even know about festivals, and there certainly wasn't YouTube or Vimeo or BitTorrent.

There was Liquid Television, though, and Spike & Mike, and there was a good video store in my neighborhood (Video 21). But now it's so much easier to see different animation, because of the Internet and because of my involvement with ASIFA.

The biggest change I've seen so far in my lifetime has been the rise of 3D CGI animation, and also the rise of cheap Adult Swim-style animation.

anything else?
You can see my work at www.fluidtoons.com. ASIFA-Atlanta has a website at www.asifa-atlanta.com.

Thanks so much for the interview, Graham!!

What's happening in this drawing?

Let me know what you think is happening in this drawing and perhaps someday I'll animate it!

What would you say is going on in this picture? Or any of the others, for that matter!

Daily Drawing

I'd like to start posting a drawing almost every day. Here's another:

More drawings

Drawings

I've been going through some old drawings- here are two samples:

Sample from today's Animation Draw

By Cameron and Catherine!

Random drawing

I'm going through some old photos and am coming across some work I forgot about. Here's one:

Uncle Paul's Story Time Part 1

Shitty Bedford, one of my favorite artists alive today, has recently begun posting on YouTube. I wasn't involved with this particular video- in fact it was shot by Sirius Bee- but I find it most amusing:

Hannah video from Xiamen

Cameron and Brett jam

Thanks to my lovely and amazing teacher Nirvana, I'm able to barely play some very basic viola.

Thanks to Bradley for having Cameron and myself over, we were able to jam, which felt wonderful. I loved playing music with my close friends so much!

Thanks to Catherine, there's a video of us jamming.

I felt so encouraged after this that I hauled my viola on my trip to Cinanima in Portugal, though I didn't actually practice at all (bad!).

Anyway, here is Cameron and me jamming:



My pinky is not proper (it should be bent, not stiff and straight) and my posture isn't so good either, but I love how Cameron and I sound together.

Xiamen 2009

As an ASIFA international board member, I was invited to the second annual Xiamen animation festival, where I gave a talk on early American animation.

Here's a photo:



I have some footage as well.



Lots more pictures from Xiamen

Thanks to Anni and Jonchill of ASIFA-China for inviting us!

International Animation Day 2009

International Animation Day

Wednesday, October 28th, 8pm, FREE

High Museum of Art Rich Auditorium

Click here to reserve a free ticket!

Also, thanks to Linda Dubler at the High Museum of Art and Jay Blodgett, our ever-reliable and amazing secretary of ASIFA-Atlanta, we have a lovely article about the event:

International Animation Day article

Animation Draw 5 (silent)

Once a month at WonderRoot, we bring light tables, paper, and markers and animate on paper- our monthly "Animation Draw" event!

Animation Draw 6 was today; here is Animation Draw 5, just shot and uploaded:



When it's ready, I'll post the version with the soundtrack.

Post by Harvey Deneroff about "Georgia Animation on My Mind"

Yay!! Harvey posted about "Georgia Animation on My Mind", which was a great event- a collaboration between ASIFA-Atlanta and Society for Animation Studies:

http://deneroff.com/blog/2009/09/25/georgia-animation-on-my-mind-qa/

Thanks Harvey!!

Atlanta Flood Pictures

I saw some of the flooding as I drove home from work- I truly wish I'd gotten some more pictures, but perhaps it was safer to avoid my compulsion to document. Anyway, here are the few I did snap while driving.

This was Moreland Ave:







I turned around when I saw this one:



But I drove through this one:



The wave from a car going the opposite direction hit my front bumper with a thump!

Many more pictures from other people at the Atlanta Flood 2009 Flickr Pool.

VAMMOPHONE FRANK SAX ONE

Beautiful video directed by Shitty Bedford, who also invented the VAMMOPHONE FRANK SAX ONE, available for only $200

Professor Spitwash played by yours truly, Brett W. Thompson

Society for Animation Studies / ASIFA-Atlanta "Georiga Animation on my Mind", Q&A part 1

Thanks to Ian Nathanson for filming!

ASIFA-Atlanta Animation Draw 4, with sound

Bowling!

I love bowling!

We went recently as a fun day for work, and Walter took this video:

ASIFA-Atlanta Animation Draw 4 (silent!)

Version with soundtrack coming soon!

Society for Animation Studies / ASIFA-Atlanta "Georiga Animation on my Mind", July 10th, 2009: Introduction

Ian Nathanson was kind enough to film my introduction to the Society for Animation Studies Conference 2009 / ASIFA-Atlanta screening "Georiga Animation on my Mind", which was at the High Museum of Art on July 10th, 2009.

Here it is; many thanks to Harvey Deneroff who asked me to curate this show!

Animation Draw lengths on a graph

I just finished shooting Animation Draw 4 (it just needs some music!), and I wondered how much longer it was in comparison to the previous ones.

So I put the lengths (in seconds) into Google Spreadsheets and made this little graph!

It'll be interesting to see how Animation Draw 5 goes, which is August 22nd at WonderRoot, 2pm-7pm (that's this Saturday).

Animation Attack! 2009

Animation Attack! 2009 schedule available now!

Article Mentioning "Sita Sings the Blues" in Montezuma

Last November, I helped out with the Montezuma International Film Festival. Montezuma, Costa Rica is incredibly beautiful and relaxing, although if you're running a festival you have to keep in mind where you are and take time to enjoy yourself- my tendency was to worry and work too much! I did fall asleep on the beach once, though, and had a blast hula-hooping...

Anyway, one way I contributed was getting ahold of Sita Sings the Blues for the festival, and it was quite popular! Consequently, we ended up showing it a few extra times. The lady who owns and runs a health-food restaurant there, Organico, particularly loved the film.

At the time, Nina Paley hadn't given the film away yet- she only had festival rights, so it was even more special to see. Explaining the copyright situation after one of the screenings, an older lady immediately offered to donate to Nina's cause!

A very sweet writer named Brit interviewed Eric and me and wrote this lovely article about "Sita Sings the Blues" and the Montezuma International Film Festival:

Montezuma Alights, Curtain Calls and All.

Brit said "see you next year!" as we parted, but I'm already using all my vacation time on animation festivals (Annecy and Xiamen), so I don't know if I'll make it...

But it was fun to unearth that article, I'd forgotten about it!

Mail Trends

This is my email volume over the years, generated by mail-trends.

ASIFA-Atlanta "Gather Atlanta" video

ASIFA-Atlanta "Roll Yer Own" 2009 Program

ASIFA-Atlanta Animation Draw 1

Next Animation Draw: June 20th, 2pm, at WonderRoot! No experience necessary- I'll bring paper and light tables, come and draw!

Late Night Chess at Majestic

I met some awesome dudes at Majestic who were playing chess- we got to talking and they pulled up fluidtoons.com on an iPhone. I snapped this picture which I love!

Chickenheads, by the way, is now on IMDB, also!

ASIFA-Atlanta "Roll Yer Own" awards and "Blowin' Smoke"

The latest mass-email to ASIFA-Atlanta folks:

Hello animation fan!

Thanks so much to everyone who came to Roll Yer Own!! Especially those who were generous enough to donate a buck or two, we truly appreciate it!!

ASIFA-Atlanta "Roll Yer Own" 2009 Awards:

The "Best of Show" award went to "Stubbe Peter" by Kristin Jarvis.

The "Audience Choice" award went to "Cornpopalypse" by Maurice VandenBergh II.

Winners receive a free year's membership to ASIFA-Atlanta.

This was the first year we did awards; here's how they were picked: the night before "Roll Yer Own" we held a pre-screening and debated about which film to give the "Best in Show" award to, and we picked Kristin's. For the "Audience Choice" award, we received 70 votes (thank you voters!); "Cornpopalypse" won with fourteen votes, and "Gypsy Crepes" came in second with nine votes. "As Seen on TV" was third with six votes.

Thanks to all filmmakers for submitting, and thanks to those who helped, particularly John Cason for the beautiful flyer, Karl Sigler for the DVD authoring, Cameron Stuart for everything, Takuro Masuda for working the door, and Bryan Fordney, Fatimah Abdullah, and Joel Rose for being on the award committee.

Our next big event is "Blowin' Smoke", showcase of locally-produced commercial animation, June 28th at 8pm at Five Spot, free:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brett_w_thompson/3573748383/

We are seeking volunteers to help with Gather Atlanta on June 6th. Please email me if you're interested.

Upcoming animation-related events (also on the calendar on our blog, asifa-atlanta.blogspot.com):

Gather Atlanta at Eyedrum on June 6th, 5pm
Art community gathering, www.gatheratlanta.com

Animation Workshop at Manuel's Tavern on Sunday, June 14th at 7pm
Monthly workshop; see http://atl-animators.org

Animation Draw at WonderRoot on June 20th, 2pm
Collaborative animation; paper and light-tables provided, no experience necessary, come and draw! Example resulting film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShJo_RBF4I

Blowin' Smoke at Five Spot on June 28th, 8pm, free
Free showcase of commercial animation made by local studios!

Society for Animation Studies Screening at High Museum of Art on July 10th, 8pm, free
Free ASIFA-Atlanta showcase of local animation for the SAS conference; http://blog.scad.edu/sasc/schedule/

Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation at Plaza, June 26th to July 2nd

Figure Drawing every Thursday 8-10pm at Westwood College, $5

Thanks so much!

-Brett W. Thompson, President of ASIFA-Atlanta

I liked the bowling picture so much I think I may start to post more pictures.

The one above is typical hilarity at Bradley's. He gave me that jean vest to wear, which actually has Betty Boop on the back. Notice the ThoughtMarker shirt, too!

Thank you Jeremy Abernathy!

Oh my!!

I blushed so much when I read this! I'm overwhelmed:

http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/culturesurfing/2009/05/20/feminismanimation-mixer-on-thursday/

A billion thanks to Jeremey Abernathy of Ghostmap Microwave for the kind words!!! He was also one of the participating artists in ASIFA-Atlanta's first Animaiton Draw.

Also: don't forgot about ASIFA-Atlanta's "Roll Yer Own" showcase of independent animation at the Five Spot, May 31st, 8:30pm, free! We got a ton of great submissions to show!

Bowling

I hadn't gone bowling in forever; a few of us went recently, and it was a blast, haha! It's a ridiculous game isn't it? Cameron snapped this picture of me which I love:

ASIFA-Atlanta "Roll Yer Own" 2009

ASIFA-Atlanta Presents
"Roll Yer Own"
Independent Local Animation

May 31st 8:30pm
Five Spot
No Cover

Submit at www.asifa-atlanta.com

(beautiful flyer design by John Cason)

ASIFA-Atlanta Google Groups

Recently I moved two of the big ASIFA-Atlanta email lists over to Google Groups! Thanks to Jason Welte of Kintovision for suggesting we use Google Groups a while back! It's making things significantly easier (we have a bunch of email addresses).

Please subscribe if you're interested; this first list is our general ASIFA-Atlanta and animation-related news email list, which currently gets about one or two emails from me per month, mostly promoting our animation screenings and related events.


Subscribe to ASIFA-Atlanta Announcement Email List

Email:

The second list here is for the ASIFA-Atlanta figure drawing class, currently happening every Thursday night from 8pm-10pm at Westwood College. It's five bucks and is a great way to meet fellow artists and animators (I've made several good friends there over the years, e.g. Jert). It gets one or two emails per week. Joe Peery still runs the figure drawing class, yay!



Subscribe to ASIFA-Atlanta Figure Drawing Email List

Email:

ASIFA-Atlanta Animation Draw 1

Charles Judson from Atlanta Film Festival encouraged us to try this out, and we did- it was a blast!

We set up four light tables and piles of paper and makers at the Independent on April 18th as part of the Atlanta Film Festival.

Here's the result:



We're going to have another one on May 16th at WonderRoot at 3pm!! Come and draw!

Update: Cameron did a soundtrack for me! Updated the video! :)

International Pillow Fight Day

Photo by jack_babalon


Photo by Mike Germon