Short Trip - Alexander Perrin

Well me and The Old Man are off on yet another short trip.

So let me point you to Australian technical artist Alexander Perrin's  interactive illustration "Short Trip".

There you can while away your time, idly traveling a graphite, cat-populated train journey via your keyboard's arrows and spacer key. With its peaceful soundtrack I find the journey reminiscent of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. Or perhaps that's just me because I am a little obsessed with Miyazaki.

Warning: not an experience for gamers perhaps.

With thanks to Brian D Butler's blog "Travel Between The Pages".

Artistic Obsessions: Mattias Adolfsson on Fountain Pens

Mrs D always says that creative makers/artists need to be obsessive... somewhat. She usually says this whilst lying around with a glass of red and a snack. But I have stumbled across some videos which illustrate this point nicely.

The first comes from Swedish artist Mattias Adolfsson - one time 3D animator and now an "analogue" illustrator. Mrs D follows his blog and enjoys visiting his intricate, fantastic and wittily drawn world on an almost daily basis.

His blog is called Mattias Inks. You can read a Nonsense Society 2013 interview with Mattias .... but above all let him tell you about his obsession with fountain pens himself. Watch the video.

Animated Discussions: Google Celebrates Winsor McCay

Today you can catch Google's elaborate Doodle-Tribute to cartoonist and early animator Winsor McCay. Their animated tribute is a notable thing in itself. I'd like to acknowledge not only McCay's early foray into animation but to his surreal and elegant comic and illustration style .... what I do like immensely.

Graphic Passions: "Moebius" - Jean Giraud 1938-2012

A bit of a genius be Jean Giraud but now sadly died 10 March.

This is a trailer for a 2007 documentary about Giraud (aka Gir, aka Moebius) that I did see a year or so ago. As well as the "bandes dessinee" (comics) he worked on the costume designs for "Alien", input into "Tron" and influences upon other sci-fi films.

And Oh but I wish his collaboration with Alejandro Jodorowsky for a film of "Dune" had made it to the big screen.

First fame as Gir - with his anti-hero cowboy, Blueberry. Later he set up with others the magazine "Metal Hurlant" ("Heavy Metal") and explored sci-fi and fantasy. He also collaborated with Rene Laloux on his full-length animated movie "Les Maitres du Temps". About which.... more later.

For another YouTube tribute/taster try clicking through this link.

But me... I'm off to get me some of his graphics.....

Mattias Adolfsson: "Bazooka Art"

As some of you may have noticed I do follow the wonderful and toweringly imaginous Mattias Adolfsson with his blog - "Mattias Inks". His intricate, inked, convoluted and witty delights are a cheer to start the day... and virtuoso triumphs all of them.

Sample this delight - Bazooka art and see what I mean.

Graphic Passions: RIP Ronald Searle 1920-2011

For a girl like I... and of my particular generation... Ronald Searle was an all pervading influence on humour and drawing style.. And to all those younger things out there...which includes just about everybody... maybe you don't realise how far Searle's "Style and Zeitgeist" reached. I think that Searle fed into Scarfe, John Lennon, maybe into Monty Python even. In Britain, there was a generation who came through after WWII to create a surreal world of humour that fed the following generation (Think "The Goon Show" with Sellers, Milligan, Bentine, Secombe.. the wonderful Gerard Hoffnung with his own cartoons and anarchic music festival. Rowland Emett and his crazy kinetic sculptures.) A lot of this stuff caught fire and led into the anarchy and satire of 1960s humour, which has maybe blasted it's 1950s parent generation out of the fame it deserves.

Searle was a serious artist whose recording of his own experiences in a Japanese POW camp led to the doubtless forbidden act of drawing. That's just how necessary drawing was for Searle. But today everyone thinks of Searle and St Trinian's... (And I really could not begin to cope with the 2007 film of St Trinian's.... It's the 1950s you see, you just had to be there.) I was brought up with his boys' skool equivalent, St. Custard's - a collaboration with Geoffrey Willans. As I peer into my copy of "Down with Skool", I realise how much of everything I laughed at as a skool-girl was down to Searle and his generation of artists: my own doodles.. the line... the characters that look out from the page at you....

There's a Ronald Searle Tribute site here. Click through and acquaint yourself with more of Searle's work. His really was a great contribution to cartoons, drawing and illustration.