This comic strip is definitely one of my favorites and it continues to improve. The Halloween stuff has been particularly funny and todays Sunday strip prompted me to put out a little link love. I think the characters probably get funnier as you get to know them. This and Dilbert are the only strips I read on a daily basis.

I’m tempted to copy the strip strip here, before it leaves the archives but for a comic strip that would probably extend beyond the scope of fair use.

Pearls Before Swine can be read for free every day here.

I came across an interesting post (via Cartoon Brew) that compares rip-offs of Preston Blair drawings to the originals. The copies change a few details to fit the specific project’s needs — in this case to make it Halloweenesque. It’s these changes that ruin the copies.
Being very much an amateur myself, I wasn’t quick to note why they were bad (though to be fair I was probably distracted by the hideous colouring; something I did notice straight away). When you compare them side-by-side with the originals, it’s pretty easy to say which are the more sucessful images, but it takes a little while to spot exactly what makes the copies so bad.

This my favourite example because it shows how something small can make an image seem wrong; even if the reason isn’t obvious straight away:

There’s a big give-away here — the line that run’s through Blair’s picture depicting the line of action. Now look at the eyes. In Blair’s version the eyes follow the line of action and make sense when compared to the position of the body; the cat looks like he’s looking at something with his whole body. But in the copy his body position is in contrast to what his eyes are doing. This could make sense in the context of a story (e.g. he’s seen a mouse, then someone tells him off and he responds by moving his eyes), but without context it just makes it seem a bit odd.

From looking at remakes of good movies I think one of the biggest problems with copying is that you always miss some of the subtle elements that make it great. And at the same time you don’t put enough of your own decisions into it. But if you take a bad movie and make a good version, or you reimagine* the original concept and make something completely different then you can be successful. Sometimes.

In other words, no matter how great your talent, copying or tracing is always going to produce something inferior if you are copying something great. The remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is probably the most obvious filmic example. I saw the remake first and the credits were just funny. Then I watched the original and they were haunting. I guess there were probably oddities in the music, but the obvious difference was the use of the colour green in the remake. Without doing a side-by-side comparison I’m not sure what caused the different reactions, but my guess is it’s not mainly the green colour, but something to do with the interaction between sound and image. I think if I were doing it, I would have mismatched the image to the music to some degree to make it a little uncomfortable to watch.

Having said that, copying is one of the best possible methods for learning from the masters; it’s just not a good idea to turn the copy into a full production.

Take a look at the original post (here) for more examples and some great comments. Try to ignore the colouring and shading (it’s difficult) as it’s too obviously grotesque — and not in a halloween type of way.

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*No, not like Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes. I can’t even comment on that because I haven’t seen it.

This looks like it could be an interesting film, but what really interests me is the excellent composition and lighting in this still. Look how clearly the girls are framed by the L-shape foreground. The eye is also drawn to them through the high contrast of black and white and further drawn to their faces which are drawn simply and, once again, with high contrast. The image is nicely balanced by the use of the scroll pattern on the far left. It’s heavy enough to balance out the image, but not distracting enough that it draws you away from the girls. A simple triangle formed with all 3 girls keeps the eye mainly focused on that group, but there is enough interest in the rest of the picture to keep it interesting (bins, broken glass and windows).

The lighting not only provides a great composition, but it’s also very atmospheric. As you would expect in a photograph, the high contrast peters out gradually in the background providing a a sense of rich depth. Finally, while most of the image is in a flat shade, certain areas are highlighted with a tecture. Check out the road, the highlight on the tree and the building. Again, this is almost a photographic style if printed in high contrast. I think it’s particulary brave to shade the road jet-black in the foreground and high-white in the background. What further contrast of shades could there be? And still it looks like the same surface.

This is a quite brilliant animated short. It starts out all lovely with a rabbit running through the fields, and turns into a waking nightmare. Really horrible to watch, but still excellent.

From an interview with Run Wrake:

The story is basically a very simple morality tale about greed - the dangers of greed and exploring nature. It came about when I found some 1950’s stickers in a junk shop about 20 years ago. When I was moving the studio out of Soho about 2 years ago, I fond them again in the bottom of the drawer and thought it would be great to make a film out of them. There were about 200 different stickers.

Wrake took these stickers, scanned them into Photoshop and then used After Effects to animate the parts. Quite often working with found images just seems showy, but in this film it works really well to turn, what I believe were always creepy illustrations, into their true nature.

I think I may get a complex about rabbits if I see too many more scary rabbit creations (Watership Down, that episode of Spaced with the art play thing, etc.).

The film can be seen here.

After taking a little break from listening to my song I still like its general construction. It has problems and is a bit rough around the edges, but for a first song-writing attempt I’m quite proud.

The other point I need to consider is that mostly I’m listening to the notation as midi sound, which on my soundcard is quite bad. I can hear what sections sound like on my guitar, but I need people to play drums, bass and a second guitar before I will hear the full sound. I’ll worry about all that later. Right now I figure if I get it sounding good in midi, it’s only going to improve when I port it over to real musical instruments.

But anyway I’ve done my first draft as it were which feels good. Why I couldn’t just write an acoustic guitar piece, I don’t know. Maybe because I don’t have an acoustic guitar.

Yes I am writing a song.

I figured that since I have a habit of singing to myself for hours everyday, I may as well have something to show (?) for it.

It’s one of the most exhausting things I have ever done. I’ve been listening to the same tune over and over again. It changes gradually (otherwise I wouldn’t really be writing), but basically I’ve been listening to the same thing over and over again. All day long. Over and over. Hour upon hour.

Why is it difficult to take a break?

So earlier, I thought the song was quite good (for such an early stage)

Now. Now I can’t stand it.

The temptation is to stop screw it up and toss it in the music bin. Lukily I don’t have a music bin, so the song is safe.

Much, much potential here. It’s amazing what people are doing creativily through the Internet these days. They follow the Creative Commons ethos as well (if they get permission). The work doesn’t quite hit the mark for me, but the potential is really big. The Internet is bringing on a new wave of creativity. This is a good example.

www.tower8.net

Can you imagine how great this would be, if made into a film? Dr Claw would fit in quite nicely, but you would probably have to change the other characters a lot more. Make it serious. Make it dark. Keep it animated, but animate it in black and white. Take the annoying characters and make them likable. Get rid of the lecture they always give at the end of the show, but make subtle in jokes about it. The smoking joke is set up right here.

by Bob

Would they ever allow it?