Links Of Interest - What Am I Even Doing Anymore Edition!

Right. 

* - First off, the Savannah College of Art and Design has a stunning collection of Don Bluth animation art, including art from never-made films, some of which they have recently posted online.

* - Jim Hill wrote this touching article about Boston.

* - Tom Bancroft wrote an evenhanded reaction to the Disney animation studio layoffs.

* - Filmspotting SVU watched Don Hertzfeldt's "It's Such a Beautiful Day" and discussed it and other unusual animated features.

* - "Futurama" has been re-cancelled.  I'm surprisingly not too upset about this.  They had a good run.

* - Everything is Terrible just wrapped up Puppet Week and it is incredible.

* - Tim Brayton of Antagony and Ecstasy wrote a guest post for The Film Experience reflecting on "Jurassic Park".

* - Mark Witton basically wondered if the word "reptile" even means anything anymore.

* - Mark also wrote the blog post I've always wanted to.

* - If any one movie begged for a muckraking, nobody involved in the making of the damned thing is spared, everyone is called-out on their WTFery, "How the hell did this even happen" Final Cut/Devil's Candy/Monster-style "Behind the Scenes" book, it's..... Well, it's "Radio Flyer" (1992). If we're talking about any ONE movie, I mean.  But until that happens, here's a long article that helps explain why the "Super Mario Bros" movie is the way it is.

* - We're getting a movie based on the Bone Wars!

* - Start using these obsolete words!  The owls demand it!

Sketches from Nature Documentaries

But not from "Nature", as is my usual tradition.  Instead, here are pages of sketches from two other animal documentaries available on Netflix Instant.

The first is "The Lizard Kings", a "NOVA" documentary about the Monitor Lizards.  It's pretty good, especially since it shows a different side of a group of animals I didn't know much about.



The next page was filled while I watched "The Natural History of the Chicken".  And I must warn you that it is... not about that.  The actual natural history of the chicken, I mean.  Instead, it's one of the strangest and most borderline uncomfortable documentaries I have seen since "The Rock-Afire Explosion".  (Quick review: You know that one moment with the lady in the cat sweater during "Best Worst Movie"?  "The Rock-Afire Explosion" is like that for the entire movie.)  Man, the story of Miracle Mike is gonna haunt me...

Icariid Species Sheet Sketch Montage

I recently finished one of the most downright enjoyable commissions I've ever had the pleasure to be assigned. Some time ago, Lucia Cochrane-Davis asked me to help her visualize her birdlike fantasy race, the Icariids. She gave me a wonderfully detailed description, and the creature design eventually wound up being a full-on species sheet. Here is a montage of the many sketches I drew during the process:



Montage of Sketches for the Icariid Species Sheet by ~babbletrish on deviantART

Looking back on these, it's mostly the facial design that got altered the most. Aside from that, I liked the woman in the lower-right ever since I first drew her and she's in the final version as well almost exactly as she appears here; I just needed to straighten out her tail feathers.

As a bonus, here's the mockup of the final species sheet, complete with all the spelling errors and formatting snafus:

New England Aquarium Sketches

I figured we all needed something to help ease our frayed nerves today.  Here are pencil and watercolor drawings of the animals we visited at the New England Aquarium a few days ago:

Updated Commission Information!

If you were wondering what I was working on all this time.  Had to get this ready for Boston Comicon after all:

For more information, head on over to DeviantArt, where you can see the larger image and where I will be fielding questions not covered by this graphic.

Belated Easter Insanity - Let's Watch "Peter and the Magic Egg"!

Right, stuff is happening in real life, so this post almost didn't happen at all and I apologize for its obviously being spur-of-the-moment and damn-my-OCD-for-making-me-feel-weird-not-having-a-post-every-week-ish.  I will hopefully be able to sit down and write some nice long posts soon.

But never mind all that now.  I know Easter has come and gone, but it's never too late to watch an insane holiday special that -remarkably- it does not appear Rankin/Bass was responsible for.  No, "Peter and the Magic Egg" was most likely an attempt to put personalities and voices to the cute little mascot creatures on a particular brand of egg dye and make them into beloved holiday characters (it worked for Rudolph).  And the writers of this special decided to do this in the most absurd story they could possibly have come up with:





So, what did we learn here:

* - Amish people talk like Yoda.

* - A plastic surgeon can turn you into a robot.

* - Put clothing on an animal and they'll suddenly be able to speak.

* - Evidently a self-respecting sheep will voluntarily answer to the name "Lollychop".

And a spoilery one:

* - Man, words cannot express how p*ssed I was as a child when the egg finally hatches and you find out what's inside. I was expecting a phoenix or a magical wish-dragon or something equally awesome to save Peter and I got... that.

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Sketch of the Day!

I wonder what other Eevees we'll see in this new "Pokemon" game?

Reasons why you need Katrina Van Grouw's _The Unfeathered Bird_

It Fills a Massive, Obvious Gap in Your Animal Anatomy Library - Remember way, way back in 2009 when I reviewed Eliot Goldfinger's massive tome Animal Anatomy for Artists?  And how I was so stunned and disappointed that, for all the gorgeous and rigorously accurate studies of a wide variety of mammals, he only illustrated the internal structure of one bird?  And it was a domestic chicken?  If you were just as put off by that, The Unfeathered Bird is for you.

It Makes That One Chicken Look Embarrassing - Really embarrassing.  Van Grouw has rendered staggeringly beautiful studies of at least one species of every major clade of extant theropod you can imagine and a not-insignificant number of clades you can't, plus a couple of extinct species.  She even goes so far as to illustrate the often insane extremes of domestic ducks, chickens, and pigeons.

It's a Comparative Anatomy Book in the Truest Sense - Van Grouw has grouped different unrelated clades of birds via a long-antiquated system that rather arbitrarily bunched similar-looking birds (ie, all long-legged, long-necked birds) together regardless of actual relationships.  The arrangement of the book, I will admit, confused me at first, but it facilitates comparison between species adapted to similar lifestyles.  She does clarify, as much as she can, who is actually related to who in the body text. 

Man, You Think You Know Birds... - There are some crazy reveals in this book.  Whooping Cranes have a windpipe that loops around inside the keel of their breastbone, creating essentially a live French horn.  Screamers posses vicious, claw-like spikes on their wrists.  Toucan nostrils face backwards.  Swifts have xygodactyl feet, quite contrary to every other illustration.  And, of course, necks lie.

It's Just Gorgeous - Seriously.  I can't imagine the work involved in preparing a book of this scope.  The fact that it's a fabulous work of art is icing on the cake.


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Sketch of the Day! Had some visitors earlier this month.