THEORY CORNER FOR TEENS

So you're twelve years old now! You're almost a teenager! Wow, I'm envious, or at least partly envious. Um...there are some troublesome parts and I thought I'd discuss them here by way of giving you a heads up. 

Well, let's see....okay, for starters... any day now you could wake up with strange bumps where you never had them before. 

I don't mean the obvious bumps. I mean.....ZITS!

Well, better zits than acne. Wait til you see what a job acne can do on you. I'm not aware that there's a cure.

At least you'll be thin. That's something.

It won't last long, though.

Then there's braces, which will make you look like a little kid again just when you thought you'd left all that behind.

Maybe you'll be lucky and just get overbite and not buck teeth teeth. On a girl overbite is  kinda cute, don't you think?

And if you're a guy, expect that 90% of your waking hours will be spent on thinking about girls. That time could be used to find a cure for cancer or to figure out how to translate the secret tablets of the Pharohs, but...naaaaaaw...it'll be for girls.  

You'll get a unibrow. I guess that's easy to take care of.

Your taste in clothes will plummet. You'll wear things you wouldn't have been caught dead in a few years ago. 

If you're a girl you'll put on make-up with a trowel.

 You and all your friends will fall in love with the local chick magnet (above). The trouble is, there's not enough chick magnets to go around.

You'll be stuck with the pathetic alternative of pasting up pictures of your favorite movie star all around your room.

Boys know girls do that so they react accordingly.

You'll develop an obsession for...no,wait, I said that already.

Wait til you see what teen angst is like. Only your closest friends will be able to stand you.

You'll develop a very harsh view of your parents.

And did I mention...oh, I did? Okay.


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Yikes! I forgot that Wednesday is Veteran's Day! Thanks to all the brave soldiers of the past who made it possible for me have a blog where I can be myself and say what I like.

HALLOWEEN 2015

Well, another Halloween bit the dust this Saturday. Here I am at Mike's place, posing in his Flintstone hat.

I only had a short time to decorate the porch for the Trick or Treaters. Usually I spend a whole day making paper cutouts for it, but this time I just emptied a couple of garage boxes and made what I could from what was there. How do you like this "Old Lady from Hell?"

Haw! The little kids hated the evil old people dummies and had praise only for the pumpkins. The older kids liked them, though. Halloween always brings out the local art students.

 Here's a wig I got from Ikea the day after Halloween. It doesn't look like much from the front but it strikes a great profile.

I wish I'd saved the masks my kids made in grade school. One or the many benefits you get from having kids is that you get lots of free wall decorations that are better than what you can buy.

 Nobody in my neighborhood sold good plastic masks this year.

They used to be cheap and readily available. Now they're expensive collectors items.

Wait a minute...this face is based on an ancient Greece mask. How do you like that? The original was created 2,300 years ago and the mask is still on sale.

I was a snob who only collected latex masks. Now the good plastic masks are gone and my latex masks are falling apart. Why did I ignore these nice plastic masks?

Why?

Because I'm...
S T U P I D !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

RALPH BAKSHI'S "LAST DAYS OF CONEY ISLAND"

This Sunday I paid a visit to Steve Worth's to see Bakshi's new film, "Last Days of Coney island." I knew the film would be good but I didn't know it would be THAT good.  It was gorgeous! Look at the way the painterly way the characters (above) are handled. Who else does that?  All the way through I kept saying to myself, "This is shocking! Absolutely shocking! I don't believe what I'm seeing!!!"

At the film's end it was clear that, at an age when most animators retire, Ralph had created an industry changing film. It's easily the best thing he's ever done.

The first thing you notice is the color.  Ralph did all of it himself. I've always liked Ralph's paintings...I knew he could  paint...but who knew that he could paint like this? He's raised the color bar for the entire industry. What was acceptable last year will get faint applause after people have seen this film.

By way of an example, check out this bar (above). It's red, like something out of a Nolde painting. Not only that but but the woman behind the bar is wearing a similar red, making the bar shape more complex and interesting. The background is green to make the bar pop out, and even the guy sitting at the bar is wearing a type of green. It's a case where red sits on top of green, and green sits on top of red. It's a nice contrast, and it fits the contrasty story, which is flamboyant and melancholy at the same time.

The film is full of exciting color, like this triad (above) of red, green and purple. The big studios are too timid to try things like this.

You can see the character color a little better here.

The second thing you notice is the cartooning. Everybody who's worked for Ralph has lamented that the public never sees his own sketches and animation, but only other artists' translations. Now we get to see Ralph raw and unfiltered and the experience is vastly entertaining. 'More about this in a minute.

The third thing you notice (and this'll be my final bullet point) is how cinematic the film is. Ralph's always had a knack for editing but here the film is uniquely wedded to what's happening with the color, cartooning and music. I'm not aware that his own paintings have ever been shown to greater advantage. It's "synergy." Ralph's a big believer in the power of combined arts to create something bigger and better than its parts.

 I said I'd return to the subject of Ralph's cartooning and animation. Some of his characters are drawn as if they were made for a pencil test. The characters are outlined carefully, but sometimes have internal lines everywhere, and it works spectacularly.

 The lines don't get in the way, rather they help to give the characters a texture, and color reads better on texture than on a flat ground.

The animation, that's done in Ralph's own style and it's beautiful!!!!! It's alternately smooth and deliberately jerky, and when it needs to be wild a Jimmy Tyre influence comes into play. It conforms neatly to the animator's code which is, "funny drawings that move in a funny way."

To sum it up, THIS FILM LOOKS LIKE IT WAS CREATED BY AN ARTIST! AN HONEST TO GOD ARTIST...and a CARTOONIST, NO LESS! Imagine that! What a rarity! Geez, there are some studios where cartoonists are shot on sight and their bodies fed to sharks. Many thanks to Ralph and the visionary supporters who financed this at Kickstarter!

BTW: The film costs 4 bucks through PayPal and is yours for a week. What a bargain! The link:

https://vimeo.com/ondeman/lastdaysofconeyisland

HALLOWEEN PICTURES

Who are these people??? The masks look old but the shoes look more modern. I''m guessing that these are amusement park workers posing in the 40s or 50s. 

Here's another picture I can't identify. It looks like it's from an anime film.

A few of my own rubber masks are torn and brittle now. I have to cover them up with props to disguise the flaws.

Here's an old, brittle half mask that I accidentally crushed in storage. The lips bonded to the cheek but...surprise, surprise...it looks great this way!

This has been a great year for neighborhood Halloween stores. For one thing, it marks the introduction of the adult muscle suit. Finally we adult men can have muscles without all that tedious exercize.

Above, an upscale version.

There's some new masks this year, too! This one (above) would have looked better minus the snot and with a smaller head behind the nose.

Something like this (above, drawn by a cartoonist friend) would have worked better. The mask industry really needs to take in more cartoonists. Non cartoonists tend to be too literal. 

Latex masks are also limited by the necessity to fit over the head. That's why girls make good mask subjects. You can make the mask broad and disguise the width with the hair.

Who's this? It looks like a 90 year-old version of "Bill Nye, the Science Guy" from TV.

Hmmmmmm....masks for twins. Yeah, sure, why not?

 I'm happy to report that dog costumes continue to improve with every passing year.

Wow! What a great T-Rex mask! 

I'm still curious to see if someone can come up with a good Jessica Rabbit mask. The face above is from a figurine. It fits the movie perfectly, but could still be a bit more sultry and cartoony.

Here's (above) a reconstruction of the young Steve Buscemi, proving that he'd make a great mask. 

Geez, Buscemi and Peter Lorre could have been brothers.

Come to think of it, why haven't we seen a Peter Lorre mask?

The world desperately needs a good Rondo Hatton mask (above)...

...and maybe a cool hat to go with it.

  

This picture (above) shows how a decent mask might be made of Tippi Hedren.

Some of the best masks used to be free on cereal boxes.  Why are the cereal people so resistant to Halloween now?

This time of year Disneyland should sell cheap reproductions of their Haunted House paintings, don't you think?

Here's a great gorilla mask...or is it a caveman?...used by Ernie Kovacs in his famous "Nairobi Trio" sketch. It's very funny and may still be in print, but if it is a caveman, how accurate is it? Cavemen are always portrayed as ugly, but were they?

So far as I can tell cavemen would have been exceptionally handsome. Assuming they were polygamous, the handsomest cavemen would have had many wives and children, and ugly, mateless cavemen wouldn't have had any.  That means most cavemen would have looked like Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp...only with bigger browridges.

I searched the net for a better picture of the Kovacs mask and came up with nothing. In desperation I typed "Ubangi Mask" and to my surprise I came up with.....ME (above)! Yes, ME! My Photoshopped ears have earned me a place on the Ubangi sites!

For comparison (above), my unretouched ears.

Recently I wondered out loud if my buck teeth would look good on a mask. A friend suggested that I already have a mask (above). Maybe he's right. I shouldn't be greedy.

Here's an example of the starched cheesecloth masks that were all over the place when my dad was a kid. 'Kinda nice, huh? I like the transparent hat.

Last but not least, here's a frame from The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror XXVI." Wow and double Wow! John K continues to amaze!

BTW: my costume this year: Mr. Meek (above).