Recently in Finds Category

What ho, Internet readers! It's been some time, hasn't it? I've been doing a lot of going to bed early and a bit of reading and a bit of cooking and a lot of thinking about things, but very little productive, I'm afraid.

So, rather than posting drawings (which is probably what you're hanging around here for), I'll tell you about an interesting product I ordered that just came in the mail today. It's the Storyboard Book! They're little pocket-sized 32-page sketchbooks made specifically for storyboarding (or other activities where you may wish to accompany sketches with notes). I haven't used mine yet, but they look like they have potential in comics-making.

They seem like pretty sturdy little books, too, but only time and use will tell whether that's actually true. The covers are a sort of light cardboard/paperboard, and the paper itself is of a good quality. The smell and feel of good paper (new or old) triggers the release of pleasure-hormones in my brain--this is how I can tell.

I'm not entirely sure what I plan to use mine for. They're pretty neat, though! If you want to order your own, you can get them here.

I finally caved and got a Tumblr for posting all the dumb/awesome stuff I find on the Internet (and in real life (but mostly on the internet)) without feeling obligated to write useful commentary about it.

Subscribe to it and enjoy.

The "Finds" category will still be operational here, but it will only be used when I don't feel like exercising my skills in brevity.

Depressingly, Art Clokey, the creator of Gumby, died this morning. As a kid I was completely crazy about Gumby: I had the Gumby board game, a bendy Gumby doll that I took in the bath tub (which I think rusted the wires in it because it eventually stopped being bendy), smaller Gumby and Pokey figurines, and this one VHS tape of Gumby cartoons ("Gumby and the Moon Boggles") that I watched over and over again.

From that tape, in honor of Mr. Clokey, here is my favorite childhood Gumby episode, "Mystic Magic":

I'm actually not entirely sure why that one appealed to me so much. Not much of a story there! But it did include the terrifying prospect of accidentally transforming all your friends into inanimate objects, at least.

And Prickle! Prickle was my favorite Gumby character.

Now I think it's time we all also watched "Robot Rumpus" again:

Long-time Gargoyle acquaintance Jon Visger (AKA Absofacto) has posted this totally sweet new video for his song "Paper Crane."

My favorite part is when he is standing in front of the gate covered in hobo symbols. But I wonder if the space bubble sequence is intended to be a reference to Aronofsky's The Fountain.

Jon also has all his EPs available as pay-what-you-want downloads at his website, so you have no excuse. Go get his music! And please pay at least a few bucks for each record if you can. Mr. Visger is a cool guy and all that money goes to him, to do things like make more nice music for you to listen to.

EDIT 12/14/09: Tonight Absofacto also released a new single. Go listen!

Music by Brian Lonano and Flash animation by Victoria Cook.

I don't know, either. All I know is Poezenklaas both intrigues and terrifies me.

Video found via Cartoon Brew.

I'm sure every person on the Internet has seen this before, but I'll post it here anyway, just in case you haven't:

The clip is from a 1985 claymation film called The Adventures of Mark Twain, which I guess saw a few TV broadcasts despite (or perhaps because of) being intensely creepy.

This particular sequence is based on Twain's unfinished novella, The Mysterious Stranger, which is in many ways just as upsetting as the animation. It's also a very interesting meditation on the nature of God and religion, though I'm not sure it's a good story (I guess that's what "unfinished" indicates). Still, Twain was nothing if not a master wordsmith. Go read the novella.

I came across these unreleased recordings for Disney's Robin Hood earlier this month via Cartoon Brew. Both alternate recordings were edited into videos and uploaded by Huston Huddleston from the archives of his late father, Floyd Huddleston, who worked on the music for the film in 1973.

"The Phony King of England":

"Love":

This particular recording of "Love" is used in the new Wes Anderson film Fantastic Mr. Fox, which I am very much looking forward to seeing. This has been a great year for animation and kids' films, folks.

I still have not been terribly productive, so here, watch this clip from Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure.

This film, released in 1977, is extremely weird and did not do so hot at the box office, but it's widely known among cartoon nerds for its gorgeous animation. I mean, watch that movement; it's pure eye candy. A ton of brilliant Golden Age animators worked on it, including Fleischer/Disney animator Grim Natwick, Disney animator Art Babbit, and others who had worked at Disney, Warner and more during the time when the best hand-drawn animation the world has ever seen was being produced.

Even at their worst, these guys are a hard act to follow. This stuff is amazing.

yeah, when I was only seventeen
I could hear the angels whispering
so I drove into the woods
and wandered aimlessly about
until I heart my mother shouting through the fog
it turned out to be the howling of a dog
or a wolf to be exact
the sound sent shivers down my back
but I was drawn into the pack
and before long
they allowed me to join in and sing their song
so from the cliffs and highest hill
yeah, we would gladly get our fill
howling endlessly and shrilly at the dawn
and I lost the taste for judgin' right from wrong
for my flesh had turned to fur
yeah, and my thoughts they surely were
turned to instinct and obedience to god
"Furr," Blitzen Trapper

You might have noticed that I just added a favicon to the site. It is a tiny wolf head. You have no idea how hard it is to make a 16x16 pixel image look even vaguely like a tiny wolf head until you have attempted this Herculean feat.

It's always been a pain for me to create and edit ICO files because popular image editing programs like Photoshop don't recognize them by default. There are a few ICO converters out there, but it makes the whole matter a two-step process. However, a little googling revealed this ICO file format plugin for Photoshop, which adds that missing functionality to Photoshop itself. It is supernaturally useful.