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I only see in neon.

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Recently, I taught a class at my alma mater, the Rhode Island School of Design. It was a class on character design, focusing on THE CUTE ONES. Suffice it to say, this was right up my alley!

Discover the art of Jacob Menden, Cartoon Brew's Artist of the Day!

A man wakes up from the American Dream.

RISD (The Rhode Island School of Art and Design) is hosting an art show—now open and running until January 9, 2015—“What Nerve!” and it spotlights alternative artists, several of them with one foot in cartooning:

What Nerve! Alternative Figures in American Art, 1960 to the Present proposes an alternate history of figurative painting, sculpture, and vernacular image-making from 1960 to the present that has been largely overlooked and undervalued. At the heart of What Nerve! are four mini-exhibitions based on crucial shows, spaces, and groups in Chicago (the Hairy Who), San Francisco (Funk), Ann Arbor (Destroy All Monsters), and Providence (Forcefield)—places outside the artistic focal point of New York. These moments are linked together by six influential or intersecting artists: H. C. Westermann, Jack Kirby, William Copley, Christina Ramberg, Gary Panter, and Elizabeth Murray.

All of these artists ran against the modernist grain and its emphasis on theory. Rather than distancing their art through irony or institutional critique, the artists in What Nerve! seized imagery and ideas from vernacular sources as diverse as comics and pottery, pulling and reshaping material from their environments to tackle a variety of subjects with equal doses of satire and sincerity. What Nerve! looks at their distinctive idioms, shown in works that are often earnest, sometimes narrative, frequently transgressive, and always individualistic.

Nadel has also put together the catalog for the show, What Nerve! , which spotlights all of the above with essays by Nicole Rudick, Roger Brown and more. I WANT THIS BOOK.

The RISD exhibit will have some events as well:

Design the Night opening celebration
Thursday, September 18, 2014 | 5-9 pm | free 

Critical Encounters with Body, Place, and Time
Friday, September 19, 2014 | 1-4 pm | free
Gallery conversations with artists, curators, and art historians explore key issues emerging from What Nerve! 

Screenings: Hairy Who & The Chicago Imagists
Sundays, September 21 and October 12, 2014 | 2-4 pm | free

Art top: Karl Wirsum’s “Show Girl I” (1969)

Join Mr. Piggy on an adventure through time and space. Please wear 25-D glasses.

Cartoon Brew's fifth annual Student Animation Festival will launch tomorrow, August 5th, with the grand-prize winning work "Mr. Piggy Dies in 25 Dimensions" by Josh Sehnert.

A tiny monster dreams through her school day.

For the fifth year in a row, we are delighted to present the selections for the Cartoon Brew Student Animation Festival, the premier online showcase for animated short premieres by student filmmakers. We like to believe that each year is our strongest year, but this year's selections feel particularly vital, illustrating the remarkable breadth of work currently being produced by student filmmakers around the globe.

Flipping through the virtual RISD website the other day, I was reminded that I was featured in one of their recent publications.

This brochure is called Working, and it focuses on alumni who are doing cool things. Suffice it to say, I am humbled and honored to be featured amongst these stellar artists!

Click to see the whole brochure here!

Tim Beckhardt studied animation and printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design. After graduating in 2009, Tim went to work as an artist at Augenblick Studios in Brooklyn.

Pellet Gunn, a short that Tim made at RISD is described as “a dog, a cyclops, and others kill some time with the help of wormholes and hobbyist self-modification.” The piece plays out unexpectedly, remaining fresh until the satisfying end:

A follow up student film from 2009, Inner Tubes, is described as “a frank look at tube-hole relationships.” This meditative piece may leave you thinking about your own tubes and holes:

Take a look at Tim’s portfolio website and Tumblr for more animated loops, drawings, comics and prints.

Sonnye “Jin” Lim is a recent graduate of the film/video/animation program at the Rhode Island School of Design. Her 2013 reel is below, along with more of her films on Vimeo.

One of Jin’s personal projects in progress is a comic called Blondie, starring her characters Blondie and Quinn and set “in a zombie apocalyptic universe.”

See more of Jin’s dark drawings in pencils, ink and pixels on her Tumblr and her animation portfolio blog.

This morning we continue Cartoon Brew’s Student Animation Festival with the online debut of Eric Ko’s Our Son (우리 아들) which is a graduation short produced at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Notably, Eric’s short marks the second time he’s been selected for our festival; his junior year film Troubleshooting was featured in last year’s festival. Our Son is an evolution of his distinctively spare geometric language while reaching new heights of filmmaking ambition and confidence.

Ko is fascinated with the idea of speed in this film, and he skillfully manipulates the cinematic space to create a fast-paced and exciting animation thrill ride. The driving percussion-oriented soundtrack lends to the sense of urgency. The film flirts with abstraction, but remains grounded in a narrative universe that is both resistant to (and demanding of) interpretation by the viewer.

Continue reading for comments from the filmmaker:

THE IDEA

The transition from carefree irresponsibility to reality is often instantaneous. Based off of a few precious memories of growing up with a best friend in a place that offered very little and the relationship I have with my heritage, I wanted to work on a film that took me on an adventure during its creation, with hopes that it would take the viewer on one as well.

TOOLBOX

I used Flash and a tablet to animate. For the music and sound design I worked in Ableton Live.

CHALLENGES & LESSONS LEARNED

I wanted to make a film that embodied impulsive, frantic adventures; with that said, having a storyboard seemed to be an ill limitation. At first I had plenty of boards drawn up and ideas down on paper, but after the first few seconds of animating I threw it all out. All I had left were the bigger ideas that I kept in the back of my head as I worked. At a certain point I was simply putting one image in front of the other without knowing what came next, which was fun for me. Once something stopped being fun, I stopped and changed it. I think realizing to make sure I had fun was the most important thing.

INSPIRATIONS

I looked up to independent animators such as Lei Lei and Misaki Uwabo. I did some really basic research on Korean culture; I think my vague understanding of my own heritage and the disjointed humor I get from it particularly inspired me. Also, retro side-scrolling spaceship games such as Gradius interests me a lot, where a lot of strange visual motifs went unquestioned because it’s an arcade game. While animating I listened to a lot of Louis CK interviews for laughs and really loved his attitude about creative freedom. Echo Park by Willamette was my favorite album to listen to.

WHERE YOU SEE YOURSELF IN FIVE YEARS

Making more short films!

FILMMAKER WEBSITES

Personal website: Crybird.net
Vimeo page: Vimeo.com/EricKo

For the fourth year in a row, we are delighted to present the Cartoon Brew Student Animation Festival, the premier online showcase for animated short premieres by student filmmakers.

Our 2013 festival offers one of the strongest and most dynamic slates of short films since we launched the festival. Chosen from a record-breaking 266 film submissions, the eight films in this year’s festival represent a remarkably high level of creative vision and filmmaking skill. The films selected were made by adventurous filmmakers who show a commitment to exploring the narrative and visual possibilities of the animation art form, and whose ideas and concepts are fully realized.

More quality student work was submitted than ever before. In fact, half of the films in this year’s festival are from schools that haven’t been in the festival during its first three years—Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, DePaul University, University of Southern California and Massachusetts College of Art and Design. On the other hand, Eric Ko is the first filmmaker who has been selected twice for the festival; his junior film Troubleshooting was a part of our festival last year.

Each of the eight filmmakers whose work is featured in this year’s festival will receive a cash award of $500 (US), thanks to the generosity of our festival sponsor JibJab. Further, Evan Spiridellis, the co-founder of JibJab, will select one additional film to receive the Grand Prize and an extra $500, for a cash prize totalling $1,000 US.

The festival will debut on Monday, July 8th, and a new film will be presented every week throughout July and August. And now, we proudly present the 2013 class of Cartoon Brew’s Student Animation Festival:

Lady with Long Hair
Directed by Barbara Bakos
School: Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (Hungary)
Synopsis: An old lady relives memories of her life contained within her hair.
Running time: 8 min 45 s

Sun of a Beach
Directed by Natan Moura
School: Sheridan College (Canada)
Synopsis: Shunned for shining a little too brightly, the poor sun feels alone in its search to connect and be wanted.
Running time: 1 min 20 s

Dumb Day
Directed by Kevin Eskew

Brain Divided
Directed by Josiah Haworth, Joon Shik Song and Joon Soo Song
School: Ringling College of Art and Design (USA)
Synopsis: The story about an ordinary guy who meets a not so ordinary girl, but his brain cells can’t agree on how to go about winning her over, which leads to Conflict!
Running time: 5 min

Our Son (우리 아들)
Directed by Eric Ko
School: Rhode Island School of Design (USA)
Synposis: Celestial bodies and the fragility of happiness.
Running time: 4 min 30 s

i
Directed by Isabela Dos Santos
School: California Institute of the Arts (USA)
Synopsis: Hand-drawn animation and dance performance intersect and interact in this short piece that deals with a well-known question: Who am I?
Running time: 3 min 35s

Wolf Within
Directed by Alex Horan
School: Massachusetts College of Art and Design (USA)
Synopsis: A father prepares his son for a world without him.
Running time: 9 min 35 s

Passer Passer
Directed by Louis Morton
School: University of Southern California (USA)
Synopsis: An animated city symphony celebrates the hidden world of background noise. Field recordings from the streets of Los Angeles and Tokyo drive imagined characters and cycles that build to form a living musical creature.
Running time: 3 min 47 s

The Box by recent Rhode Island School of Design grad Joshua Durst is good for a giggle—and sometimes that’s all you want on the weekend.

In the year 2000, Jesse Schmal created the most excellent student film Sub! while attending Rhode Island School of Design. Since then, he’s kept a relatively low profile, working on shows like Codename: Kids Next Door and Superjail!, while also pursuing other non-animation projects. The good news is that Jesse has recently been expanding his Web presence. He now has a nice portfolio site at JesseSchmal.com and has posted Sub! online. Here’s to hoping we’ll see more personal work from him in the future.

Today, in Cartoon Brew’s Student Animation Festival, we’re pleased to present Troubleshooting by Eric Ko, of the Rhode Island School of Design. Produced as minimalist as any film could be; Ko uses only simple line figures in black and white to take us on a journey, from a routine morning bus ride to a spectacular sci-fi apocalypse, with one surprise after another. Like his slacker protagonist, Ko is a self-assured filmmaker with a sly sense of humor and a fine sense of visual storytelling Troubleshooting has an imaginative premise, superb execution and proves, in this case, that less is more, as long as someone hits the “reset” button.

Click HERE to read an interview with the filmmaker Eric Ko.

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Eric Ko, Rhode Island School of Design, RISD

Today, in Cartoon Brew’s Student Animation Festival, we’re pleased to present Troubleshooting by Eric Ko, of the Rhode Island School of Design. Produced as minimalist as any film could be; Ko uses only simple line figures in black and white to take us on a journey, from a routine morning bus ride to a spectacular sci-fi apocalypse, with one surprise after another. Like his slacker protagonist, Ko is a self-assured filmmaker with a sly sense of humor and a fine sense of visual storytelling Troubleshooting has an imaginative premise, superb execution and proves, in this case, that less is more, as long as someone hits the “reset” button.

Continue reading for comments from the filmmaker Eric Ko:

THE IDEA
What if the end of the world wasn’t such a big deal, and some guy fixed it every now and then?

TOOLBOX
I worked in Flash with a tablet. I’m not sure if the limitation of black, white, and grey was a conscious decision at first, but it just seemed right after a while. It definitely helped me with directing, and it also gave me the time I needed to animate the scenes needed for a proper climax, and some extra details here and there. I always found it to be the little things in cartoons that made me laugh the most.

LESSONS LEARNED
The idea I started with is so different from the finished product that it could be its own thing. I had a basic storyboard laid out, but I always kept the ideas for the scenes kind of vague. I was making up the scenes as I animated — which is a creative process that I find natural, but it became kind of scary at times. As always, it helps to have friends or just somebody to help you keep going, or keep you from veering off-course.

INSPIRATIONS
I was reading a lot of comics by younger cartoonists during the time I started thinking of ideas, going through every MOME publication I was able to find. Because this was my first try at animating human-style characters with human-style faces, I figured comics were a good place to start for inspiration. I watched Cowboy Bebop before I started, and Akira during production.

My violent-video-game-filled childhood helped cement the theme, and I looked to my little brothers for inspiration as well. I was also heavily influenced by a RISD grad named Tom Deslongchamp, throughout the ages.

FILMMAKER WEBSITE:
Eric Ko’s website
Eric Ko on Vimeo

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Eric Ko, Flash, Rhode Island School of Design, RISD

Welcome to the third annual Cartoon Brew Student Animation Festival. Over the course of the next ten weeks, we’ll be debuting ten remarkable student animated shorts.

We’re launching the festival today with 21 Years in 7 Minutes by Caroline Torres (Rhode Island School of Design). Autobiographical stories are a staple of student filmmakers, but rarely have we seen one as confident and original as this one. Torres’ fast-paced accounting of her life uses superb visual storytelling filled with comedy and heart, and pairs it with a distinctively quirky animation style that complements the simple line artwork. The film is a pleasant reminder that life is most often about friendship in all its many forms, from boy-next door crushes to BFFs who share in everything to animation school friendships in which people often connect through their characters.

Click HERE to hear from the filmmaker and comment on the film.

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Caroline Torres, Rhode Island School of Design, RISD

Welcome to the third annual Cartoon Brew Student Animation Festival. Over the course of the next ten weeks, we’ll be debuting ten remarkable student animated shorts.

We’re launching the festival today with 21 Years in 7 Minutes by Caroline Torres (Rhode Island School of Design). Autobiographical stories are a staple of student filmmakers, but rarely have we seen one as confident and original as this one. Torres’ fast-paced accounting of her life uses superb visual storytelling filled with comedy and heart, and pairs it with a distinctively quirky animation style that complements the simple line artwork. The film is a pleasant reminder that life is most often about friendship in all its many forms, from boy-next door crushes to BFFs who share in everything to animation school friendships in which people often connect through their characters.

Continue reading for comments from the filmmaker, Caroline Torres:

THE IDEA
The original idea for this film first came from these comic strips I used to make in middleschool/highschool to entertain myself and my friends. My friends would make comics about their day and I’d make them about mine, then we’d swap and crack up at what we’d missed out on in the classes we weren’t together in. In college, we wrote letters to each other in the same fashion, with more pictures than words. I realized the art I had the most, straight up JOY making wasn’t in any of my art classes, but was when I was drawing in letters to my buds. So I guess ‘21 Years In 7 Minutes’ was my solution to making an animation that I would have a lot of fun with, that had to last the whole year. Also, a few months before we had to decide what our degree projects were going to be, my animation class went to the Ottawa Animation Festival where I saw this animation One Minute. That animation really clicked with how and what I wanted to be animating.

TOOLBOX
My toolbox was Flash CS3, and some After Effects CS5 compositing at the end for the paper background and softening the Flash line a bit. My composer Mr. Nathan used ProTools.

CHALLENGES
My biggest challenge in making this animation was clear storytelling. I’d animate and animate, then show my teachers all my fine work and they would be like “What is this? This makes no sense.” Then we’d talk for 20 minutes about why it made no sense, I’d go home, chuck out most of what I’d animated, and do it over. If I hadn’t been so stubborn and just story boarded my ideas out before animating, this could have been avoided.. but eh. Next time! :D

LESSSONS LEARNED
The most important thing I learned from making this short was that at some point I had to start making it for myself and not for the sake of impressing my teachers and peers. This didn’t mean ignoring their advice in crits, I just needed to figure out that I had to stop using how I thought everyone else was thinking as a crutch for my own thinking.

INSPIRATIONS
Inspirations throughout the making of 21 Years In 7 Minutes… Everyone I know who I like enough now to spend hours drawing over and over and over. Situations that I remember strongly, that I think influence who I am today. For example it always bothered me that the father of these kids that I used to babysit died in 9/11. I had a dream this year that was like “You’re douche bucket if you don’t put 9/11 in your animation.” I woke up and agreed. Old s

The ICON 7 Illustration Conference was held right here in RI this year, sponsored in part by good ol’ RISD. That was good news for Eric and I…we had our tickets reserved months ago, and it was finally held this week.

The weather was perfect, the city was looking’ good for the hundreds of illustrators that came to town. We didn’t manage to get to any of the workshops that occurred on previous days, beyond going to the RISD Icons art show opening at the Woods-Gerry Gallery (the show is up until June 24th, so you can still catch it).

Our first full day of stuff was Friday the 15th, and it started early. The darkly chipper Masters of Ceremonies were Jennifer Daniel and Nicholas Blechman.

Gregory DiBisceglie, creative manager for Campaign Planning and Special Projects at Macy’s, showed how he tries to raise the bar of creative experiences that Macy’s offers. Why, there’s one of his special projects now… art created by Chris Buzelli for Macy’s Flower Show.

Here’s the art powerhouse Bob Staake, with a page from one of his children’s books. He started off working in a well-regarded cartoony style, but has since morphed into more graphic looks. He says that since art is always subservient to something else, he likes to shake up his style depending on the need. He also like to surprise an art director with unique takes.

My favorite point he made was that art directors come to you because you’re a thinker. So true. Style and execution is less important than concept, so long as the art gets your point across effectively. I find this very true in product design, as well.

Christopher S. Neal, Josh Cochran, and Sam Weber came to talk about the importance of community and collaboration, as learned in the Pencil Factory studio space in Brooklyn. They not only collaborate with each other, but with lots of varied clients.

The importance of collaboration was a theme that kept popping up throughout the conference. Apparently sequestering oneself up in a studio all alone with no input is not the best way to achieve good art, or to get anything to happen with your art. Huh… go figure!

Here are the folks from the Children’s Book panel: Cecily Kaiser (Abrams), Chad Beckerman (Abrams), and Elizabeth Parisi (Scholastic), with Rachael Cole (Schwartz & Wade/Random House) as

A couple of weeks ago I was asked to come speak to RISD students in the illustration department about my work. It was great fun to be able to go back to the very building I spent many hours in (the ISB, which hasn’t changed a bit) and talk about the post-RISD experience!

There’s the unchanged ISB. What has changed is in front of it- a beautiful waterfront complete with art tile-encrusted walkways and arches. It’s about a million times nicer than the late 80s landscape I saw as a student!

Here’s my first indication that I would have to be “professional”!

A Professional Practice flyer about me!
Check out those great student watercolor studies to the left!

My talk was mostly in the dark, with a Powerpoint display, so no pictures there! But afterwards, the students could come up and play with the array of my products, toys, children’s books and kid’s menus that I brought along.

I like seeing peoples’ initial reactions to these things… it’s very telling.

While I was in the vicinity, I had the chance to walk over to the always-fun risd/works store nearby, which is now part of the cool new wing of the museum.

risd/works carries a lot of my design items, and displays them in a gorgeous setting!

Here’s a wall o’ fun from the Fred Co. My designs shown are: CooKeys, MonKeys, EarRing, TropSticks, and Cool Jewels<