- It’s been a good week and it’s only Thursday! I’ve cooed and oohed and aahed over NYPL’s 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing 2013 list before. Nothing new to say . . . or is there? I don’t suppose you happened to see NPR’s interactive booklist consisting of their Best Books of 2013 (in a rare moment of bliss, I like all their children’s book choices though some diversity wouldn’t have been out of place). Well, NYPL took one look at that list and thought, “Heck. We can do that.” And so they did! Meet the Interactive Books List of NYPL. It’s gorgeous. It’s user friendly. It’s the only place you can find animated Melissa Sweet. Overall, I rather love it. Hope you do too.
- In other best book news, Colby Sharp and Donalyn Miller teamed up at BuzzFeed and produced a list of 20 of the Best Children’s Books 2013. And AGAIN I like all the choices. Do you know how rare this is? Extra points for including Donner Dinner Party. Love that thing. Love anyone who includes it on a list.
- Having trouble keeping track of all the Best Of lists out there? Mr. Schu’s your man. Thanks to him, we now have a nicely compiled 2013 Best Books Lists posting. It’s very attractive. Of course, if you want the most complete listing out there, there’s no better place to go than Chicken Spaghetti. The information is AMAZING over there.
- A lot has been said lately about how big Best lists of children’s books this year have neglected to include any Latino characters (NPR and The New York Times most notably). Perfect timing then for the 2014 Reading Challenge suggested by Latin@s in Kid Lit. Take a look at the guidelines and join, but seriously? One book a month? I think you can handle that. They even have some suggestions to start you off (yay, Nino!).
- And, of course, if you read only one Best list, read the 100 Scope Notes highly hilarious Year in Miscellanea. Plus he mentions my superfluous little cupcake. Quoth he it’s, “the Axl Rose Hair Metal hair of picture book cover cupcakes.” You’re just going to have to read his piece to understand what that means.
- Tempted to see Saving Mr. Banks in the theater this holiday season? Feel free but be aware that the film may be throwing P.L. Travers under the bus in the process. A great piece from Jerry Griswold, former Director of the National Center for the Study of Children’s Literature.
- Anyone who has ever attended one of James Kennedy’s 90-Second Newbery Film Festivals will attest that they are a bundle of fun. Just the most delightful little films, created by kids, turning Newbery winners into concise 90-second films. Some are, understandably, better than others but there’s nothing cooler than sitting in a theater next to a kid who gets to see their film projected on a big screen for the first time in their young lives. Want to join in? The deadline for the next 90-second films is January 20th. So get cracking, young geniuses! For lots more information about the events and the showings, go here.
- Awww. This is so sweet. Over at Mocking It Up, Rebecca did me a solid and created this simply gorgeous infographic on the books that are topping the Mock Newbery lists around the country (she compiled results from 19 different Mocks). That’s a ton of work but the results are simply gorgeous. Wowzah! Well done, madam.
Why, yes. That IS a bookshelf in the shape of a robot.
Now you all know what you’re getting for your birthday. Surprise!
Tonight was for writing this post and watching some football and thinking about orange and blue. And then this commercial comes on TV. (Well, this one is a few years old. Same flavor, though.)
Remember this. It means something in a bit. I promise I don’t care where you buy your life insurance.
by Olivier Tallec
{published 2012, by Enchanted Lion Books}
Waterloo & Trafalgar is at once spare and very much not. It’s a book about unnecessary fighting and the two stubborn sides who forget why they are even at odds. They are suspicious, bored, but always staid. Until. A snail, a bird, a different perspective. Different looks a little bit the same after all.
Tallec’s goofy little men end up as a charming shout for peace. They are absurd. They are us.
Waterloo. Blue. Trafalgar. Orange. Opposites. Enemies.
There they are, as far from one another on the color wheel as possible. Direct opposites. Complementary colors.
Orange and blue are a combination of dominance, because each is competing for the attention of your eye. One cool, one warm, constant attention-grabbers. Because of their stark contrast, each truly shouts.
That’s why it’s a duo you see in a lot of advertising for banks, credit cards, and other Important Things. Would that Northwestern Mutual commercial be as strong if it were in a different color palette? Probably not. They want to imply strength, power, and – well, life.
And, ahem. I’m a fan of these two colors. Note my blog header and the rest of this thing’s design. Those design decisions were intentional, and since you are reading this and hanging out here with me, it might just be working.
Perfect choices for Waterloo and Trafalgar, right? It wouldn’t make sense for those two ridiculous little men to be represented by closer together hues. Their orange and blues are a tenuous balance.
Besides a color scheme that works, that sings, and that smacks you in the gut, this is just a darn beautiful book. The paper is thick and rich to the touch, and some split pages inside extend the stories and heighten the division at hand.
I love the die cuts on the cover – those clever windows reveal these two nuts and their telescopes at the ready. And the endpapers’ narrative is subtle as it holds the story in place. The carved out holes close up by the end, and the stream of blue and orange smash right up against each other.
Still different, still far apart on that wheel. Transformed into something lovely together.
Ok, ok. One more orange and blue moment I love is the opening title sequence to the James Bond flick, Quantum of Solace.
(These titles are created by a studio whose motion design work is just spectacular, MK12. They are the creative minds behind the visuals in Stranger Than Fiction and the gorgeous end titles of The Kite Runner. By the way, notice the colors in the first minute of that one!)
And! A whole slew of orange and blue on movie posters. You won’t un-see this color palette once you start noticing it. That’s a promise prefaced with a slight apology! Here’s just one:
Tagged:
balance,
color palette,
color theory,
complementary colors,
movie posters,
olivier tallec,
orange and blue,
trailers,
waterloo and trafalgar 
samhiti:
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: Sam Hiti, I rest my case. Once Upon A Time In The West is one of my favorite movies ever, and features my very favorite movie soundtrack ever. Sam Hiti is also one of my favorites ever—if you want to have your eyeballs melted in person, pick up his amazing book Death Day, one of the weirdest, best, wildest, best books you’ll read this year or any other. Read the online serialization for free here.
I’m not sayin’ that Hollywood doesn’t know how to make good movie posters anymore (because they obviously still do), it’s just the the Ghanaians seem to have perfected the art. In the 80s, when VHS technology became affordable and bootlegs of lousy horror and action films were plentiful, the resourceful folks of Ghana would travel from town to village setting up “mobile cinemas” with nothing more than a TV, a VCR and these spectacular hand-painted posters.
“In order to promote these showings, artists were hired to paint large posters of the films (usually on used canvas flour sacks). The artists were given the artistic freedom to paint the posters as they desired – often adding elements that weren’t in the actual films, or without even having seen the movies. When the posters were finished they were rolled up and taken on the road (note the heavy damages). The “mobile cinema” began to decline in the mid-nineties due to greater availability of television and video; as a result the painted film posters were substituted for less interesting/artistic posters produced on photocopied paper.”
If a trip to Ghana is not in your itinerary, then please wander over to Ephemera Assemblyman or the Affiche Poster Museum to gaze upon more of their glorious godawful goodness. And if you’d like to actually display one of these works of cinematic art in your own home or hovel, then why not stock up over at Ghana Movie Posters? Christmas is just around the corner and you know how much grandma loves her Tiger Cage 2!
Posted by Stephan Britt on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog |
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Tags: Affiche Poster Museum, Ephemera Assemblyman, Ghana, movie posters
This reimagined poster for Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator is sublime. It’s the work of designer/illustrator Olly Moss.
This fantastic collection of illustrated versions of popular Hollywood movie posters from Poland puts the current movie poster trend of a bunch of Photoshopped faces to shame. They’re certainly closer in spirit to theatre posters than they are to what we’re familiar with as movie posters.
Related:
Polish Poster Design
Bob Peak
The Death of Movie Poster Art
(Thanks, Gabby!)
I just finished drawing this movie poster for "The Goonies" showing at the historic Artcraft Theatre.
It's an old theatre in Franklin, IN and our poster operation, Mile 44, has teamed up with them to provide funding for renovation of the beautiful old theatre by creating a series of collectible, hand-printed movie posters for some of the theatre's showings.
The posters in the series are sold
Digest
/v. dɪˈdʒɛst, daɪ-; n. ˈdaɪ
dʒɛst/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[v. di-jest, dahy-; n. dahy-jest]:
1.to convert (food) in the alimentary canal into absorbable form for assimilation into the system.
2.to condense, abridge, or summarize.
3. to plunk together in a veritable hodgepodge.
4. to give the author of a particular blog the excuse she needs to work the word "hodgepodge" into one of her postings.
Here are some trinkets and tidbits of an especially shiny nature that I've not had time to properly digest this week. Between this and that my brain is not working to its full capacity. Fortunately that means that the brains of others work where mine has ground to a rusty dusty halt.
Less excuses. More postings.
First on the list is Roger Sutton. You all know Roger. Editor of Horn Book. Bearer of the sacred throat vinculum. This week, he
mentioned that the Horn-Book Globe Book Awards committee is beginning their deliberations and you are invited to offer your bets on who the winners might be. So exciting! I side with the commenter that suggested that
A Drowned Maiden's Hair finally get its due. Roger also done went and linked to the article
Circle of Cliches via
The Daily Telegraph. I'll have to speak more on this later this week. It talks about the words or phrases reviewers love far too much. I know that for my part there are certain comfort turns of phrase that I'll reuse more often than I really should. Give the piece a glance alongside
Roger's response.
Thanks to
Children's Illustration we got a glimpse of some remarkable movie posters from back in the day. Blogger Michael Sporn also offered this great bit of info:
Through Aug. 1, the Posteritati Movie Poster Gallery (239 Centre St.) lets New Yorkers escape into the past with a collection of art from fantasy films ranging from 1937’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” to modern-day favorites like “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “The Incredibles.”
Gallery hours are Tuesday - Saturday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 6 p.m.
If that means I get to see posters like this 1960 Czech image of Dumbo then I'm in.
Those of you in town for Book Expo might want to consider making a side trip.
The Longstockings may have a lock on the Pippi blog name, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't shoot on over to
the excelsior file to read David Elzey's view from an adult perspective of Sweden's hitherto best-known redhead. Great opening sentence too. "Pippi scared me when I was young."
If the webcomic
Questionable Content is unknown to you, watch and learn.
This one goes out to all the librarians out there. I've never heard the term "shush" sounds so very very dirty.
And because of
Mo Willems I now know that Jon Scieszka has a
new website. It's very nice. I'm particularly fond of the map that shows
Population That Wishes They Were Reading Scieszka Books. The one thing I would change? I want that big scary picture of Jon at the top to say "Gleep" unexpectedly and without warning. Is that too much to ask?
Finally, I've been memed. I'll meme it right back tomorrow. Cross my heart.
I went to see the Science Of Sleep at the cinema, at the Electric Cinema actually, which I love, in Notting Hill.
I wanted to do a poster for the movie afterwards, but thought it would be more fun to play with a lot of element from his music videos and movies.
That Fischer Price baby iPad thingie is scary and evil. But… Did they get the idea for that by watching Wall-e?
That baby looks exactly like the humans on the spaceship in Wall-e.
I just love that two people came up with the same idea unbeknownst to one another.
[...] to Fuse #8 for sharing the link. Share [...]
Thanks for including our 2014 Reading Challenge!!
-Cindy for Latinos In Kid Lit