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Next Wednesday, the animated duo of Jeff Twiller and Randy J. Johnson will host their own animated film screening in Brooklyn. It's a legit line-up of animated shorts, with perceptive cinematic commentary supplied inbetween the films by Twiller and Johnson. Thankfully, they happen to be animation experts.

Last night in New York City, the ASIFA-East Animation Festival Awards were presented for the forty-fourth year in a row. The Best in Show prize was awarded to the NYU student short Based on a True Story directed by Jacob Kafka. In the Independent Film category, first place went to Celia Bullwinkel’s Sidewalk. Other prizes in the indie category were handed out to films by Mark Kausler, Arthur Metcalf, Bill Plympton, Richard O’Connor and David Chai.

New York veteran Candy Kugel took home first place in Commissioned Films for her TEDEd short Sex Determination, while first place in Student Films went to Michelle Ikemoto’s Tule Lake, produced at San Jose State University.

The complete list of winners is below:

BEST IN SHOW
Based on a True Story
Directed by Jacob Kafka

INDEPENDENT FILMS: FIRST PLACE
Sidewalk
Directed by Celia Bullwinkel

INDEPENDENT FILMS: SECOND PLACE
There Must Be Some Other Cat
Directed by Mark Kausler

INDEPENDENT FILMS: THIRD PLACE (TIED)
It Took A While To Figure Shit Out
Directed by Arthur Metcalf

INDEPENDENT FILMS: THIRD PLACE (TIED)
Drunker Than A Skunk
Directed by Bill Plympton

EXCELLENCE IN ANIMATION
It Took A While To Figure Shit Out
Directed by Arthur Metcalf

EXCELLENCE IN DESIGN
Christmas Day
Directed by Richard O’Connor, designed by Kelsey Stark

EXCELLENCE IN WRITING
A Knock On My Door
Directed by David Chai

EXPERIMENTAL FILMS
The Productive AniJam
Produced by Katie Cropper & Cynthea Diaz

COMMISSIONED FILMS: FIRST PLACE
TEDed: Sex Determination
Directed by Candy Kugel

COMMISSIONED FILMS: SECOND PLACE
Quiet Loud (Sesame Street)
Directed by Bob Boyle

COMMISSIONED FILMS: THIRD PLACE
Sniffles
Directed by David Cowles & Jeremy Galante

STUDENT FILMS: FIRST PLACE
Tule Lake
Directed by Michelle Ikemoto

STUDENT FILMS: SECOND PLACE
Chasing Unicorns
Directed by Deena Beck

STUDENT FILMS: THIRD PLACE (TIED)
The Crawler
Directed by Seth Brady

STUDENT FILMS: THIRD PLACE (TIED)
Good Night Guard
Directed by Janice S. Rim

STUDENT FILMS: HONORABLE MENTION (TIED)
Mirror
Directed by Q-Hyun Kim

STUDENT FILMS: HONORABLE MENTION (TIED)
Register Rap!
Directed by Josh Weisbrod

I didn’t really know about animation smears until college. It was a time when my passion for animation had just kicked into high gear, and once I learned how to convert my DVDs into Quicktime files, the flood gates opened. I was like a kid in a candy store, scouring through hours of animation every day. As I looked through the cartoons, I began to discover some odd things occurring. A character would look perfectly fine in one frame, but for a few frames it would turn into an absolutely insane-looking mutant, before suddenly reverting back to normal form. Without any understanding of what these were, I had discovered smears.

Around the same time, my second year animation teacher at the School of Visual Arts, Celia Bullwinkel, gave an in-class lecture about smears. She explained to us what they were, and what purpose they served. She screened a few smear-heavy Chuck Jones cartoons like The Dover Boys, showed some still-frame examples, and gave us an assignment to animate one ourselves. Of course, every budding animator thinks the same thing when they discover smears: “I CAN USE THESE FOR EVERYTHING!” But soon one learn that smears are best used judiciously; otherwise everything you animate looks like it’s made of Jell-O. 

After some time passed, I began to appreciate smears outside of the context of animation, simply as still pieces of art. Somebody had to draw every one of these. It’s a truly creative and subliminal way of expressing artistic abilities, while at the same time serving the practical purpose of recreating an effect that happens naturally in live-action film.

Eventually, my friends said I should go ahead and make a blog about them, probably so that I would stop pointing them out while we were watching animated films together. So two years ago, I launched Smears, Multiples and Other Animation Gimmicks, never imagining that it would become as popular as it did.

Almost immediately after setting up my first post, followers started pouring in. I opened up submissions so that followers could submit their own images, and people began submitting smears from anime, foreign animated films, television shows, commercials, video games, Newgrounds Flash films, and even smears they had animated themselves. 

As of this writing, the Smears Tumblr has over 110,000 followers. I’m sure many followers simply find the images hilarious, but I believe there are plenty of us out there who think they are much more than just funny images. Either way, I’m glad people get as much of a kick out of these as I do. Perhaps a few young animation fans have been inadvertently enlightened on how much art, creativity and hard work goes into creating animation. That’s a good thing, I think.

“Art in the Streets,” the first major museum survey of street art and graffiti, opened last week at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and I highly recommend it. It ranks among the most fun art exhibits I’ve ever attended, and features lots of eye candy in the form of large-scale installations that at times can feel more like an amusement park than a museum. As a first-of-its-kind exhibition, it’s also guaranteed to spark plenty of vigorous debate about what was chosen for inclusion and what wasn’t, not to mention all the controversy it’s already generated from the Blu mural debacle to irrational police fury.

Though minimal, animated works do have a presence in the show. A sequence of animation drawings from the opening of the influential early-1980s documentary Wild Style is displayed in one area. The sequence (watch it HERE) was designed by Charlie Ahearn, who directed the film, and graffiti writer Zephyr. In the “Battle Station”, a fantastic recreation of the Tribeca loft of the late Rammellzee, a mograph music video called “Alpha’s Bet” is screened on a television. The video, posted below, was directed by Celia Bullwinkel in 2002. (Disclosure: I am a personal friend of Celia and attended the show with her.)

Graffiti/street art has a complicated relationship with animation, which is a thread that the curators of the exhibit never explore. While the show features a handful of artists, like the aforementioned Rammellzee, who have the ability to express personal ideas beyond the confines of referential pop culture, many of the artists from Kenny Scharf to Banksy to the anonymous graffiti writers who painted on the sides of subway cars have relied on animated characters as their lingua franca for communicating with the general public. These cartoon characters, to my surprise, are rarely used to make any statement or to subvert the original intentions of the characters, a la Wally Wood’s infamous Disney “orgy” drawing. For graffiti and street artists, the act of recreating popular cartoon iconography is considered an accomplishment in and of itself.

If one looks only at the art displayed in the show, the conclusion could be drawn that things are beginning to change. More recent artists, like the Brazilian twins Os Gêmeos, have dispensed with drawing pre-existing animated characters and are creating libraries of new cartoon characters drawn in their personal styles. Like any vital art form, street art is evolving, and the evolution points in a positive direction that emphasizes personal creativity.

Below are a few of the cartoon references I saw in the show.

Will you take the Mickey or Woody train?

Kenny Scharf began doing Hanna-Barbera tributes in 1981, long before anybody else considered celebrating Hanna-Barbera’s cruddiness.

Only in the world of graffiti could Hanna-Barbera and DePatie-Freleng characters co-exist.