"SpongeBob SquarePants" creator Stephen Hillenburg will have hands-on involvement in creating the show again.
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Blog: Cartoon Brew (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: TV, Stephen Hillenburg, Paul Tibbitt, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, Add a tag
Blog: Cartoon Brew (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Ideas/Commentary, SpongeBob Squarepants, James Dobson, Clarence, How To Train Your Dragon 2, Stephen Hillenburg, Adam Parfrey, Dr. Fredric Wertham, Phil Phillips, Turmoil in the Toy Box, Add a tag
Bit by bit, overtly gay characters are making inroads into animation targeted primarily at children, but the fear of gay cartoon characters has existed for years.
Add a CommentBlog: Cartoon Brew (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Books, Chronicle Books, Sketching, Sketchbooks, Fran Krause, Priit Pärn, Regina Pessoa, David Polonsky, Koji Yamamura, Stephen Hillenburg, Animation Sketchbooks, Laura Heit, Luis Cook, Michaela Pavlatova Georges Schwizgebel, Paul Driessen, Add a tag
Laura Heit’s Animation Sketchbooks (published this month by Chronicle Books in the US, and earlier by Thames & Hudson in the UK) offers a peek inside the private sketchbooks of 51 (mostly independent) animation filmmakers. The 320-page hardcover has a straightforward format: each artist is allotted 4-8 pages that includes a career overview, brief statements about the process of sketching and keeping a sketchbook, and a gallery of sketchbook pages and stills from short films.
The artists in the book include many of the biggest names in indie animation (Koji Yamamura, Michaela Pavlatova Georges Schwizgebel, Regina Pessoa, Priit Parn, Paul Driessen) as well as some artists who are better known for their commercial work (Stephen Hillenburg, Luis Cook, David Polonsky, Fran Krause). It’s safe to say that unless you’re a regular festival attendee—or a reader of Cartoon Brew—many of the names will be unfamiliar. That’s not a criticism though. These are all artists who deserve greater exposure and this book does a fine job of giving it to them.
There’s a remarkable range of techniques, approaches and visual styles represented in the volume, as the author Heit explains in the intro:
You will discover many types of sketchbook keepers within these pages. You will find early ideas plotted out, sometimes repeatedly until their purpose becomes clear, thumbnail sketches of developing characters, mini storyboards scratched out in a hurry. There are those who try out new mark-making techniques, searching for the next film’s look. Others use the pages to doodle mindlessly as a kind of artistic respite, their work here unrelated to their film projects. Some keep a book like a travelogue, carrying it with them on all of their adventures…Others, such as Luis Cook, treat their sketchbook like a reliquary, part scrapbook, part personal project.
My only gripe about this otherwise commendable project is that the film stills took up an excessive amount of space in the book. When an artist like Koji Yamamura only has six pages, it’d have been preferable to not see a third of that space devoted to film stills. The reason for their inclusion—to connect the sketches to filmmaking practice—is perfectly valid, but the stills could have been presented in a way that didn’t consume large chunks of space that would have been better devoted to the book’s main selling point: the hard-to-see sketchbooks.
Not only will this book introduce the reader to names worth knowing in independent animation, it will inspire and challenge any artist with a non-commercial streak to push their own craft further. That, in itself, makes it a recommended purchase.
Order Animation Sketchbooks for $36.07 on Amazon
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JacketFlap tags: Events, nickelodeon, SpongeBob Squarepants, Gallery Nucleus, Cuddly Rigor Mortis, Oliver Akuin, Peter Bennett, Stephen Hillenburg, Add a tag
Created by marine biologist-turned-animator Stephen Hillenburg in 1999, SpongeBob SquarePants is one of Nickelodeon’s most popular and longest running television shows. The upcoming group art show, “Nautical Nonsense: A Tribute to SpongeBob SquarePants,” will feature artistic interpretations from an eclectic roster of animation artists, illustrators, and cartoonists.
The show’s opening reception will be tomorrow night—Saturday, July 27—from 7-11pm at Gallery Nucleus in the LA suburb of Alhambra (210 East Main St). Admission is $5, and the event will include costumed characters from the show, a scavenger hunt and raffle prizes.
“Plankton Scream” by Peter Bennett (Acrylic on canvas)
“Jellyfishin’ with Gary” by Cuddly Rigor Mortis (Acrylic on panel)
“Sponges” by Oliver Akuin (Gouache)
(Artwork at top of post: “Nautical Nonsense” by Joey Chou, digital illustration)
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