Thanks to everyone who bought my DVD last year. I got so many nice emails back, but none can top this one I received last week:
"Sally, I am thrilled beyond words to find this! My husband courted me in 1983 by playing Quasi at the Quackadero when I would come over. The old beta tape (copied from channel 11PBS) has long been useless/lost, but our 4 children have heard the story often. (They are now 21, 18, 16, and 13). My husband will simply explode when he opens this! "
3 comments:
Hi Sally,
What have you been working on lately?
Not a darn thing. 2D animation seems totally dead, just when the software to do it with is so easily learned (Flash and After Effects.)
Charles Solomon of the New York Times had an article on Jan 15, 2006 ("Cartoons have their John Henry moment") in which he talks about how disappointing the computer animated films of 2005 were. The article features stop-motion (particularly Nick Park), but he ends the article with:
Similar imperfections creep into even the most polished hand-drawn movies, and those signs of fallibility may strengthen Hayao Miyazaki's devotion to the medium. His films are distinguished by their humanity; his characters are complex, interesting and flawed. The spiky personalities of "Howl's Moving Castle" - shy young Sophie and her outspoken aged self; the dashing, cowardly wizard Howl; the eager apprentice Markl; the vain Witch of the Waste - would be difficult to convey with smooth, computer-rendered contours. When Howl changes from a birdlike monster to his human form, Mr. Miyazaki employs a few drawings rather than an elaborate computer-generated metamorphosis: the focus is on the character and his moods, not the process of transformation. He does use C.G. to create Howl's wonderfully ramshackle castle, but he flattens the 3-D structure so that it fits seamlessly with the 2-D drawn sequences.
A sign posted in the studio as he made his previous film, "Spirited Away," sums up Mr. Miyazaki's attitude: "Do everything by hand, even when using the computer."
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