Joe Mills

Calvin and Hobbes

Well, I did not think I would be writing about another “retro” topic, but I was once again reminded about one of my favorites as a child. Next to Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes was easily my favorite comic strip. (Thanks to Drawn! for posting this article about the artist, Bill Watterson.) I have MANY clippings of the strip in various scrapbooks. Wikipedia does a nice job summarizing the strip. It even chronicles my favorite subject matter:

Calvin also builds snowmen; but these are usually grotesque, monstrous deformed creatures (e.g., two-headed snowmen, a snow monster with tentacles devouring a bunch of snowmen, a snowman who grabs another snowman’s head and uses it as a bowling ball, a snowman who scoops snow cones out of the back of a dead snowman, snowmen getting hanged, a buried giant snow monster destroying other snow men or holding their heads in its hands, and a prostrate snowman seemingly beneath the parked family car, surrounded by a host of worried “snow-onlookers”, etc.) In one storyline, Calvin builds a snowman and brings it to life using the power “invested in him by the mighty and awful snow demons”. The snowman immediately turns evil (reminiscent of the film Frankenstein) and becomes a “deranged mutant killer monster snow goon” by giving itself two heads and three arms. The snow goon then makes copies of itself, which Calvin eventually defeats by spraying water on them while they slept and freezing them solid. However, Calvin was caught by his parents and had to explain why he was outside when he should’ve been asleep (which wasn’t successful).

By the standards of today, I wonder if Calvin and Hobbes seems ancient considering it ended in 1995. I would hope that kids still like to read Calvin and Hobbes and find as much humor in it as I did.

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The Long Tail

When I saw The Long Tail had been regarded as the next big business book by a couple news outlets, I was skeptical to whether or not I would like it. Althouhg, it had been mentioned in the same breath as one of my favorite books, Blink, and the author is the editor of of my new favorite magazines, Wired, so I thought I would give it a chance. The Long Tail chronicles how the growth of the Internet has lowered the impact of the “hit” market and increased the impact of the niche market. Chris Anderson discusses, among many things, how a normal “bricks and mortar” store only has limited shelf space, so the amount of the product they carry pales in comparison to a place like Amazon. In other words, more different kinds of products can be made available by online retailers since they do not have to spend as much money trying to move product off their shelves. Also, the means of production are now cheaper for the average person. Just ten years ago, you needed expensive equipment to produce a song or a video. Now, people are regualrly creating their own music and television shows and making it available to people. Since more products are available and many different kinds are available, people are able to find exactly what they want instead of settling for what is presented to them by the major media and retail corporations that have controlled our spending for so many years.

I thought this book is definitely worth the hype surrounding it. In this day and age when people expect the big hit, it is refreshing to see that we might actually be moving towards a day and age when the choice of MANY products takes precedence over choosing between a few products. I guess that day has already come, but it has not fully arrived yet. I like being able to decide what I think is worth buying instead of feeling like I need to choose between the lesser of a few evils. And with the ability to produce music, movies, and artwork at home, we are moving away from just consuming cultrue to producing. We are, hopefully, becoming a culture where people want to “do-it-yourself” instead of settling for what is on the shelf. I hope to one day self-publish a book of my artwork…and now, I feel like I can actually do that. I would never thought that day was possible even just a few short years ago. It remains to be seen, though, how money can be made from all of these niche markets, but for now, it is great to see the large availbility of so many prodcuts slowly dissolving the hit machine. Long live the Long Tail.

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Massive Change

It has been slow going in the inspiration business recently, so I thought I would talk about something that I THINK it will be inspiring. I am very excited about an upcoming exhibiton at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago called Massive Change. From the MCA web site, it says:

Massive Change: The Future of Global Design is an exhibition that changes the way you think about design just as contemporary design is changing the way we live in the world. Design effects all aspects of our lives and holds the possibility of changing the very nature of human life itself. Massive Change is an exhibition grounded in a provocative proposition. It is a celebration of the human capacity to change the world and a call to recognize both the power and the responsibility of design.

Since my undergraduate degree was in industrial design, I still like to peek in occassionally to see what is happening in the world of design. The exhibtion runs from September 16th until December 31st.

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Tom Friedman

Image from DesignBoom

This artist/sculptor goes against almost everything I normally like about art, but he is probably my favorite contemporary artist. He is a sculptor. And, his work is conceptual. That alone would make stay away from even looking at the work of an artist, but I love the work done by Tom Friedman. I recently received a book on his work, and the words of Adrian Searle explain the reason I like his work so much:

Many of Friedman’s works make me think of adult play, of the hobbyist’s obsessiveness abd meticulousness. I think of fly-tiers, men who would put ships in bottles, experts at marquetry. Why do I not then think of professional cabinet-makers, limners, miniaturists, watchmakers? There is something absurd and grand about Friedman’s project, something which defeats the professional stance. He does things the hard way, even when he makes it look so easy.

He takes the simplest objects and does things with them that don’t seem all that exciting, but you can’t help to keep looking at them and admiring the aesthetics and intricate nature of his artwork. His piece, Loop, is an entire box of spaghetti cooked, dried and then pieced end to end in one continuous loop that looks like a ball of yarn exploded. One of his works, Untitled, is a child’s school desk that has had holes drilled in it over and over again. It doesn’t seem all that exciting, but the work has this simplistic elegance to it that is truly amazing. His patience and attention to the smallest detail make his artwork special. I was so happy to learn about his work when I visited the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago years ago, and I hope he makes his way back here very soon.

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Presto Magix Rub-Down Transfers

Image from X-Entertainment

This is the last retro entry…I promise. I’m not trying to turn this into “I Love the 70’s” or “I Love the 80’s”. I just wanted to point out some specific items of inspiration to add to the mix that aren’t contemporary. Anyway, Presto Magix Rub-Down Transfers were one of my favorites as a kid that many people don’t know about. Basically, you got a scene from a cartoon show, movie, or television show and a sheet of characters or props in each pack. The site I’ve linked too shows Return of the Jedi. To put the characters and props on the scene, you rub a pencil over the character or prop to stick it on the scene. It magically transfers on to the scene! Very simple idea, but they were always a lot of fun. Plus, you could make scenes that weren’t always “normal” or rub transfers down from different packs. I wish these would come back…

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Mort Drucker

Image from Mort Drucker

Mort Drucker is the reason I can draw today. According to Wikipedia, he has drawn for Mad Magazine since 1957. I started reading Mad in 1986 and copied his celebrity caricatures over and over and over again. I took the smaller pictures from Mad and enlarged them on to a normal sheet of paper. To this day, many of my drawings still have a Mort Drucker style to them. I think the thing that makes his caricatures so great is that even though they are exaggerated, they still seem to be very life-like. They could almost be portraits. Unforuntately, the site I found only has a small sampling of his work, but he has done hundreds of telelvison and movie parodies for Mad plus multiple other caricatures. I’m continuing to go retro this week…

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Flat Eric

I love when I forget something I used to think was cool but then find it again. I saw this video while in Las Vegas over the weekend and I immediately looked for it when I came home this week. The song, Flat Beat by Mr. Oizo, isn’t all that great but I love the video. Flat Eric starred in some Levi’s commercials but his crowning achievement is the video for Flat Beat. He basically bops his head up and down to the music and seems to be a high level executive typing on his computer, signing papers, and testing cigars. The puppet is very simple but very expressive and conveys a lot of humor with the simplest movements. I think I might have to include some more retro-inspiration this week…

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Elio

Image from Elio on Flickr

I don’t normally like watercolor, but I was really drawn to this work by Elio, a Chicao based artist. Since I don’t like using watercolor, I’m not always looking at watercolor artwork, but I often like when watercolor is mixed with dark, black lines. I like how Elio uses very strong, bold, humorous line work and adds minimal splashes of color. I saw him on Drawn! and I am impressed. He has a site other than the Flickr site, but Drawn! has had some problems lately. I think they have heavier traffic because of a Time article they were recently in.

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Threadless

Threadless is nothing new. It has received a lot of press over the past year, but I haven’t seen a lot of inspiring artwork lately so I thought I would talk about something that is truly deserving of the tag “inspirational”. The premise is simple. Each week, people submit t-shirt designs. Anyone who views the site can score each design. The designs with the highest scores every week win $2000 in cash and prizes, and people can actually buy their t-shirt. Pretty cool, huh? The t-shirt designs range from clever to strange to beautiful to spectacular. Now, if only I could come up with a good design…

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Thadeus Maximus

Image from Thadeus Maximus Artworks

Thadeus Maximus is another artist I came across on Drawn! He has some great character illustration. I love how he puts a bold image in front of a faded image. It adds a lot more interest to his artwork and makes it really pop. I also like how he bends his subjects out of proportion to add depth. He takes normal character design and adds another dimension. Check it out.

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