Man vs. Art

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Interview with Mark Kirkland three time Emmy Award winning Director (The Simpsons).
Multi Award winning Filmmaker, Writer/Director/ Antique movie camera collector and cinematographer.

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From around the age of six, I have had a passion for drawing the shapes of objects.

From about the age of fifty I produced a number of designs, but nothing I did before the age of seventy was worthy of attention.

At seventy-three, I finally apprehended something of the true quality of birds, animals, insects, fish and of the vital nature of grasses and trees.

So, by the time I am 80, I will have made much progress, so that by ninety I will have penetrated to their essential nature.

By one hundred, I will decidedly have attained a higher state, indefinable, and at one hundred and ten, each dot, each line shall surely possess a life of its own.

May Heaven, that grants long life, give me the chance to prove that this is no lie.
Hokusai (who lived to be 90)

On today’s show I put together a collection of emails and voice mails for a massive buffet of art talk. So Buckle your cartoon belts and let her rip!

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Artistic genius across three different artistic disciplines.

Picasso’s genius for painting; Chaplin’s genius for film making; and the Beatles’ genius for songs are fine examples of how artistic creativity can be used to approach complex problems.

These guys all were masters of creating art that depicted universal experiences that could be appreciated by us all. They were spontaneous and intuitive in their approaches at first and then built discipline and persistence as their projects evolved.

So to understand creativity , we must understand the character of the artist.

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Holy smokes! Has it been 50 episodes already?!
I’ve had a blast producing the show. I’ve learned so much about art, artists, and about myself. Since day one, I decided to produce my show to a higher standard of quality than most others in terms of production value, editing, writing, music, comedy, and honesty in the content.

The inherent difficulty and comedic irony of producing a show about Visual Arts in audio.

Why on Earth would I choose to produce an audio podcast about visual art? What am I stupid?!

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Ever notice that whenever you begin an new artistic project like a new book, painting, portfolio, short film, etc that the darned Fear of Failure Demon always seems to drop in to petrify you? You spend sleepless gut wrenching nights where all you can imagine is doom. You toss and turn with dark visions of both yourself and your art as objects of scorn, ridicule, or even worse objects of pity. So you put off trying for the thousandth time, and ditch your dreams. Ask the top painters, cartoonists, designers, illustrators, comic creators, animators, poets, writers, directors, and they will all claim that they are no different! They too have had to deal with the Fear of Failure Demon and have had their shares of crushing disappointment.

I’d like to give a shout out to Krishna Sadashivam The creator of the killer web comic PC Weenies! He called in and left a voice mail question on the Man vs. Art Minion Hotline! He asks what animation studios are looking for in terms of Storyboard Artist Portfolios. Check out the podcast if you want to know what I had to say on that.

Born in 1920 Isaac Asimov was a writer of some of the greatest classic Science Fiction stories of the last hundred years. Of his works The Foundation Series… The Galactic Empire series and his Robot series were major contributions to the world of sci-fi literature. And These are just a few among the 500 books that he wrote or edited in his lifetime.

In particular Asimov’s Robot series generated 2 lasting concepts in science fiction including the invention of a robot’s ‘Positronic’ brain and the 3 laws of Robotics. Both concepts were featured in the movies ‘The Bicentennial Man’ and ‘I Robot’ which were loosely based on his characters.

Lastly I’d like to present you with some samples of the 2D Traditional and some 3D digital Animation my students did from my History and Principles of Animation and Timing for Animation Classes at the Gnomon School of Visual effects in Hollywood California.