Building up my Portfolio on Behance

A quick post to let everyone know I'm uploading a lot of my past and present illustration and character design projects to Behance, a great FREE portfolio hosting site.

Here's the link to my portfolio.
There'll probably be a lot of my work on there that very few people have seen. I hope you like it.

What's all this stuff?

Regular visitors to my blog may have noticed a few Amazon gadgets appearing. I hope you don't mind.

I've decided to add these to help all the people who email me to ask about what animation or woodblock printing reference books I would recommend.

At the top of the page are a range of really good and easily available books on woodblocks, and at the botton of the page is a slideshow of animation books, DVDs and CDs which I'd recommend to anyone wanting to learn how to animate. These are all items which I own personally and feel should be a part of any animator's or woodblock printmaker's library.

There are also more obscure, and out of print books which I would also recommend, but the ones I've highlighted are a great start.

I'll be updating my choices as new books appear, so keep checking in.

Children's TV Campaign

This is a recent film to highlight the problem faced by programme makers by the Government's change of policy regarding advertising around children's television, and how children's TV, and in particular animation, has been affected by it.

Elmer Fudd & Bugs Bunny's ancestors

If you ever get the chance to read a copy of STRUWWELPETER by Heinrich Hoffmann you will be richly rewarded. Not only are the cautionary tales, originally written and illustrated in 1844 by Hoffmann for his 3 yr old son, amusing in themselves, but it becomes quickly apparent how much they have influenced popular culture ever since.

Where would Tim Burton be if it wasn't for Shock Headed Peter with his wild hair and long twig-like finger nails and Conrad, the boy who wouldn't stop sucking his thumbs and had them chopped off by "the great, long, red legged scissor-man"? (What Hoffmann's 3yr old son thought of that, history does not recall.)

But most interesting for me is the story of the wabbit... sorry, rabbit... who turns the tables on the hunter, a theme harking back to the Middle Ages and forward directly to the emergence of the Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny partnership in the late 1930's and early 1940's.

Struwwelpeter would have been a well known children's book by the Warner animators as it was translated into many languages, and not forgetting the large number of German immigrants who's children may have carried their favourite book across the Atlantic with them.

Like the Animal Frolic Toba Scrolls from 11th century Japan and the illustrations of Heinrich Kley (who I'll post about soon), humorous drawings of anthropomorphic animals say so much more about the human condition, satirising mankind's desires, weaknesses, irritations, injustices and foibles than a 12 page essay or pious sermon could ever do.

Park Post Christmas Animation

As promised, here's the Park Post Christmas animation, it's hugely compressed, but I hope you can see it well enough. The live action was shot and edited by Julian Kronfli (see my links in the sidebar) and the animation was produced mainly on paper (with a little extra in Flash) and scanned into Digicel's Flipbook for painting.

Original Artwork on Sale at Etsy... NOW

Winter Scenes Set 1

In the next couple of days I'm going to be listing a small pile of original ACEO/ATC sized (2.5x3.5 inches) artwork in "Mark Mason's Curiously Drawn Print Shop" over at Etsy. ACEO stands for Art Cards, Editions and Originals and ATC stands for Artists Trading Cards.

Miniature pieces of original art and limited edition prints have become very popular over the last few years and I've decided to respond to requests for artwork by producing my own. There will be more to follow.

In total there are 53 original pieces, and I'll also be listing a VERY small Limited Edition Print run of the images.

I've divided the artwork into Series and Sets. Each set in a series comprises of only 5 images and 1 title card. I've kept the sets small because if people want a complete set, they only have to buy a total of 6 cards. I really dislike the seemingly never ending series, I think it's dishonest to genuine collectors, and especially at a time when we're all watching our money.

So, in this initial collection of original illustrated cards I've got 9 sets:

Winter Scenes 2008 Set 1

Winter Scenes 2008 Set 2

Animal Portrait Studio Set 1

Animal Portrait Studio Set 2

Hokusai Artists Set 1

Hokusai Artists Set 2

Japanese Lanterns Set 1

Kanji Animals Set 1

Kanji Animals Set 2

Here's an image of the Japanese Lanterns Set 1

All the images are produced on heavy stock acid free watercolour paper using quality watercolour paints, pastels and coloured pencils. The Winter Scene title cards are edged in silver leaf, and the Hokusai Artists sets are highlighted in gold leaf.

All the artwork will be either initialled or stamped with my personal seal, depending on the style of the image, and the reverse will be signed, dated and contain all the details about the image and the set that it relates too.

Tests for new print set

My studio table today.

I've not posted for a few weeks because things are a little busy at the moment,

but at last I'm able to show you the first test prints of a new woodblock project I've started on.

I've given myself the task to produce 3 animal and 2 haiku calligraphy prints per season.

These are my "Spring" animal prints.

The baby rabbit and robin picture is called "Sakura" (Cherry Blossom), the Japanese characters for cherry blossom are hidden in the branches of the tree. The grey rabbit and blue tits print is entitled "Rabbit Calligraphy" (Although I've hopefully got the Japanese characters for rabbit and calligraphy right, I don't know how to say it!). The rabbit has written the word "spring" using his brush and ink. The final image of the kimono clad dancing mouse is called "Harukaze" (Spring Breeze).

I've searched for Japanese script haiku that reflect the seasons and also include a reference to animals and I've carved 2 of these. The Spring haiku I've chosen are:

New Year's Day: the clouds are gone and sparrows are telling each other tales.

(Ransetu)

Serenely gazing up at the mountain - a toad.

(Issa)

I'm keeping the designs quite simple, and, at most, only using 5 blocks, although a block could contain more than one colour. The original drawings were pretty loose and sketchy and so I'm trying to keep the prints that way too.

I'm using Shina ply and each image is about 5x7".

The aim is to do a print run of 30 to 40 of each image, of which 20 will be set aside for the final stage of my project. The remaining prints which are good enough will be sold individually (I estimate around 5-10) as a very limited edition.

So, the final stage...

You may have noticed that 2 of the test prints are on the same piece of paper. This is because the paper is going to be folded down the middle (with the reverse side of the images facing each other) to form the 2 sides of a book page.

When I've produced a set of 3 Spring, 3 Summer, 3 Autumn and 3 Winter animal prints with 2 seasonal Haiku for each (a carved block of Japanese characters), a "chapter" title for each season and a couple of information pages, I'll bind them together using Japanese papers and bookbinding methods to create 20 5x7" original print books for sale through Etsy.

So don't be expecting the books any day soon. It will probably be around this time next year (at the earliest) as I've got to fit in the small task of earning a living doing the day job. The "extra" prints will be available throughout the year, as I complete them.

I realise the economics of this project don't make any kind of business sense; but sometimes the pleasure in just producing something that a few people may really enjoy is reward enough.

I'll be printing these from next week and then I'll have to start thinking about the Summer prints.

A Blast from the Stone Age Past.

As a result of some online conversations about new developments in traditional 2D paperless animation and some of the very early pieces of animation software (Hands up; who had an Amiga computer and ran DeluxePaint and Take2 on it?) I received an email from Jerome Lorin who kindly included a link to a piece of animation I worked on with Billy Allison from Core Design in 1994.

Have a peep HERE.

It was a title sequence for the Sega computer game "Chuck Rock II". We had to work within the huge constraints of computer game memory at the time, and so the animation is rather limited in places. I thought I'd add it to the Blog purely for it's nostalgia value. At the time though, the title sequence received a host of 5 star ratings in computer magazines.

The "inking" and colour work was produced in DeluxePaint, on good old Amiga computers.

I continued to use an Amiga for animation pencil tests (Using the excellent Take2 program) up until the end of "Second Star to the Left" in around 2002. Amigas were great little computers with excellent graphics capabilities (2D and 3D) far in excess of PCs at the time. It's a shame they got left behind in the blitz of hype and publicity that surrounded the dull old PC that most of us use today. Amigas were happy computers.

The Curiously Drawn Print Shop

"The Curiously Drawn Print Shop" on Etsy has opened it's doors with it's first 2 prints; my Year of the Rat postcard and "Sparrows", a new, improved print run of my Baren Exchange 34 Chuban print.



I'm hoping to slowly add to the number of items for sale over the next few months, so please keep an eye on the shop at CuriouslyDrawn.etsy.com, or this blog.

"Hiroshige: The Moon Reflected" Exhibition coming to Blackpool

Utagawa Hiroshige. Sea at Satta, Suruga Province (Suruga Satta no kaijō) Thirty-six Views of Mt Fuji (Fuji sanjūrokkei) Spring 1859 Colour woodblock print Courtesy: The British Museum

Currently running at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham until 20th January, this is a personal selection of Hiroshige's print's (mainly from his later period) by British artist Julian Opie and Curator of Prints at the British Museum, Timothy Clark.

The exhibition will then be moving north for seemingly it's only other venue, The Grundy Art Gallery in Blackpool from 8th March until 26th April 2008.

It's going to be a fantastic opportunity to view a small part of The British Museum's original Hiroshige prints. This exhibition features three series as well as a number of the artist’s sketchbooks and the famous Snow, Moon and Flowers triptychs. "Flowers" is one of my favourites. The flowers refered to are actually the Naruto Rapid Whirlpools of Awa Province.

Second image in the Tryptych "Flowers"

"Snow" is also pretty fantastic; so simple but so deep and consuming. I love them all.

"Snow" image three.

A full colour catalogue of the exhibition has been published and is currently available from the Ikon Gallery online shop.

See you in Blackpool!

New Animation Player Added.

I've added a new element to the bottom of my Blog page; a nifty little video player from the bods at YouTube. You can either press play and sit back and watch a run through of the clips of my animation, or click on the small 3 squares button to find pop-up thumbnails of each clip.

I hope you like it.

900 Year Old Animal Caricatures by Toba Sojo

Toba Sojo (1053-1140), Japanese painter-priest, who painted the Animal Caricature, or Choju Giga, scrolls, which are considered among the finest examples of Japanese narrative scroll painting.

Toba Sojo was a Japanese nobleman of the Heian period who became a Buddhist abbot. The famous set of 4 scrolls representing caricatures of animals and people (in the Kozanji, a monastery near Kyoto) are attributed to him, but modern scholars now believe that he was the author of only the first two scrolls painted during the second quarter of the 12th century, and the remaining 2 by an anonymous follower of the artist who worked during the early 13th century.

The Animal Caricature scroll can be viewed HERE. At the top of the page are a row of numbers in little boxes, numbered 1-18, in reverse order. Click on [1] to see the far right hand part of the scroll and work your way up to [18]. The scroll reads right to left.

It's such a beautiful piece of illustration. The linework is highly skilled and delightfully economical, the poses and actions of the animal characters are so finely observed and the pacing of the events portrayed give a real feel of a passage of time: the areas of landscape without characters add timing to the scroll, as does the monkey being chased by the rabbit, in effect "through shot" as the scroll would have been rolled right to left.

It's just beautiful, and produced around 1130AD! (I'd have believed anyone who'd said that it was produced today at 11.30AM.) How did Toba produce pictures that look so contemporary when drawings from Europe and the rest of the world in that period look so much of their time?

E. H. Shepard, T.S. Sullivant, Heinrich Kley, Beatrix Potter, A. B. Frost, Harry Rountree and Disney's Nine Old Men could all find a common connection with the animals in this scroll.

Like a lot of Heinrich Kley's animal illustrations, a lot of the finer satire is lost on us, but what we miss in 900 year old satirical comment is more than made up for in the subtle references to the timeless human condition and the sheer pleasure of the energetic animals wrestling, swimming and frolicking, all rendered in a free, humorous spirit which show Toba Sojo's mastery of brushwork and remarkable feeling for animation.

I've stitched all 18 images together as one long image which can be scrolled through to give the best impression of what it would be like to read as a scroll. It's too big an image to post, but it's an easy enough exercise to do in Photoshop, and well worth the effort.

Wisdom from the Past.

We all have our own personal drawing styles and rules which we follow without thinking. I've picked up good and bad habits along the way, and continue to learn every time I put pencil to paper. It's fascinating though when you stumble across technical knowledge from the past that chimes so strongly with the way you work now.

Here are a couple of examples:

The first is an extract from a letter by Vincent Van Gogh to fellow artist Anton Van Rappard between 1881 & 1885.

"He (Delacroix) had a discussion with a friend about the question of working absolutely after nature, and he said on this occasion that one must get one's studies from nature but that the ultimate picture ought to be made from memory. That friend was walking with him when they were having this discussion - which had already become pretty vehement. When they parted company, the other one still wasn't entirely convinced. Delacroix let him toddle on for a bit after he took his leave, and then (using his two hands as a speaking trumpet) he roared after him in a lusty voice, to the consternation of the respectable citizens passing by, "Par coeur! Par coeur!" (From memory!)

Another thing - the painter Gigoux comes to Delacroix with an antique bronze and asks his opinion about it's genuineness. "It is not from antiquity, it is from the renaissance," says D. Gigoux asks him what reason he has for saying this - "Look here, my friend, it is very beautiful, but it is starved from lines, and the ancients started from central things (the masses, the nuclei)." And he adds:"Look here a moment," and he draws a number of ovals on a piece of paper - and he puts these ovals together by means of little lines, hardly anything at all, and out of this created a rearing horse full of life and movement. "Gericault and Gros," he says, "have learned this from the Greek - to express the masses (nearly always egg-shaped) first tracing the contours and the action from the position and the proportions of these oval shapes"

Now I ask you isn't this a superb truth?"

I couldn't agree with Mr. Van Gogh more. When I first read this last year I was astounded to realise that the way I always draw, and especially when I'm rough keying animation, is exactly as is described in this letter. I'm using the same technique to create movement and form as the ancient Greeks, and it still works every time.

Most "How to Draw" books on cartoons use a version of this but I've yet to see one that I'd really recommend. They have a slightly dishonest way of reverse engineering a drawing back to a series of circles that don't help the reader. A new one of these books shows readers how to draw the Simpsons. Don't believe them, the book will teach you nothing about drawing.

Van Gogh's earlier mention of working from memory keys into the way Japanese artists used to work. They didn't follow the Western school of study for art which was based on copying from life, sat infront of whatever your subject may be, and recording it in as much detail as possible. The Japanese school was about observation of nature without recording. I've read of artists watching birds, for example, for two or more hours without putting a brush to paper, and then turning away and drawing from memory, capturing the essence, spirit and movement in simple expressive strokes. It's a fascinating way to work, and one that I've been using in one way or another since I first started to draw, without realising the history of the technique. I very rarely use sketchbooks on location, but I observe intently and can draw anything from memory. I used this technique recently at a life drawing group. Not putting pen to paper until the last minute of the pose, but just observing prior to that. The resultant drawings were simple but strongly posed and weighted, a distillation of the subject.