The art show is long-time gone but the excellent poster remains:
ABOVE: “the ultra-limited-edition silkscreen show print… for the Ghost World: Special Edition exhibit opening this Friday, August 29, at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery.”
BELOW: the Ghost World paperback cover, the Ghost World poster, and the new Ghost World: Special Edition cover.
To tell you the truth, I think the Ghost World: Special Edition cover is not very good at all. It’s clearly meant to echo the movie poster, but I think there’s a glaring disconnect now between the typography and the drawing. In the movie poster, the design of Enid’s black and green skirt and the other elements of black clothing, including Enid’s retro black-plastic-framed glasses, connected very nicely with the sinuous black letters of the title, Ghost World. Now, there’s no connection at all, except for the anemic colouring. Also, the figures in the drawing are too stiff. Their shoulders and hips are both square to the viewer and parallel to each other. Look at the figures in the poster. Both have one shoulder higher than the other; and while Rebecca has her hips nearly parallel with the ground, with both legs bearing her weight almost equally, Enid has her hips at an angle, with one leg clearly bearing more weight than the other, as is naturally the case, most of the time, when a person is standing still. In short, insensitive design plus insensitive drawing equals a mediocre cover.
BONUS LINK:
“Ghost World: ‘You’ve grown into a very beautiful young woman.’” by Ken Parille
Lynd Ward’s illustrations for Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, are stunning examples of the wood engraver’s art, and John Lauritsen has posted them all on his Web site:
Above: P. 161: The monster strangles little William.
BONUS LINKS:
Lynd Ward: A Centennial Appreciation
Click the above photo of Blind Blake–the only photo of the musician known to exist–to visit a site offering MP3s of Dry Bone Shuffle (1927), He’s In The Jailhouse Now, Bad Feeling Blues (1927), Too Tight Blues #2 (1929), Southern Rag (1927), Doggin’ Me Mama Blues (1928), Georgia Bound (1929) , Champagne Charlie (1932), and Police Dog Blues (1929). And right click here and select “Save Link As…” to download Diddie Wa Diddie. All of the aforementioned songs are, apparently, in the public domain.
Aug 222008
Aug 222008
The basics:
Finding great stories:
Good taste (my favorite!):
Excerpt:
All of us who do creative work, like, you know, we get into it, and we get into it because we have good taste. Do you know what I mean? You want to make TV because you love TV, you know what I mean? Because there’s stuff that you just, like, love. Okay? So you’ve got really good taste and you get into this thing that, that, I don’t even know how to describe it, but it’s like there’s a gap that for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good, okay, it’s not that great, it’s, it’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. You know what I mean? You can tell that it’s still sort of crappy. A lot of people never get past that phase; a lot of people at that point, they quit. And the thing I would just like to say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where, they had really good taste, they could tell that what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be, they knew it fell short, and, and, like, some of us can admit that to ourselves and some of us are a little less able to admit that to ourselves, but we knew that, it didn’t have the special thing that we wanted it to have, and the thing I would say to you is, everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you’re going through it right now, if you’re just getting out of that phase, or if you’re just starting off and you’re entering into that phase, you’ve gotta know, it’s totally normal, and the most important possible thing you could do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re going to finish one story. You know what I mean? Whatever it’s gonna be, like, you create the deadline. It’s best if you have somebody who’s waiting for work from you, somebody who’s expecting work from you, even if it’s not somebody who pays you, but that you’re in a situation where you have to turn out the work, because it’s only actually by going through a volume of work, that you’re actually going to catch up and close that gap, and the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.
Two common pitfalls:
Bonus Link:
This American Life: Radio Archive
Aug 102008
(Click each image in this post to view a larger, readable version.)
“Wally Wood‘s 22 Panels That Always Work!!”:
Ivan Brunetti’s “22 Panels That Always Work* (*Sometimes)”:
“Cheese‘s 22 Panels That Never Work!!”:
And…
Jon Morris’s “16 Panels That I Don’t Think Work All That Well (But Which People Keep Using Over and Over) (Also, I Couldn’t Think of 22, So Wally Wood Wins)”:
Bonus Links:
Wally Wood’s 22 Panels that Always Work: Unlimited Edition – Joel Johnson outlines the history of the famous 22 panels and offers, for your downloading pleasure, various “high-resolution versions of ‘Wally Wood’s 22 Panels That Always Work’ in ‘Unlimited Edition,’ scanned in from the original paste-up.”
Walking with Wally Wood: 22 Little Panels Project
Aug 102008
“It’s a way of coping with the world. You know, in the same way that somebody copes with it by being a stamp collector or a sports addict or a titan of industry or an alcoholic or something. My way of coping with the horrors of existence is to put my nose to the grindstone and work and not look up.”
—from “The Director’s Craft: Woody Allen reflects on ‘Vicky Christina Barcelona,’ love and his life,” by Rachel Abramowitz, Los Angeles Times, August 10, 2008.
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