G Nemec

Star Wars Uncut: Director's Cut

2012-01-29T06:24:00.000-08:00

Two hours of Sweded Star Wars Episode 4. My bits are scattered throughout: R2D2 and C3P0 climbing into the escape pod and getting launched, Obi Wan, the droids, Han and Chewie sneaking around the Death Star, and the death of Biggs. These three clips are featured in previous posts on this blog, they can be accessed by clicking the hyperlinks. There are many wonders to behold throughout the film, some funny, some ingenious, all sincerely made by fans. Delighted to see my friend's young son made the cut as well.

ASFMWLHG&FH

2011-11-30T20:35:00.000-08:00

Back to School

2011-08-26T21:31:00.000-07:00

So last year at the summer house I did a quick drawing of my seven-year-old nephew interacting with characters from the Pokemon universe. It was done with colored pencils, took about twenty minutes, and got stuck to the fridge and I kind of forgot about it. Then last week his five-year-old brother asked for a drawing featuring him. He asked to be inserted in the Sesame Street universe. That drawing took more like an hour and was done with pencils and watercolors. Then being good cousins they asked when my own two kids would get their drawings. Never mind that they are jaded teens. So my daughter asked for a Glee-themed drawing and my son asked for Harry Potter. I did the Glee drawing (because I love my daughter) and then went a little overboard on the Harry Potter drawing (because I love Harry Potter. And my son.) Here's a detail. I am always surprised when I get a likeness right in a caricature, as I have no good system to achieve that. Here I got a good likeness of Professor Lupin. He is my favorite adult in the series, so maybe that has something to do with it, but mostly when I get a likeness right it's luck.

The Devil is in the Details

2011-07-25T18:49:00.000-07:00

The sketch was done on a plane ride on my way to see my family in Iowa. It was photographed with my low-end camera phone and sent to a laptop where I colored it with Photoshop in a hotel room while my kids swam. Then I did the final in scratchboard, scanned and colored it once I got back home. It doesn't make me miss the good old days.

The article itself is fascinating. It is about the power of the mind on appetite. An experiment was conducted where one group was shown a "sinfully indulgent" treat and one group was shown a "low calorie healthy alternative" treat. Both were the same exact milkshake. The "unhealthy" treat elicited greater feelings of hunger than the "healthy" one, and after consuming the shake, those who had the "unhealthy" treat reported feeling more full and satisfied than those who had the "healthy" treat.

Merry and Bright

2010-12-24T13:21:00.000-08:00

click to enlarge, print, and turn into next year's wrapping paper.

Interiors

2010-12-15T19:32:00.000-08:00

One of the animation classes I teach is for a small group of developmentally delayed young adults. Some of these students have physical challenges, some have mental challenges, but as a group they each contribute something different to the film. So the person who has a lack of fine motor skills may not be able to move their paper characters 1/16th of an inch at a time, but will invent the story and dialogue. Another may be almost nonverbal, but has that animator's instinct for creating movement. Here is the project this group just completed.

Space Bananas! from Gregory Nemec on Vimeo.

There was a new student this session. Among the open faces and smiles, he was quiet, withdrawn even. During our test animation with toys on a tabletop, he created convincing flickering flames from clay. Hmmm...maybe this is one of the quiet instinctive ones. I asked for story ideas from the group, and there were lots of childlike, enthusiastic responses: "Race cars!" "Monkeys!" "Pirates!" I asked the quiet one what he'd like to make a movie about. He shrugged. When I asked what kinds of movies or shows he liked, without looking up he said, "I mostly read Lovecraft." That one sentence told me he wouldn't be comfortable making the equivalent of kids' drawings come to life, and probably wouldn't be comfortable working with the other students. Thankfully I had an excellent assistant who was great with the rest of the group so I could work more directly with this one student. He was hesitant to talk about ideas for animation, even after finding out I knew who Cthulhu was, and especially hesitant to create characters or animation: "I'm a perfectionist and it wouldn't have the level of realism I would want." I showed him the animation of William Kentridge—here's someone who gets emotional depth without realism. Once he saw Kentridge's torn paper figures he was ready to get to work. His movie is made from cut and torn black paper on a white background. All the atmosphere was added by the animator using the excellent, discontinued version of iMovie.

The Dunwich Chase from Gregory Nemec on Vimeo.

During animation he would talk about Lovecraft's universe and his own interest in online gaming. His group leader told me that he never talked this much anywhere else. He had told her that he wasn't sure he should even be in this program because he was "so high functioning." He was very particular about each aspect of his film. And he was a natural, laying down torn bits of paper until figures were formed, and he knew how to make them move. Never looking me in the eye, never betraying a single emotion in his voice or face. On the final day, he added the effects and the audio. As the members of the group were getting their coats on to leave, I said, "Christian, it was good to meet you." He said in his typical quiet way, "But you already met me." I explained I meant it was good to have worked with him, and I was glad to have met him, and I wanted to tell him since we may not see each other again. He said "Oh." He put his hand out, we shook hands, and he was gone.

Dem Bones

2010-10-28T11:46:00.000-07:00

A variety of images of my favorite part of Halloween.

From the top down:

Unknown sculpture.
James Ensor painting.
Still from Ray Harryhausen's "Jason and the Argonauts."
Skeletons unearthed in Verona. Could they be a Montague and a Capulet?
A small section of the Mutter Museum's collection of skulls.
Odilon Redon painting.
Part of a Google image search page. Sometimes they look like someone designed them.
Posada print.
Another Mutter Museum specimen.
Michael Paulus drawing. He has a lot more of these.
Three unknown photos.
A wall in Chitzen Itza, Mexico.

Genies

2010-09-17T06:17:00.000-07:00

Here are the repeating genies in place. (It helps to click on the image to enlarge it) This illustrates a story in a math magazine, and I warn you, even a story-problem lover like me gets lost trying to solve this one.

What these explorers are viewing is an octagonal treasure chest, with a drum at each corner. Inside each drum is a genie, each standing either heads up or feet up. Each time you strike a drum, the genie within flips over AND the entire octagon spins so that you don't know which drum you have just struck. Once all genies are either heads up or feet up, the treasure chest opens. The logic starts out simply (If there were only two genies, you would hit one drum and the chest opens) but I am left behind as the numbers increase and the thinking gets complicated.

But it's not the illustrator's job to understand the math. What is important: solving the editors' dilemma. Namely, how can you illustrate genies that nobody can see? That was the inspiration for creating a repeating surface pattern to begin with.

I  ESCHER

2010-07-20T07:09:00.000-07:00

I was looking for a heart icon, but could only find the Apple logo. Then I realized it's more accurate in this case: if you focus on the bite, it reads "I chomp Escher." Because I often do. In this case, I really did take a big bite. I have always marveled at his interlocking repeating figures. I designed the genies as part of another image that isn't complete yet. Eventually they will wrap around an object, including the top of a round chest:

Thanks to our friend Photoshop, I can repeat it endlessly, and in a variety of distorted shapes. What would M.C. have done with a Mac?

They're Gonna Put Me in the Movies

2010-05-07T12:24:00.000-07:00

Here's the book trailer for "Diamond Ruby" written by Joe Wallace. At the 1:30 mark is a cameo appearance of the poster I made to promote the book. This trailer was all shot in and around Pleasantville, and combines new footage and historic footage.

Caricature of a Caricature

2010-05-05T17:36:00.001-07:00

Here's an illustration I just did for an article about the demonization of Frances Fox Piven by Glenn Beck and those of his ilk. It was a good opportunity to draw someone who really doesn't need much tweaking to become a caricature. He has always reminded me of Howard Beale, who was fictional and seen as an extreme satirical character back when "Network" was released in 1976. Watching the movie now, there is nothing extreme or satirical about it. It just seems prescient. A possibly mentally unstable individual, who is encouraged to act in outrageous ways for television ratings? Today we can't even count the Howard Beales.

"There is No Dog" round 5

2010-04-11T18:47:00.000-07:00

The last of three "There is no dog" projects done with my friend John Bergin was the most satisfying. It really felt like an artistic process that evolved into something better and better, and like all good collaborations it would have never been born without both artists' input. It can be seen in its entirety here. The rest of John's collaborations are here.

"There Is No Dog" rounds 3 and 4

2010-01-20T12:22:00.000-08:00

See my previous post to get caught up. The two details at the top of the page are from the two completed pieces as they appear on John Bergin's new blog. As the Luna Park image (in progress below) and those by other artists collaborating with John are finished, they can be seen there.

Luna Park, in progress. Here's what John sent back to me (click to enlarge):

This references the true story of the bizarre spectacle of an elephant being electrocuted to death right in Luna Park. Here's what I sent back to him.

"There Is No Dog" rounds 1 and 2

2010-01-06T21:01:00.000-08:00

My friend John Bergin (who is always making cool things) invited me to do an Exquisite Corpse-style project he is calling "There is no dog." He also sent this to other artist friends. The idea is that I add something and send it back to him, he does the same, until it is done. Here are the three options he sent (click on image to see them bigger): I thought I might as well add to all three, and see what he does next. From left to right, I added a detail of an illustration I am working on, a Gericault painting, and a photo of Luna Park at Coney island that I am using as reference for another illustration. Here's Round 2:

Stay tuned.

Someone's learning Illustrator...

2009-12-22T11:39:00.001-08:00

I try, I really do. Here's a logo (the lettering part already existed) incorporating a new mascot I designed.
Here's a logotype for Diamond Ruby who is the main character in my friend's soon-to-be-published novel. Picture her initials on the front of a baseball cap in 1923. Stay tuned as this may be featured on other materials, like a poster and actual caps.

More Star Wars by fans

2009-11-24T08:05:00.000-08:00

I got interviewed for this ABC Online article about the Star Wars Uncut project, which is a good opportunity to link to it again, and to point you to a clip by my friends' son Gio, a gradeschooler whose clip is awesome and whose drawings (above) of Stormtroopers, C3P0, and Leia put mine to shame.

She Wore Blue Velvet

2009-11-10T08:02:00.000-08:00

I have written before about how much this movie affected me when I first saw it. I should probably mention that I haven't seen it in over twenty years and don't necessarily want to view it again. The snippet they used in "The Squid and the Whale" was enough for me. But "Blue Velvet" has stayed with me. It's a good entry point anyway to look at poster design in different places.
Here is a Turkish version. Helpless damsel and macho violence.

This German version focuses on montage and heavy symbolism.

These two evocative French posters show characters looking out, helplessly. The one on the left decorated the front window of a video store near my college, so I would be greeted by that haunted look whenever I walked to class.

I saw a copy of this hanging in an office at the JBFC, signed by Isabella Rossellini herself. What does this disturbing and violent image have to do with the disturbing and violent film? The story is that it is based on a scene excised from the final cut of the film.

This is a Polish poster by Jan Mlodozeniec, who created many film posters and applied his light and clever touch to even the darkest subjects.

This is a DIY poster for a 2008 Valentine's Day college campus screening. Looks like it's 5 in a run of 25 screen prints. I bet they all were taken soon after being posted. I know I would have wanted one.

Like, whoa!

2009-10-13T06:26:00.001-07:00

What if, like, you could be inside the sphere that M.C. Escher is holding, and be, like, peering out, and looking all around the room? Dude, now you can.

http://www.ciudadesferica.com/varios/experimentos/escher/

Final Star Wars scene

2009-09-25T05:13:00.001-07:00

Star Wars Uncut - Scene 021 from Gregory Nemec on Vimeo.

My last one (only three are allowed, which is probably a good thing for my sanity) which includes my first attempt at hand-painted frames. The rapidly changing lighting is so much a part of the shot of the pod launching that I didn't see another way to do it. I already had a healthy respect for Alexander Petrov, but my respect for him has grown.

Starring Obi-Wan, C3P0, Han and Chewie

2009-09-21T11:41:00.000-07:00

Star Wars Uncut - Scene 351 from Gregory Nemec on Vimeo.

I am bitten by the Sweding bug. I chose this scene because it wasn't really a scene, it's bits of three different threads of the story. Who wants to act that out? But animating it is no problem. Also, a chance to draw four of my favorite characters (see title of this post) AND Stormtroopers? Please.

The Death of Biggs

2009-09-16T22:06:00.000-07:00

Star Wars Uncut - Scene 453 from Gregory Nemec on Vimeo.

Here is my contribution to the GREATEST IDEA EVER on the internet. The idea in a nutshell: chop up the first Star Wars* into fifteen second clips and let people shoot their own versions of those clips. Compile them all in one place and you have a remake of a beloved movie, in hundreds of different styles. Some are pretty much just like the "Sweded" scenes in "Be Kind Rewind", with various degrees of professionalism. Many use Lego and action figures, and at least one artist used hand-painted paper bag puppets. I did mine in cut paper stop-motion, with a few self-imposed limitations: no sketching with pencil first, no do-overs. If I had been too picky, I never would have finished all fourteen shots. Fourteen shots for fifteen seconds of film! I noticed a lot of animators gravitated to the action scenes, with lots of quick cuts.

I love all the creative solutions people came up with to re-create moments from the film. A narrow hallway for the garbage compactor scene. A computer keyboard as the surface of the Death Star. And, wow, a milk carton on its side DOES look just like a Jawa sandcrawler.

*okay, I have a beef with them using the "new and improved" version, not the original version. But whoever did scene 196 decided not to have Greedo shoot first. See, it's the GREATEST IDEA EVER on the internet.

It's not copying, it's an homage.

2009-08-27T09:42:00.000-07:00

(click on my artwork to see it much bigger)

Autobiographical numbers describe themselves. For example, the subject of this art is 1210, and it has 1 zero, 2 ones, 1 two, and 0 threes. 1—2—1—0. Get it? It's the smallest autobiographical number. Fun for a geek like me, and fun to be able to add my name to the long list of people who have ripped off the famous Rockwell triple self-portrait. Of course he was the master of doing that:

Dime Bag show ending soon!

2009-08-07T14:24:00.000-07:00

I had a great time at the opening of Dime Bag 3, featuring my little rabbit painting and lots of great art by lots of artists. Stop by Giant Robot and see all the work by Wednesday. Then it's coming down. Trust me, it's worth seeing. Tiny work that packs a big wallop. You can buy the individual pieces of art, ranging in price from $10 to $500, online if you can't make it to the show. Check out Giant Robot for details. There are lots of photos of the super-crowded opening courtesy of Giant Robot on Flickr, but here are the highlights from a Greg-centric point of view.

Illustrator and co-curator Jordin Isip. The look of a man who just hung up almost 300 works of art.

The red dot means someone bought my painting. I hope it gets a good home.

This was one of two walls full of art. I hear that additional work went up after the opening. Click images to see in more detail.

This is what happens when you invite several hundred artists to be in a show, and they each bring a friend or two...

So since my wife was sad that my painting might be sold, and she liked it, I created a companion piece for her. She likes it even better. Maybe because we have two bunnies of our own now.

Teeny tiny art

2009-06-24T08:58:00.000-07:00

Done for an upcoming group show called "Dime Bag 3" at Giant Robot New York. Each piece of art has to fit inside a three-inch plastic baggie. Tiny paintings, drawings, sculptures, all displayed on the wall in their zip-lock bags.

This is the first piece I have done that I would consider multimedia scratchboard. Scratching, sandpaper, scratching, oil paint, more scratching, in a genuine wood frame. Scratchboard's not usually soft and warm so that was my motivation. Click on the photo to enlarge.

Portraits in Two Directions and Cartoons!

2009-06-04T10:43:00.000-07:00

I just finished up a semester of teaching gradeschool and middle school artists, and whenever a kid had some downtime (either finishing a project early, or wishing they weren't doing the current project) I would ask them if they would draw or paint me, I could draw or paint them, and we could trade art. So here's a variety of simultaneous portraits.
Each grid has a corresponding portrait in the other, so the center portrait of me was painted by the artist who is shown in the center of the kids. (She also drew the bottom center portrait of me, as she is quite prolific. The bottom center portrait in the grid of kids shows what happens when I screw up—turn it into a pirate!)

The artist who opens our exhibit above did not want her portrait created, but watched and recorded the moment that Justin and I drew each other. Click on these to see them in much more detail.

One of my animation students and I made this movie by moving sand around on a light table. He was great at figuring out how to turn one shape into another.

Also, here is an animated film created by two first time animators with me this semester. It's a feminist masterpiece that's a little over two minutes long.

Back to, oh yeah, illustration

2009-05-08T16:16:00.000-07:00

Lots of illustrator interviews on this site, but I am the freshesh one as of this moment. Get it now, hot out of the oven, before the fat lady sings.

http://www.whohub.com/nemec

Celebrating Celebrity Resemblances

2009-04-25T13:02:00.000-07:00

The latest Facebook activity I have enjoyed is "I've been told I look like..."

You select five celebrities from their database and post them. When friends balked at some of my choices (and they aren't really my choices, it's what others have said) I tried to recreate them, starring me. (click image to enlarge)

Of course, it's not my idea to try and look as much as possible like a photo of someone I allegedly resemble. It comes from a smarter and funnier guy. Check out this classic Kids in the Hall minute.

If fictional characters had been an option, I could have included Harry Potter, Where's Waldo (way too strong of a jawline), and the groom from "The Corpse Bride" (just right in the jawline department). And way back when, several people noticed my resemblance to (these are obscure) the kid at summer camp afraid of swimming in the 1885 TV movie "Poison Ivy" (Cary Guffey, several years after he was a kid in Close Encounters) and the young piano genius in "Shine" (Noah Taylor, who went on to play a young Hitler).

Then there's the game of picking who would play you in the biopic of your life. I am actually leaning toward Noah Taylor, but my sentimental favorite is Steve Buscemi.

Mary Worth, by Alan Moore

2009-04-06T16:00:00.000-07:00

With just a little noodling, mysterious fiance Ted Confey becomes:

Bring on the Silly!

2009-04-02T09:56:00.000-07:00

In honor of the impending reunion of these two guys on The Tonight Show, here's my nominee for the funniest thing ever seen on their show.

What's Greg been making?

2009-03-12T09:08:00.001-07:00

I've been busy with lots of illustration projects, as well as teaching. Here are a few things recently released into the wild. Two just for fun, and one not, but which was a lot of fun to make anyway. Above is a panel from Apartment 3G, a comic strip that has been around forever and is a favorite over at the Comics Curmudgeon, thanks mainly to the character Margo, whose coldness and self-absorption border on villainy. Someone suggested that this panel, which sums up Margo's philosophy perfectly, would make a good shirt or a Roy Lichtenstein painting. Josh was kind enough to post my "appropriated" version. Actually, I barely changed it, just cleaned it up and added the all-important Lichtenstein flesh tone dots.

Item two: here are the latest "awards" I have drawn over the past year or so, given out by the hosts of Filmspotting for their movie marathons. They represent marathons with these themes: Angry young men (British working class dramas from the 1960's), heist movies, 1970's sci-fi (we know Planet of the Apes was 1968, but the spirit is right), Almodovar, Bergman, and film noir. Have I mentioned I love this podcast?

Last but not least, here's a piece I did for Trial Magazine about organ donors not being properly screened for disease. This happens extremely rarely, but when it does it's tragic, as donors' organs tend to go to numerous recipients. Sometimes a topic is so gruesome that I feel the need to go in the complete opposite direction with the art. And again with the Lichtenstein dots!

Screaming Links

2009-03-05T06:35:00.000-08:00

Today's topic: screaming faces in art. What expression captures modern man's unhappiness as well as a scream? Everyone knows Edvard Munch's "The Scream," but he was not alone, or the first.

Above is a self portrait by Franz Messerschmidt. Not a scream as much as a grimace, this is one of sixty-four extreme, even grotesque "Character Heads" which he sculpted, believing that the act of creating them and using them as guides would help fight the evil spirits/mental illness plaguing him, and hopefully help others with similar afflictions. Hard to believe these were done in the 1770's; they are so modern in their sensibility.

Here's a collection of some of my favorite screaming faces from the past century.

TOP LEFT: On my first visit to John Fisher's house to learn to play Dungeons and Dragons, he showed me the cover of King Crimson's "In the Court of the Crimson King." John was a friend of my older brother, and the album belonged to his older brother. There was an overall older brother vibe happening as we listened to the first song, "Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man."

TOP RIGHT: A friend recently sent me a link to an animated student film that was inspired by the King Crimson album from almost forty years earlier. Six thousand paintings, according to the film's creator. I'm not sure how he is defining individual paintings as they seem to be digital, but a Herculean feat nonetheless.

CENTER LEFT: Gottfried Helnwein's take on contemporary angst. If the King Crimson album had come out twenty years later, this could have been the cover. This is the first image I ever saw of his art, and he has been making indescribable things for most of my lifetime, touching on everything from Austria's whitewashed Nazi past to surreal visions of Donald Duck.

CENTER RIGHT: Still from Sergei Eisenstein's silent 1925 film "Battleship Potemkin." This is one of the final frames of the amazing Odessa steps scene, depicting Tzarist troops slaughtering innocent civilians.

BOTTOM LEFT: Francis Bacon's "Study After Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X." I grew up seeing this painting in the Des Moines Art Center, which was free and which I could ride to on my bike. I was fascinated by it as a kid, that something so terrifying could also be beautiful and in a museum. Maybe that is why it is still my favorite Francis Bacon painting. Was it inspired by Eisenstein's film as well as by Velazquez? I don't know.

BOTTOM RIGHT: A frame from "Raiders of the Lost Ark," which made me think of the Bacon painting when I first saw it, but now everyone says is an homage to Eisenstein. It may also just be a coincidence—did Spielberg know what it would look like, when he filmed a time-lapse shot of a multilayered wax head collapsing under heat lamps? What isn't a coincidence is that it is showing the fate of the most sadistic Nazi in the movie.

Another List?

2009-02-12T09:16:00.000-08:00

There is a huge backlash against the Facebook "25 Random Things About Me" exercise, which to me seems like getting mad at people for keeping a diary, or writing a blog, or being on Facebook to begin with. So flying in the face of opposition, here's another self-indulgent list.

I was inspired by my favorite podcast Filmspotting when they recently discussed transcendent filmgoing experiences, where what happens in the theater goes beyond just seeing a movie. (A listener had written in with a story of the stars of "Once" doing a Q and A at a screening and unexpectedly performing the film's signature song. One of the podcast's hosts mentioned feeling hugely energized by watching "The Matrix" and, curiously, "Meet The Parents." Say what? That's why I love that podcast.)

This was right up my alley, and as Filmspotting is known for their top five lists, here's mine. They are in reverse chronological order, which also happens to be in order of increasing significance, which seems logical. The most recent isn't on the list, but "Pan's Labyrinth" just blew me away, thrilled me, and left me emotionally drained.

Greg's Top Five Transcendent Movie-Going Experiences

5. 2004: The Last Waltz. It's always good when a long-anticipated film surpasses expectations, and this did. Pristine print, and the best sound I have ever experienced in a theater. Still probably the best time I have ever had at the movies.

4. 2002: Chicago. This was a special preview screening and Q and A with director Rob Marshall and critic Janet Maslin. While it was an entirely enjoyable film, the real thrill was seeing Maslin helping Marshall navigate through his dawning realization that this would be not just a hit, but a grand slam. He had clearly never seen it with a full audience before. Two hours earlier he was probably just hoping people liked it, after the screening he seemed transformed.

3. 1986: Blue Velvet. A Philadelphia college student, on a rare afternoon free, goes alone to see the latest movie by the guy who made "Eraserhead" and "The Elephant Man" and has his mind exploded. Luckily the staff of the dumpy little theater off Rittenhouse Square didn't come and clean between screenings, so he could sit through it again.

2. 1984: This Is Spinal Tap. The night of high school graduation, three friends went in knowing it was supposed to be funny, but not knowing we were in for the funniest two hours of our lives. Bonus: The angry metalhead who stormed out of the theater when it dawned on him, a half hour in, that he was watching a parody of all that he held dear.

1. 1977: Star Wars. Like "The Last Waltz," a long-anticipated (three weeks is LONG when you are eleven and EVERYONE is raving about this thing) film that exceeded expectations. I am sure I am not the only one who watched the opening sequence with the massive Imperial Star Destroyer looming over my head and realized, "movies can do ANYTHING."

Oddly enough, I only own one of these movies ("Star Wars," obviously) and don't have a great desire to watch any of the others over and over. The intense experiences were enough.

Nudity You Can't See

2009-01-23T18:39:00.001-08:00

An art director and friend of mine was clearing out her and her husband's huge collection of books and ephemera and came across something that I thought only existed in jokes: The Braille edition of Playboy. No centerfold, I am assuming.

On the other end of the spectrum, artist Jason Salavon has gone into centerfold overload. He created art by blending the images of every Playboy centerfold, mathematically averaging the color and value of each, one per decade. This is every Playmate from the 1980's:

So Miss November 1981, who presumably does not appear in the Braille edition above, is hidden amongst the pixels here. To see the art based on other decades, click here. I really like how they are completely luminous and ethereal, like a soul should look.

Salavon has done similar amalgamations (his term) of class photographs, special moments, and architecture, video amalgamations of late night talk shows, and an audio amalgamation of twenty-seven versions of the song "Yesterday." He also has interesting art based on still frames from movies.

I obviously can't get enough of this kind of thing. Once I created visual formulas to depict some of my friends (you know, "You are like two parts Yukon Cornelius and one part D-Day and a dash of My Name is Earl") and one of them created a similar formula for me. It included Duchamp, John Linnell from They Might Be Giants, and the animated groom from The Corpse Bride, among a half dozen others. I blended them all together, Salavon-style, to create a metaphysical portrait of me:
Salavon creates his own software to make his art; I just fiddled with Photoshop layers. Here are my friends Scott, Wayne, and Fran, done the same way. Hidden in there are Saddam Hussein, Orson Welles, George Harrison, Dylan Thomas, Terry Gilliam, Casper the Ghost, and many others.

Why designers can include movie tickets as business expenses

2009-01-16T05:52:00.000-08:00

My friend Scott, who is responsible for pointing me in the direction of much that is awesome, sent me this link to an ever-expanding website that collects screen captures of movie titles, from A:

to Z:

(Zathura, by the way, is by no means the last one on the list, what with Zombies being on Broadway and Zontar being from Venus and so on. Similarly, Anatomy of a Murder is preceded by lots of Alien and Abbott and Costello movies. I just like the looks of these two.) It's interesting to me to see how many different solutions there are to the problem of putting the movie's title up on the screen. There's the Woody Allen approach, simple and unchanging from film to film, creating a kind of brand for the director:

Then there are the ones that really set the stage for the film, like an illustrated book cover:

And apart from the first image on this blog entry, which I included as a personal favorite, I haven't even looked past the A and Z pages. Lots of treasures to unearth.

Mea Culpa

2008-12-21T08:27:00.000-08:00

I am a bad blogger. I realize the key to being a good blogger is fresh content. I know this because when the half dozen blogs I check daily do not have fresh content, I am disappointed. Of course, you are saying, "Greg, instead of reading other blogs, shouldn't you be writing your own? Wouldn't that help?" I hear you, imaginary reader of my blog. So here is an end-of-the-year wrapup of all new stuff:

An actual unretouched photo of what the recent Moon/Jupiter/Venus alignment looked like, in China. It was impressive here in Pleasantville, but it wasn't a smileyface. A friend of a friend took this photo, and said through the mutual friend I could post it, but didn't want his name used. So I figured I shouldn't name the mutual friend either, to throw the Chinese government off the trail or whatever it is we are trying to avoid, but thanks, mutual friend and anonymous photographer.

A sketch by one of my ten-year-old students. She did it as a joke, and was probably going to throw it away, but I think it is awesome in a Daniel Johnston kind of way.

A piece I did for a gallery show curated by my friends Jordin Isip and Rodger Stevens. It's called "Harold Grows Up." Every participant was given a lovely piece of wood and instructions to incorporate a horizontal line at a specific height, so that the overall effect was a continuous dividing line/horizon running through all the art, all of which were hung butted up against each other running the length of the gallery. I have done work for other shows created/curated by these guys, and never sold anything, so when this piece sold I was pleasantly surprised. My twelve-year-old predicted it would sell: "It's a character people know, and it's like, a gag." I gotta listen to him more often. See this and other recent art on my you-don't-have-to-be-a-member-of-facebook facebook page. The link is up there in the right column also.

The piece at the very top of this entry was done for Yale Alumni Magazine, and it is about the psychology of witch hunts, and it is probably my favorite thing I did this year.

New Years Resolution: Spread out this content (God how I hate that word) over weekly installments instead of doing it all at once.

How 'Bout Some Illustration?

2008-11-18T18:46:00.000-08:00

Yes, I do illustrations. I just end up thinking about lots of other things and probably a part of me wonders who wants to see my artwork anyway. So here is one. This was used in Yale Alumni Magazine and accompanied an article that presented the theory that the great thinkers of the Enlightenment were not necessarily the originators of revolutionary ideas, and that many of their ideas came from so-called common people. The great thinkers synthesized and codified these grassroots ideas. I like this theory.

A New World?

2008-11-06T06:09:00.000-08:00

The morning after my son Jacob was born, I was walking through the crowded streets of Manhattan, looking at everyone and realizing that they didn't know the world was a fundamentally different place. Of course, that was only true for the very few people affected by this particular brand new human being, but for me it was a seismic shift. (Years later I read an old Kurt Vonnegut story that expresses the exact same scenario and feelings.) Then on September 11, 2001, and for weeks after, I felt that once again that the world was fundamentally changed. And now I am happy to report I feel this for the third time in my life. Several neighbors have told me it was my Barack-o-lantern that put him over the top. I don't know about that—New York is traditionally a blue state, and it was a rush job—but here it is.

I Heart Halloween

2008-10-27T10:47:00.001-07:00

Yes, it's my favorite holiday. It's not even a real holiday--there is still mail delivery and banking. But it does offer the dual pleasures of being creative and seeing how others are creative. This weekend was the Pleasantville Ragamuffin Parade, where all the kids and a few brave adults show off their Halloween finest, in a kind of dry run for Halloween. Each year I am inspired by the variety of costumes on display. And of course the homemade ones are my favorites. This year my daughter Olivia is part of a group costume. Since all the major Candyland characters (Queen Frostine, Gramma Nutt, Mr. Mint, etc.) had already been claimed, she was asked to be the game board.

This thrilled me as I am a big fan of inanimate objects as Halloween costumes. In the past I have dressed as the Empire State Building, a #2 pencil, and a bottle of Elmer's glue. So for Olivia I painted an old choir robe from a rummage sale, and my wife made earrings and did hair and makeup. The colored path wraps around to the back and theoretically could be used for actual game play, although the order of squares is wildly inaccurate.

I think everyone likes Candyland because it is the first board game we all play. So like Crayola Crayons or Grover, it provokes a happy memory. Also, it is about candy. Come to think of it, that's why I like Halloween so much. Candy.

A Museum in Paris with no "art"

2008-09-18T07:22:00.000-07:00

We went to England and Paris in August. My kids had never been overseas, and Kat and I hadn't been in fifteen years at least. None of us had ever been to Paris. I won't burden you with all our vacation pictures, so here are just a few from a museum I had never heard of. It was one of my favorite places in Paris.

This is a manhole cover outside the Musee de Arts et Metiers in Paris. He is winking because he probably looks up women's skirts all day.

A box of beautiful wooden geometric shapes, apparently a teaching tool. I coveted it.

Lots of machines in this museum. I love gears.

Me in a space helmet. But not really IN the space helmet.

My son Jacob at the museum's Metro stop. It was all copper, and felt like we were inside Captain Nemo's Nautilus. The whole museum had a Jules Verne-meets-Dumbledore's office feeling.

Most of the objects in the museum had English captions, but not this flying machine. So I have no idea if it was ever flown (the propellers are giant feathers) or even intended to be flown (did I mention the giant feathers?). I loved how the hard science and the fanciful ideas were all in the same museum.

A lion and a serpent made entirely from glass (fiberglass fur and scales). My daughter Olivia is flesh and blood.

Cool clock that I imagine can send you back or forwards in time.

Spy cameras disguised as a gun and a book. Was there a time when a gun was seen as a lesser threat than a camera? "Drop the camera! Oh, never mind, it's only a gun."

A pair of zoetropes.

A phenakistoscope. Yes, I had to look it up.

Another link to love

2008-07-31T08:07:00.000-07:00

The key to a successful blog is specialization. Focus on one thing obsessively and the audience knows what to look for. There is a blog devoted to photographs of the contents of pickup truck glove compartments. (No, I don't have the link.) There is a blog devoted to the interpersonal relationships among the X-Wing pilots during the attack on the Death Star. (Again, sorry.)

My blog is not successful because I am unable to specialize. My brain is either a pinball or silly putty, going in all directions. See, I can't even settle on a metaphor. I take no comfort in the Robert Heinlein quote, "Specialization is for insects." Because, let's face it, insects are pretty darn successful on this planet.

I do have a link to my favorite hyper-specialized blog in all of webdom. Now known as "The Comics Curmudgeon" but originally called "I Read the Comics so You Don't Have To," it is the dream destination for anyone who doesn't find the daily newspaper comics that funny or entertaining, but is compelled to read them anyway. Josh reads them and then ridicules the art, or the stories, or the perceived perverted personalities portrayed within. For example, Josh presents the above panel as evidence of Rex Morgan, M.D.'s repressed sexuality. As with everything in that comic strip, the truth is maddeningly more banal.

Josh is wicked smart (he was just on "Jeopardy" for God's sake) and funny. His love for all these strips is apparent, even if it is the love one might have for a three-legged dog. Think of his blog as "Mystery Science Theater," but for Blondie and Mark Trail.

My own personal story of the comics:

I was a paperboy for the Des Moines Register (Sunday mornings) and Tribune (daily afternoons, even Saturday) for my entire adolescence. I obsessively read every strip in the morning and afternoon papers, except for the "soap opera" strips. They just seemed so boring. But I did notice that in the strip Judge Parker, there was never a judge. So I started reading it and sure enough, the title character never made an appearance. As a thirteen-year-old I realized that reading Judge Parker was even less cool than the other things I did (watching all the Planet of the Apes sequels, playing Dungeons and Dragons) so I never spoke about it. But I made a secret deal with myself that I would stop reading Judge Parker when the judge showed up. By the time I went off to college, he had never appeared. (Perhaps the judge made quick appearances while I was in South Dakota visiting my grandparents, whose newspapers featured rare treats like Henry and Mary Worth.) I admit that I got excited when Sam Driver spoke to the judge on the telephone once in those five years.

Twenty years later I rediscover Judge Parker thanks to Josh. (It appears that about six months have transpired in the characters' lives since I stopped reading.) And the judge himself has appeared, several times! Apparently he was holed up writing pulp fiction:

One of Josh's readers wrote in responding to the term "Crime-Fighting Judge," and suggested a few other outrageous character ideas, like a disease-fighting nurse or a fire-fighting fireman. And the ridicule goes on.

Away From Home: for your viewing pleasure

2008-07-21T06:45:00.000-07:00

Lots going on since my last entry. The Illustration Conference happened and it was a good time. Our movie was greeted with all we hoped it would be greeted with: laughter at the right moments, applause, and nobody got bored or antsy. Now from the comfort of your own laptop you can share the magic. Thanks to James Yang, the movie's producer and on-camera guide, for getting this movie posted. It is twenty-three minutes long and features seven illustrators talking about life abroad/in transit.

If you go to James's blog, keep in mind that he insists on calling the movie by the wrong title. He named it "Away from Home" even though I preferred a different title, and now he is calling it "Home and Away." It's like if I wanted to name my child Hector, but my wife wanted to name him Gerald, so I agreed, and then she couldn't stop calling him Bert.

James and other familiar faces showed up at my book-signing in Park Slope, so thanks to all who were there. My co-author got sole billing, but these things happen when you have a PhD. Doors are held open, people are nicer. It's probably a lot like being really good-looking.

The other big event that has happened is the death of my hard drive. It is still in the hospital having data rescued. Then I need to get a new hard drive. So I am a bit cranky.

The image that opens this post is one I did years ago for the NYTimes Book Review. It was never published, but not because it was rejected. I emailed it, and then went on vacation without confirming it got there. So I returned from vacation to several "where the hell is it?" messages. Someone else was hired to do a piece of art since I was out of contact. I felt terrible of course, and sent the art anyway with an explanation/apology. In typical terse Steven Heller style, I got an email in return:

No problem. Nice piece.

Now with remote access to email and cell phones and everything, this kind of thing doesn't happen. Well, almost never.

ICON is coming!

2008-06-02T07:11:00.000-07:00

And Greg Nemec is feverishly finishing editing a video he is creating with James Yang. It is all about illustrators living in unexpected places, or somewhere far from either where they are from or where their clients are. The short film will be part of a long weekend of discussions, studio tours, and lots of other things. Illustrators or anyone into illustration can learn more about the conference and sign up here. Here is a still from our film's fantasy sequence. Oh yes, it has a fantasy sequence.

I don't know where they come from

2008-05-07T11:18:00.001-07:00

People sometimes ask me how I get my ideas. I guess that is the most frequent question for most writers and visual artists. The answer seems evasive ("It depends.") but it is honest. You might as well ask how the human mind works. But I can tell you what I do with the idea once it is in my head. I refine it. And if I have time, I refine the refinement. Here is a piece I did recently for a magazine article about the mortgage mess. There are now lawsuits springing up against the "predatory" mortgage lenders who may have misled their customers. In this case, the idea came pretty much instantly from the word "predatory."

Here is the series of drawings that show the process the idea went through from "aha" to final artwork. This first one shows the idea being put on paper just to have a record of it.
The problem with this drawing is that it could be a housecat just passing by. I thought it would look better to have the predator really stalking its prey, and also changed to a higher point of view.
This sketch was good enough to add some quick color and submit to the client for approval. But I still wanted to make the predator more graceful and low to the ground. So I did a third sketch just for me.
I based the final art on this sketch. I still changed some things, like making the leading paw more enlarged, when I drew the final art.

All the lines you see in the final art were done by scratching black and white lines on scratchboard. I then used Photosphop to turn them other colors. But that can be discussed another time.

shameless self promotion

2008-04-28T10:16:00.000-07:00

Sorry it has been a while, but life has a way of taking over when one should really be blogging.

I would like to take this opportunity to let everyone know that the website is live for the book I illustrated and cowrote, "The Official Guide to Dysfunctional Parenting."

The premise: a parenting advice book full of terrible advice.

My co-author Fred is my wife's brother, who I have known since he was in high school. At the time I was an art school nerd from Des Moines and he was a skate punk from Queens. This is a book that Fred and I have been chewing on for over a decade. Since we started the idea, he has become a doctor in clinical psychology, gotten married, and had two kids. In that time my wife and I also have had two kids. Fred is no longer (at least visibly) a skate punk but I will always be a nerd from Des Moines. So anyway, we started as smartass twenty-somethings but did the bulk of the writing as older, wiser, hopefully funnier thirty- and forty-somethings. So far the response has been favorable from friends and friends of friends. Here is an illustration from inside. It is one of several "books" within the real book. The book cover designs were a satisfying part of writing the book as they are a truly collaborative melding of our ideas.

Jennifers

2008-03-01T10:27:00.001-08:00

The cashier at the supermarket today was a grandmotherly type with a "Jennifer" nametag. Now, if there is one name associated with my generation, it is Jennifer. Only a gen-Xer would write a song that begins "I went to school with 27 Jennifers." Ben Affleck has been involved with two Jennifers (that we know of). So I asked this white-haired woman if she was the only Jennifer she knew growing up. She said she was, having been born in 1945, until "Love Story" was published and there was an explosion of Jennifers. This led me to wonder: where do modern names originate? There were no Brandons or Madisons a hundred years ago, right? Well, a little research told me a few facts about Jennifer.

1. It was a rare name, then George Bernard Shaw named a character Jennifer in a 1906 play, which started its ascent in popularity.

2. It was already the number three name by the time the book and film "Love Story" appeared in 1969 and 1970. (That makes sense, since I was three at the time and was already surrounded by Jennifers.) "Love Story" is possibly the reason it shot to number one and stayed there until 1984.

3. Where did it originate? It's a variation on Guinevere. So like many things, it goes back to mythology or the Bible. And to all you Jennifers who think you have a common name: cheer up, it's royal!

a guy making cool things

2008-02-13T17:15:00.000-08:00

My friend John Bergin had a story to tell. It's called "From Inside" and it has had a few incarnations over more than a decade. It first appeared as a story in black and white in a 'zine (kids, ask your grandparents about 'zines). Then it was expanded into a big full color graphic novel. John is the kind of guy who wants to tell the story his own way, so when a producer offered to make it into an animated movie, John sat down and taught himself how to make an animated movie. And he and his computer basically didn't stop for two and a half years. Now he is in the final stages of the movie. He had some help from a few crucial people, but mostly it was a one-man operation. It is based on his artwork so closely (way more than Sin City or Beowulf or 300) that he rightly calls it an "illustrated movie."

Why tell you this? Mainly because it is so cool that he did it. But also because of my tangental connection. I am sure I wasn't the only one, but when I first saw the story in its embryonic 'zine form, I urged him to keep going with it. Make it bigger or longer or something. It was too good and too strong to just exist in a form that so few people would ever see. And I wanted to go deeper into the story too. Also, I kind of got to be in the graphic novel, and it looks like I made it into the movie too. Here is a still John posted on his movie-making blog:

This image is based on a photo of me from a long time ago, which John aged to make me look like a decrepit old religious nut. I am quite disturbed to see how much it actually looks like me now. It's like I am the Gertrude Stein to his Picasso.

Want to see more? Go here to see stills and the first three minutes of the movie. Remember, one guy did this.

Pardon me?

2008-02-07T05:33:00.001-08:00

Here are two sketches I did last week for the NYTimes op ed page. The piece was about the number of requests for presidential pardons and the current administration's minimal effort when it comes to dealing with them. Art director Brian Rea provided the layout with the "hole" and I worked my sketches to fit.

Here is a detail of the final art, which appeared on Monday, Feb. 4. Click on the image to, like, WAY enlarge.

Stop the commotion with stop motion

2008-02-06T18:14:00.000-08:00

Here's a movie we made when a few college friends got together recently. Shot in istopmotion, a really easy animation program to use, and edited in imovie.

Love that Filmspotting

2008-01-08T10:28:00.000-08:00

Here are some icons I did (click to enlarge) for movie "awards" given out by my favorite podcast, Filmspotting. Two guys in Chicago reviewing new films, catching up on old films (hence the awards), and re-enacting (in their words, destroying) scenes from beloved screenplays in "Massacre Theater." Available for free on iTunes.

Who what the?

2008-01-08T09:33:00.000-08:00

First post, just figuring it out like I'm Abraham Simpson.