Molrak.com
Daily Digital Wanderlust

I had a birthday recently, and as I’ve aged, the allure of the birthday celebration has inversely dimmed. I just don’t care that much anymore. Sure, it’s nice to get well wishes and even the occasional present, and who doesn’t like to spend time with loved ones, but the whole big soiree is just kind of meh to me. Actually, it pretty much has been for a long time, as even as I kid I don’t remember wanting that many big parties. Maybe I did and it was a financial issue. I wasn’t too aware of such things as a kid, but I like to think it was more because I was antisocial.

Plus people always buy the worst shit for you, I’ve always hated getting crappy gifts, especially around Christmas because I would make exhaustive lists, probably from 2nd grade on. I’m talking 2 column printoffs, 6-8 pages long. It wasn’t so much greed, just that I have a lot of interests. Thus my amazon wishlist.

What brought this to focus is Little Nephew’s birthday. He turned 2… actually today, but yesterday he had a little kid’s birthday party. There was a sprinkler and a little kids splash pool, and all the adults sat around and made chit chat and laughed at the youngins. Perhaps it’s just the difference already between my nephew and myself, but I really didn’t want the adult equivalent of that, I never have. My dream birthday is sitting around, reading a book, maybe a little time with good friends, and just relaxing and avoiding all cares and concerns. I did take my birthday off from work (unpaid, natch), because frankly, no one should have to deal with shitheads on their birthday.

Note: The following was originally posted on January 16th, 2005. I wasn’t very good about maintaining my blog back then and lost the 3-4 posts from this era, but thankfully the Internet Wayback Machine saved them for me.

One of the disadvantages of going to a small school is that you get to know everyone on campus. Anonymity, a luxury at many large universities, is a danger for the ‘at-risk’ student (as it was for me when I went to Moo-U), but at times it was nice to be able to blend into the crowd.

This is my third full-time semster at this school, and I’ve gotten to know the students in my department rather well. One of the biggest annoyances during this week has been listening to students say, “I won’t need this class in the real world,” or “I won’t need this class to be a ____.” Apparently these know-it-all students are not only smarter and more talented than their peers, but smarter than the faculty as well. Granted, some of the requirements for animation students at my school are a bit off the wall, because they shoved us in with the Graphic Design students. Yet the principles of traditional design and art are necessary to be a good animator, even in Maya.

Many students at my school try to get out of classes with certain ‘tough’ professors, and they try to only take classes from professors who employ soft love instead of tough love. Both approaches to teaching are valid-at first, positive reinforcement will help the student explore their potential, and they will grow. But at some point, the student must make the transition into the real world, and students need to know what expectations will be like in the real world. Students should also realize that they shouldn’t be obligated to work themselves to death like a med student in residency or your average EA employee.

Note: The following post was originally posted on January 13th, 2005. I wasn’t very good about maintaining my blog back then and lost the 3-4 posts from this era, but thankfully the Internet Wayback Machine saved them for me.

The popularity of digital art tools, especially Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, has led to a bit of a crisis in the visual arts. Students are learning with the handicap of the undo–a useful crutch, but a crutch all the same. As my art professor pontificated yesterday, a good artist doesn’t worry about making mistakes, because a good artist knows how to fix these mistakes.

This reminded me of a saying public television art legend Bob Ross would often say, “We don’t make mistakes here, we just have happy accidents.” That truly was the genius of Bob, he knew that for many amateurs, things would just seem to happen with the brush. Bob would show how these accidents could be turned into something wonderful. Bob’s “happy mistakes” turned the tedium of painting into a joy.

This necessity to adapt, the process of discovering the tabula rasa, is slowly being lost in an era of infinite undo’s and thousands of layers. It may be turning a generation of digital artists and designers into hopeless perfectionists. I can’t count how many times people have pined for a real-life undo button for their analog artwork, and I even find myself doing so at times. Somehow the eraser isn’t quite as gratifying as a perfect undo step. The challenge the digital artist constantly faces is to constantly draw in their sketchbooks, paint on their canvas or paper, and force themselves to tackle difficult challenges and mistakes in order to improve their artistic abilities.

Note: The following post is based off a longer post originally posted on January 11th, 2005. I wasn’t very good about maintaining my blog back then and lost the 3-4 posts from this era, but thankfully the Internet Wayback Machine saved them for me.

I’ve been a life-long lover of animation and have been watching cartoons for as long as I can remember. Unlike most children, I never really stopped watching cartoons. The Simpsons began in 1989-1990, while I was still in elementary school, and I’ve been watching almost every Sunday (and Thursday) night since season two or three. I was also indoctrinated in the usual Disney fare as a youth. I really was a great time to love cartoons, as Disney’s second golden age came around the same time The Simpsons first aired. I still recall going into the theater to watch Oliver and Company-not Disney’s best effort, but the film that preceeded the immensely popular The Little Mermaid.

While Disney’s films were popular with kids, they struck a false chord with me. My parents were big believers in reading to my sister and I when we were young, and thus we knew Hans Christian Anderson’s wonderful tale before we saw The Little Mermaid. Even as a child, something just didn’t quite feel right about the Disney company’s treatment of their source material. As I’ve grown, I’ve learned to accept the sugarization of Disney’s fare while still resenting that feeling that kids couldn’t handle the classic fairy tales that served kids well up until the motion picture arrived.

I’ve also been a long-time fan of Looney Tunes, which are grand examples of short cartoons which appeal to young and old alike. In a perfect world, Warner Brothers would recognize the brilliance in that cast of characters instead of butchering them with the recent series of films and tv shows they have appeared in. The only recent decent effort that I can think of off the top of my head was the short-lived Duck Dodgers series, but even that was followed by the unwatchable Loonatics Unleashed.

Of course, if copyright laws around the world were more sane than they are today, corporations would have less incentive to milk old cartoon characters (or dead celebrities) in horrible ways. The last thing I want to see in the retirement home is He-Man trying to sell me robotic vacuum cleaners.

This post marks the relaunch of the molrak.com blog. If you’re reading this around the start of January, 2008, there will probably be a few more hiccups before this thing is running like gravy. I appreciate your patience.

Because a couple people were wondering about it, here’s a repost from an lj comment I made. Hopefully this clears a few things up about…

Meatspace: I think I probably picked the term up on slashdot back in the day, possibly before myspace even existed. Meatspace is simply what a lot of people call ‘real life’. I started referring to internets and meatspace because a lot of my friends (granted, I don’t talk to them much) on myspace and facebook are from high school, so they’re “real life” friends, but now I only interact with them on the internets. The line’s also blurred because a couple of my lj friends I would easily consider just as important as some of my meatspace friends, although not quite as close as some of my best friends in meatspace. (How sad, I have a hierarchy of friends developed in my mind that I hadn’t even considered until now.)

Part of the appeal of the term (for me) is that Bender on Futurama would often call organic lifeforms meatbags (shooting DNA at each other to reproduce, which he found disgusting). To further clarify, my meatspace friends are the ones I’ll go and play games with or go out to eat with or a drink (although the last is fairly seldom nowadays). In other words, if I see them in the flesh, they’re meatspace friends. If not, then they are internets friends (coming down the tubes and all that).

I played my first meatspace game of dnd in eons last night for Halloween. It was a room full of 6 dorks (3 greasy guys, 2 chicks, and myself), and it was actually pretty darn fun! I had contemplated movie additions after the session ended, but half the group was getting tired or had stuff to get done before bed, so we called it a night, but it was easily a most enjoyable and entertaining night. We cleared out a couple of dungeon rooms, watched the idiot monk die in our party, and had problems putting down a flaming skull. We probably would have done a lot more had I arrived earlier (I had to set up my character).

So ya… I’m a dork. Or is it geek? Definitely not nerd…

as silent as is she
so must my love for
    her be
til time dulls
    the sting of
        her memory.

<undated>, found on a scrap of paper

Under a starred
Banner they built
The dream of a
Bright tomorrow.

They crossed the seas
And stormed the skies
To protect the
Freedom of all.

They even sinned,
Touching heaven
From which they gained
Hidden knowledge.

But pride and sloth
Sank slowly in.
Vigilance waned
As comfort ruled.

The believers
Soured and the
Mouths cried foul.
So they ignored

The rule to know
Thy enemy
As thyself and
Thou shall not fail.

In their hubris
They thought the sky
Could reveal what
Stealth and gold could.

They sought to strike
Wrath from heaven
Using knowledge
Gained from afar.

In their folly
They felt mighty.
They were as gods
And so they fell.

Gary Larson was the cartoonist behind The Far Side. I read a lot of strips as a kid–mom and dad always had newspaper subscriptions, and I lived for The Far Side (although once we lived in M’town, I’d often have to read it at school, since the local paper in M’town didn’t carry it and we only got The Des Moines Register on weekends). To fill the void, I picked up the collections and calendars. I also picked up The Complete Far Side after the Xmas it came out and always thumbed through it, but never really sat down to read it.

I’ve been going through the last 6 months or so during the last couple of weeks. The individual comics are awesome, but the real treat is Larson’s commentary before the start of each year. Topics vary from the grind of comic’ing to his upbringing and where some of the ideas came from. (The other great treat are letters from people who hated the strip so much that they sent in letters to local newspaper editors or even the syndicate, including the infamous Jane Goodall strip.) Prior to 1991, Larson compares and contrasts cartoonists with comedians, then goes on to compare cartoonists with writers (novelists really):

“Actually, I think cartoonists have more in common with writers than we do with comedians. The following writer-cartoonist parallels come to mind: loners, quiet room, favorite chair, hand puppet (just me?), and our trusty writing/drawing tools.”

Larson then goes on to contrast the difference between completing one comic versus completing a novel (the novelist goes out to fine restaurant while the comic eats a bowl of cereal).

When we were covering pop art, our art history prof asked the class who thought comics were art. I didn’t raise my hand. I believe that art is largely defined by the will or intention of the creator. Due to the demands of the industry and the sheer volume writers and artists go through, I find it hard to classify comics as a whole as art–comic strips and comics are more lit (or lit lite/pulp). Bad art can ruin a (good story) graphic novel, but seldom can good art overcome a bad story. You don’t often hear many people uttering how great the art is in any sort of fiction, unless it is coupled with quality writing. Sure, there are a few exceptions (I think the art in say, Kingdom Come helped make the book more than the story), but I think that the true triumphs in comics are the coupling of great art with great writing.

Visual art has a level of abstraction and ambiguity to it. A painting should be open to interpretation, perhaps in a similar (but more limited) vein to classical music. Comics are more akin to pop music in the 20th century–largely dialog (or lyric) driven, while the backing (visuals or music) comes in to complement the written work.

That’s not to say that I don’t think comic art is without merit. It can be incredibly moving if well done. But a lot of U.S. comic work today fails to connect with me, it’s almost too busy. In some ways, the adventure line of novels which used the D.C. animation style of art almost appealed to me more because they were simpler.