Rammellzee

Ikonaclast Panzerism!

Freights

Many moons ago, a group of us would skulk off to the freight yards and paint some cars. It was a bit of an easy set-up, because it seemed to us that no one really minded (as opposed to us painting a wall on the side of a freeway). These things seemed up for grabs. There was a cement plant along the coast that had dozens of these trains parked out by. It was basically picking a nice flat car, and spending a few hours painting.

Ot was the closest thing we had to a subway system, and that was the graffiti that all of us had been reared on.These rail cars would in fact ship concrete cross country, and every once in a while, a friend from Pennsylvania or Oregon would let us know that he saw our train car roll through town.

Crime Time

This was developed a while ago for an online show as a sort of interactive/cartoon/comic, side feature. The story centered around four homeless kids who make their home in an abandoned subway car.

The kids have the idea that, with the help of technical boy wizard 'Gnome', they'll one day get the car started again and running and away from the underground.In the meantime they come up against foes who have their eye on the car itself.

The four main characters consisted of Mila, a hot-headed graffiti artist. Gnome, the tinkerer brains of the outfit. Jaws, the loudmouthed, outspoken heart of the crew (Gnomes brother). And Charles, a limber jointed, half-wit, who, though part of the crew, is the only member who has an actual home.

Their adventures bring them to confront nazi skinheads, dangerous, homeless-ex-police, and insane social workers who have sinister agendas.

The series was created entirely in Flash, and had mostly a 'web comic' format along with music and animated elements within the panels.

Billie Jean- Aloe Blacc Dir: Ross Harris

Greek Newspaper

As a kid, I'd gone to Greece with my family. It was a stopover trip, so, we only stayed a few days. Athens was hot, and crazy polluted. I also remember seeing porno mags for the first time, because they were on every newsstand, plastered all over. My mom had given up on shielding my eyes. I didn't care too much, but, I was obsessed with Star Wars, and could think of nothing but. I picked up this:

Another thing we brought back was this newspaper. Can't read the headlines, but, the editorial comic on the front page says it all:

Beer!

Thanks to the fine folks over at 'Cartoon Brew', they've featured a series of old Beer ads (which were in a way, what kept the smaller animation studios busy off-season). Here's a classic from Stag beer, animated by none other than UPA studios:



J

Three

Art & Copy by Doug Pray

Just caught the new Doug Pray (Scratch, Hype, Infamy) documentary Art & Copy. It chronicles the rise of the advertising industry in the latter half of the 2oth century.He doesnt delve too far into the broader biology of advertising, but instead focuses on some of the stand out agencys from the last 50 years including Chiatt Day, Goodby & Silverstein and the legendary Jack Tinker Associates (which Mad Men is loosely based).

Pray's subjects are most times a pretty broad subject, and advertising is no exception. While it's interesting and inspiring to see the names and faces behind the slogans that have been burned into our subconcious as youth, some of the bravado and self importance proclaimed by some of the notables gets a bit tiresome. Sure, we might remember your ad campaign, and it might have been legendary, but ultimately it., like most other ads gets discarded into the waste basket of 'market clutter' that we're bombarded with nowadays.

While an interesting subject (especially to us in the business) it does cast a pretty wide net. He covers as much as he can in the hour and a half, but, you can't help but think that there's a bit more to this subject than what we're being presented with here. But maybe hat's another movie entirely. Recomended.:


"We're selling people what they wish their lives would be"

Great Quote #24

"It's not where you take things from, it's where you take them to"

-Jean Luc-Godard

41st Street Forever

Something I've been coming across lately are the endless reels of old movie trailers lurking around YouTube. Some of these are for movies I can't believe someone actually made but, they do in fact exist. There's a great DVD series called '41st Street' in 3 volumes. Below are some of the notables.

Your Face- Bill Plympton

Check it out while it's still up:

1985 Volume 3 Page 12

Not quite at the halfway mark, but, trudging through!

Lost Pages

I just came across these roughed out pages in a sketchbook for a graphic novel I'd put together a few years ago. This scene wasn't included in the final storyline, but were from an earlier draft of the book:

Evan Hecox by Arktip

Evan Hecox from Incase on Vimeo.