Is done! Please tell me what you think of it. As for weather the site is in beta yet, I'm not entirely sure. I think it would need to have at least one each of the music and book pages to count as that.
Current music: Gaijin à Go-Go!
Thursday, 28 June 2007
Wednesday, 27 June 2007
Now this is just the most amazing thing ever. Well, one of them: contemporary art interpretations of archaic video games. There's a tantalising slide show on the official site there, and this blog entry has links to a few more entries on various people's personal sites. Amy Sol's entry is definitely one of my favourites – not really any different from what she normally does, but it makes for a particularly striking reinterpretation.
Current music: Some songs by Bizet, and something else I rather liked but can't be bothered to find out what it's called right now.
Current music: Some songs by Bizet, and something else I rather liked but can't be bothered to find out what it's called right now.
Monday, 25 June 2007
Le Palais des dessins animés is now open to the public, though it's not quite in working order just yet. There will, eventually, be a proper newsfeed for the site, but until then, this blog will have to double as one.
And I may as well also use it for posting something I've been thinking about:
Once upon a time, there was a Japanese comics industry and an American comics industry (of course, there were comics in other countries, but I'm trying to keep this simple). In Japan, comics are monochrome things which are made primarily to be serialised in phonebook-sized anthologies, themselves primarily intended for reading on trains during daily commutes. In the USA, the situation is rather different: most people commute in their own cars, with their own in-built radios, and so have neither the need nor the opportunity to read something during these journeys. Comics, to them, are either the gag strips to be found on the back of newspapers or the monthly, staple-bound issues of a single series, which are as a rule in colour.
When Japanese comics were first translated and released into North America, they were done so by established publishers of American comics, and were shoehorned into the same format as their own original produce – that is, the monthly, A4 issues of a single chapter of a single series; later compiled into graphic novels which were also A4-sized. Some were even coloured for the American release, and all were flipped into the western reading direction. However, over time people came to discover just how different what they were reading was from how it was published in Japan. The publishers – now mostly specialists – picked up on this, and started to release their translated graphic novels in a format that was closer to, though not quite as small as, the Japanese tankôbon. Being both cheaper and easier for them, and more authentic for readers, these monochrome, DVD-case sized books quickly became the standard. And so, when Seven Seas and TOKYOPOP expanded into publishing works from Euramerican creators, they did so in this same standard format – shoehorning western comics into an eastern format, just as the reverse had been done years ago.
Except that these weren't really shoehorned – they written specifically for this format of a monochrome, DVD-case sized book of 150-200 pages. There is no serialisation first (except sometimes for free, on the internet) and it's never seen printed on an A4 page – just graphic novels published many months apart. So really, these things called 'OEL' or 'world' manga are by no means in the Japanese tradition, but neither are they significantly closer to the existing American way. They are a new, third format to create for, born out of a process of importing and reformatting, and depending on their size it can include many titles, such as Blue Monday and Gray Horses, which are simply referred to as comics. But as for what anyone should call such a thing… Well, I'm just glad that the decision isn't up to me.
Current music: Rasputina… And Les Rita Mitsouko. Yes, I'm feeling slightly rocky today. Or more likely, I've been listening to such little music (being without my own computer and iTunes library) that even stuff like this appeals to me.
And I may as well also use it for posting something I've been thinking about:
Once upon a time, there was a Japanese comics industry and an American comics industry (of course, there were comics in other countries, but I'm trying to keep this simple). In Japan, comics are monochrome things which are made primarily to be serialised in phonebook-sized anthologies, themselves primarily intended for reading on trains during daily commutes. In the USA, the situation is rather different: most people commute in their own cars, with their own in-built radios, and so have neither the need nor the opportunity to read something during these journeys. Comics, to them, are either the gag strips to be found on the back of newspapers or the monthly, staple-bound issues of a single series, which are as a rule in colour.
When Japanese comics were first translated and released into North America, they were done so by established publishers of American comics, and were shoehorned into the same format as their own original produce – that is, the monthly, A4 issues of a single chapter of a single series; later compiled into graphic novels which were also A4-sized. Some were even coloured for the American release, and all were flipped into the western reading direction. However, over time people came to discover just how different what they were reading was from how it was published in Japan. The publishers – now mostly specialists – picked up on this, and started to release their translated graphic novels in a format that was closer to, though not quite as small as, the Japanese tankôbon. Being both cheaper and easier for them, and more authentic for readers, these monochrome, DVD-case sized books quickly became the standard. And so, when Seven Seas and TOKYOPOP expanded into publishing works from Euramerican creators, they did so in this same standard format – shoehorning western comics into an eastern format, just as the reverse had been done years ago.
Except that these weren't really shoehorned – they written specifically for this format of a monochrome, DVD-case sized book of 150-200 pages. There is no serialisation first (except sometimes for free, on the internet) and it's never seen printed on an A4 page – just graphic novels published many months apart. So really, these things called 'OEL' or 'world' manga are by no means in the Japanese tradition, but neither are they significantly closer to the existing American way. They are a new, third format to create for, born out of a process of importing and reformatting, and depending on their size it can include many titles, such as Blue Monday and Gray Horses, which are simply referred to as comics. But as for what anyone should call such a thing… Well, I'm just glad that the decision isn't up to me.
Current music: Rasputina… And Les Rita Mitsouko. Yes, I'm feeling slightly rocky today. Or more likely, I've been listening to such little music (being without my own computer and iTunes library) that even stuff like this appeals to me.
Saturday, 9 June 2007
I've started a site, a wiki, called Le Palais des dessins animés. I need some help with it. Both complicated programmy layout-type help, and simple repetitive dogwork. Perhaps even artistic writing-type help, though that's of less importance right now. If you're bored and don't mind helping someone, then register at Wikidot (you might need Firefox for it to work) and tell what username you've chosen. For safety's sake, you would have to be someone whom I already know to care about these things.
Current music: Emilie Simon - "Song of the Storm" & "Dame de lotus"
I don't care much for anything else I've heard from her, for about a week or more now I have been quite obsessed with these 2 songs, and may end up getting The Flower Book just for them.
Current music: Emilie Simon - "Song of the Storm" & "Dame de lotus"
I don't care much for anything else I've heard from her, for about a week or more now I have been quite obsessed with these 2 songs, and may end up getting The Flower Book just for them.
Sunday, 3 June 2007
Animation-related Stuff
Ga-nime. They specialise in a genre I'd describe as "shin kamishibai" - a sequence of only ever slightly animated pictures which tell a story when accompanied by music and voice acting. Particularly interesting are the hallucinogenic Highway Jenny (the only one I've seen which is actually animated) and Joseito, which is done in a CGI style very similar to Azur et Asmar, but as the camera and some sakura petals are only things which move, it seems instead like a series of sculptures.
You should read about Morimoto Kôji (Noiseman) and Nakamura Takashi (Palme no Ki, Fantastic Children). They're both animators who were famed for their realism, but went on to write and direct very unrealistic films.
Current music: Björk - Earth Intruders and some orchestrations of French songs and preludes by Debussy and the like.
You should read about Morimoto Kôji (Noiseman) and Nakamura Takashi (Palme no Ki, Fantastic Children). They're both animators who were famed for their realism, but went on to write and direct very unrealistic films.
Current music: Björk - Earth Intruders and some orchestrations of French songs and preludes by Debussy and the like.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
