Universal Monster Movies

"Universal Studios Monsters" by Michel Mallory, Universe Publishing (2009)

So I thought I might try something different for this post.  Lately I've been seeing posts on other blogs and sites saying that sometimes followers enjoy not only seeing the artwork that an artist creates, but stepping into the artists world a little as well.  I'm assuming this means things that inspire the artist or that they enjoy so that the followers can feel like they know the artist on a more personal level.  Although I'm not the keenest on letting strangers in, I can definitely share with people my inspirations.  Granted I'm sure every artist with even the slightest penchant for the Macabre has the same inspirations that I do, so if you've seen these things before. . . *shrugs*. . . you get the idea.

So to kick things off, and because I'm just too damn excited about the Classic Monsters Show coming up at Halloween Town in Burbank, CA, I thought I'd share some classic Universal Studios horror related things over the next month or so.

I got into horror a tad late in life.  Most people now-a-days who show an interest in it start in their mid to early teens.  I got started in my late teens/early 20's  (around the same time I found Oingo Boingo, but that's a totally separate post) and I started with the slasher films of the mid to late 90's.  But, instead of moving forward with horror films, I chose to move backwards.

I love all the original Universal horror films.  Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolf Man, Invisible Man. . . they're all great!  If you have an aversion to Black and White cinematography they might not be your cup of tea, but considering that they were still in the relatively early stages of movie making for most of those films, some of the things they accomplished (mood, composition, lighting, make-up) is highly impressive.  Also, if your'e the kind of movie watcher that can't tolerate slow movies, the older horror films are definitely not going to be your idea of fun, but the trade off to watching them is you're educating yourself in some of cinematic history.

Bride of Frankenstein (1935) image from Classic Movie Monsters 

Which movie is my favorite?  Well that answer can actually be broken down into two categories.  These categories would be "which movie was more entertaining" and "which monster is the coolest".

In regards to the first category, the James Whale (that's the director, in case you don't know) films are seriously my favorites as far as the entertainment factor is concerned.  Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein and the Invisible Man are all great pictures and beautiful to look at.  The Invisible Man especially so.  But if we're going off of which monsters are the coolest from the Universal "major monster" library I have three favorites: The Mummy, The Creature from the Black Lagoon and, of course, The Bride of Frankenstein (not really a surprise considering I'm female and she's the most iconic female Universal Monster).

Revenge of the Creature (1955) image from Classic Movie Monsters 

Next week I'll post more about one of the aforementioned monsters in my 'favorite' category, but this week I'll leave you with this awesomeness.

Universal 100th Anniversary Classic Monster Box set (2012)

Two weeks ago Universal Studios, in honor of their 100th anniversary released 8 of their more popular monster movies on blu ray for the first time.  I tried looking at a couple of 'big box' stores around town for the box set of all 8 together but wound up settling for ordering online.  Thank goodness I didn't find them and remembered just before ordering off of amazon something I'd seen in one of my Facebook threads.

Universal Limited Edition Classic Monsters Box set (2012)

Amazon.uk has a Limited Edition blu ray set.  The item specs said it was Region Free, so I took the risk and purchased it thru them.  Yet, I found out today that they will be offering it here in the US starting October 23rd.  Let me just say, I'm on cloud nine!  Not only were they true their word, my set is region free and the discs play beautifully at home, but the history buff in me loves the bonus features.  They did a nice job cleaning up and restoring the film.  I love that I can still see a tiny bit of film grain and even more exciting for me is that I can see some of the fabric patterns in the actors clothing.  Granted I have only checked out my "Dracula" disc, but it's pretty sweet.  Best part?  I got it for half the price that they want for the regular edition set currently for sale in the US. As I stated a bit ago, I did just find out they are offering a US release of the limited box set here.

Until next time!

Images in this post were taken from Amazon.com and the Classic Movie Monsters blog.  The Universal Monsters are all Copyright Universal Studios.  Be sure to check out the Classic Movie Monsters Blog for more images.  They have a ton!

Boobies

So, um, yeah. . . I don't know why I made her topless. . . sometimes I just don't wanna draw clothes on them. Maybe it's like a deep seeded psychosis rooted in the fact that I never wanna get out of bed in the morning, hence not getting dressed. . . although I always live in my Slimer and the Real Ghostbusters pjs, and that's kinda dressed. . . right? Rambling again. Time for bed.

In case you're curious, it was done in Corel Draw X3 and was inspired by this artist I found on Deviantart that goes by the name Blush Art.

Mini City Commuter Hearse

So, my midterm projects were due this week. We had to do presentations in front of the class as to why we were so much more awesome than our classmates. I really wish I could say I was kidding, but the teacher literally sat us down the week before and said we should go up to the front and introduce our selves and then say "my project is superior to these other projects because of . . . "

Anywho, above is the side view and the rear three-quarter view of my Mini City Commuter Car project. The images below are my presentation boards. We were instructed to create a client that was in need of a mini city commuter and cater our design towards this fictious person's needs. Ms. Ivey Bohem, the Hollywood shoe designer wanted a stylish hybrid vehicle to put around LA in. What she got, was a stylish mini HEARSE, mainly because I just really wanted to draw a hearse. :D



In the end, for my first real car renderings, I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. I'm hoping to find the time to go back and make a front 3/4 view rendering, because the best part of the car is it's face, which I based off of a spider and the Packard Hawk (which I think looks like a catfish).

The Creature From the Pink Lagoon

One of my all time favorite old school movie monsters was the Creature from the Black Lagoon. I just thought he was really cool looking. When I was a kid, I was a total water baby and one of my favorite games was to sneak up on people underwater like a little monster. . .

I've been toying with the idea of a female "creature" for few years now, but I've never been able to get her out on paper. I think I got lucky last night. ;)

Caterpillar Roll

So, yet another year in my life has passed and through out the course of this year I have learned a few important things. The most important one being NEVER, EVER feed a 14-year-old female a ton of sugar followed by a frappachino from Starbucks. It spells disaster.

A Caterpillar Roll of Doom for your viewing pleasure. Potato Farm Girl took me out to a sushi dinner for my B-day. Enough said.

Now off to enjoy the bestest b-day gift (for me) EVER!! 18 hours of CSI viewing goodness, here I come!!

Masquerade

Well, after months of racking my brain trying to figure out how to get my other two films up on the web I've finally been able to piece my Sophmore CalArts film back together and upload it to YouTube.



I really must thank my friend and coworker Nicolette Davenport for being kind enough to reburn the disc's from my freshman and sophmore films on her mac. Retardedly I had chosen this option called "session" burning and my pc would only read one of the multiple sessions on each disc. So much of the information I needed to reoutput my films was trapped on the original discs. I really could not have done it with out her and I'm very, very greatful. :)

Anyway. This film was a super personal one. Since I didn't grow up in the LA area my dreams and ambitions to become and animator, and the quirky personality traits I had due to that dream, we're kind of looked down upon when I was growing up. Shortly before my graduation from high school I'd started following the path of the "dark side" and kind of became a sudo-goth, which if we look at todays terminology just basically means I was Emo before there was a word for Emo.

Masquerade was supposed to be about all the pain I felt growing up as a teenager an how my first summer at CSSSA (California State Summer School of the Arts) made me feel like I was going to join other people like me. I was lucky enough to go there for two years and it was so refreshing to know that there were other people like me out in the world. It gave me something to look forward too, even though it was only for a brief time. When I got to CalArts for college, having not been around other animators (well, except for Potatofarmgirl) for nearly 5 years I was overjoyed to be back around others of "my kind" and decided to make a film about it.

Sadly no one cares about personal films in college, especially Character Animation. The more personal the film, and the more "realistic", the less people notice it and push it off to the side as an "art film".

Now, don't get me wrong, I admit that there's TONS of things wrong with this film.
For starters my dumb ass didn't bother to take a story class that year. Imageine that, only a sophmore and I thought that I didn't need anymore story instruction. I was a moron. Secondly, anyone that tried to tell me to change my film, or to make it funny, I'd shoot down and tell them that they just didn't understand what I was trying for. Basically that year I was an arrogant prick and very pig headded so I missed a TON of really great learning opportunites all due to pride.

Quite honestly, this film is truly one huge flop. But now I don't mind looking back at it, because it teaches me a lesson everytime I do. And that lesson is this. I will NEVER know everything and the instant I think I do, or start acting like I do, I'm only going to lead myself to self distruction.

Girly Things

So I've been a little busy lately. I don't really know why or where my time is necessarily going, but I'm busy.

Also, recently, I've been finding myself smack dab in the middle of a bunch of girly stuff, not necessarily girly stuff as in shoe shopping or putting on make-up, but girly in the sense of things that have brought the fact that I'm a woman to the surface. How so you may ask? Well. . .

Last Wednesday I went to this really interesting forum hosted by the animation guild. Basically they had asked actress Geena Davis to come speak to their union members about her foundation See Jane. In short it's an organization that is working for the cause of sexual equality in media or more specifically in children's broadcasting. Her organization "commissioned ground-breaking analysis research by USC's Annenberg School for Communication analyzing the top 100 G-rated movies as well as TV created for kids ages 0-11." Basically, to save time let me tell ya this. The average of female to male characters in children's entertainment programming is 5 males to every 1 female. All they are trying to do is get the ratio to be about 50-50 so that children of all sexes can have a role modle type character to look up to.





What I found more interesting than the "cause" of the forum (which I kinda agree with, but mostly I agree with there being a good story and the sex of the character being what ever fits the character best) was the small bit of research the union did on the male to female employment ratio currently in place at the studios. Mind you these numbers are pertaining to the number of females and males CURRENTLY union members and not taking into account all the people (like me) not lucky enough to be in a union shop. (Oh, and if there's any spelling errors, which I'm sure there are, it's not my fault. I copied the ditto they gave us VERBATUM!)

Gender Breakdown of Employed Active Membership as of October 10, 2006

Producers................................ 8.0% (2 of 25)
Directors................................14.9% (20 out of 134)
Writers..................................10.8% (10 out of 93)
Art Directors............................11.1% (2 out of 18)
Visual Development.......................13.1% (8 out of 61)
Story Art................................13.8% (51 out of 370)
Layout...................................17.8% (41 out of 230)
Model Designers (characters & props).....21.4% (36 out of 168)
Background...............................25.6% (34 out of 133)
2D Animators.............................21.3% (50 out of 235)
3D Animators and Modellers...............13.0% (47 out of 362)
compositors..............................29.2% (21 out of 72)
Tech Directors...........................13.8% (42 out of 304)
Checkers, etc............................34.0% (35 out of 103)

=========================================
Industry Wide.............................17.3% (399 out of 2308)

SEE DAD!!! I'm not lying when I said that it feels like animation is a "boy's club" sometimes!! There's barely any girls in it!

On a slightly bitter note about the meeting, towards the end of the meeting the working professional women that had decided to attend the meeting were wondering where all the women were and why there weren't more now a days and that kind of stuff, and I wanted to scream "they can't get their foot in the fuckin' door with all the boys hookin' their boyfriends up!!!" But, I just sat there and told myself I needed to just work harder on my portfolio cause there's gotta be something missing from it still since I can't get a test. . .

Anyway, on to other girly stuff. This weekend I FINALLY stumbled upon some kick ass cookbooks from the 1950's. I had to post some of those for all to see. Back in the day they used to put quick little illustrations in there. Really REALLY simple ones that were only two tones. They are just too charming. In fact, they are so charming I'm going to totally let it slide that they were in a Betty Crocker cook book and that Betty Crocker is part of General Mills evil empire.

Also, were you aware that Bisquik has been around since the 1950's? I seriously learn something new everyday.

Now, if you click on all the images EXCEPT the little piggy, you can see larger versions of the kick ass cookbook illustrations. If I were you, I'd definately click on the little lamb/sheep. I thought it was kinda funny. :)