A Great Episode from The Backyardigans - Who Goes There?

 

The Backyardigans is still one of my favorite childhood shows I've experienced. I watched a few episodes yesterday and they were jam-packed with tons of action and music. To me, it's the perfect show for younger audiences. 

One episode was called Who Goes There? from Season 3 Episode 1. This was really entertaining and funny at times. I don't ever think I watched this episode when I was little but now after seeing it for the first time, I can tell that this is what it like and enjoyed about the show.

Every episode starts with the backyard, someone in the main cast introduces themselves and explaining their occupation they are going to imagine and sing about it. 

In this episode, Tyrone is a museum security guard who bravely protects the world's greatest art. The layouts as always are really fun and engaging.

 The plot is very easy to follow. Tyrone has to keep the museum clean because of a new exhibit. 

The creativity in this episode is fantastic. Both Tyrone and Tasha explore different artworks, but you can definitely recognize 3 of them. General Pablo is a statue, Lady Uniqua is an oil painting, and Austicles placed onto a Greek vase. 

When they finally meet together, Austicles recites a poem about how nighttime is better than daytime because the art becomes alive and play during the night hours, make sense because in the next few scenes, they play tag and get into alot of trouble. 

Tyrone seemingly thinks that there's a thief entering the museum and begins to search around. This adds alot of funny moments throughout it like Tyrone reacting to the painting saying it's weird looking, there's also a moment where the trio clashes into a horse ride and it's actually amusing.

The final epic moment in the entire episode is The Splatter Paint Flamenco. It has a great song, and the entire battle is very enjoyable.

Tyrone realizes that he might be fired for causing a mess especially in terms of the blank canvas. But the final few minutes aren't wasted as the trio helps fix the mess and clean up the museum just in time. When Tasha returns she notices the canvas is all splattered, but she thinks it's beautiful which any viewer who also experienced this episode would be surprised to see coming but it's a great way to end it nonetheless.

My final thoughts, I absolutely loved this episode. The premise, the energy, the character roles were all memorable and perfect. I just really hope that this show has the recognition and love that it deserves.

I wanted to show the full episode since it's free to watch on YouTube, credits to Treehouse Direct.

Great Vintage Stuff

 

I like to highlight all the talented artists who appreciate these style of illustrations. To me, Little Golden Books, animation, comics, magazines, and paintings are my biggest influences.

Here's some awesome art from the 40s-60s, the golden age of the art mediums.

This is one of my favorite illustrated Little Golden Books to date. Mister Dog, by Margaret Wise Brown, a childhood hero of mine. She makes one the best children books in my opinion.

These are ALL gorgeous! Definitely memorable and relaxing.

I found lots of unique and interesting art from the Disney staff and production. Let's start with something underappreciated, Song of The South!

I just love the green color scheme to this image. I can notice that Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit's heads are not extremely well-drawn and look very off model, but I still enjoy it and they still look exactly like each other. I also love the rich font of the movie title and the some of the italic writing.

Disneyland Records easily makes one of the best album covers I ever seen. They're so pleasing and happy! They were basically used to produce songs but I adore them myself. 

This is a masterpiece in of itself. I recently watched The Three Caballeros and forgotten all about the watercolor short sequences. The Las Posadas, and Mexico scenes were beautiful and comforting, it's my style of how a movie works in my opinion, and this Saludos Amigos record cover reminds me of it.

Even if you don't want to add a background, you can still do alot by drawing characters, and great natural stuff to still be considered art.

I just love the old art featuring tons of characters, warm and sweet colors and an extra layer of personality and environment.

Below it is I guess an advertising poster for Alice In Wonderland (1951). I know I'm not overly keen on the film than other people do but I still enjoy the passion and creativity that went into the surroundings. 

This is such an adorable book cover of Smokey The Bear by Richard Scarry.

Mickey Mouse and His Space Ship has the best covers to a Little Golden Book I ever seen. I love Mickey's distinct design and the details are impressive.

Here's an image from the actual book.

If you didn't know who made the cover, I looked into it and it was Norm McGary. He's probably one of my favorite Little Golden Book artists competing with Scarry.

These I immediately appreciated and are extremely nice and captivating.

I have a soft spot for the Hanna Barbera cartoons. These are awesome.

Lastly is a Disney calendar from 1953, this is pure candy because it has almost every Disney character from that time and it's so cute seeing Mickey wearing a Santa costume.

It was so inspiring that I created one myself. Yeah. It took me a while but it was fun.

A minor flaw to me is that May is kinda messed up but I hope you like the rest.

Since you been all liking The Artmania Girls lately here's your bonus treat.

Friday Out On The Farm

 

Today was an interesting day, I went out and went to a farm, shopping and got pumpkins.

I was drawing concepts of an actual mascot to the farm we went to. Weber.

These drawings were made on my random sketchpad I never used until now. 

I went outside for a bit and observed the nature around me, there was this leaf as well and the skies and clouds were just beautiful today.

Also drew one of the Artmania Girls, Thea for fun.

Lastly, here's me portraying Johnny Appleseed obviously meant to be a stand-in photo.

What Films Did Best - Camera Angles, Focus, Composition and Structure

 

I'm sure everyone probably had a day where the teacher would put on a movie for us whether there was no schoolwork, right before Halloween or Winter Break or we had to do a very crummy assignment on the actual film itself to answer questions, y' name it.

I could name over hundreds of movies I have experienced while still getting an education. 

I do have to say if became worse every grade I processed. 

I remember all throughout high school we had to get through movies I just wasn't drawn to and they would be 

Remember The Titans, Hocus Pocus, 2019 Aladdin for cripes sake, someone decided to play a Madea movie one time, was really ridiculous, Fences, and a totally R rated film called Memento. Let me tell you it was quite a ride and I did have somewhat interesting memories for these films.

But the one movie I'll say attracted me the most was The Great Gatsby (2013). I actually really liked this film. Sure I didn't watch ALL of it but I was invested in it. There was alot more focus and the characters were extremely likeable and well written.

Anyways this is what I think films should be valued for, I don't think movies should only be taken for the appreciation for the story and characters. I trust the cinematography and style the most.

When I was returning to this movie after what seems like almost 2 years later, I was astounded, I still really like the calm and gentle atmosphere we get in this movie. Now obviously I know this movie is adapted from the original book but I still enjoy it nonetheless. 

This is 1920s done accurately if I'm being honest, alot of these environments are memorable.

I was fully aware of becoming challenged to this type of stuff when I started to watch more toned down and artistically structured movies. 

This is a magnificently gorgeous image from The Band Wagon (1953). I love it because it's really pleasent and full of blooming energy. It takes a moment to relax and soak in all the choreography and colors right at you.

I think that's what the people behind-the-scenes were doing with The Great Gatsby as well. They use the old fashioned techniques in a more modern approach but still have solid colors and excellent form of camera angles.

When it comes to animation being more attentive, there's alot of great choices, but I'm choosing Disney mainly because I've been drawn to the old style ever since I first watched the movies.

There's alot of Disney movies I keep on coming back to like Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Winnie The Pooh, 101 Dalmatians, you name it but were they all trying to go for comedy and over-the-top zany like other animation studios? Heck no. And that's what I truly like about the golden age of Disney in particular. They were experimenting with so much emotion and potential. 

An excellent example is Bambi.

This is one of the rare instances where the dialogue is economical, for a fact, there is less than 1,000 words spoken throughout the film and to me I think that's fantastic. 

I've been re-watching countless Disney movies especially last month and my favorite moments from Bambi are the rainy scenes, mostly when a storm is coming. It's absolutely riveting work. 

The powerful sense of the older Disney films was the multiplane camera where they have the background and move it in opposing directions and angles to make the environments more realistic and adds point of view. 

To me, this is pure bliss. Most cartoons like short films don't regularly do this, and yet when your watching a feature film if an animated one, it's so much different. Sure it might not be straightforward and comedic but it doesn't have to be. 

This is a shot sequence from Pinocchio (1940) which is probably the most iconic and important animated movies besides Snow White, it's their 2nd animated film obviously but so much passion, complexity and creativity was packed into this movie alongside other films. 

I absolutely love it. You can research into more depth of the multiplane camera and how genius of a concept it really is. 

Another great example is B&W movies. While I don't see myself watching too much of them, some I say are just outstanding in terms of cinematography and style.

This movie is called Orpheus (1950). Now I never actually knew about this movie until now but it's an excellent example of composition. 

Look at that nice view of the person driving. I like the small details given here. The mirror, the car window. 

I got these from Filmgrab.com. 

https://film-grab.com/

This movie is very handsome, the camera angles are absoutely phenomenal and adds a layer of personality. 

Nicolas Hayer is overlooked in the entertainment industry, these are the scenes I chose that immediately captured me the most. 

I'm sure there's over countless of other movies with camera angles this massive but this was the best I searched for so far.

I think this what films are missing out on nowadays. Sure, there are still some films from our current decade I think are hits but in terms of mood, atmosphere and simplicity in vain of the short films and dialogue free movies, I think it's best that the 30s-50s did it best. 

Artmania Girls

 

Today I couldn't stop drawing and thinking about these characters I created.

These were made quite recently. About two weeks ago. I first designed these ladies as concept art. You can find them by clicking the link.

Marinette

Thea

Fennica

Yeah, it wasn't that long ago. I wanted to sorta make another comedy trio, and I actually tried to create the characters to make them more appealing and memorable just like Szac and Dredd.

This is the final product of the three girls.

And fully colorized. 

These characters might appear more often on my blog. When I first created some of my more iconic characters, they were more abstract and clumsy, and I wasn't aware of real acting or the classification of appeal yet but when I finally took a dive into critiques and the medium of art, I was improving my artistic abilities.

Here's some sketches and below it are their info and personalities.

For now I'll simply call them The Artmania Girls mainly because they could go for a match between these fine men.