I played my Kramer electric guitar for the last of two sessions. Tomorrow I’ll start a two session stretch of playing my Martin acoustic guitar and so I’ll be out of tune again.
I weighed 86.5 kilos before breakfast.
Around midday I called up some comic shops to try to find a Nightbreed compilation paperback. Only the Beguiling knew what Nightbreed was but didn’t have it. I finally found three volumes of the 25 comic run on Ebay. I bought them for $100 and had them shipped to my daughter for Astrid’s birthday.
I weighed 87.2 kilos before lunch. I had saltines with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of low sugar iced tea.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and in the way back stopped at the horribly congested and compact No Frills at John and Richmond. Not only is that place always crowded but I noticed today that 99% of the customers are in their 20s. I assume they are all condo dwellers in the area.
I weighed 86.9 kilos at 18:30.
I was caught up on my journal at 19:18.
I finished adding seven shades of blue to the sepia copy of frame 17 of my rainbow wave animation. I started on frame 18 and with each one the amount of blue is increased and so it takes a little more time. I’m only getting one done a day lately. There are 11 frames left to make.
I made pizza on a slice of Bavarian sandwich bread with marinara sauce, Genoa salami, and five year old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching episode 11 of Birdman and the Galaxy Trio.
In the first Birdman story, Hannibal the Hunter, the self proclaimed greatest hunter in the world has hunted down every known wild beast. But the one trophy he has yet to acquire is Birdman. He begins by going to the university where Birdman’s oldest friend Professor Demetrias teaches. He captures Demetrius and takes him back to his island to lure Birdman. Falcon 7 tells Birdman about his friend’s abduction and so he flies to the island. After Birdman lands and starts moving through the jungle he triggers the first trap as two charging rhinos are released from ahead and behind. He flies up at the last minute, causing the two beasts to bump heads and knock each other out. A herd of stampeding elephants force Birdman into the water where he is attacked by two crocodiles but easily subdues those with solar blasts. This however nearly depletes his power and so he flies upward with the intention of rising above the canopy to reach the sunlight but he is caught in a net. Hannibal declares that he has succeeded where all others have failed in capturing the mighty Birdman. But that’s not true. The fact is that every foe Birdman has faced in this series succeeds in capturing Birdman about halfway through each story. As the net is slowly lowered into a pit containing hungry lions, Birdman radios Avenger to get him to clear the foliage above him. Avenger gets several other birds to help him until the leaves are torn free of the trees and the sun reaches Birdman to recharge his powers at the last second before the lions are able to reach him. The first thing Birdman does is use a solar blast to cut a ramp so the lions can escape. Hannibal is about to release some caged tigers to kill Demetrius when Birdman bursts in to save him. Hannibal runs but gets caught in one of his own traps.
In the Galaxy Trio story, Condor 1 comes across a damaged spaceship that is spinning out of control. Gravity Girl uses her powers to steady the ship and lock it to Condor 1. Inside they find an unconscious cave man who when revived angrily points at Vapour Man to declare that he refuses to be his slave any longer. Apparently some renegades from the planet Vapourus have enslaved his people of the planet Primevas and forced them to work in mines. Condor 1 arrives in orbit above Primevas. They use their lazon tubes to transport to the surface, which is almost the same as transporters on Star Trek. At first the natives attack until their fellow Primevian also appears and explains that the Trio is there to help. The Trio dress as Primevians to go with them under the pretense of working in the mines. Meteor Man traps one of the Vapourans in a mine by caving it in. Gravity Girl traps another with a cauldron. Vapour Man insists on taking on the tyrant leader alone because the honour of his home planet is at stake. He challenges the leader, who has similar powers to him but not quite as strong and so the tyrant flies away. But he unknowingly flies to the pit of the winds that suck him down to the centre of the planet from which there is no escape. The other invaders are tied up in a space ship and the controls are set for the planet Vapourus.
In the second Birdman story, the young Prince Jal, the son of Birdman’s friend the Maharaja of Ramadan is on a hunting expedition when he is captured by the sorceress Medusa and her tribe of giant Amazons. Jal’s elephant charges but one of the Amazons easily flips it. When Birdman hears of the kidnapping he speaks as if he’s tangled with Medusa in the past. He flies to the jungle to confront her. He enters Medusa’s mountain lair where he is faced before him by a wall of fire and behind by a group of Amazons. Birdman says he refuses to harm women and so he uses his solar shield to pass through the fire. Medusa turns the fire into a fire breathing dragon that attacks Birdman. Birdman must use all of his solar power to defeat it and now he is drained. Birdman is about to be thrown into a pit of cobras but Jal tosses him the gem from his turban, which is the diamond of the sun god Ra. Birdman catches it to access the stored energies of centuries and it recharges his powers. He tries to get away with the prince but is blocked by Amazons. Birdman uses a new power that he calls his solar desensitizer that temporarily freezes the Amazons. Medusa fires the rays from the serpents eyes on her headdress but Birdman fires back with his own power combined with that of the diamond and it destroys the serpents’ eyes. Medusa jumps into her own snake pit and may have used magic to escape.
One of the animators on these stories was Lloyd Vaughn, who lost the sight of his right eye before becoming an animator. His drawings were rejected by Disney but he was finally accepted as an in-betweener (someone who fills in the gaps in the drawings) by Leon Schlesinger for $6 a week. He did not become a full animator until his mid thirties. He was the animator of the classic duck season versus rabbit season argument between Daffy and Bugs in the cartoon “Rabbit Fire”; the haircutting scene in the “Rabbit of Seville”; the scene in which the cartoonist plays god with Daffy and gives him a surreal body with a flower head in “Duck Amuck”; the Pepe le Pew pursuit of Penelope the cat in “The Cat’s Bah”; and the story “Duck Dodgers in the 24 ½ Century”. He was a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He was the editor of the Screen Cartoonists Guild newspaper The Animator. He was the animator of the Whos singing around the tree in How the Grinch Stole Christmas in 1966.
No comments:
Post a Comment