Sign: Maltese style



Spotted and photographed by the parents. Thanks!

Design: WhatTheFont?!

Do you keep hundreds or thousands of fonts on your computer or discs? Have you experienced wasting a great deal of time going through all of them just to find the right one? Sure there are nice applications for download (even for free like The Font Thing, FontPage) that will will help you review your fonts more easily, but it still takes time. Also you might not have the right one! This online service might be a solution for you:

WhatTheFont : MyFonts
...and then you might wanna download some fonts for free? ...and then some?



Thanks to P. Asth!

Art and illustration: John Bauer

The painter/illustrator John Bauer (1882-1918) is not well-known outside of his native country Sweden. In Sweden he is, at least to a older generation, famous and loved for his classic fairy tale illustrations. They were mainly made for the traditional Christmas edition of "Bland tomtar och troll" (Among Gnomes and Trolls ...or something like that), a fairy tale collection published since 1907. Unfortunately he died as young as 36 together with his wife and child in a shipwreck. Following Bauer's death Gustaf Tenggren took over his roll as illustrator of "Bland tomtar och troll". After Tenggren came Einar Norelius (see this earlier post) and he was succeeded by Hans Arnold (see this post).

This post about Bauer was inspired by this post by Stephen Worth of ASIFA who says that Bauer's "...style influenced generations of artists from Gustaf Tenggren ... /... Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac and Kay Nielsen to Brian Froud and Jim Henson (The Dark Crystal)." Judge for yourself:







Other sites of interest is The John Bauer Museum and Project Runeberg - Målningar av John Bauer where you can find great scans.
---

Stuff: Lots of Online Generators











Online Generators | Smashing Magazine
Via Populici.us

And even more at The Generator Blog


Video: Saul Bass title sequences



The great graphic designer Saul Bass (1920-1996) though having created many well-known logotypes and posters, is mostly know and remembered for his work with movie title sequences (IMDb). This is a collection of the few I found on YouTube. My thanks to those who uploaded them. If you find more or upload more please let me know.

"My initial thoughts about what a title can do was to set mood and the prime underlying core of the film's story, to express the story in some metaphorical way. I saw the title as a way of conditioning the audience, so that when the film actually began, viewers would already have an emotional resonance with it."[1]
Check this site out for great screenshots from other of Saul Bass' title sequences and this one for screenshots of other great titles.

Animation: Zune Arts


Zune Arts

Via Hopsakee

Illustration: BibliOdyssey posts

"German naturalist Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber (1739-1810) trained as a physician and went and studied botany in Sweden under the great Carolus Linneaus."/"The absurd rendering of many of the animals comes about because the engravers/artists working on the project did not actually see the animals."/"And thankful we are too." - Indeed we are! Get links and more of the illustrations of "Die Saugthiere in Abbildungen" here: BibliOdyssey: The Concept of Mammals.


Engeneering manuscripts by "Mariano di Iacopo [Jacopo] (aka Mariano Taccola; and also referred to during his life as the 'Archimedes of Siena') (1381-?1453)" Go to BibliOdyssey: Engineering The Renaissance for the rest of Taccola's illustrations in engineering manuscript collection "De Ingeneis".

Animation: Whiteboard Stop Motion


Johnny at Drawn! writes "This music video is outstanding. Created for the Swedish band Minilogue by Kristofer Strom from Ljudbilden & Piloten, the entire thing is stop motion animation created on a whiteboard."

Go to the post at Drawn!
for this YouTube video and more.

Festival: Stockholm International Film Festival


I managed to watch three movies today at The Stockholm Film Festival. However I have a hard time justifying sitting through the first one - Electroma. Some kind of sci-fi roadmovie by Thomas Bangalter, one of the members of the French popgroup Daft Punk. The music score by the same group and others were quite alright but it wasn't enough of it. Even together with the sometimes great images it wasn't enough. Tideous and pointless in my opinion. Having said that I must point out that I can appreciate poetic and slow moving pictures but you have to give me a reason! I'm angry at myself for not walking out of it. But after having watched two men/robots in shiny helmets walking for an hour I guess I was too tired of walking...

The second film was an American independent production by Mia Goldman called Open Window. A pretty strong drama about a couple and their struggle after the woman gets raped by an intruder. It makes a point by not lingering on the deed but on the aftermath. Also, to a large extent, we get to follow the events from the man's viewpoint and lets us understand that the repercussions of a rape might be different but just as severe for the man. It's a pretty painful movie but still it breathes of hope. (Cybill Shepherd and Elliot Gould have supporting parts).

Third and last I downed the French picture Them (Ils) by David Moreau and Xavier Palud. In the countryside outside of Bucharest, Romania, French teacher Clementine and her man Lucas are restoring an old mansion. The couple without a care in the world are suddenly one night flung into a nightmare. There are sounds outside the house and then inside. Who are the intruders and what do they want? The festival catalogue draws some paralells to The Blair Witch Project, The Descent and "a little spice of Wes Craven". This is probably true. They continue to say that the makers of the film "...have created an intense, claustrophobic universe" which sounds about right. I'm no horror movie expert but I guess it's a decent shocker. Edit: Oh, I forgot - "Based on a true story"!

Video: Go Go Go Mini Mini

Music: The Spotniks



"Long before ABBA was said to be the first Swedish band to chart in the UK these guys made it. They were a sort the "Swedish Shadows". " (...more)

...and they are still at it! (their own web site)

Thanks to Mod*Mom!

News: Martin Klasch reaches 100.000!

The other day (probably Thursday) Martin Klasch had its 100.000th unique visitor since we started counting on June the 22nd of 2005! Thanks to all our visitors, contributors and friends! We're having a big ol' party over here! C'mon over!!

Video: Two times Night at Bald Mountain

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky's orchestral tone poem Night at Bald Mountain was spun around an ancient Russian legend of a witches' sabbath. The piece was completed in 1867. An impressive animation in pinscreen technique interpreting the music was made in 1933 by Alexander Alexeïeff & Claire Parker. (Via Coisas do arco da velha)



As early as in the 1880s Rimsky-Korsakov did editorial work on Night at Bald Mountain and thus made it more successful and the music track heard in Disney's Night at Bald Mountain sequence from Fantasia (1940) is even more adapted.

Poster Art: Collections via El Burlador












Click images for the poster collections or use links below

B-western movie posters
Collection of African posters
Large collection of Latinamerican Posters
Bollywood horror movie posters
Vintage Hungarian posters
Political posters from the US, Cuba and Vietnam

All links via El Burlador

Cartoons: Pink Panther Title Screens

"DePatie-Freleng (often abbreviated DFE) mostly made animated commercials for television, but they're big break came when Blake Edwards commissioned them to create an animated opening for his movie, "The Pink Panther"."

Check out som nice Pink Panther (and others) title screens here:
DePatie-Freleng Website

Blog: Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie


Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie

Via Drawn!

Blog: Where did Earnest Little Cartoon Guy go?!

The link to the excellent blog "Earnest Little Cartoon Guy" is dead and so is the link to his old blog "Happy Palace"! ....sad! Does anyone know if he's moved or just bailed? You are missed! Start over!

UPDATE:
Oh, happy day!!!
Mrbalihai informes us that "The Cartoon Guy" is alive but has transformed into Peanut Butter Sandwich! He seems to be in good form. Thanks for the info, mrbalihai!












Now we can all sleep snug as a bug.

Illustration: Disney Album Covers From the 50s and 60s



Beautifully
designed Disney record covers from the 50s and the 60s at ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Project Blog.

Blog: Musselsoppans Vänner Updated

Martin Klasch's sister blog Musselsoppans Vänner was updated the other day with a new large batch of nice and/or interesting pictures picked from around internet and from scanned images. Have a look, why don't you!

PS. Once again thanks to all blogs from where many pictures has been taken. As usual only a few has been credited but most can be found in the sidebar. The general idea of Musselsoppans Vänner is to be a simple imagedump blog and noting every image source would be far to much work and work against that idea. I hope this is alright with you all.