Digital Dream Machine

One of the best things about Halloween is working your way through the candy and treats throughout the year. In addition to this year’s haul, be sure to check out my 2005 blog post for a bunch of tasty Halloween leftovers from last year!

AUDIO GOODIES:

Characters © Mike Mignola. Art © 2006 Starz Media, LLC and Revolution Studios.

An audio interview with Hellboy and The Amazing Screw-On Head creator, Mike Mignola, can be found over at Word Balloon. Mike discusses the upcoming Hellboy Animated films, working with Tad Stones, more Abe Sapien and BPRD adventures, and the big red character’s beginnings. *Contains potentially offensive language near the end. (via Hellboy Animated.)

The Nocturnals © Dan Brereton.

What’s Halloween without Dan Brereton’s The Nocturnals? The Gunwitch, Doc Horror, Halloween Girl, Polychrome. Great names. Great characters. Great stories. Great art. Check out another great Word Balloon audio interview…this time with the creator of the fascinating Halloween-style characters himself.

Note to movie and TV producers: Where’s the Nocturnals movie or animated series we’re all waiting for? These easily-translatable characters, if handled properly, could potentially be a box office tentpole film or series!

Tunes for Ghostbusting: Ghostbusters Project:Remix. Use the free Switch application to convert the WMA files to MP3 or other format. Flip4Mac (also free) is also required for conversion.

VIDEO LOOT:

The Skeleton Dance © Disney.

Tune in to Disney’s classic Silly Symphony animated short, The Skeleton Dance (1929), on YouTube.

Lonesome Ghosts © Disney.

One of my all-time favorite Disney animated shorts, Lonesome Ghosts featuring Mickey, Donald, and Goofy, can also be found over on YouTube.

“Bustin’ makes me feel good!” - Ghostbusters by Ray Parker, Jr.

SWEET GRAPHICS:

Art © Bruce Timm.

Arglebargle has a blog post on Bruce Timm’s monster art as well as influential poster artist Reynold Brown. Some really fun images! (via The Ward-O-Matic.)

Art © Merrill Rainey.

Merrill Rainey has posted some fun icons, desktop wallpaper, and PDF coloring book at this link. (via Drawn.)

Scarloff. Art © Matt Putnam-Pouliot.

Matt Putnam-Pouliot has posted some fun wallpaper at this link. (via Drawn.) Be sure to check out his fantastic art gallery filled with fun ghouls and beasties!

Art © Mars, Incorporated.

Guess the titles of 50 Dark Movies hidden in imagery in this Hieronymus Bosch-like painting at the M&M’S Dark Chocolate website.

Art © Vera Brosgol.

“Everyone Loves Mummies” is a fun wallpaper for your desktop by Vera Brosgol. (via Boing Boing.)

TASTY TREATS:

Photo © theprojectmaker.

Hosting a Halloween gathering? Check out this fun set of instructions for creepy but consumable foods for supper! (via Boing Boing.)

Photo © Bakerama.

Mmm-mummy cupcakes.

GHOULISH CRAFTS:

Photo © Spooky Blue.

Carve your own decorative tombstones. Create fear with the wicked scarecrow!

Art © www.origami-club.com.

Use the leftover candy bags to make your own Halloween origami! (via Monsterama and Paper Forest.)

FREAKY LINKS:

The League of Robots and Monsters
BlueSky Studios Challenges - Halloween!
BlueSky Studios Challenges - Classic Movie Monsters
Smooky Ghost Story. (via Cold, Hard Flash.)
Flickr photos: Jack O’ Lanterns, Halloween, Pumpkin, Pumpkins, Ghosts, Monsters, Monster, Spooky, Costume
Monstrous.com - “The largest site about monsters.”

Photo: Copenhagen, Denmark. © Warren Leonhardt.

Warren Leonhardt’s ”abra macabre!” Flickr photoset. Be sure to view his fun blog with other spooky postings!

Happy Halloween Boils & Ghouls!!

Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas © Walt Disney Pictures.

Catch a glimpse of how the wizards at Industrial Light and Magic and Disney transformed Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas into a 3-D film format in this video.

Photo: Robert Hanashiro / USA TODAY.

Tim Burton discusses the impact of the film at this USATODAY.com article:

“It makes the movie weirdly better; you just see it the way it was meant to be — completely dimensional,” says Burton, 48, on a visit to his native Southern California from his adopted home in London. “It takes the story and actually deepens it. I see details in the sets that I don’t remember seeing.”

Burton has resisted tampering with the 1993 film that has become a cult classic. With so many current movies generating sequels or even forcing out a trilogy, Burton’s Nightmare stands alone. There will not be another installment, he says. But that’s not for lack of trying on the part of Disney, the studio that released Nightmare.

Burton — whose most recent films are The Corpse Bride and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and who is in pre-production on the screen adaptation of another macabre story, Sweeney Todd — fends off sequel offers from “each new regime that comes in” at Disney. “I just say no. So, there won’t be a Jack Visits Thanksgiving World.”

Part of his desire to keep the movie a solo offering has to do with the connection the stop-motion animated film has forged with die-hard fans.

“You can’t screw around with that,” says Burton. “It’s not a mass-market kind of thing. It’s kind of specialized.”

Visit the official movie site at this link where you can watch Jack’s head follow your cursor, check out the remasterd soundtrack (with tracks from Marilyn Manson, Fiona Apple, and of course, Danny Elfman), and enter a contest to create a character and win a greeting from Tim Burton for your MySpace page.

IESB has video clips and photos from the coverage of the film’s premiere at the El Capitan theater in Hollywood at this link.

Thanks to Cartoon Brew for the first video link!

As the 2D version is one of my all-time favorite films, I’m really looking forward to seeing this…

Image: Copyright 2006 Walt Disney Pictures.

Trailer available at this link.

Image: Copyright 2006 Joel Fletcher

For a taste of what the film might look like, be sure to grab your red and blue anaglyph 3-D glasses and check out Joel Fletcher’s The Nightmare Before Christmas 3-D photo gallery. Joel was an animator at Skellington Productions and worked on the film.

Sources: Aint It Cool News and Cartoon Brew.

Check out this great Flickr photo from Princess Shari of Stitch from Walt Disney World…

“It’s Experiment 626!” - Originally uploaded by Princess Shari.

Because I’m a bit of a science geek, and because they have that ‘cool’ mythic element to them, news regarding Giant Squids excite me. Well, on September 27th, word spread that a live one had been photographed underwater!

Photograph courtesy T. Kubodera and K. Mori.

Photograph courtesy T. Kubodera and K. Mori.

The Japanese scientists estimated the animal to be an astounding 25 feet long but the longest giant squid on record measured 59 feet (18 meters), including its two elongated tentacles. Along with photos of the exciting discovery, National Geographic posted the story:

“The scientists say they snapped more than 500 images of the massive cephalopod before it broke free after snagging itself on a hook. They also recovered one of the giant squid’s two longest tentacles, which severed during its struggle.

The photo sequence, taken off Japan’s Ogasawara Islands in September 2004, shows the squid homing in on the baited line and enveloping it in “a ball of tentacles.”

Tsunemi Kubodera of the National Science Museum in Tokyo and Kyoichi Mori of the Ogasawara Whale Watching Association report their observations this week in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

“Architeuthis appears to be a much more active predator than previously suspected, using its elongated feeding tentacles to strike and tangle prey,” the researchers write.

They add that the squid was found feeding at depths where no light penetrates even during the day.”

Check out the link for the full story and more on the history of the Giant Squid!

This post seems like a fitting one to share one of my all-time favorite poster images. It was created by the great Disney Imagineers and can be seen in the book Walt Disney Imagineering: A Behind the Dreams Look at Making the Magic Real.

Image courtesy of Walt Disney Imagineering.

If anybody knows where I can get a large-scale poster of the above image, please contact me. I think I see the Nautilus now!

Pixar Animation Studio’s Joe Ranft passed away in a tragic car accident last night. Truly sad news. Please see my post at Luxo.

More great record covers found in the ‘Lost Archive’…

The Adventures of Pinocchio needed quite a bit of image retouching. To see the original scan I did, click here.

The Adventures of Pinocchio © United Artists Records, Inc.

The Sword in the Stone © 1972 Walt Disney Productions

Winnie the Pooh and the honey tree © 1965 Walt Disney Productions

Check out more great covers at the Vol. 1 posting I did a few weeks back.

Occasionally, I’ll venture into thrift shops, visit garage sales, and browse flea markets. Not to seek out discarded fortunes, but to discover great treasures in illustration, photography, and design. These come in many forms, but mostly materialize as books, toys, and even records.

LPs or albums, as records were also known, had a major plus over all other forms of music media, which was the size of area available for cover imagery. Even though a large majority featured lackluster photography, gaudy colors, impossible-to-read fonts, and forgettable titles, some great gems were produced during the vinyl years.

Scanned and retouched for your viewing enjoyment, I present the first 3 finds…

Produced by Peter Rabbit Records / Arc Sound Ltd.

Walt Disney’s Pinocchio © 1963 Walt Disney Productions

The Music Man © 1962 Warner Bros. Records, Inc.

You know how Lemmings supposedly commit mass suicide by jumping off cliffs? That myth really gained momentum from none other than a Disney movie that was filmed right here in Alberta. It’s amazing to think that one smaller Disney film had the effect of creating not only a false representation of an animal and its activities, but also helped create “a metaphor for the behavior of crowds of people who foolishly follow each other, lemming-like regardless of the consequences.”

Click here to read about the creation of the Lemming Suicide Myth.

I actually read this fascinating piece about a year and a half ago while searching the Internet for movies produced in Alberta. Thanks to thedisneyblog for the reminder.

Ever wonder what The Magic Kingdom looks like from the air? My wife and I have yet to experience Walt’s California creation, but perhaps you’ll recognize parts of the park you’ve been to. Thanks to the US Geological Survey, aerial photos from 2003 have been merged together to provide a stunning overhead view of the layout and size of Disneyland. If you’re on a high-speed connection, I recommend the 10 MB file for optimum quality viewing.

I wish I could’ve seen the park in its original condition, with the great design work of the 50’s and 60’s era and rides like 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. It seems Disneyland is undergoing constant renovations, with old rides being dismantled and modern ones erected in their place. This is all in order to attract new visitors and entice previous visitors to experience the park again. You never know if your favorite ride will be around for your next visit. Thankfully, with numerous photos and articles, the good folks at MiceAge.com keep us informed of the perpetual facelifts and upgrades at ‘The Happiest Place On Earth.’