With a little boy on the way I find myself checking out more and more children’s books, especially ones with interesting and quirky illustration. In Waterstones today I spotted a great book by Oliver Jeffers called “The Way Back Home” about a little boy who finds an aeroplane in his bedroom cupboard and flies to the moon, where he finds he’s not the only one that’s lost. It was a little while later, after getting back and Googling, that I realised I’d seen his work before.

Anyway, here’s his site, and an interview. Enjoy.

I had a Halloween post all ready but never got around to posting it. I guess it’s a bit late now so I’ll have to save it for next year. C’est la vie.

This, however, I do have to share. Friends of a friend of a friend (yeah, we’re that close) created (and dressed up as) a Big Daddy and Little Sister from the Bioshock. Amusingly, the costumes are better than the ones at the games own launch event! (Thanks to See-ming for the tip!)

More Bioshock Halloween costumes on Cult of Rapture.

Update: Forgot to link the “making-of” set.

Update 2: Another video of a dad and his kids playing Big Daddy and Little Sisters. “no little sisters were harvested in the making of this video or when walking rapture looking for treats” (via Wonderland).

Possibly an enormous co-incidence, but the new animated Play-Doh bunnies commercial for Sony Bravia by ad agency Fallon bears a rather remarkable resemblance to one of artist duo Kozyndan’s earlier pieces of artwork, “What’s next, USA-chan?”

It really is a beautiful commercial, but a huge shame they haven’t credited the very obvious inspiration. Bad Sony. Again.

Chris Sanders, former Disney artist and the creator/director of Lilo and Stitch, finally has a website. He also released a new sketchbook at this year’s San Diego Comi-con which I’ll have to order a copy of to sit alongside the one he printed last year on my bookshelf.

Monkey: Journey to the West: The latest collaborative project by Gorillaz co-creators Jamie Hewlett (also famous for creating Tank Girl) and Damon Albarn is an opera based on the 16th century Chinese novel “Journey to the West” — better known, thanks to the BBC re-dubbing of the 1970s Japanese TV-series, as Monkey. Lots of info, illustrations and photos can be found on the myspace page.

The show started at the Manchester Palace Theatre last night and continues until the 7th July. It then moves to the Theatre de Chatelet in Paris from 13th September until the 13th October.

“Imagine: Damon and Jamie’s Excellent Adventure“, a documentary on the show, premieres on Wednesday 4th July at 10.35pm on BBC1 in the UK. The site contains clips from the forthcoming show.

I never knew him by name, but I was certainly familiar with his work. Charley Harper was most well known for his highly stylised bird, insect and wildlife illustrations, particularly for the U.S. National Parks Service.

Charley liked to say, that when he paints a bird, he doesn’t count all the feathers in the wings – he just counts the wings. Minimal realism, he called it, and his unique and precise style continues to resonate and inspire his admirers.

A new book, “Charley Harper: An Illustrated Life“, is being published next month, edited by Todd Oldham, on his six decade long career. More details can be found on the publisher’s website.

• Charley Harper Artwork
• Cornell Lab of Ornithology Article
• Illustrations from The Golden Book of Biology (1962)
• More from The Golden Book of Biology
• Charles Harper Flickr group
• Cincinnati Enquirer Obituary

(thanks Ward)

There are a whole bunch of rumours about a new Monkey Island game flying around that almost definitely aren’t true. Probably. Either way, here’s some fantastic concept artwork by Steve Purcell.

The I Am 8-Bit 2007 exhibition opened on Tuesday at the Gallery Nineteen Eighty Eight in LA. Thankfully, for those of us too far away to enjoy the video game inspired artwork in person, there are loads of places to get a sampling online:

• Gallery Nineteen Eighty Eight
• Cartoon Brew
• Destructoid
• Fort90 part one
• Fort90 part two

Mark Ryden’s The Tree Show at the Michael Kohn Gallery in LA.

“Trees, like the giant sequoias, can inspire religious awe in people. Other folks see lumber. These amazing, beautiful living things took thousand of years to grow, and some people want to cut them down, the faster the better.”

“The show is about our relationship to nature,” Ryden says. “When Christianity plowed over paganism, man was seen as dominant over nature, and we lost our spiritual connection to the natural world around us.”

A preview of artwork to be shown at the I Am 8-Bit show from, oddly, this year’s Game Developers Conference. The official site is here (but empty) but you can still see some of the older ones from last time here.

The Skirball Cultural Center in LA is currently hosting an exhibition of Saul Bass’ film-based work until April 1st. I missed the show at the Design Museum in London a couple of years ago and kicked myself that I did. If you’re near to the sunny part of California it might be worth taking a look.

Once upon a time Walt Disney: Remember the Walt Disney art exhibition that I told you about last month which is currently showing at the Grand Palais in Paris? Well, we’ve just got back and I have to say that it exceeded all expectations; the thing was huge — three floors of gorgeous animation history chronologically laid out for my consumption!

After a 20 minute queue outside in the rain (I put the long line down to being a holiday weekend) we finally got inside where I was immediately mis-recognised as a French actor. My poor grasp of the French language eventually gave me away as an imposter and the guy apologised and wished me a good holiday.

Highlights for me were seeing many many pieces of original Mary Blair concept art for Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, Eyvind Earle’s numerous, enormous, background pieces for Sleeping Beauty and other films, Salvador Dali’s concept work for Destino (and the film played in its entirety), and many original character sheets and sketches.

When I first saw the Mary Blair work I actually had to practically press my nose against the glass to check that they were the real thing and not just prints. They were, indeed, the real thing and I was delighted to be able to see her pencil outlines just visible beneath the paint! This is the kind of thing you never get to see in coffee table books, now matter how good. Just seeing how the Mad Hatter’s hat, for example, was originally sketched much larger brought her thought process to life.

Eyvind Earle wasn’t a Disney artist that I knew much about before this exhibition but I was blown away by his concept work and, in particular, backgrounds. The first time I saw one of his paintings I stopped and couldn’t move away from it… quite literally! After viewing the pieces from afar I was drawn in to inspect the detail of each one… the combination and use of colour, the painting techniques on his massive paintings. No print, or indeed DVD, could ever do this detail justice! What’s more fantastic is that these are backgrounds; emphasising that numerous art forms must be combined, with equal importance, to produce a truly outstanding animated feature or short.

Low lights? The inability to take any photos of all the fantastic stuff on display… (wishing I’d bought a notebook and pen with me) and the disappointing selection of prints and postcards available in the shop, postcards were mostly poor crops of incredible artwork and really didn’t do the originals justice, especially after just being overwhelmed by them in the flesh. The book and the guidebook were only available in French and printed on some rather cheap paper stock (when the exhibition reaches Montreal later in the year I’ll be interested to see if an English language guidebook becomes available). A shame really, but I couldn’t leave empty handed. I picked up a print of a Marc Davis sketch of Bambi’s Thumper which was a rather reasonable six euros. I also regret not purchasing the accompanying DVD but, as we were on a very tight budget, I just couldn’t afford to.

And talking of not being able to afford not to… if you’re in Paris before the 15th January, or in or around Montreal between March 8 and June 24th, you really can’t afford to miss this.

If you want a complete overview of the show, take a look at this article at Animated Views (thanks Jenny)

Update: Michael Barrier mentions in his post about the exhibition that an English language edition of the book is available to pre-order on Amazon.

Designer Stefan Bucher has started a Daily Monster blog where he creates a new monster every day from an ink blot.

(via Cartoon Brew… again!)

Il Etait une Fois Walt Disney: I meant to write about this earlier, but I got so excited that I’d actually be seeing it next month that I almost completely forgot! Le Grand Palais in Paris is running an fantastic exhibition of classic Disney artwork alongside the works that inspired them. It runs until January 15th 2007, so there’s still time to catch it before the exhibition moves to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from March 8 to June 24th 2007.

There’s a superb slideshow of artwork at l’Express and Cartoon Brew (where I originally found out about the exhibition) has a few more details as well.

Update: I’ve been! Read my report here.