Irena Sendler – time to acknowledge her

This is basically a cut and paste from an email that’s going round but I feel it’s important. This was a remarkable woman and I’m completely amazed that she’s almost  unknown.

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Look at this lady – Let us never forget! The world hasn’t just become wicked…it’s always been wicked. The prize doesn’t always go to the most deserving.

12 May 2008 (aged 98)

During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the Warsaw ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist.

She had an ‘ulterior motive’.

She KNEW what the Nazi’s plans were for the Jews (being German).

Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried

and she carried in the back of her truck a burlap sack, (for larger kids).

She also had a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto.

The soldiers of course wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking covered the kids/infants noises.

During her time of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants.

She was caught, and the Nazi’s broke both her legs, arms and beat her severely.

Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept them in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard.

After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it and reunited the family.

Most had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes or adopted.

Last year Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize.

She was not selected.

President Obama won one year before becoming President for his work as a community organizer for ACORN and Al Gore won also — for a slide show on Global Warming.

It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended.

This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the six million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900

Catholic priests who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated! Now, more than ever, with Iran , and others, claiming the HOLOCAUST to be ‘a myth’.

It’s imperative to make sure the world never forgets, because there are others who would like to do it again.

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Here’s more on her  I recently saw a movie called The Piano Player (also based on a true story of life behind the walls of the Warsaw ghetto during WWII) and have to say when it ended I was just stunned into stillness. The human heart is a strange, wonderful, sacred, terrible place. It is full of pure potential to go either way.

Cool app for photographers

Before I actually get down to doing that photography course, here’s something I’ll definitely get when it comes around.  Click on the image to follow the link.

Planning your animation…

Sometimes I find something in passing that is so valuable and I know I cannot possible afford to miss this. But can’t absorb it straight away – so excuse me for using this blog as my pantry.

Oh stop moaning, you’re bound to find it useful as well if you’re planning an animation. And you are, aren’t you?

Really good tips from the creators of South Park

Click on the image to view the clip – it comes at the perfect time for me – am about to work on a new animated short. Cool that New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts shared this with the rest of the script-assemblers out there. Thank you, also to the New York Times!

There is only one Bjork!

Mysterious Paper Sculptures

Such a beautiful soul lives in Ediburgh… or is suspected to live there. Check out this beautiful series of sculptures and poetic gestures. Very soul-feeding, utterly lovely.

If you illustrate using Photoshop …

Here are some really, really cool brushes from many different sources at Vandelay Design’s blog – and they are downloadable for free! Brushes come in useful in more ways than is at first obvious. Just one massive sweep across an entire background using one of these babies at a ‘humungous’ setting will be so inspirational you’ll spend days studying the possibilities of the other variants.  Not to mention actually drawing a picture with them….

 

 

I see comments are now closed on Vandelay Design’s blog. Well I’m sure he was deluged with such tsunamis of gratitude that he just couldn’t take it anymore. But – thank you so much, guys.

So far I’ve looked at those by Jay Hilgert  of Bittbox  who is responsible for the sample reproduced on the left and Blogspoon Graphics who does watercolour brushes and also spraypaint brushes as far as I can gather from the little I’ve breezed through so far. There seem to be around a hundred others, including birds, wings, leaves, grass, sparkly light effects – time doesn’t allow. It’ll take you … a long time. I’m retiring exhausted and going off to get a sustaining coffee.

I think my next job is going to be exceeding beautttttiful…. I feel massively inspired. Not sure why I’ve never gone looking on the net for new brushes, but I didn’t. It just hadn’t occurred to me.

Well,  that’s at an end.

My search is at a beginning.

Interview with directors of Pixar’s Pooh movie

Always fun to go behind the scenes at my favourite animation company. Pixar rocks! Looking forward to seeing what they mean about the characters interacting with the text. Check it out here.

Weekend work for couch and hammock

Most designers have a certain level of skill. Sometimes it’s hard-won, with many years of study. Okay – usually, it’s hard-won etc.

Then you get the geniuses who just seem to Have the Eye. Yes, let’s count in those cave-dwellers with their exquisite lines and beautiful shading. No, cancel that, that was more in the pure illustration category. And yet – it performed the task of advertising. The ancestors needed to be communicated with as to which brand of animal would be good for the clan that day.

Both these categories, the Tribe of the Hard-Won Skillz and the Clan of The Eye that Balances,  can benefit from intensive reading of the people who’ve gone before. I myself really needed to see this article today.

Because I have to confess I don’t often read about the work of other designers, and I didn’t spend years at college, tech or varsity. I’m more or less self-taught, and learned on the job, the first of which I acquired purely because I could draw, back in ’85 when things like that sometimes happened. So – this article happened along at the right time – actually it’s waaaaaaaaaaaay overdue! What an epiphany! Naturally I’ve browsed design books and so on – who can resist them? But when someone’s complimented me on a design, there’s always that faintly surprised feeling. I knew or hoped it worked, but wasn’t sure why.

So – now I know what to do. This little blog has plenty of names to start off with – any designer reading this and the recommended material will probably also find things much easier in the future, by standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before and not re-inventing the wheel when a hubcap is called for. I wouldn’t dream of just animating without studying it carefully first and reading as many animation books as possible, so – it’s odd that I allowed this gap to remain in my design knowledge.

And you? Did you also shun knowing about the work of others in case you were accused of ripping off  ’…………?’ That was my purist little outlook. I wanted so to be Original. To have an individual Eye. But – a lot of knowledge is a useful thing.

Time to hit the hammock with the Names. Good company in a hammock is always a pleasure. Even more so when you’re ‘working’ and ‘researching’.

Fonts! The Utter Glory of Fonts

Thing with fonts is that they have so much to offer the designer – you can match the brand’s personality with several different fonts out there. Or design your own like these students: Check out the amazing work on this brilliantly-conceived website. It keeps changing every time you visit it, different word, colours change as well… love it.

Sometimes I wish I did more design because of the sheer delight of fonts – which at first glance seem so limiting compared to a picture. But they speak a language all their own, and not only designers are affected and influenced by them.