Further Thoughts on Don Bluth's Thumbelina

A couple of days ago I published a video in which I go through Don Bluth's 1994 fairy tale film, Thumbelina (you can watch it here), and I thought I'd do a blog post as well so I could talk a bit more about the film (and maybe a little more seriously too).

The character paintings I made for my video, with palette tests alongside them.

For some reason, Thumbelina is one of the most nostalgic films of my childhood for me, and it's pretty odd watching it as an adult and being so aware of how cheesy it is, how much it desperately wants to be a Disney film, and how much songwriters Barry Manilow, Bruce Sussman, and Jack Feldman clearly wanted to go home and lie down forever after writing the brilliant 'Let Me Be Your Wings'.

I'm not particularly interested in Thumbelina's character, because she's fairly uninteresting and hollow for the most part. She exists as a vessel for beauty that other characters wish to possess. The portions of the movie which show her voice, captivating every living being she comes into contact with, and almost emanating from her through no direct will or consciousness of her own, remind me somehow of religious iconography and myth. She is the altar of the virgin at which the miscellaneous male creatures and captivated children are anointed. She is a symbol through which the other characters express themselves. A precious jewel which allows them to feel more connected to themselves. Like the one ring, they scramble to harness her through corrupt ownership.

Dialling it back a bit, I want to bring up the dog's moustache. Please look at it:

How did the dog grow a moustache like this? What is going here? What kind of genetics are in place to produce this hair growth pattern? A lot of the animals we see in the scene which introduces us to Thumbelina's home environment have character designs that feel a bit incongruent with the film's overall visual style. I'd include the dog in this, with his thick spaghetti limbs and the end of a plunger apparently glued to his head. I don't really understand what they were going for with a lot of these designs, as they're so lumpy and strange compared the designs of Thumbelina, or the fairy king and queen, or even the jitterbugs, who have a rounded, lumpy, childish look to them. It works much better for them because they're both insects and children. They don't look over-designed or out of place.

There are a few things that really draw me to this film though. Like the great designs for the fairies, and the glittery, golden aesthetics that surround them. The film is very well-paced and feels smooth to watch, despite having very little information, character, and even plot, really. Bearing that in mind, it's impressive how interesting I found the concept of the fairy monarchy and how they ride around in their golden carriage and have bees and stuff. The frost being brought in by the king and queen is such a great concept to lay underneath the thin narrative of the film's events. It's that kind of mystery and mysticism and imagery that I find captivating about fairy tales, so seeing elements of that brought through in a film like this is really cool to me. Despite Thumbelina's over the top, nonsensical, and frustrating elements, I personally find a sense of that deep forest of childhood imagination in it, undercutting its shallow heart. And hey, some of the animation is incredibly well done, so I think this will always be one of my favourite films, despite the fact that there are many things I think it could have done a lot better.

Also, I love sweeping, sudden romances if they're in the right context, and whilst Thumbelina and Cornelius could really benefit from having some more build up in their personalities as well as their relationship, at its core I do quite enjoy the instant captivation they seem to experience with each other, so whatever. But seriously, the bumblebee is the best character.

An unused animation test I made for my video.

Amazon Art Supplies & Stationery Wishlist

One of my favourite things to do is get sucked into the rabbit hole of browsing Amazon for art supplies, so I decided to put together a wishlist of art supplies I may or may not be coveting.

Disclaimer: the links used in this post are Amazon affiliate links. This means if you end up purchasing anything through my links I'll earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Maybe I'll earn enough to buy a Curly Wurly. That's the dream.

Anyway, on with the wishlist!

1. Cat/Panda/Bird Sticky Notes - £1.16/£1.20 each

The first items on my list are these ultra cute sticky notes. They come in three different designs (I think my favourite might be the panda set, but they are all delightful). They're just so nice. So sweet.

2. Black Paper Pad & White Sakura Gelly Roll Pens - £5.94 & £4.79

I love the idea of drawing on black paper, and I don't think I've done so since childhood (I also remember having a really cool notepad once which came with special pens that would change the colour of the page). I really want to try it again, so I've been scoping out some good white and light coloured pens, as well as sheets of black paper.

3. Blank Business Cards - £2.59

I thought it would be really fun to have a set of blank cards this size, so that I can draw my own unique business cards, or just small and portable drawings to give to people or leave in people's kitchens for them to find later. Something like that. I'm really into very small drawings in general, so I think this would be a really nice format. These also come in a lot of different colours, so I'd be tempted to get a few different ones (maybe black, white, and pink).

4. 'The Cat's Story' Pens - £3.99

I can't resist these. Look at them. It's way too satisfying to write with pens this cute.

5. Cat Stickers - £1.55

And finally, another cat-related item. I love stickers (especially flat ones, because they fit in diaries and on letters better), and I love the classic illustration style of these adorable cat stickers. I need millions of them to stick on everything, immediately.

☆☆☆

There, now I've got that out of my system I can rest easy for at least another twelve hours before I need to dive back in and look at more stickers and cat-focused stationery. Which item do you like best?

Schedules & Spider Bombs

Welcome to my bedroom, where paintings are drying on every surface and a small bean bag dog surveys my antics. As I write this I am listening to revered artist of the late 1990s, Billie Piper. Her song about asking a guy if he has a girlfriend and also telling him he looks cool is a transcendent exploration of the human psyche.

I've been doing some big paintings, and I recently started a new playthrough of Final Fantasy IX, so everything is going very nicely and I feel quite relaxed (it's the soothing sound of Billie Piper songs that really does it though). It also may be an omen worth mentioning, the fact that earlier on today I got a Girls Aloud song spontaneously stuck in my head, despite not hearing it for a very long time. What can it mean? A premonition of some kind?

Anyway, I guess I'm really enjoying my creative schedule at the moment, so I'm going to talk about that a little bit. I've started writing a to-do list when I get up in the morning, because it seems to help me feel more aware of what I'm doing. I usually keep lists like that on a sticky note anyway, but it's not really been a habit before for me to write/update a list in the morning for the day. I think it's really useful though, so I'm probably going to keep doing it for a while. It just helps to push me towards bigger projects or things with a higher priority.

I've been using the inside of a small notebook as a paint palette for a little while, and it's nice to use the same thing as a paint palette repeatedly and get to see the paint building up more and more. For the past while I've used scrap paper for my palettes, so I've missed that a bit.

When I'm done with something I'm doing, especially with something involving painting, I really like to do some aimless painting to round it off. It's a sort of meditative thing to close with, and it ends up giving me some nice extra paintings to work with a lot of the time as well. I like to make the effort to tidy my space up after painting too, because it always feels nicer to lay everything out again anyway, so I think it helps me to feel fresh each time I paint. Assuming there aren't paintings on every surface that still need to dry, because that happens fairly often.

In closing, here's a spider holding a bomb that I drew for no reason at all, as far as I know:

Painting The Cool S

For some reason the other day I painted a COOL S, and afterwards I thought to myself, yes, this is a good idea, let's do more. So I painted a lot of cool S'es (wow, that is incredibly awkward to pluralise). Here are many of them. I also made a video about painting them, which you can watch here.

It's so interesting and cool (heh) how ubiquitous the cool S is in people's childhoods, so I thought it would be really fun to paint it and give it some kind of personality. I mean, it looks great with a cute little hat, right?

If you get stuck for ideas when you're painting or drawing, my advice is basically to keep doing the same thing but then also put a hat on it. Creative block SOLVED.

I love the cool S a lot.

Now!

I love being cooped up in my lair, in gentle spring darkness with papers and biscuits all around me. I have this need to share things and always be doing and making stuff to post, and I have a notepad of ideas and possible things to do. I've been making some animated stuff lately, and I want to always be working on approx. 12 things. But I want to read forums all day and learn weird facts and laugh at jokes about bad movies, and I also want to sink away and into my own life and go do stuff in the kitchen.

It's always a balance trying to shift itself and break the equilibrium. Sometimes I feel like the only me is online, then other times I feel like the only me is the person making dinner and shivering and putting things back in drawers. There's a weird disconnect between the two worlds. I want to smoosh them together and pull them apart like strings of blu-tack.

One song in particular I think perfectly expresses the kind of disconnected, ambitious desire I feel in relation to this kind of internet/IRL longing, combined with acceptance of the pointlessness and randomness of being a human person who exists and how it's all... fine is The B-52's 'Song For A Future Generation':

"Wanna be mother-father?
Daughter-son, captain?
Wanna be ruler-king and empress?"

To me it encapsulates the spontaneity of feverishly pursuing desires, but also kinda has a lazy feel to it, like, whatever.

I just want to be and do everything, but also I just want to lie down.

Making Watery & Fast Paintings

I've been painting just about every day recently, so I end up with a lot of bits and pieces to put in different places. These paintings are from a few different painting sessions and have ended up coming together, gathering in my pictures folder like dust bunnies, so it made sense to post them as a collection.

For some reason I really miss drawing comic panels all of a sudden. It's just the format - there's something satisfying about putting things in boxes sometimes. It's as if I completely forgot for a while that I could draw a rectangle, and now my brain is like, "YEAH!!! RECTANGLES!!!!!!"

I've also really enjoyed using very watery, drippy paint lately. I like the way it gets all light and blobby and muddy. Like me waking up in the morning.

Using watery paint is a tense game of timing. You gotta get your shape out quickly, before it sinks in, bleeds, or blobs out. It's a bit risky, but when the results are good it's worth it.

I always feel like doing a really fast painting is really interesting and expresses some kind of animalistic part of me, or at least showcases how the way I draw is embedded in my muscle memory. I tend to like painting something more considered as well as making time to paint really loose and fast. Both inform the other, and both are fun in different ways.

This bunny looks so sad. I'm sorry, bunny.

Let's Play Bomberman Tournament: Meteors & Bunnies

I thought I would have a relaxing time and play some Game Boy Advance goodness, so I selected Bomberman Tournament to play. One thing I like about Bomberman is that he looks a bit like a moogle. Or a cross between a Power Ranger and a moogle, which might be better. This game has a bit of an RPG spin to it, with some odd pseudo Pokémon battles that play out in a semi-predetermined way after you select some commands at the start of battle. It feels a bit pointless, but it's still better than the Final Fantasy XIII battle system (I'm sorry, low hanging fruit and all that).

The game starts out with some meteors hitting the planet, and a doctor telling you to go off and speak to a guy about some bombs and animals or something, and you find yourself in a small town near a forest. People immediately ask you to run errands when you see them, which is a bit rude, but whatever.

I really like the art style going on in this game. Everything is nicely rounded, cute, and plump, qualities that I also expect to find in a cat. There are some discordant scenes drawn in a more angular style, but for the most part everything feels nice and coherent.

Soon you're heading into the local forest to find a ring and photograph an animal after some guy throws his camera into your hands. He's a photographer, but I guess he'll get any random stranger to take his photos for him, unless Bomberlad is also known for his photography skills. Maybe he has a photography zine I can purchase, featuring lots of very artistic shots of various bombs in pretty shafts of light. Does he have a Tumblr portfolio? Am I developing this reality in my head far too much? Perhaps.

I'm also laughing at this screen where a girl named Honey asks him his name, because it made me imagine that he's just a very normal middle-aged man trying to pretend he's cool and mysterious, and that 'Bomberman' is just a really obvious fake name. I bet it's all a lie and his name is actually Steve.

So you find your way through the forest, dealing with some very weird and wobbly plant life, and you eventually find a massive green bunny. This is the animal the photographer wanted you to snap, and happily the bunny loves posing, so you take a beautiful picture of it. It's at this point that I realise this game is excellent. Also the bunny is me.

Good game.