We all know that a good person can be a bad artist.
But no one will ever be a genuine artist
unless a great human being and thus also a good one.
Marc Chagall

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.
Imagination embraces the entire world,
and everything there will be to know and understand.
Imagination points to all we might yet discover and create.
Albert Einstein

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter
and those who matter don't mind.
I ♥! Dr. Seuss

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
Eleanor Roosevelt


EllieAndFriendsClub YouTube Channel ♫ ♪ ♫ ♩ ♪

What a pure pleasure…spent down time this week listening to hundreds of uplifting songs about inspiring women to create the Intergalactic Ellie Fan Club channel!  : )  Whoowhooo! (Not official Pixar — Ellie on film charms everyone; her Intergalactic Fan Club frankly doesn’t pull any punches. When it comes to female foeticide, burkas, genital mutilation, and all male anything — brace yourself — Ellification of the universe is a forgone conclusion.
 
(Bless you precious muses!! Art is Powerful. Hope this little μούσα-who-could finds you inspired and smiling! Special thanks to Emma Coats, Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, Ronnie del Carmen, and the entiré Pixar story crew for bringing this beautiful archetype to us!)

The Importance of Play to Creativity

“In my experience, the thing that has the most significant impact on a movie’s budget–but never shows up in a budget–is morale. If you have low morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about 25 cents of value. If you have high morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about $3 of value. Companies should pay much more attention to morale.”
Andrew Stanton  http://blogs.bnet.com/businesstips/?p=1496
 

“Every time I’d have to show Up! to John Lasseter or Andrew Stanton, I would hate it because I just want to be left alone and make the movie. And yet when once I do show it to them, it made it so much better, especially hearing their comments. They’re great filmmakers themselves, and we have this great system at Pixar where we show each other our work about every four or five months and get feedback from all those guys. They’re such amazing filmmakers. To get comments from them is fantastic.” Peter Docter
 
” It’s very supportive, although it’s not always easy, because we’re all very honest with each other with constructive criticism. It’s like we’re all on the same team, and if the whole team wins, then a place like Pixar will not have to go away. We all get together every 4-6 months to look at each other’s films. It’s not some sort of tribunal or anything. It’s almost like a writers’ room kind of feel, where you get a chance for objectivity from others. If you work on something alone too long, it’s like staring at yourself in the mirror—you stare too long, and you start seeing a million things wrong, and you start changing things just because you can. So you need your peers—somebody you can trust creatively—who can say, “I think this is great, don’t change it,” or, “This is not working as much as you think so change it.” Andrew Stanton
 
“I also like a comment I’ve heard Andrew Stanton say, which is “talent isn’t fair.” I’m lucky enough to work at a company where I don’t have a chance of being the smartest person in the room, and I like it that way. I won’t lie; it’s hard to work with so many talented people, you have to have a certain diamond hard sense of self or you can come home bummed out after a hard day at work. But it does cause you to bring your A game. Luckily, we tend to do a very good job of hiring people that are actually nice, and really want to work with other people.” Michael B. Johnson
 
“We’re not supervised. We’re sort of allowed, like an independent filmmaker, to do what we want. You don’t get that freedom anywhere else. And this is the only studio outside of Disney, when Walt Disney ran it, where an artist runs the whole place. Here, it’s John Lasseter, and that trickles down.” Andrew Stanton
 
“My motto has always been, ‘Be wrong as fast as you can’. Which basically tells you that we know that the process involves messiness and risk-taking, but that’s what art is. Art is not doing the same thing twice, art is not playing it safe; art is taking risks….”
Andrew Stanton
 
“The one thing that I’m very proud of about Pixar, that I think does make a difference, is that it’s not some “Nirvana”, Willy Wonka chocolate-river-place where everybody walks around with great ideas and we just make them. It’s a bunch of hard-working guys that really know that, like, it’s all about getting on your bike and falling over as often as you can. What Pixar does really well is… make it a supportive atmosphere to make mistakes… In a weird way, the process is dependent on you making mistakes… That’s how we find a lot of freshness to things.” Andrew Stanton

Playful Narrative as an Educational Tool

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” Plato

“In play our burdens feel lighter and we are opened to new possibilities. But play goes even deeper – it shapes our brains to make us smarter and more able to adapt to situations.
 
Our success as an innovative culture rests first, on our recognizing the importance of play, then on our allowing play into daily living. 



The National Institute for Play believes that as play is woven into the fabric of social practices, we will dramatically transform our personal health, our relationships, the education we provide our children and the capacity of our corporations to innovate. ” The National Institute for Play

 
Isn’t it strange there is an “Institute for Play”?!? : )))))
 
Stuart Brown on how humor, games, roughhousing, flirtation and fantasy are more than just fun. Plenty of play in childhood makes for happy, smart adults — and keeping it up can make us smarter at any age.
 
Ken Robinson on the topic: “Creativity is as important in education as literacy.”

…………………………………………….Sports are for Idiots…………………………………………….

“This is a young lady not watching a football game, not watching a basketball game — she is watching exploration live from thousands of miles away and it’s just dawning on her what she’s seen — when you get a jaw drop you can inform. You can put so much information into that mind it’s in full recept mode — this I hope will be a future engineer or a future scientist in the battle for Truth.” Quoted from this fascinating YouTube video on new technologies for deep-sea exploration (17:20): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHU8G6icwsY
 
Amen! Why do so many people spend their lives watching grown men with balls play together in stadiums subsidized by taxpayers? Why do we teach our children this waste of humanity is acceptable, much less worth accolades? (Let’s not even start discussing the single worst economic decision Americans make, repeatedly, throughout their lives — their choice in automobiles: pickup trucks, sports cars, and SUVs. New too, of course. How much education, travel, and peace-of-mind has been exchanged for vehicles, debt, and enterslavement?)
 
Ok this blog is often over-the-top rhetorically…sports are important for exercise and development of leadership, teamwork, and cooperation  2¢

Purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrcasso!

Purrcasso is an art and craft auction/gala benefiting the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society in Berkeley, CA.
 
It’s that time of year again and they’re in need of contributions. The event will be split into two parts: an evening auction of fine art/illustration and a daytime craft fair. If you’re an artist who would like to donate a cat or dog themed piece of art, check out the official website for details.
 
Submissions are due by October 17th, 2009.
 
The show itself will be held November 7th and 8th (location still to be determined), so if you’re an art collector who enjoys the work of animation artists you may want to check it out.
 
All money raised will go to the care for animals in the Berkeley Animal Shelter.

Disney/Pixar YouTube Channel Up and Running…

Pixar just started a YouTube Channel! The coolest thing about it are verrrrrrry personal, verrry intimate mind-meld interviews with John Lasseter. Amazing. Much more informative and interesting than articles or conference presentations…he really comes across as a genuine, smart, uplifting person. Check out this interview on the role of storytelling at Pixar: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9p7YwKteG4&feature=channel

Green Dye, Pink Arms, Yellow Hair = Fun!

Check out Furry Puppet Studio’s cool uplifting characters at:

Looking forward to seeing more cheerful fun creative characters from Zack Buchman, Maria Gurevich, and the furilicious Furry Puppet Team.
“Don’t let their innocent faces fool you. On the inside, these puppets are as complex as the USS Enterprise.” If you are interested in the technology behind puppetry check out these eye sockets on Flickr.
…click their site’s grey gizmos! ; )

Mars Artists YouTube Channel Now Broadcasting to a Happening Screen Near You…

The Mars Artists YouTube Channel is up and running with an eleven part presentation given by historically influential space artists at the last convention of the International Mars Society (University of Maryland, College Park, 2009). The coolest part of our channel thus far is its new icon, a “collage of babies” smelling an orange rose…not exactly what one would think of when reflecting upon Mars, hopefully. Enjoy!

(Oh! And after updating the Mars Society’s YouTube Channelaesthetics and after publishing 72 new videos, subscriptions jumped 4,900 percent and friends increased 6,500 percent!! –Well…we only had 4 friends and 5 subscriptions but at least now we are on our way to gaining Partnership Status with YT!! Whoowhoo!! …The astonishing thing to note, though, is that even premier channels have merely a few thousand friends and subscribers. With 10 years of superb video to be published from our archives we will soon surpass them! Innnnnndeed.)

What would Zheng He say? "TRAITORS RETURN TO EARTH!"

PROPAGANDA TO PREVENT ANOTHER MULTI-DECADE DREAM-CRUSHING LUNAR/LEO DIVERSIONARY VOYAGE OF COWARDS TO ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE:
 

Lunar Astronaut Buzz Aldrin came out in favor of the HEROIC “Mars to Stay” mission architecture! Thank God!!
 
“They need to go there more with the psychology of knowing that you are a pioneering settler and you don’t look forward to go back home again after a couple a years,” Aldrin said. But that’s not to say they’ll never return to Earth. Years down the line, there may be the opportunity for a return mission, depending on technological advancements. “At age 30, they are given an opportunity. If they accept, then we train them, at age 35, we send them. At age 65, who knows what advances have taken place. They can retire there, or maybe we can bring them back.” The full article may be read at Universe Today: http://www.universetoday.com/2008/10/23/aldrin-mars-pioneers-should-not-return-to-earth/
 

Zheng He was the 13th Century HEROIC Chinese admiral of the largest expeditionary fleet assembled for hundreds of years following his time. Shortly after his death the ships which had carried him to India, Africa, and beyond were burned in their docks by a new reactionary Ming emperor. Within a hundred years Christopher Columbus had sailed to America and China began its slow decline into tribute to foreign powers.
 
In China, 11 July is Maritime Day (中国航海日), devoted to the memory of Zheng He’s first voyage. For more about Zheng He, please visit:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He
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