-Adrian Shaughnessy, How to be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul

Really now, i just added it to my website…only about a year late. I still love it though, and am currently working on getting back into motion graphics again- a bit stuggling though with my aging computer (my after effects has officially crashed and died). No time for excuses though, I’m figuring something out. Stay posted for more animation in the future!

Happy place #1 is one of my ALL TIME favorite illustrators, Winsor McCay. Whenever I’m feeling bored and uninspired, I go to the happy place of Mr. McCay in my mind and think about his wonderful drawing skills and spot on perspective and just overall AMAZING ART. A few minutes of this and I’m usually feeling motivated again.

Winsor was born probably in 1869 (what his tombstone says) although he himself claimed 1971 and the census reports say 1867. His original name was Zenas Winsor McKay, which, he dropped for just “Winsor McCay” before his parents sent him to business school in Michigan in 1886. Here he obtained his only formal art instruction, which was very brief. In 1889 he moved to Chicago with dreams of studying at the Art Institute, only to realize that he didn’t have enough cash to do so (still an unobtainable goal today for many students…). So instead, he got a job at the National Printing and Engraving Company, producing woodcuts for circus and theatrical posters, which sounds like a pretty awesome “setback” to me (oh schucks I have to get a job creating posters for a living)(and printmaking, GOSH).

SO fast forward, he only stayed in Chicago for two years before moving to Ohio, getting married, having babies and getting a job for a local newspaper submitting weekly drawings. In 1903 he landed a job at The New York Herald and moved to New York to become famous. From 1904-1911 he produced most of the work he is famous for today. Apparently he was very prolific during this time; I read in one biography that his work produced during these years “surpasses the work of some equally famous cartoonists” and also something about “inner demons” driving him to draw…Anyway, 1905 was the year he created Little Nemo in Slumberland which basically revolutionized the comic strip as people knew it. This is really what made him famous and the strip ran until 1911. Readers of Little Nemo were literally addicted to the wild story line (some claiming Slumberland was way cooler than the surprisingly trippy land of Oz) and became dedicated readers of the paper solely to read McCay’s strip every week.

one "episode" of Little Nemo

In 1911 for unclear reasons, McCay left The Herald and went to work for The Hearst publication, The American which turned out to be a bad deal for everyone involved; The Herald lost it’s star illustrator and McCay apparently lost a lot of his freedom since Hearst demanded that he not make any appearances outside of New York AND that he quit creating comic strips and begin working on more serious editorial pieces for the paper. Around this time, McCay had begun experimenting with animation and he debuted his most famous film, Gertie the Dinosaur in 1914 to crazy awesome reviews. If you haven’t seen it, you can actually watch the whole film in two parts on youtube. Here’s a quick clip:

McCay’s editorial work began to suffer as a result of him putting all of his time and effort into his animations. His contract with Hearst ended in 1924 so he went back to The Herald for one last go at Little Nemo but unfortunately audience interest had by this time mostly dried up and the strip was canceled in 1926 and was never finished. He then went back to The Hearst to do press illustrations until his death in 1934.

poster advertising McCay

Like most topics, you can find out a lot more on Winsor McCay if you do your own, more extensive research. This is just some basic info I’ve pooled together. There’s also a blog called Meeting McCay that centers around an event that happens every year in Michigan. And ALSO, I recently stopped by Columbia to pick up my diploma from the spring and saw a poster for a lecture that will be held this week in the Wabash Building which I will be attending:

Winsor McCay – Conservative Revolutionary October 28, 2009 6:30 – 7:30 pm, Hokin Lecture Hall, room 109, 623 S. Wabash building. Free and open to the public.

welcome to the new and hopefully final home of my blog. i’ve tried more blogging sites than i can remember in the past few years with at least double the amount of actual blogs, all initiated with the intent of writing about various fields of interest. I’ve had the personal blog, the photography blog, the i’m-going-to-france blog, etc. but now i’ve decided to write about something that i actually know about and something that is close to my heart: illustration and design.

this blog will not only be used for sharing interesting news pertaining to the design world, but will also be a place to document and display my visual process of various projects and assignments i will be working on.

i’ve also started this site simply because i believe having an audience keeps one motivated to keep producing work and that making one’s work and ideas accessible to others in one’s community allows for open discussion and the sharing of other ideas and work, which just motivates everyone involved. it’s all about motivation.

so i hope that you enjoy this place and you keep coming back.

a. b.