Showing posts with label Horace Horsecollar. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Summing Up 2013

Attempted Bloggery has been around for two and a half years now, so I no longer feel like the new kid on the block. This year, the blog published 433 individual posts, which is more than eight a week on average, and considerably more than last year's total of 375, thank you very much. Still, the daily format has been trying at times, because when I write about something I like to include everything but the kitchen sink, and then I occasionally add the kitchen sink anyway for good measure, and all this can be quite time-consuming, particularly when it's my turn to do the dishes.

The blog's format has changed a bit this year in ways I didn't foresee. Probably the most obvious change is that I'm entering the weekly New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest, something I never dreamed I'd be capable of , and I'm documenting the results here no matter how disheartening. For those of you keeping score at home, my success in this contest to date can be counted on no hands. My new pastime all got started with Danny Shanahan's Caption Contest, the very first contest I entered, although only one full round of that contest has been completed thus far. Most encouragingly, in the midst of my second round of the Moment magazine Cartoon Caption Contest, I've been made a finalist twice, and a new winning caption should be declared soon, so I still have a shot at the big time here. This latter contest represents the sum total--two--of my captioning successes to date, and I find it highly motivating, particularly after dealing with the New Yorker contest and its 5,000-odd weekly entries..

Without warning in March, this blog started receiving page views from China and of course I, student of global trends that I am, took note of it immediately. After more than a year and a half of publication, this humble weblog was being visited by someone in the world's most populous nation. Something remarkable has happened, as I believe the Chinese government still goes to great lengths to prevent its people from freely surfing the internet. I in turn certainly have never had anything remotely civil to say about the evil government there. For December, China placed seventh among nations here in page views, and they now have moved up to ninth in all-time page views, just edging out Australia. It's never been clear to me just what anyone from the People's Republic is hoping to find here, but I applaud them for taking an interest. One thing seems clear to me: when the malevolent Chinese government sees fit to shut down our internet, Attempted Bloggery will not be spared. Read it while you can.

All-Time Page Views by Country, December 30, 2013

You may have noticed that this blog has become, like this blogger, more bottom-heavy. By that I mean simply that a lot of content is now located in the note at the bottom of the blog posts, including links to older posts. I started out my blogging career doing this often, then deliberately avoided the practice for a while thinking it was getting out of hand, but as the blog has aged I've now found it useful to put in more and more references to relevant older content and to a variety of outstanding internet sites.

One very minor tweak is that I no longer attempt to write posts about the Disney short "The Band Concert" on summer Fridays, but for auld time's sake I will return to it right now on this winter Tuesday. Here's Horace Horsecollar and I say he's about to welcome in the New Year! Who's going to argue? Have a Happy New Year, everybody!

Horace Horsecollar cel set-up with nonproduction background
from Walt Disney's "The Band Concert" (1935)

Film Still 8:46

Walt Disney's "The Band Concert" (1935)

Note: I'm not sure where I found this image, which appears to be an animation cel set-up, perhaps with a Courvoisier background. If you know, please drop me a line.

My archive of New Year's Eve posts can be accessed here. Bring your own champagne.

Older posts about Walt Disney's "The Band Concert" may be seen here.

0999

Friday, September 2, 2011

"The Band Concert" in Good Housekeeping

One afternoon late in 1987, I went to an exhibition of extraordinary Walt Disney Studios magazine artwork at Alexander Gallery in New York. Each framed piece was a set of drawings retelling the story of a new Disney cartoon short. They had been published each month for some years in the magazine Good Housekeeping and were apparently new to the market.

The illustrations were just beautiful, but what I remember most vividly was how surprised I was at how expensive these fine drawings were. They were individually custom-matted and framed. At the time, it was supposed that all the surviving drawings from this series were on display in the gallery, but that turned out not to be the case.

Here's one set of illustrations I didn't see that day. Whether Disney subsequently found and released them from their archives I don't know. Tom Wood's drawings for Disney's "The Band Concert" (1935) are really top notch, as befits a truly top notch animated cartoon!

2011 February Dallas Signature Vintage Comics & Comic Art Auction #7030

Sold for:	$20,315.00 (includes BP ) Bid Source: HA.com/Live

Auction Ended On:	Feb 25, 2011
Item Activity:	16 Internet/mail/phone bidders

Tom Wood The Band Concert Walt Disney Illustration Original Art (Good Housekeeping, 1935). While Heritage has been privileged to offer about 30 Good Housekeeping sequences over the years, this is one of the earliest (the feature began in April 1934 and this is the tenth one) we've offered, ties in with the most significant cartoon, and is one of the most colorful and fun! This is also Mickey Mouse's first Good Housekeeping appearance.
This is probably the first piece of finished "Band Concert" art to see print. It was featured in the January 1935 issue of Good Housekeeping(the cartoon short was released in February 1935), and it's been well-documented that Tom Wood based his art on the storyboards of a given cartoon.
This promotes what would be the first theatrical Mickey Mouse cartoon in color, The Band Concert. Often considered one of the very best Disney cartoons of all time, this delightful tale of Mickey's rag-tag team of musicians gets the full Tom Wood treatment here, with wonderful results. The art is in ink and watercolor, in connected segments that have an approximate image size of 18" x 26", and the art, along with a copy of the text, has been professionally linen-matted and Plexiglas framed to an overall size of 28.25" x 36.5". There is some very minor paper aging to several of the connected segments, leaving the art in Very Good condition. What a perfect item to go along with The Band Concert animation cel, offered elsewhere in this auction! From the Kerby Confer Collection.

Wood, Tom: Tom Wood came to Disney Studios in 1932 from his position as a Los Angeles daily newspaper artist. He worked at the Studio as publicity artist, assumed primary responsibility for the monthly Good Housekeeping page as well as the creation of publicity stills for the theater, until his untimely death in 1940.