BEAT Magazine

So the last month or two has been a bit of a mad one. On friday, we head to the printers to pick up 5000 copies of the #1 issue of BEAT Magazine. It is  a local culture magazine for Torquay, published monthly, featuring articles on local bands & artists, street style, event reviews & a total Live Listings - over two pages, offering something for every night of the month.

We began talking about the magazine in the midst of the planning for a local art shop. We wanted to open up a little place where we could sell local art, put on classes - Life Drawing, Tai Chi, Meditation, & promote art in the local area. The more we spoke about it, the more we became aware of the incline of the hill. BEAT Magazine was something Steve had been doing for a while online. We decided some hazy green tea fueled night to make a print copy of the magazine, and work began. This was only about a month ago, maybe less.

The magazine is 16 pages, full colour. We are a team of three currently & have plans to expand. My friend Steve is the editor & in charge of advertising. I am the graphic designer, but have also been involved with other areas. & Dena is the newest member, in charge of press/photography.

Anywho, it's been quite a difference to animation, although it shares alot of similarities. Primarily, being a creative venture it shares many of the same attributes; working to a deadline, idea conception, style & decisions on aesthetics. I've found it pleasing the turn around time of something like this compared to animation; as I said the magazine has been from conception, birth to the end result something like a month.

\it's been alot of fun to do. We are really passion fueled in our desire - we can see things happening in Torquay (culturally) but not everybody is aware, we want to be the thread that winds through & pulls it all together. We're really inspired in our desire to see people motivated in our home town.

So if you're in the area, look out for Issue #1 available from the 1st! We are also holding a Launch Party to CELEBRATE! Come on down!

www.beat-magazine.com

Re:Papers papers papers... and the future!

Brotherly Love

A humongous event here at Mickey Mouse Has Grown Up a Cow (aka Tom Gameson's blog).. we have my first ever guest poster! Comes straight from the lips of ma boy Jimbo Cox, read it and believe..

As someone who, since turning eighteen, has always been employed (including through university, entirely) and has never been on benefits, I think the dole is fantastic. The safety net it provides is an element of our country I am proud of.

In my opinion, benefits will always be abused, but denying people money that need it because of this abuse by others is evil.

I find it very interesting that The Conservatives inherited a ‘’broken Britain’’ according to many, yet people are less moved by the fact that The Red Cross are giving donations to homes in The U.K for the first time since the Second World War this winter. To me this shows that people consider being unable to buy a third family car due to Labour policies including benefits being exploited (when really it was a global financial crisis) more ‘’’broken’’ than people on your street receiving aid usually reserved for third world countries in crisis. And that is harrowing.

I do find it strange how some benefit receivers appear to live so wealthily, for example, a mate of mine back home who has a pregnant girlfriend and a son bought my TV off me (that I needed money for) to put in his bedroom! His girlfriend does not work and I work a lot harder than him, yet he has a lot more for himself. Perhaps this is because I spend my money on plane tickets. Truthfully, I don’t seek the reason, because I don’t care. To be perfectly honest, I don’t give a shit if people forever abuse these benefits they receive. Let’s go by Daily Mail-esque example. If a Polish immigrant’s lazy nature and subsequent benefits are what prevents a middle-class man from buying a 50 inch TV to watch X-Factor on then that is fine by me, the only part I am sickened by is that this man is watching X-Factor (why is it that people buy big screens to watch the shittest television on?). If an overly rewarding benefit system is what prevents the disparity between rich and poor from being so huge then I highly endorse it (and I say this as someone who, when I finally decide to enter it the real world, is aiming as high up the career ladder as I can go).

Any way, that’s my two cents, we could make a blog together man, across the hemispheres! I got a lot of ideas about what to write about, from politics to more light hearted subjects.

Peace

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If anybody else has anything to add on the subject (the dark side of the dole) then please, feel free to send in - whether onside or on the contrary its very interesting to here those perspectives we don't often hear in our 'who shouts the loudest' society

Papers papers papers... and the future!

This is interesting to read:

Article one (Daily Mail) (by Richard Littlejohn...)
Article two (Response posted on blog / republished on The Guardian)

Really highlights how those poor poor papers like the Daily Mail like to build one-dimensional characters of real people before they ask the public to stone them.

The Daily Mail is much like Stweart Lee said about Jeremy Clarkson.. "Ooh that Jeremy Clarkson, with his outrageous political views that he has for money..". This is the cream of 20th century capitalism.

I've been doing a business course for the last month & one lady on the course is a Liverpoodlian (don't think i've spelt that right). Being a Liverpoodlian (person from Liverpool..) it didn't take long for conversation to turn to what paper she buy's, & her opinion of the Sun. (See image)

She said something very interesting about the way society responds to their own communities, and those people in need of support. 40 Years ago, it would have been a case of 'Aah, Derek next door has lost his job, lets take a food basket round'. Today it's 'F##kin scroungers'.

My belief in the dole, or that is - the spirit behind the dole, is mirrored in Jack Monroe's article; isn't it fantastic that we can offer a safety net as such, to support those in need. This may provoke a grey area, prone to misuse; but what is a better alternative?

One thing people have to remember, like Richard Littlejohn, the Daily Mail & most importantly those members of the public whose ignorance is wrongly played upon by such papers - and this I believe is something noone is really drawing attention too - more & more jobs are being exhanged for even cheaper labour. When you go into Tesco's & go through self service, that used to be someone's job. Every industry has had - with varying degrees of influence - the microscopic eye drawn over it's productivity & where costs can be kept down, and often this is in staff. I'm not saying this is wrong, this is the end result of capitalism and financially logical.

However we have to remember this - what happens when most jobs are filled by robots?

Eventually it'll be expected that only 80% of the population can find work, then 50% and so on.When all jobs are dried up & we no longer critisice those who don't work, I believe we'll have built towards some sorta landscape where everybody does what they want to do. I'm talking creatively. The internet is bringing an audience to those who have something to show, whatever little niche creative venture that may be. Technology is going to massively facilitate this creativity too.

I believe that a new culture of naive art is soon to grow. This is totally spurred on by three key things;

1. The creative drive (which we all have)
2. The internet Not only with it's value in sharing, but in the very idea of 'an open book'. We today tend to go on the net and go on a select few sites - the children of the future are going to go on it and dream up anything they want - which really confounds 'an open mind' philosophy.
3. and the tools of the 21st century that will make that creative drive possible (3D printers in the hands of a jeweller! Even myself using one computer in one room to make whole animations on)

A good example of this 'naive art' is already all around us, Facebook, Instagram & the like are making artists out of everyone. Naive artists that is - a new folk art.

Anywho - the overarching point of this is - we are at a cross roads, a gigantic shift in the way the world works. This is very much the final days of 20th century capitalism, and those big pigs are gunna keep squarwking with their dollars and trying to stop the change (see the music industry...). I believe this is the end of a 2000-yearlong era, we've been living in the shadow of the Roman's for that time, culture has not much changed (they had fast food in Pompeii, & is there really much difference between the Colosseum & the San Siro?)

People have to be aware of this shift and excited about the possibilities of the future we're stepping into. Whether they are as wide-eyed optimistic as me or not, they must realise that things are changing in a new way and it is very much an open book.

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Here's an example of how art & creativity are beautifully realised with the internet

Watchmen

This is so good -


I've included it in my 'This is why I love animation' bit. Although its obviously not really animation in the typical sense - everything about it, the way the story is told, all the different characters are developed, all the philosophical angles built, all the pop reference, is exactly what i'd like to see, animation's of a similar keel

Melancholy

"Tortoise-shell butterflies burst from the chrysalis and pattered their life out on the window-pane.."

Mandalas

Gig! Next month! Gunna be a goodun!

A short poem:
Find me at the front,
very drunk
and i'll try not to spit on you
like the punk (that I am at heart)

This one was fun because I got to mess with some of my cousin's photography work. Check her out BECKY MAYNES dot COM

If you can't wait that long to see the boys get down theyre's a gig on next weekend in Exeter and I hear there may be a surprise appearance by the mysterious Fifth Mandala himself...

(not) my kind of animation..

First, let me just say..
I'm really really sorry to single out one guy for this. And understand, whilst I am singling out one person - i'm also not, i'm just using it as an example of a whole canon of work - a whole canon of thought about the medium & the usage of the medium. I do not mean to single him out in anyway other than to provoke in your mind ideas of other examples.

There, haha.



This is the showreel of Sandro Cleuzo, someone who has been around for a while, worked on some big films & clearly a very talented fella. However, I wanted to point out this kind of work. I would not be happy on my deathbed to look back at my career like this. It's just regurgitating of the same subject over and over, slick, beautiful, but just dead underneath. What's the point? (besides the holy $...)

I agree whole-heartedly with what Ralph Bakshi says in this clip, and whatsmore the sentiment grows each time I watch it.



I felt that same way about Tom & Jerry as a kid, what's the point? Every episode is the same. Disney films are the same (hyper-Holywood, atleast every now & then live action throws a curveball). Dreamworks etc are largely the same. What's the point? I don't want to do this with animation. Lets not forget, it's a medium with such explorative artistic potential. (someone really needs to put a decent version of this online..)

On the contrary, I have alot of time for Pixar as they do things with heart & the occasional daring (if minor) attempt (Wife dying in first ten minutes of Up, how dark Toy Story 3 almost gets (all things considered..), largely silent first half hour of Wall-E) that I think in their own small but far-reaching way are slowly championing the change in animations public perception.

PS - just to again apologise to Sandro Cleuzo. I see he worked on Chico & Rita, a film I do very much admire, especially for its use of animation to tell an adult tale. Perhaps the above is simply an overview of his more commercial work.

Two contradictory states of mind...

...That is modern life.

I find at the moment my days move between two modes of thought. On the one hand, I very much believe in mindfulness. It's something i've got into over the last few years, beginning when my friends dad lent me 'The Miracle of Mindfulness' as an in roads to Buddhism. Mindfulness is the attaining of the ability to sort of at once be clear minded but also directly focused; it is the cultivation of this ability. Also, inherently moulding a mindset that says "Wow! We are here! What are the chances?" and really basking in the joy of this. To quote some wise man - "The miracle isnt to walk on water; the miracle isnt to fly; The miracle is to purely walk on Earth".

At the same time, I find myself very given over to the '21st century scizophrenic' mindset that Jameson outlayed. That today with all the signs, all the morsels of information that line our streets & days, we have become almost scizophrenic in our thought process - we absentmindedly jump from one ship to another in mind, thoughts of 'whats for lunch' one second, then suddenly, without concious reason, thoughts of a dead pet, or murmers of an ex girlfriend spring the next. We are sort of rolled from the beginning of days to the end picking up signs and churning them in such way. It's a rather disparaging way to think, atleast, when levied alongside the clear virtues of 'mindfulness'; However I find for the creative thinker its a rather attainful way to think. I find thinking like this, ideas spring up out of nowhere, tangents are thought-up and felt-out; a brisk walk back home from the shops may be the kiln for a feverous new idea, built on nothing more than seeing a car drive by or a bird fly low.

It's a mindset that Virginia Woolf personified in To The Lighthouse, perhaps only now (almost 100 years later) we have cranked it all the way to 11 in our 21st century ways. An absolute overdrive of information as you walk the streets, or look around your room (much different from the simple Victorian fixings she would have surrounded herself with). Standing still, how many labels can you read? How many ideas are in ear-shot?

So this is my contradiction of thought-process. On the one hand I am very fond of attaining that fruitful insight that mindfulness brings, but on the other, I like to be the pebble dropped in the river, washed this way & that from wave to wave. I find myself cushioning up in either way, from one day to the next. For animating, I find the mindful thought-process the best; being all over the place (mentally) absorbs you in elsewhere ideas when trying to animate & before long you find yourself hunched over Facebook or the kettle, procrastinating.