"Look! The Sky's Awake!" - Thoughts on "Frozen"

Note: This review will contain some SPOILERS, so if you have not yet seen "Frozen," go and get that accomplished already.  In 3D, if you can.  Because it's worth it.  Like "Avatar" was worth it.  I'm getting way ahead of myself.

Movie #67: "Frozen"

Okay, first thing's first.  Yes, I was as wrong about Olaf the Jar Jar/Poochie-looking Snow Goon thing as I was about Ray the firefly in "The Princess and the Frog".  I still don't quite understand the marketing of this movie, but let's not focus too much on that now.  Just know that they did a fantastic job misrepresenting this particular character as well as the film as a whole.  Very like Ray, Olaf is the heart of this movie.  He has a lot more in common with the enchanted objects in "Beauty and the Beast" than with, say, the lemur-things in "Dinosaur" or that damn robot in "Treasure Planet".  His design is intentionally silly for reasons that will be clear maybe five minutes into the movie, and his personality (half innocent little kid, half accidentally-newly-created sapient being) is adorable.  He is the emotional center of the movie, the Morality Pet of the two sisters.  But I'm getting way, WAY ahead of myself.

It sounds like a broken record by now but "Frozen" is outstanding.  OUTSTANDING.  I took my cousin, my other cousin, and her preteen daughter for a Crazy Disney People Girls' Night Out/Christmas Present in a recently refurbished movie theater.  (They upgraded their projectors and sound systems, swapped out the old flip-down chairs for reclining leather seats, and put in huge new screens; the old theater from when I was a teenager is amazing now.)  We sprang for the 3D showing and did not regret it one bit.  Every single one of us was enthralled from the opening chorals to the end-credits stinger.  That right there is a sign of a great movie.

I hate to harp on the marketing some more but as usual, they did a stellar job of NOT representing what this movie is and/or how you will feel when you watch it.  (Just, ugh at the TV spot where one of the biggest, most emotional songs is interrupted by something silly because LOL we know you're too cool for songs in a throwback to Bronze-Age Disney musicals.  That'd be my vote for worst trailer for an animated film this season if not for the "Frisson all up and down my arms --> 'Oops, I stepped in yer "fear"!'" ad for "Walking With Dinosaurs 3D".)  That "how you will feel" bit is important.  Look at that still above.  I could have just posted it, said "THIS, this right here is why I love 'Frozen'", and saved myself a lot of typing.  It hit me square in the childhood. 

I have a couple of nitpicks, but I feel bad for even bringing them up because it feels like pointing out lose threads in the Unicorn Tapestries.  They could have done a more even balance of songs; the first half of the movie makes the second half look a little sparse, musically.  The (spoiler) death of the King and Queen could have used a little room to breathe, as could (HUGE spoiler) Hans' betrayal, which also really could have used a little more foreshadowing, though it did make the entire theater gasp, for what it's worth.  Then there are the trolls, who are already probably the most polarizing part of the movie from what I've read in other fans' reviews.  I loved their opening scene, especially how they hint at a larger mythology going on here, and I LOVE their design -- but they really started to give a bad Minion vibe somewhere in the middle of their second scene and song.

But never mind all that.  I'm going to not only call this the most visually stunning and musically terrific "instant classic" Disney movie since I saw "Beauty and the Beast" as a preteen all those years ago -- but also the most emotionally resonant.  I love the relationship between the two sisters.  And I was especially thrilled by the surprisingly psychologically dense subtext that helped define that relationship.  Here come the big spoilers: If you think about it, Elsa has basically lived her entire life haunted by the guilt of accidentally causing her little sister what's basically the magical equivalent of permanent brain damage.  (Remember, the troll healer literally has to alter Anna's memories to save her, and it doesn't look like they're ever fully restored -- I feel like a much stupider movie would have had her fully regain them for a super-dee-duper happy ending.)  She's terrified of harming Anna even more, and the specific reason why everything goes to hell in the climax is because her worst fears are actually happening.  That's some heavy stuff, and between it, the "You really ARE a bad guy" scene in "Wreck-It Ralph", and Mother Gothelle's emotional abuse, I'm okay with Disney movies getting crazy dark again.

So, incredible music (sweet mother of Walt, they're no longer afraid to do the three-songs-practically-in-a-row thing anymore!), staggeringly gorgeous visuals (oh my God that snow!  That ice!  The Rosemaling!  That scene where Anna dances with the paintings!!!) and endearing characters (I'll keep this one quick: there isn't a single dud character in the main cast).  Just, go see this.  Really, I ordered the soundtrack right when I got back so there's that.

And the short before the movie!  I almost wish that I had no idea at all what was going to happen because it turned out none of my cousins did and I felt a little left out.  I could hear their whispered reactions go from, and I quote, "Aww, I love Mickey Mouse!" to "Wow, I wonder how old this is?" to "😮" and finally "😍"   You know, I've often wondered what it would have been like to be in the theater for one of the first screenings of Chuck Jones' "Duck Amuck" and I think now I have an idea.

Before I close this out, I really need to give major props to the Rotoscopers for doing a better job promoting "Frozen" then Disney's own marketing department.  For more posts in this ongoing series, go here, or click the Chronological Disney Animated Canon tag below.

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Art of the Day!  You're still a unicorn to me, Tsintaosaurus.

"Fraggle Rock" Month - Season Four, Episodes 24-26: The Grand Finale

"It's just a dream away
"You've got to leave to stay
"We'll meet again, someday
"Just a dream away..."
 - Mudwell

As we have seen on this journey through "Fraggle Rock", this wasn't your typical children's show.  The vast majority of such series never even get a true final episode, much less a three-part grand finale.  (It turns out that in some parts of the world, "Fraggle Rock" didn't get a "real" ending either because the final season never reached their shores, which is a damn shame.)  This makes the final three episodes of "Fraggle Rock" largely unprecedented.

So let's break it down.  We start with "The Gorg Who Would Be King", which I had not seen before and is a very nice sendoff for the Gorgs.  Through plot complications that are admittedly kind of ridiculous, Junior travels to Fraggle Rock and meets the Doozers and the Fraggles and the Trash Heap and sees more of the Universe he's being groomed to rule.  And he learns, for the first time, that the Fraggles and Doozers depend on his radishes.  That's a fantastic touch; we in the audience learned about this connection between the three worlds in the very first season, remember?  But that doesn't mean the characters know about it, and its a great lead-in for the next two episodes, which act more as a two-parter.

"The Honk of Honks" is a hell of a penultimate episode.  Cantus returns for another Medley, but this time he entrusts Gobo to lead and instructs him to create the trumpet blast that will signal the beginning of The Song of Songs.  The Honk of Honks signals the beginning of the end for the series.  To create it, Gobo must travel to all the different worlds and collect an instrument from all the major characters, and so we have our last significant encounters with Junior Gorg, Cotterpin Doozer, and Phylo and Gunge.  And so we have matter-of-fact interactions with characters who wouldn't even look at each-other back in the first season.  They're finally seeing each-other as people now.

Doc doesn't see Gobo at all.  That's the first major reveal in this episode and, I have to say, it's... weird.  I know what they were going for here; in the special features, the writer clarifies that she was inspired by the inattentional blindness phenomenon (specifically a personal childhood experience with it), and to her credit, she does stay on the "As a scientist, Doc desperately wants to meet a Fraggle, so he can begin to make sense of the strange goings-on in his workshop over the years and this hidden world he's long suspected but had no real proof of" side of the crevasse.  However, it tapdances so awfully close to the deep dark pit of "You don't have to make sense, just ~*~Believe!!!~*~" that it sticks in my craw.

But look at that scene where Doc and Gobo finally interact with each-other.  It's just beautiful.  This character who's been on the sidelines of this wonderful world we've been a part of for so long finally gets to join us.  Remember, Doc has never been able to personally interact with Fraggle Rock until now; once again, we're experiencing the place from an outsider's perspective.  And through Doc's wonder, we get a sense of the joy and awe we had ourselves when we started watching the series all those years ago.

And it is a world that, now that Doc has finally met one of its residents and is so full of questions about, he is going to have to leave soon.  After the Song of Songs (a sequence that I don't want to discount because it is freakin' glorious; basically the victory lap for the whole series with an awesome musical number and darn close to every single Fraggle character onscreen at once), we learn that Doc and Sprocket are moving away. 

They're preparing to move in "Change of Address", and in the opening of the episode, we learn that Doc has been "feeding" the Fraggles.  That's a fantastic little touch, but it's not clear why until a little later.  Gobo heads up to talk with Doc for, it turns out, the second time ever.  And Doc's behavior towards Gobo here struck me as surprisingly troubling -- until it hit me that Doc does not think of Gobo as a person yet!  Goodness, he's been feeding the Fraggles like you'd feed an animal you want to tame, starting with dog biscuits(!?) and moving on to pizza.  We know Gobo as a respectable intelligent being but to Doc, he's a funny little animal that can talk. 

Gobo is, naturally, put off by this.  He runs off and mopes while Doc and Sprocket close the door on the workshop for the last time ever.  Consulting with the Trash Heap, Gobo receives the cryptic advice, "You cannot leave the magic".  Rushing to share that with Doc, Gobo finds himself in a workshop that is completely empty but for a final message from Doc.  Meanwhile, in their new home, Doc and Sprocket long to find a Fraggle Hole (God, this sequence is heartbreaking) but to no avail.  But when all hope is lost, Gobo notices a tunnel he's never seen before, and then...

I have to be honest, readers.  The final three episodes of "Fraggle Rock" made me about a million times happier than I was at the end of most other series I've followed all the way through -- and they have also left me with a deep sadness and sense of loss like I haven't felt at the end of any other series.

That makes this three-part series finale the single greatest ending to a series I have ever seen.  I mean that.  At the very least, I think we can all agree that it is one of the most downright emotional series endings ever made.  It wraps the whole series up in a beautiful bow of a triumphant happy ending and leaves us to mourn the loss of a series that is, honestly, so noble.  And it is beautiful in its nobility, which is why it is so deeply painful to see something so truly wonderful end and... dammit, the words on my screen are getting all blurry again.

When they say "You can not leave the magic", they're talking to us viewers.  I called the series noble and beautiful and I stand by that.  I don't think it's possible to watch this series and not internalize it somehow.  It makes me want to be a better person.  It makes me want to make art that comes from a purer place.  At the risk of sounding cheesy, it is a part of me, as I am a part of it.

"Fraggle Rock" Month - Season 4, Episode 1: "Sprocket's Big Adventure"

(Note: This is the twenty-third episode included on my [relatively] old season three DVDs, but I have recently learned that it was aired and produced as the first episode of season four.  We'll talk about the scheduling weirdness of HBO next week.)

So here we are in the last (or second-to-last depending on what part of the world you were in -- but again, that's something we'll talk about next week) season of "Fraggle Rock" and at this point the Fraggle world, the Doozer world, and the Gorg world have all interacted with one-another somehow.  And the Human world, our world, has interacted just a little bit with the Fraggle world.

There's the obvious fact that humans have met Uncle Traveling Matt on his adventures in "Outer Space".  And now it is tangent time, cause I can't believe I haven't talked about this yet.  "Outer Space" is the Fraggles' term for our world, and I never truly realized the brilliance of that until I considered this show as an adult.  This gives "Fraggle Rock" all the hallmarks of a xenofiction series.  We're seeing the whole world through the eyes of the Fraggles, so the unknown alien creatures living in an unknown alien world, we realize with a little shudder, are us.

Sprocket, Doc's loyal dog, is a truly horrifying alien creature to the Fraggles.  Earlier in the series, he and Gobo came to a kind of understanding after Gobo helped Sprocket when he was trapped in the tunnels leading from the workshop to Fraggle Rock.  Now, they're friends, which comes in handy when Sprocket becomes lost in the tunnels of the Rock in this episode.

Here's the crazy thing about this episode, and the reason why I love it.  At this point in the series, we are more familiar with the worlds of Fraggle Rock than we are with the human world.  And just now, we're getting to see this world from the point of view of an outsider.  I'd like to point out that most series set in a fantastical imagined world do this in the very first episode/book/whatever.  Meanwhile, "Fraggle Rock" dropped us right into the fantasy world from the start with almost no hand-holding.  It doesn't do the obligatory episode where a newly arrived character is given a lengthy tour and has all the details of how the place works explained to him until the first episode of the final season.  You guys...

Anyway, Sprocket makes his way into Fraggle Rock and, in yet another nice subversion, meets with Cotterpin and her Doozer crew before any of the Fraggles.  And Cotterpin recognizes how lost this poor beast is and shows him the way to his home -- which, she assumes, is the Gorg's garden.  So Sprocket meets Junior Gorg and Marjory the Trash Heap.  The latter turns out to be fluent in canine and helps poor Sprocket find Gobo and the way back to Doc's workshop

And so we have the table set for the major crossovers between the worlds of the final season.  That does it for the third season set.  Next week, we head into the last season of "Fraggle Rock, which includes several episodes I have never seen before.  I'm just warning you, this could get emotional...

"Fraggle Rock" Month - Season 3, Episode 18: "Bored Stiff"

Okay, let me level with you, dear reader.  This is not the most psychologically dense episode of "Fraggle Rock" ever made.  It is not the most sophisticated.  And yet...

And yet, I think of all the episodes from Season Three, this one made me the happiest.  Look at that climax again!  Look at it!  Great Wish-Granting Creature, we get to see that the Gorgs and the Fraggles are finally dancing and singing together in the spirit of harmony -perfect harmony, if you will- to one of the most delightful earworms on the song score so far!  And they're doing it to help each-other because...

I think I need to back up a little.

Okay, so Ma and Pa Gorg are feeling romantic (At this point, the Gorgs are basically a much less cynical version of Chuck Jones' Three Bears), but the spot where they first made out is infested with Fraggles.  Pa finds a nasty potion, Boredom Juice, in the shed and is determined to saturate the whole Fraggle tunnel with the stuff.  But Junior is worried because he has begun to befriend the Fraggles in earlier episodes, most notably "The Great Radish Caper".  The Rock gets sprayed, the Fraggles suffer fatal amounts of ennui, and it's up to Junior and Gobo to save everyone with a magical song-and-dance number -- and of course, they'll have to deal with their differences and work together to do so.

So at first glance, this episode is just fun.  The aforementioned song-and-dance number is truly terrific and showcases the wonderful physicality of these characters.  And I still have the "Touch your nose / then touch your toes" song in my head.

But dig a little deeper and you've got a beautiful case of character development here.  We got hints of it in earlier episodes, but now it is very clear that "Fraggle Rock" has a genuine gosh-darn myth arc going on here.  This is the episode where Junior and the Fraggles finally start coming to an understanding.  Consider this: in the first season, the Gorgs were almost straight-up antagonists!  For a Gorg to even talk to a Fraggle was unthinkable back then!

And given that Fraggles have already befriended Gorgs and Doozers, there's only one other world left to fully connect with...

In Which Trish Attempts to List her Favorite Walt Disney World Things

But first, and I again apologize in advance, mom, HOLY SH*T YUTYRANNUS YUTYRANNUS YUTYRANNUS EFF YEEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!






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Right, now that we have calmed down, back to the topic.

It started out innocently enough. I was contacted by a friend on Facebook who is going to visit Walt Disney World for the very first time ever, and she asked me what my three favorite things she shouldn't miss are.

Well.

Since I cannot possibly limit myself to only three things, I wrote up this blog post. It probably will not help my friend as much as originally intended, since she is staying offsite and only has five days down there (to which I tell her, since this is her first visit, good effing luck). But it seemed like a fun subject to approach. And so, in no particular order at all, my favorite things in Walt Disney World:

* - The International Gateway of EPCOT. This has been my family's worst-kept secret for years now, since I am pretty sure everyone aside from WDW Newbies already knows about it. If you stay in a Crescent Lake resort (Yacht and Beach Club, Boardwalk, or Swan and Dolphin), or if you -ahem- decide to explore the Boardwalk for your own reasons, you have your own entrance to EPCOT. You can either walk or take a brief and always scenic, oftentimes entertaining FriendShip ride. You arrive in one of the prettiest parts of World Showcase, in-between the United Kingdom and France. Have lunch at the lovely Chefs de France or grab a pint at the Rose and Crown to start your adventure and avoid the crowds pouring in from the main entrance. Best of all, the Gateway is right near a nice bridge which is one of the best places to view Illuminations, and you won't have to fight crowds after the show! And as for Illuminations...



* - Fireworks and Nighttime Shows. Illuminations in EPCOT is, by far, the best of these. Disney's pyro team setting a lake on fire and chucking every explosive they have in the sky to promote world peace for a show that makes me tear up at the end every time without fail? Eff yeah. Wishes in Magic Kingdom isn't nearly as spectacular but is gradually growing on me because, let's face it, I'm a sucker for Disney movies and nostalgia. The preshow for Wishes, "The Magic, The Memories, And You" is a really cool concept with amazing special effects - that are largely used to let you look at somebody else's vacation photos. The same can be said for "Fantasmic" at the Hollywood Studios. The effects are incredible but the story they are used to tell is... just what? And let us not forget the classic Electric Light Parade and Electrical Water Pageant, both utterly charming and trippy as all get out.

ProTip: If you do want to see Fantasmic and want to have a far, far more enjoyable viewing experience, spring for the Brown Derby dinner package. It's worth every penny to not have to deal with the sea of people pouring into and out of the stadium, and you'll be eating in one of the World's best dining places.

If you want to see Wishes without having to deal with the truly terrifying crowds exiting the park afterwards, the solution is much more simple: watch them from outside the park. Bay Lake Tower's Top of the World Bar is best for this but you have to be a Vacation Club member (and depending on how chill the security guard is that night, you may even have to be staying in the Tower). Try the beach outside Polynesian, the little outdoor area near the monorails at Contemporary, or even the Transportation and Ticket Center.
* - All of the Boats. Walt Disney apparently liked boats a lot (he decided where WDW should be located because he spotted a beautiful island-dotted lake during a scouting trip and said, "this is it.") If you park at the Transportation and Ticket Center, you can take a ride in a gigantic boat over to the Magic Kingdom. You can take free boat rides all over the Bay Lake/Seven Seas Lagoon waterways, all around the aforementioned Crescent Lake, and down the Sassagoula River from Downtown Disney. They're an excellent opportunity to get the layout of the land and maybe see some exotic (to us) Florida wildlife. And speaking of Disney World travel...



* - All of the Trains. If Walt Disney liked boats, he LOVED trains. His beloved model train hobby was the germ that eventually became the Disney theme parks. The iconic steam train in Magic Kingdom is a must-ride, especially for a first-timer. But the very best train in all the World is the Monorail. I love the swooping ride through EPCOT (although I can never remember if it's on the inbound or outbound ride) and I love, love, love resort-hopping. One of our favorite memories from when we stayed at Bay Lake Tower on a recent trip was just riding the Resort Monorail and bar-hopping at each resort stop. And for that matter...



* - Resort-Hopping! Many of the Walt Disney World resorts are worth exploring in their own right. Take the Magic Kingdom Resort Monorail to see the Contemporary, Polynesian, and Grand Floridian, then take the boat over to beautiful Wilderness Lodge. Take the boat to Fort Wilderness to get a taste of 70's Disney. Take the boat around the Crescent Lake resorts (I haven't mentioned them enough, have I?) And it is well worth the drive to see the spectacular Animal Kingdom Lodge and Kidani Village.



* - The Landscaping and Gardens. It's no coincidence that my family likes to head down to Disney in winter, and usually in time to see the beginning of the Flower and Garden Festival. Just seeing the color green is like an antidepressant. But Disney has a "go big or go home" attitude towards every thing they do, and that goes for their landscaping as well. The gardens in Animal Kingdom are especially beautiful and -this was confirmed by our wonderful Keys to the Kingdom guide, though sadly he could not elaborate- are made up of plants from every continent. Yes, even Antarctica. Disney is that crazy-awesome. Crawesome.



* - The Non-Disneyish Portions of Animal Kingdom. Animal Kingdom is a strange park coming from Disney. Nearly every WDW park up until this one has funneled you through a main path to go on ride after ride and see show after show (and stand in line after line). And every guest is pretty much going to have the same experience every time.

Animal Kingdom is not like that at all. You enter and are greeted by families of decidedly not-animatronic Spoonbills and several paths to take into the park. The message, lost on a depressing number of guests, is to explore nature on your own terms and take your time to look and appreciate creatures you may never have heard of as they go about their business. The entrance pathways, the trails that take you around the spectacular Tree of Life, the Pangani Forest and the Maharaja's Jungle are the reasons I go to Animal Kingdom, and I always see something new. After all, the name of the park isn't Disney's Thrill Ride Kingdom.

ProTip: Which isn't to say that the rides, shows, and other more typically Disney things in AK are totally worthless. The safari is amazing, Expedition Everest is very good even if you aren't into thrill rides (though avoid Dinosaur; it's rubbish), the Lion King and Finding Nemo musicals are excellent, and we just discovered the very well-done Conservation Station area of the park this last visit.



* - The Northwest Portions of Future World and World Showcase in EPCOT. When I was a nerdy little girl, I loved EPCOT more than Magic Kingdom. Yes, I was that kid.

I had a dream recently that I brought my seven-year-old cousin to WDW for her first time ever. We stayed in Bay Lake Tower and watched Wishes from the Top of the World on our arrival night, then we went to visit EPCOT on our first full day. We walked around World Showcase and enjoyed the live shows, great foods, and beautiful flowers.

And then, in my dream, we visited Future World... circa 1990-ish. We rode Horizons and World of Motion, the original Universe of Energy and Journey Into Imagination, watched Cranium Command at Wonders of Life and Symbiosis in The Land, and toured through the two Communicores. Yeah... (Well, of course, we headed back over to WS and watched "Illuminations: Reflections of Earth" so it wasn't utterly heartbreaking.)

So the EPCOT I fell in love with is largely gone or altered beyond recognition. However, World Showcase is still essentially intact, as are the Land and Seas pavilions. The Land and Seas contain two of the very best attractions in Future World: Turtle Talk and Soarin'. For first-timers, I would not dare ruin the fun by describing them here. Just go, you will love them.

ProTip: And of course, "Captain EO" is, by all evidence, sticking around in the Imagination pavilion...



* - The Remaining Edutainment in Hollywood Studios. During much of the 1990's and up until very recently, Disney's Hollywood Studio was exactly that: an actual studio. They mostly filmed television series and specials there as well as a few full-length films (notably "Newsies" and "Earnest Saves Christmas"). And they had a working animation studio. The animation building is that former studio, so while you're waiting in line for your picture with Sorcerer's Apprentice!Mickey, you're standing right where Disney animators used to work. You're invited to watch a film with Mushu the dragon interacting with a live actor, which is just like a not-satirical real-life version of the "Mr. DNA" scene in "Jurassic Park" except you know less about the subject at hand than you did before the show started.

But let's stop talking about how the animation building used to be cool, since there are still some pretty awesome things to see in there. There's a huge outdoor gallery of concept art along a path that snakes around outside the building and rather suspiciously resembles a queue line. You'll see art from almost every Disney film that has animation in it, including the unpopular ones, which I find awesome. There's another, much smaller gallery of art in the area you are herded into after the Mushu Mr. DNA show. This has things like model sheets, three-dimensional figurines, life studies and other drawings done for research, all from whatever animated feature Disney plans on releasing next. Currently, the exhibits are full of art from "Brave", and I think they might still have the initial posters for "Tangled" back when it was still titled "Rapunzel". And running along the inside walls of the building is a huge mural made up of animation art mostly of all the characters from all the films the Florida studio had a hand in.

The wonderful small museum/film presentation "Walt Disney: One Man's Dream" is tucked away near the square where the animation building is situated. It's one of my favorite things in the whole park, and you can spend as long as you like marveling at Disney's inventions.

* - The Classics at Magic Kingdom. Obviously. Going clockwise around the park, the Steam Train, Tiki Room, Pirates, Country Bears, Splash Mountain, Haunted Mansion, Small World, Peter Pan, Philharmagic, Dumbo, Buzz Lightyear, and -of course- the WEDway Peoplemover!



* - The Little Fun Things. And by that, I mean things like Dole Whips in Aloha Isle in Adventureland, Mickey Waffles at the breakfast buffets, Glowtinis, Pin Trading, the live acts throughout the park, peoplewatching, asking non-character Cast Members for their autographs, watching the hilarious Stacy Show on the resort televisions, and just, like, being there, man.

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Sketch of the Day! How about some subtle Donald Duck fanart?

Very Quick Announcement

The Ebay auction for the Pink Dinosaur Sketchbook and the two custom Fairy Tails ends tonight at 8:00 PM EST! If you're interested, click the link and place a bid. Good luck!

EDIT: The Sketchbook itself has been sold. The Fairy Tails are still up!

Little Pink Dinosaurs for You and Me.

I did it? I actually did it!



I just filled a sketchbook for Art Evolved's Pink Dinosaur Project, which ran through the month of October. You can see all the images I created in this Flickr set.

I'm so proud and touched by my fellow Art Evolved-ers. So far this project has been a real life Crowning Moment of Heartwarming (the second one in a month for us!) Having hit 182 pink creatures of the Ornithodiran* persuasion by Halloween, Peter Bond announced that we'll keep the effort going until this coming Wednesday (November 10). So draw your favorite dinosaur, paint the sucker pink, and send it in please!

You could even go crazy like I did and try to create a three-dimensional pink dinosaur...



That's where these lovely ladies fit in. These are former Fairy Tails. Fairy Tails were an unusual toy line that appeared in the wake of My Little Pony circa 1987. Unlike most toys of the era meant to ride the Pony wave, Fairy Tails were made by Hasbro themselves. This may be the main reason why they are often mistakenly thought of as a part of the My Little Pony line, rather than a different toy line entirely.

These little doves had long hair that you could comb and style growing from their tails and heads. They also had symbols painted on to help identify them -- just like My Little Ponies do. And they came with perches to sit on. Their feet were designed like little clamps, and you were supposed to have them perch on your fingers as you styled their hair. That's one for the great annals of badly-thought-out toy designs. The fact that actually clamping one of these birds to your finger hurts like hell may be the main reason why this toy line failed.

Another, more obvious possible reason is the fact that birds with hair = freaky.

These two Fairy Tails lost their head-hair, had their tails cut, and had other flaws. I had no luck auctioning them off on eBay, so I decided, since they were pretty pinkish to start with, to have a go at customizing them.

I learned very quickly why you almost never see anyone customize "Fairy Tails"...



Nonetheless, these two turned out better than I expected. I am deeply indebted to this tutorial and I enjoy finally seeing Fairy Tails with actual feathers. These two will be auctioned for charity probably around the same time as the Pink Dinosaur Sketchbook. I plan on putting everything up on eBay possibly the weekend after next, so look out for an announcement.

In the meantime, shirts! And different shirts! And hats! And somewhat less successful hats!

* - There's a good vocabulary word to add to your daily usage. It literally means "birdlike neck" and includes all dinosaurs biologically defined as such -- AND Pterosaurs. See how useful that is?

Make your website carbon neutral!

It only takes a few minutes. Head over to this website (linking to the English-language version; the project is based in Germany), follow the instructions, and they will plant a tree in Plumas National Forest. Go add your website to the list and spread the love around.

The Pink Dinosaur Project and a Self-Imposed Challenge

By now you know about the Pink Dinosaur Project, Art Evolved's massive cancer research charity fundraiser. All you have to do to support the project is draw a pink dinosaur and send it in to artevolved(at)gmail(dot)com. And if you are under the delusion that you can't draw, you may donate directly here.

I've had this project on my mind for several days now.



I've also had this little Artist and Craftsman Supply watercolor sketchpad for a long time. I decided it was time to do something special with it. It's not very big, so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to do my first themed Sketchbook.



Here's the book in the middle of modification...



And here she is after modification. Dealing with the spiral binding itself wasn't as hard as I expected -- except for those tiny holes.



So what's my goal here? I want to draw one pink dinosaur per day. I'm not stopping until the book is full. Full of pastel-colored archosaurian goodness.

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Sketch Pink Dinosaur of the Day!