Welcome to the blog of Dennis J. Woodyard - Journeyman Artist, and Dragonfly Entertainment. Former TV animation producer/director, storyboard artist, character designer, writer, concept artist, Flip book designer, and other professional credits.
Another Sunday Music Muse Day. I started the day with another Gerry Mulligan CD, which I had in my collection already. I brought "Dragonfly" by the Gerry Mulligan Quartet mainly because of the title name. (What can I say, I have a thing for dragonflys) The music is a nice way to ease into Sunday morning.
The quartet includes John Scofield on guitar. Scofield is one of my favorite guitarist and I have a lot of has early vinyl records and later CDs. I picked two to listen to today, "Slo Sco - Best of the Ballads" and "Quiet" which features John on nylon string acoustic guitar instead of his electric. "Spy vs Spy" and "Gil B643" on the Slo Sco CD were tunes I used to rock my first born to sleep on my shoulder when he was a year old. Funny how certain tunes become linked to special memories. As always, check these CDs out, and enjoy.
Here's another children's filmstrip I illustrated back in the 1980's.
The Dragon Teeth was part of a series of filmstrips , Monsters of the
Greek Myths, produced by Spoken Arts, Inc. My favorite part of the
story is the sowing of the dragon's teeth, a scene famously done by Ray
Harryhausen in his film "Jason and the Argonauts" were fighting
skeletons rise out of ground. Again, I'm just trying to archive and digitize these
filmstrips before the film fades. They are no longer produced, long
since replaced by video, DVD and Blu-Ray. Enjoy.
Sunday
is my Music Muse Day, a day to listen to old favorites and discovery
new ones to inspire the soul. I started the day with the gift CD from
Jazz 90.1 radio for renewing my membership. Gerry Mulligan and Chet
Baker, Carnegie Hall Concert. Great stuff!
Actually I starting Music Muse Day last night by cruising youtube to find some tunes I had heard on a internet radio station but they didn't show up in itunes. Sure enough, they were on youtube, full versions, not just short preview. The main one I wanted to hear was this DJ Krush & Toshinori Kondo tune "Ha Doh". The trumpeter sound like Miles Davis. This tune has haunted me for years. I'll have to track down the CD. The second track featured is Five Deez / Fat Jon - Sexual for Elizabeth, again I heard it on internet radio and could not get it of of my head. Enjoy.
Here's another children's filmstrip project I did the illustrations for back in the '70's. Eye of the Sun is a Egyptian myth about the creation of the world. I think this filmstrip is much better shape, visually, than the Kaa's Huntings filmstrip. The colors hasn't faded as much. I have to admit the soundtrack is a little lame. You can tell these weren't high budget projects.
As before, I've included some storyboard pages with this post. Enjoy
I posted some videos on Youtube of children's filmstrips I did the illustrations for back in the '70's, ancient history for some of you younger viewers. These were some of the first professional illustration jobs I landed. The paid wasn't great, in fact it was pretty damn low. But, it was great fun and let me at paid for drawing. It also prepared for storyboard work I would do later in the animation career.
These educational filmstrips were shown in schools or libraries before video tapes were around. I did several of these including adaptations of Grimm's fairy tales, like "Tom Thumb" , Greek Myths and African folk tales. I want to digitize them before the old slide film fades completely.
The soundtrack were on cassettes. One side has the music and narrative with a audible beep to cue when to change to the next slide frame. The other side have inaudible beep for use with slide projectors that advanced the frame automatically.
Here's a storyboard page for Kaa's Hunting and the sample art I did to get the job.
Like I said, crude by today's standards, but I hope they entertained some kids for a little while. In any rate, they did earned awards for filmstrips, so that's something to be proud of.
I'd been thrilled if anyone remembers seeing this in school or a library. If you did please leave a comment here or on the Youtube page. Enjoy.
I found this old Demo tape of mine that I wanted to save before it fell apart. I used it for a lecture I gave at Monroe Community College, in Rochester NY, last fall. The clips at the head of it are from record ads already posted on Youtube. Unfortunately the original sound track on the demo didn't play properly. The on-air network promos were done when I worked for Image Factory in New York City. The HBO promos were done by Doros Animation. All are crude by today's standards but back then they were cutting edge. Enjoy.
Here is my annual birthday tribute to my father, Sam Woodyard, drummer for the legendary Duke Ellington band. A year before he died I visited Sam in Paris, he was very in very poor heath at the time. His many wonderful friends there shared many warm memories with me. They also give me these albums Sam played on as a sideman while in Paris. I will treasure these always. My special thanks to Gwen Persiany-Workman and Andre' Persiany (his album is shown below) who welcomed me into their home and treated me like family. My thank to everyone.
