Harryhausen: You're the Coolest

So cool to see and hear from an artist whose work I've long admired and whose movies are a blast! I still get all silly when I watch some of my favorites, especially "Mysterious Island", "Clash of the Titans" and "Jason and the Argonauts".

Thanks to A Bunch of Short Guys (Dallas Animation Group) and Janimation and the other sponsors for putting this together.

Yup, I got the book, The Art of Ray Harryhausen; AND got it autographed. Had a fun discussion with a singer from the Dallas Opera while I was in line...it helped make the wait to meet Mr. Harryhausen go by faster. It made me think that I need to get me a ticket or two for a show again and listen to some fine music. Not that I'm a major opera fan, but I did notice in the brochure I got the other day from the Ft Worth Symphony Orchestra that they're putting on a Warner Brother's Cartoon Music set called "Bugs Bunny on Broadway". Now THAT sounds like a whole lotta fun. :) And what a great introduction to Bass Hall - I'm sorry to say that I still haven't been to a musical performance there yet.

But back to Harryhausen...

I was so impatient to go through the book as soon as I picked it up that I missed when they started letting people in. D'oh! Turns out that the guy that ended up sitting next to me is running a small 2D animation studio where one of my former co-workers is now animating. Based on what Anthony had said before about the place, it reminds me alot of the multimedia group where I first started learning some animation and layout after university. Lots of long hours, some really fun stuff, and so much to learn from some seriously experienced artists. Sounds great! I'm glad to hear that he's doing well.

Now for real, back to Harryhausen....

We got to see the short film of a new production he was involved with called "The Pit and the Pendulum", which is based on the story by Edgar Allan Poe. It was really cool! Made me want to rethink the offer I had earlier today to work on a stop motion project. It would totally be on our own time. I need to talk to the guy again tomorrow and see if we can't get something going. Why not? It would be fun.