A couple weeks ago, I spoke to a friend from college who I hadn’t spoken to in…well, longer than it should have been. It’s something I’m really trying to work on, but as you probably know, sometimes life gets in the way. Anyway, during the course of our conversation catching up on what was happening in each other’s lives, he told me that my design professor and the person who was really the cornerstone of the entire technical theatre department had passed away last year. I hadn’t spoken to him since 1989, but the news of his passing left me a little gutted. Herb Camburn was a scenic designer, a costume designer, a director, and an artist. He was one of the most talented people I had ever met, let alone had the pleasure of studying under. When explaining a particular concept, he would routinely grab a pen or pencil and begin to draw—sometimes a costume rendering, other times a scenic elevation—but regardless of what he was drawing, the execution was always impeccable. The real art, however, was that he would make his drawings upside down—either seated or standing—from across the table, so that they would be right side up for the intended viewer, who on more than one occasion was me. I had enormous respect for him and for the skill he made look so effortless. He was gruff, at times incredibly difficult (at least this was the memory of my early twenty-something self), and if praise ever did escape his lips, it meant the world because you knew that you’d earned it.

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The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is an Academy Award-winning homage to the printed page and the love of books based on a book by William Joyce.

Here’s the trailer and a behind the scenes look at a short called The Lost Property Office and one of the things that I absolutely love about this stop-motion film is the fact that everything in it was hand made out of cardboard by filmmaker Daniel Agdag. Be sure to watch the behind the scenes clip to see how some of it came together.

Bill Sienkiewicz is a giant in the comics industry, has worked on books for both DC and Marvel and is probably best known for illustrating Moon Knight and the Frank Miller series Elektra: Assassin. In this video from The Illustration Academy, we get to an overhead look as Bill creates an illustration from start to finish and offers some insights into how he creates his signature style.

Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0