Image created for Tiffany & Co. by Tobie Giddio, reproduced courtesy of the artist.
Tobie Giddio grew up on the New Jersey Shore where she fell in love with fashion and art from the books and magazines in her basement makeshift studio. After graduating from the Fashion Institute of Technology, she began illustrating advertisements for Bergdorf Goodman that ran weekly in the New York Times. Other work during this period included editorials for Interview Magazine and elaborately illustrated forecasting books and editorial work for Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. Since 2000, her work has been commissioned by clients ranging from Seibu Department Stores of Japan, to Apple, Inc., and Tiffany & Co.
Recent projects have included a series of classic charcoal and pen and ink drawings for Amy Sedaris’s book, I Like You: Hospitality Under The Influence and a series of drawings for Infiniti Cars, as well as animated projects with Dovetail Studios, a collaboration between Giddio and her fiancé, motion/graphic designer Peter Belsky.
Tobie Giddio on the Web: Tobie Giddio.com, Dovetail Studios
Cecil Vortex: Can you describe your background?
Tobie Giddio: Well, I started out in fashion illustration. I studied with a number of teachers at F.I.T. [the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York – ed.]. And one of my main mentors was a teacher who was very rooted in fine art, so I was getting taught both principles at the same time. I was learning about drawing, and drawing the figure, and drawing the fashion figure, and then at the same time I was learning how to abstract the figure and learning about color and fine art and especially the modern art folks. To this day, I work in the fashion industry, and I spend a lot of time abstracting fashion and beauty and nature.
CV: How does fashion illustration work — when you’re working on an ad, for example, what are you working from?
My One-Word Review of My Realization Out of the Blue Yesterday That Mayor McCheese was Just an H.R. PufnStuf Rip-Off
Devastating!
(fortunately, thanks to the power of the google machine, I found out this morning that the wicked were punished.)
Everybody Wants to Be a Cat
Once again it’s been a while since my last track on the virtual lp. I’ve started playing piano again of late. Not sure what’s triggered it, but it’s fun. Here’s a mimosa toast to piano, on this Saturday morn.
Specifically, my daughter brought home a great Disney songbook, which led to this here mini-cover of “Everybody Wants to Be a Cat” from Disney’s immortal Aristocats. (Not to be confused with more recent and slightly more mortal flick entitled The Aristocrats, particularly on family movie night.)
Thanks for listening…..
-Cecil
time: 1:35 seconds; specs: 2.1 MB
Press Play to play.
note: updated from Saturday’s initial version.
Shine On Harvest Moon
The bliss starts about 45 seconds in.
(As an aside, I first discovered this video about 13 years ago, and for a stretch I must have played it 15 times a day. Good times. Good times.)
Four more things we learned writing “Mankind’s Last Hope”
A week or two ago I took a crack at jotting down a few lessons learned from the MLH experience. Here are four more before it all fades into sandy dream fragments……
1. There are life-enhancing creative outcomes short of Hollywood-style success
Several years back I ended a lengthy writer’s block by figuring out that there were plenty of worthwhile things you could write that weren’t novels. Like screenplays, for example. And poems. And ditties.
This time around I learned that there are plenty of lovely things you can do with a screenplay short of getting it a slot next to 30 Rock. Not that I wouldn’t love a slot next to 30 Rock if you happen to know Tina Fey. She’s so funny.
2. Sugar can be chemically transformed into giggles
One of the shows was a little rough, in part because the theater was particularly warm. The next day I was talking with a Hollywood-style writer about the heat. He told me there’s a rule of thumb in sitcom-land that they keep the theaters at 60 or somesuch. He also said they hand out lots of cookies before the show. So we brought donut holes that night, opened the windows for the whole show and: hey presto — slightly overweight humans laughing! (Actually our audiences were remarkably fit. Disturbingly fit. It was weird.)
3. Ti-ming? Time-ing? Timing
One of the most interesting things for me and co-writer Jeff was seeing lines that we didn’t think were especially funny get some of the best responses. “Spencer” in particular had this one line: “That is disturbing on so many levels” — huge roar every night. Even when the house was too hot and there tweren’t a cookie in sight. It’s not a bad line. Not a great line. But really, the line didn’t matter. It was all about the timing. He was on the beat, like a point guard feeding the power forward a pass that’s right on the bounce. Slam dunk.
4. The audience needs to be in on the joke
The night before we opened we had a preview show for a select few. The cast did great but the response was low-key. We talked about it afterwards and concluded that the problem was that we hadn’t told our remarkably fit audience what to expect and how we wanted them to behave. The next night, director Bob stormed the stage with a rousing monologue that set the show up. told people where the commercials were going to play, where we’d roll credits. He told them we wanted them to laugh loud. To boo the bad guys. And it made all the difference. It seems obvious now, but it’s easy to forget: If you’re asking people to laugh, you gotta bring them along for the ride.
Here’s something messed up
It’s the year 2007. 2000. 7.
I’m calling bull-ass* on that one.
* “bull-ass” was my 7-year-old’s best-guess attempt when we asked him if he knew the curse word that started with bull. “Bull-ass?” he said. And oh, how we laughed at his feeble stab at sailor talk. Then we promptly started using the term ourselves.
My One-Word Review for Tom Shadyac’s “Evan Almighty”
“HoneyGodMadeMeNoah”
(runner up: “OhGod!YouMorganFreeman”)
The days of experimenting with my eggs
have fallen away.
No fennel. No onions any more. No rosemary, no cheese.
All these, pulled beneath the surf
like Godzilla, turning her scaly back on us, taking our
early egg experiments down with her
in a foamy splash.
It’s Tabasco now, every time.
Salt, pepper, chili powder. Basil, fresh when possible.
Big old curds. Not too dry.
Come back Godzilla. Come back
and we’ll make
crazy eggs.
Five things we learned writing “Mankind’s Last Hope”
Well, it was a pretty great experience watching the live version of Mankind’s Last Hope come together under the expert direction of Bob Lundy-Paine. Long journey too. I thought, before things fade too much, I’d take a few minutes to jot down some of the things we learned along the way. But first, for anyone not familiar with the tale, here’s a sketch of the trek:
Flashback
Jeff and I started writing the script something like four years ago and came up with two episodes. We did a table read with friends, which was a blast, and then we put those scripts aside. Some six months later we saw a contest to write a new sitcom. We jumped at it, wrote a pilot, did another reading, sent the pilot in, didn’t win, took another break.
Then about two years ago, I met director Bob at a Blacksmith Cellars wine tasting. He and his wife Laura were two of the co-founders for a theater company called Virago. We ended up talking about Virago and an idea Jeff and I had, that it’d be great to stage a sitcom live. Fun chat. Then we drank more wine.
An Interview with Dan Wilson, Part Two
photo credit: James Minchin.
Welcome to the second half of this two-part interview with musician Dan Wilson (Trip Shakespeare, Semisonic), whose new solo CD, Free Life, was just released by American Records/Columbia. If you haven’t already read the first part, be sure to check it out to hear about the summer day Wilson wrote his first song, the key role titles play in his songwriting process, and why art is a volume business.
Dan Wilson on the Web: Dan Wilson.com, Dan Wilson on MySpace, Free Life
CV: I’d heard Semisonic’s song “DND” several times before learning that “DND” referred to the “Do Not Disturb” signs in hotels. I wondered what your thoughts were on how much you want to let your listeners in on the particulars behind your lyrics?
DW: This is an important question. I’m torn about it. On the one hand, I’m a talkative guy who has a lot of ideas and they naturally come out in my lyrics. So I often am tempted to explain my songs, or at least tempted to lay out for interviewers (and through them, listeners) the thoughts or ideas or stories behind my songs.
But on the other hand, I have a vivid memory of being a kid and reading an interview with Paul McCartney wherein he said that his song “Jet” was about a dog. Not only that one, but “Martha My Dear,” that one was about a dog, too. These were two songs of his that I loved, and I was just deflated by the revelation — I had had my own mental images of the people in both those songs, not that they were visually detailed, but a kind of “songish” vision of the people and the stories. And to learn that these people were dogs was such a letdown.
Now, Sir Paul has every right to write songs about his dogs, I’ve got no problem with that. But in learning that those particular songs were about dogs, I was suddenly deprived of my own pleasant illusion that they were about people. And somehow they shrank in my mind as a result of being explained.
Another factor in all this is that I often don’t know what the songs are about until long after I’ve written them. This makes it tempting to share the interpretation — since in my mind, my explanation is as good as a listener’s. But on the other hand, once I’ve given my interpretation of my own song, it has the quality of being “the last word.” And sometimes, the fans come up with the coolest interpretations of their meanings – way cooler than the interpretation or intention I might have had.
So I try to curb my impulse to explain my songs, lest I shrink them in the ears of fans.
CV: Is there any aspect of the creative process that still intimidates you?