Fantasia

Let me just say a few things. Music and art. They go together. One inspires the other, and vice versa. Both are wordless languages, understood throughout the world. What first brought my attention to this undeniable link between image and sound was Walt Disney's Fantasia. See, my dad is a band teacher. Music runs in my family. So it's really no surprise that as kids, for my two sisters and me, Fantasia wasn't just a movie. It was an experience.

 As a child I had no idea they were slightly racist mushrooms.

Scared. The. Crap out of me.

As a child, I loved it for all the imagery, all the colors. "Ooh fishies!" "Look, pegasus!" "What are those half-horse half-people?" And thus I was introduced to art (and mythology, incidentally.) For the record, the Dinosaurs scared the crap out of me, as did the demons in "Night on Bald Mountain." But overall, I loved it. I didn't care that there weren't words, because the picture didn't need any (in fact I usually fast-forwarded through the parts that did have words.)

My first introduction since Greek mythology. Now I suddenly want to draw some.

Faeries :) Still one of my favorite portions of Fantasia

As I grew older, I came to appreciate, rather than just enjoy, the imagery and the animation. I even grew to appreciate those terrifying demon things and the scary bat guy. But seriously. This movie was made in 1940. Guys, that was before basic synthetic rubber and the microwave were invented. This was all done by hand, cell by cell, background painted and animation done one frame at a time. WRAP YOUR HEAD AROUND THAT. Seriously, artists back then were impressive. Not that artists today aren't. But it's really crazy to think what people did before computers.

Not only did I appreciate the animation, I was inspired by it. I cannot tell you how many pegasus, centaurs, and fauns I doodled after I'd seen this movie. I literally scribbled them on everything. So, from an early beginning, and probably because of this movie, I was connected with mythology. I was connected with the idea of music and art inspiring, shaping, and forming one another. Even today, I find most of my best art inspired by music, or done while listening to music (Sigur Ros is my personal favorite because of their ethereal quality and its lack of comprehensible lyrics.)

So if ever you're in need of some inspiration, look to art, look to music, or look to Fantasia which has got both areas covered.