Miss Rumphius' Rules » Film

In my Reader…Madagascar Trailer

Susan aka Miss. R — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 01:30:28 +0000

I am often blown away by the way landscapes are rendered in animation. Madagascar, carnet de voyage by Bastien Dubois took four years to make and is one of five short animated films nominated for an Oscar this year. In the following excerpt (the entire running time is only about 12 minutes) the landscape is, in my opinion, a star.

You can watch the entire film here.

2010 Top 5 Posts–Yours!

Susan aka Miss. R — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 11:06:33 +0000

I’ve never done a “top” list before. I was interested in what everyone was here was reading so I took a look at the numbers. As a landscape designer I’m interested in trends–self generated as well as user generated. The list below is a nod to the best of list tradition–not mine–yours. Click each the first few words of each description to go to that post.

An exploration of India’s potential influence on garden styles. The Raj ruled this post.

5 things that influenced me as a landscape designer in 2010.

Ideas on color in garden design…no I wasn’t talking to myself.

Thoughts and ideas about sustainability in garden and landscape design.

A love song to the amazing architecture in Buffalo.

Garden Inspiration | Garden Designers Roundtable

Susan aka Miss. R — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 15:58:12 +0000

I graze across disciplines, media and firsthand experience to feed my ever growing habit. Here are five (of the many more) ideas from the past year that have inspired me. Some have been included in previous posts, others on my FB page, and still others are new to this post. All have contributed to the whole that is my constantly evolving design aesthetic that needs feeding, feeding, feeding. After all, I’m a self proclaimed inspiration junkie omnivore.

French fashion icon Jean Paul Gaultier teamed up with green wall whiz, Patric Blanc to create a runway statement. No longer flat, the idea of designing a garden for vertical, undulating and moving surfaces intrigues me.

Fashion and garden synergy

Great and inspiring retail was the subject of a post entitled They Give Great Shop after a trip to Berkley last winter. I still find myself thinking about objects and textures I saw at Artefact.

Industrial and natural textures collide

Gardens don’t have to be a static thing or relegated to traditional containers. Taking a garden along with you rather than going to your garden is a new way of thinking for me. Here are two that inspired that idea.

Movable gardens from Urban Buds

French company Bacsac on the move

I have always loved the movies. Inception was a visual feast and made me think harder and look harder to see beyond what I think I’m really looking at. Oh, that spinning top.

Inception challenged perception

Travel feeds my inspiration appetite. The 1st was reviewed in Artiface and Artifacts. The 2nd is from a trip to Dallas. Right now I am inspired by juxtaposing traditional and contemporary with artifice and naturalistic design.

Gateways

Bosque

There is so much more…architecture, industrial design, interior design, graphic design, just about anything Dutch, plants, pop music, performing arts, museum shows, books, people, current events, pop culture…and then there’s augmented reality…but that would be a book instead of a blog post–wouldn’t it?

Want to be inspired by the other Roundtable contributors? You can pick up their links…

Andrew Keys : Garden Smackdown : Boston, MA

Carolyn Gail Choi : Sweet Home and Garden Chicago : Chicago, IL

Douglas Owens-Pike : Energyscapes : Minneapolis, MN

Ivette Soler : The Germinatrix : Los Angeles, CA

Jocelyn Chilvers : The Art Garden : Denver, CO

Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber : Hegarty Webber Partnership : Bristol, UK

Pam Penick : Digging : Austin, TX

Rebecca Sweet : Gossip In the Garden : Los Altos, CA

Rochelle Greayer : Studio G : Boston, MA

Susan Morrison : Blue Planet Garden Blog : East Bay, CA

Inspiration and Influence: Hayao Miyazaki

Susan aka Miss. R — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 12:51:58 +0000

For some it was reading Cradle to Cradle, for others it was seeing Al Gore’s charts and hearing the eloquence of his environmental message in an Inconvenient Truth. Others still, can trace their actions to reading Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring or participating in the first Earth Day in the 1970s.

I never imagined that the art and messages in Japanese animated films could have as a profound environmental influence on my work as those mentioned above. Princess Mononoke was the first Hayao Miyazaki film I saw. Having been introduced to anime via my then, preteen son, I was not expecting much.

The Primeval Forest

From the opening sequence I was spellbound at the beauty of the Miyazaki’s complex natural imagery and intrigued by the underlying messages about the consequences of human alteration of the natural world. Ten years later, I find images from this film popping up in my visual memory long after the viewing has been over.

The Forest Spirits

I have seen other work by Miyazaki and environmentalism is a reoccurring theme. It is impossible to convey the urgency of his message and the incredible beauty of the art in still images, you have to see the films.

Civilization

All of the images here are from the official Princess Mononoke Miramax webpage .