1963-2010

Did some artwork for the Satoshi Kon tribute being held by

I'm still pretty distraught by his untimely death.

I can't begin to emphasize how important his contributions to anime and film were... if only because he manage to make works that were so different in an industry that's being suffocated by an alarming shift towards the homogenization of productions (anime is different from film in a sense that there isn't a large enough pool of talent to support something like an "indie" scene; given the nature of animation, working "outside of the system" isn't particularly easy since, by default, staff sizes need to be somewhat large and specialized... I mean, respectable "indie"-like productions happen, but not with the frequency one would like); in a time where not many are willing to put out for elaborate movie-length productions in favor of a quick buck, Kon was one of the few people in the anime industry who could command enough resources and talent to do something wildly creative because of the power of his vision as a director.

There are still a lot of promising "young" anime film makers out there, no doubt (I'm a fan of several of them), but it's hard for me to not feel like anime has taken a drastic turn for the worse with Kon's passing; it not only came too early in his promising career, but it came at a time where his kind is direly needed.

I'll likely talk extensively about his works in the near future; I just need to re-watch his stuff first.