Image © Dan Callister www.dancallister.com

The ship that now rocks - a true story of creative initiative

You might have heard about the ship online. Perhaps you saw a photo shared on Facebook. One thing's for sure - the Duke Of Lancaster, a huge ship that has sat off Llanerch-y-Mor on the Dee estuary in Flintshire, North Wales since 1979, has never generated so much attention as it has over the past 5 months. The reason? Call it street art gone right, call it creative initiative or even a colourful intervention, but the results are undeniable - this ship has been given a new lease of life in more ways than one.

Image © Dan Callister www.dancallister.com

Built for secret reasons, beached and forgotten about...almost

There's a crazy back story to this massive ship, one that's told in great detail on the site of the mysterious DuDug, who are behind the Duke Of Lancaster's amazing makeover ('DuDug means 'Black Duke' in Welsh, by the way). It's a story that starts shortly after WWII, and takes in the paranoia of the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis, as well as a dodgy spy who was stripped of his knighthood. Turns out the Duke Of Lancaster wasn't built by Harland and Wolff (builders of the Titanic) in Belfast in 1956 to be a luxury cruise liner, which is what it looks like for all intents and purposes, but rather to be a safe and floating haven for royalty and highly-placed members of British society, in the event of a nuclear Armageddon. That of course never happened, and the ship was decommisioned in the mid-1980s, and brought to rest on the Dee estuary, with some plans to be turned into a leisure destination. That, obviously, didn't pan out, and the ship has since sat.

Image ©Annar 50

From maritime memory to front-page news

Over the past two decades it appears that there have been a fair few tussles to keep the ship abandoned, and to have her resurrected. These have involved the ship's owners and the local Council battling it out in court, and eventually the owners giving up. Surpassing all of this, and bringing the ship's fate to worldwide attention, the DuDug crew stepped up 5 months ago by inviting the first of many artists to paint the ship, the first being Latvian artist KIWIE. Since then more artists from all over Europe (including Lora Zombie, Andy Mercer, Bungle, Mr Zero, Fin Dac, Goin, Si Clark and Fatheat) have made their marks, as featured in the images on this page. In the process, the ship and the artworks have featured across all media and have become something of a celebrated art intervention. And there's an upshot - with so much attention, it would appear plans are afoot to restore this amazing ship.

As art and design lovers, we at Springleap salute the DuDug crew and wish them and the artists involved many more successes!

Saul Bass - legendary title sequence and logo designer

As the greatest title sequence designer of all time, Saul Bass's work is mostly noted only by film nuts and graphic designers. This is because for the most part his work is either featured in logo form (where no credits are listed) or on movie posters (where the poster designer is not credited). This, however, doesn't change the fact in terms of numbers, more people have been exposed to the work of Saul Bass than most any other designer of the 20th century.

Movie posters, titles and logo design for over fifty years

Having studied in New York City, Bass's career as a designer took off when he began working on title sequences for film, and took on work as a graphic designer in between film projects. As one of the leading identity designers in the USA his work has been expsosed to countless millions of people, but it was his collaboration with renowned film director Otto Preminger on 'The Man With The Golden Arm' saw his work widely recognised for the first time. In the process, Bass developed the title sequence of films and television as an integral part of the content. In his own words "My initial thoughts about what a title can do was to set mood and the prime underlying core of the film’s story, to express the story in some metaphorical way. I saw the title as a way of conditioning the audience, so that when the film actually began, viewers would already have an emotional resonance with it.”

The greatest title sequence designer of all time

Having started by working with Preminger, Bass became massively popular for title sequence work between the 1950s and and late 1970s, and it would be fair to say that any film or series which introduces credits that sets the tone or provides an epilogue to the actual storyline in some way bears the mark Saul Bass's influence. In his time, Bass designed title sequences for every major Hollywood studio. Toward the end of his career, he was rediscovered by James L. Brooks and Martin Scorsese who had grown up admiring his film work. For Scorsese, Bass created the title sequences for Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991), The Age of Innocence (1993), and Casino (1995). A design legend of the 20th century? Without a shadow of a doubt.

Video Friday: The index

Our Video Friday posts feature the best in film, animation and moving image that we can find. If you've seen any of them, you'll know that we cover a wide range of moving picture genius including classics from the dawn of film to the latest in cutting-edge CGI. Here's the list so far - keep an eye on this, we'll be adding more every week!

1. H5 - 'Logorama'

2. Salvador Dali + Walt Disney - 'Destino' 

3. Terry Gilliam - 'Storytime'

4. Walt Disney - 'Steamboat Willie'

5. Fabrice o. Joubert - 'French Roast'

6. Daniel Levi - 'Henry'

7. CRCR - ''Les Chiens Isolés'

8. Salon Alpin - 'Much Better Now'

9. Andrey Shushkov - 'Invention of Love'

10. Malcolm Sutherland - 'Umbra'

11. Osvaldo Cavandoli - La Linea #1

12. Olivier Delabarre, Thierry Marchand, Quentin Marmier - 'Oktapodi'

13. Tim Burton - 'Vincent'

14. Monty Python's Flying Circus - 'Dead Parrot Sketch'

15. Lego - 'The Lego Story'

16. John Kars - 'Paperman'

17. Matt Groening - 'The Simpsons' Episode 1: 'Good Night'

Stay tuned for our weekly Video Friday posts - there's lots more where that came from!

Classic animation: Disney's 'Steamboat Willie' (1928)

Happy Friday! And if it's Friday, it must be Video Friday here at The Leap. Today we're going way, way back to the very dawn of animated cartoons, with a clip that marks Mickey Mouse, and his girlfriend Minnie's, first appearance on public screens with which the two mice made their splash into immortality with this, Disney's third-ever animated cartoon: Steamboat Willie. Many people claim this to be the very first that Disney’s studio put out: it’s not. That honour falls to a short clip named Plane Crazy, which also featured Mickey & Minnie, but failed to find a distributor and was thus not aired commercially until the 1960s.

Mickey and Minnie - an early outing

One thing that's immediately obvious in Steamboat Willie is of course that Mickey and Minnie don't look quite the same as they've come to be known by modern audiences. No surprises there - this 7:43s short was first aired at Universal's Colony Theatre in 1928! On release it became hugely popular and paved the way for other animators' introduction to American, and subsequently worldwide, moving picture audiences. The major factor that created the short's amazing success was not necessarily the animation, but rather the fact this was one of the very first animated cartoons to feature sound - something crucial to the sketch, as the entire storyline contains musical skits by Mickey, Minnie and the rest of the characters.

A Disney time capsule from the dawn of animation

Directed and produced by Walt Disney, who also did the voices, Steamboat Willie is a time capsule which takes the viewer back to the very start of what would become an entire industry which would revolutionise the way cartoons were consumed. Enjoy!

If you enjoyed this, you'll love our other featured Video Friday shorts - go here for more.

'La Linea' - simple animation at its best

Osvaldo Cavandoli's classic animation 'La Linea' was a series of 90 episodes which featured a line drawing of a man ('Mr La Linea', who's a rough facsimile of a human) who walks along a line, of which he's part. For anyone who watched TV between 1971 and 1990, chances are they recognise him immediately, as providing the light entertainment that was often featured between longer series - over the past 40 years, 'La Linea' has been screened in over 120 countries, on more than 500 television channels.

Mr La Linea: a moody little guy who has wild tantrums

As Mr La Linea makes his way along his line, he encounters an endless array of problems - which he frequently turns to the illustrator to fix. La Linea doesn't speak any language known to man, though his gibberish is very descriptive in tone. The illustrator is always shown as a hand, with white pencil, who intervenes to correct mistakes or extend the line so Mr La Linea can continue on his way. He's a moody little guy, is La Linea, and often has wild tantrums (the series is Italian, and borrows much from the passionate gesticulation that Italians use) but equally is easy to please, and once his problems have been addressed, continues merrily on his way. As an exercise in how simple animation - this series was, after all, created using only a very basic stop-frame animation technique (and originally broadcast on the Italian channel RAI between 1971 and 1986) - La Linea remains a great example of the depth of humour and emotion that a simple line can communicate. But enough! (or 'Basta!' as La Linea might say) - take a look for yourself. And be prepared to burst out laughing!

La Linea episode #1 (1971)

If you enjoyed this, you'll love our other featured Video Friday shorts - go here for more.