- Nina Paley
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Nina Paley 
Nina Paley (2006)Born Nina Paley
May 3, 1968
Urbana, IllinoisNationality American Area(s) writer, penciller, cartoonist, animator Pseudonym(s) Nina Notable works Nina's Adventures, Sita Sings the Blues Nina Paley (born May 3, 1968) is an American cartoonist, animator and free culture activist.[1]
She directed the animated feature film Sita Sings the Blues. She was the artist and often the writer of comic strips Nina's Adventures and Fluff, but most of her recent work has been in animation. Her early short films include Fetch!, The Stork,[2] and The Wit & Wisdom of Cancer.[3]
Contents
Early life
Paley was born in Urbana,[4] Illinois, to Hiram and Jean Paley. Her father was a mathematics professor at the University of Illinois and was mayor of Urbana, where they resided, for a term in the early 1970s.
She attended local elementary and high schools, illustrating a "History of the North Pole" comic in collaboration with University High School history teacher Chris Butler, and attended the University of Illinois, studying art for two years.
Nina's Adventures and other strips
In 1988, Paley moved to Santa Cruz, California, and began to write and draw the strip Nina's Adventures. In 1991, she moved to San Francisco. In 1995, she began to draw the more mainstream Fluff, a comic strip about a cat, which enjoyed a modest success in syndication. In 1998, she also began to experiment with animation.[5]
In 1999, she made the world's first cameraless IMAX film, Pandorama,[6] a short Modernist film which was shown widely at major film festivals in 35 mm form during 2000 and 2001. In 70 mm form, it also ran for about a year as a short feature at Berlin Cinestar and has been shown at IMAX theaters elsewhere.
In 2001, she produced Fetch!, a humorous short cartoon feature based on a variety of optical illusions, which has enjoyed popularity ever since.[7][8]
She then embarked on a series based on a more controversial subject, population growth. The centerpiece of the series was The Stork, in which the natural environment is bombed to destruction by storks dropping bundled babies.[9] The film is a compact expression of the conflict between increasing human population and the ecosystem in which it must live. While the 3½ minute film angered some viewers,[citation needed] it was a considerable success at festivals, and resulted in an invitation to Sundance in 2003.
Early in 2010 Paley started drawing a new three-panel comic strip called "Mimi & Eunice." She is distributing it on the web using a copyleft license.
Between projects, Paley has worked as a freelance director at DUCK Studios in Los Angeles.[10]
Sita and recent work
At the Berlinale premiere in 2008
In 2002, Paley moved to Trivandrum, India, where her husband had taken a job. While she was visiting New York City on business concerning her third comic strip, The Hots, her husband terminated their marriage. Unable to return to either Trivandrum or San Francisco, she moved to Brooklyn, New York. Her personal crisis caused her to see more deeply into the Ramayana, the Indian epic, which she had encountered in India, and motivated her to produce a short animation which combines an episode from the Ramayana with a torch song recorded in 1929 by Annette Hanshaw, "Mean To Me".[11]
Since then she has added episodes and other material to the work, which is now called Sita Sings the Blues, thus expanding it into feature-length treatment of the Ramayana focused on Rama's wife, Sita, using a variety of animation styles and techniques. Many of the episodes have appeared in recent animation festivals. The finished work premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival on Feb. 11, 2008.[12]
Due to the obstacles encountered when trying to clear the rights to Hanshaw's recordings used in the film, Paley began to take part in the free culture movement. She made an illustrated guide to the idea of free content ("Understanding Free Content"[13]), wrote and performed the song "Copying Isn't Theft" meant to be freely remixed by other people[14] and plans to publish much of her work, including "Nina’s Adventures", "Fluff", and all original work in Sita Sings The Blues, under a copyleft licence.[15] The website for Sita Sings the Blues includes a wiki where its fans contributed translated subtitles for the DVD of the film.[16]
She has taught in the Design and Technology section of Parsons, part of The New School.[17]
Works
Comic strips
- Nina's Adventures
- Fluff
- the Hots
- Mimi & Eunice
Filmography
- Cancer (1998. Drawing directly on film. 2 minutes. Color. 35mm.)
- Luv Is... (1998. Clay animation. 3.5 minutes. Beta SP / Super-8. Color.)
- I (heart) My Cat (1998. Clay animation. 3 minutes. 16mm. Color.)
- Pandorama (2000. Drawing directly on film. 3 minutes. color. 15perf/70mm (also known as "IMAX"))
- Fetch! (2001. 2-D computer animation. 4.5 minutes. 35mm. Color.)
- The Stork (2002. 2-D computer animation (Flash/Photoshop/Final Cut Pro). 3 minutes. Video. Color.)
- Goddess of Fertility (2002. 2-D digital animation. 2 minutes. Clay animated on glass. Color. 35mm.)
- Fertco (2002. 2-D digital animation. 3 minutes. Color. Video.)
- The Wit and Wisdom of Cancer (2002. 2-D digital animation. 4.5 minutes. Color. Dialog. Video.)
- Sita Sings the Blues (82 min, 2003–2008, 2-D digital animation. Color.)
References
- ^ My Official Position on Copyright, Nina Paley blog, accessed May 28, 2009
- ^ The Stork on Youtube
- ^ Cancer on Youtube
- ^ Nina Paley at the Internet Movie Database
- ^ NinaPaley.com, official website, accessed Feb. 2, 2007
- ^ Pandorama, Ninapaley.com
- ^ Fetch! (2002) at the Internet Movie Database
- ^ Speaking of the Future with Nina Paley, The Speculist, October 6, 2008. accessed Feb. 8, 2007
- ^ The Stork, on Google Video
- ^ Tiny Inventions Takes to DUCK Studios, Animation Insider, September 29th, 2010
- ^ Featured artist - Nina Paley: Sita Sings the Blues, Flash Goddess, October 2005. accessed Feb. 8, 2007
- ^ Sita Sings The Blues (Work in Progress) Plus Selected Shorts, Cinema Arts Centre - Huntington, NY. accessed Feb. 8, 2007
- ^ Understanding Free Content, QuestionCopyright.org, 2009-04-02. accessed May 28, 2009
- ^ "Copying Isn't Theft" -- Your Versions, QuestionCopyright.org. accessed May 28, 2009
- ^ "The whole struggle with our broken copyright system turned me into a Free Culture activist. I’m actually going to release all my old “Nina’s Adventures” and “Fluff” comics under a Share Alike (copyleft) license too." http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/faq.html accessed May 28, 2009
- ^ See its lists of subtitles and screenings
- ^ Parsons - Design & Technology Faculty, Nina Paley
External links
- Paley's official website
- Nina Paley at the Internet Movie Database
- Web site of Sita Sings The Blues
- Amateur Illustrator: Biography
- Two Eyes Magazine Interview
- Mimi & Eunice, Paley's new 3-panel comic strip
Archives
Categories:- 1968 births
- American animators
- American comic strip cartoonists
- Living people
- Open content activists
- People from Urbana, Illinois
- University Laboratory High School (Urbana, Illinois) alumni
- Female comics artists
- Female comics writers
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