Cultural Origins of Popeye

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Popeye the Sailor is a cartoon fictional character created by Elzie Crisler Segar. The character first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip, Thimble Theatre, on January 17, 1929, and Popeye became the strip’s title in later years; Popeye has also appeared in theatrical and television animated cartoons.

Popeye’s story and characterization vary depending on the medium. Originally, Popeye got “luck” from rubbing the head of the Whiffle Hen; by 1932, he was instead getting “strength” from eating spinach. Swee’Pea is definitively Popeye’s ward in the comic strips, but he is often depicted as belonging to Olive Oyl in cartoons. The cartoons also occasionally feature members of Popeye’s family who have never appeared in the strip, notably his lookalike nephews Peepeye, Pupeye, Pipeye, and Poopeye.


Local folklore in Chester, Illinois, Segar’s hometown, claims that Frank “Rocky” Fiegel (b. January 27, 1868) was the real-life inspiration for the character Popeye. He had a prominent chin, sinewy physique, characteristic pipe, and a propensity and agile skill for fist-fighting. Fiegel died on March 24, 1947 never having married. His gravestone has the image of Popeye engraved on it. The town of Chester erected a statue of Popeye in Fiegel’s honor, which still stands today.

According to Popeye historian Michael Brooks, Segar regularly sent money to Fiegel.

Separate hometown residents of Chester also are claimed to have served as inspiration for two other Segar characters including Dora Pascal, an uncommonly tall, angular lady who ran a general store in town. She even donned a hair bun close to her neckline. William “Windy Bill” Schuchert, a rather rotund man who owned the local opera house, was the seed for the character J. Wellington Wimpy. He would even send out his employees to purchase hamburgers for him between performances at a local tavern named Wiebusch’s, the same tavern that Fiegal would frequent and engage in fistfights.

In 2015, businessman Greg Morena refuted the claim that Popeye originated in Chester, Illinois. Instead, he stated that Santa Monica, California was the birthplace of the character and that a Norwegian sailor by the name of Olaf “cap” Olsen served as the impetus for the character. Research presented in Jim Harris’ 2009 “Santa Monica Pier: A Century of the Last Great Pleasure Pier” raised the idea that while living in Santa Monica, Segar based the physical attributes on Olsen; even though Harris never made a definitive claim.

Tell Me Why..I see colours in Black & White Movies

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Fascinating! Listen to this podcast below discussing why we see colours in black & white movies.

Film colorization (or colourisation) is any process that adds color to black-and-white, sepia, or other monochrome moving-picture images. It may be done as a special effect, to modernize black-and-white films, or to restore color films. Examples date from the early 20th century, but colorization has become common with the advent of digital image processing.

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Dementia – Photos Helping Trigger Memories

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Pictures taken by a little-known photographer ‘Joseph Hardman’ between the 1930s and 1960s have found a new use helping to trigger memories and reminiscences among people with dementia.

When Joseph died in 1972, his wife donated almost 5,000 glass negatives to the Museum of Lakeland Life and Industry in Kendal, Cumbria.

Now the photos are used to help a group of people living with dementia using the photos as a catalyst to reminisce about their own lives in the Lake District.

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Read More of the BBC article here

 

Photo Restoration – Texture synthesis

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Did you know there are complicated Algorithms and Methods involved in Photo Restoration?

Although the algorithms are never seen, from the proposed equations you can tell how complex it was to get where we are today in terms of photo restoration.

Alexei A. Efros and Thomas K. Leung (Computer Science Division – University of California, Berkeley) developed a method and algorithm that, although initially intended for texture synthesis, has proven most effective for photo restoration problems.

The algorithm allows the image gap to be filled-in recursively, inwards from the gap boundary.

The Equation:

Output(P) = V alue(Q), P ∈ Ω, Q /∈ Ω, Q = arg min d(Ψ(P), Ψ(Q))

where d(Ψ(P), Ψ(Q)) is the Sum of Squared Differences (SSD) among the patches Ψ(P) and Ψ(Q) (considering only available pixels):

d(Ψ1, Ψ2) = X i X j |Ψ1(i, j) − Ψ2(i, j)| 2

Once a pixel is filled-in, the algorithm marchs on to the next pixel at the boundary of the gap, never going back to the completed Pixel (whose value is, therefore, not altered again). The results are really impressive for a wide range of images. The main shortcomings of this algorithm are its computational cost, the selection of the neighborhood size