Aaron's Cartoons and Stuff

Urusei Yatsura is So Good

2012-02-01T21:06:00.034-04:00

I've been watching more Urusei Yatsura, although not in any particular order. I just got Vol. 22 and 31, although I haven't watched any of the latter yet. Vol. 22 is probably the funniest set of episodes I've seen so far. In particular, episode 83 "Big Battle! Ten vs. Ataru" has a ton of insane animation, and a simple premise that leaves lots of room for crazy gags. Basically the plot is that Jariten (Lum's baby cousin) and Ataru have a fight... Told you it was simple.

This episode is drawn in a much looser, gag manga-like style than the others that I've seen. It starts off with some Road Runner/Coyote-style gags, with Jariten as the coyote.

And then there's this face. It will haunt your dreams.

Lum doesn't appear too much in the episode, but when she does, even she gets a couple of pretty funky poses.

Obviously I can't convey it through writing and pictures, but the gags themselves are even more off-the-wall than usual in this episode, and the writing and direction are fantastic, full of hilarious reveals and bizarre ideas.

This sequence with Ataru trying to open his lunchbox in class with a bandaged hand is amazing. It's actually fully animated, and chock-full of crazy, distorted drawings and wacky poses. I also find it funny that throughout the sequence, the guy behind him is frozen with his mouth wide open.

And then his teacher transforms into a pig.

...Of course.

None of the other episodes on this disc contain as much funny animation as this one, but they're all pretty good anyway.

From an episode that's basically Hitchcock's The Birds only with potatoes attacking instead:

In the next one, a giant robotic chalkboard eraser, who used to be Lum's space-elementary school teacher, returns to punish her and her friends for pranks they pulled on him as kids.

Then the last episode on the disc has the characters travel back in time to figure out why one of them is claustrophobic.

...And this is from the preview for the next episode. It is now my civic duty to buy the next volume and see this in full:

I used to prefer the early episodes of the series because I felt they were more pure comedy-oriented, whereas the later ones that I'd seen featured weird attempts at serious drama. Turns out that what I'd seen was unrepresentative of the majority of later episodes. I'm glad I've started watching them now-- I can see why people called these later Mamoru Oshii-directed years of the show its golden age. The early episodes really are a lot cruder compared to these ones, in just about every respect.

One thing I noticed on this volume is that for no particular reason, the show keeps using a version of "Your Mother Should Know," done in its usual primitive-synthesizer style, as background music. I have no idea how they got away with this. I've also heard them use "Magical Mystery Tour" in another episode.

School and a freelance animation job are taking up most of my time at the moment. Apart from those, I'm mostly working on the third Fester Fish cartoon. Unfortunately I haven't had the chance to record the dialogue yet, so the number of shots I can animate at the moment is limited. While doing clean-up and colouring, I've been listening to my new favourite podcast, "Dynamite in the Brain," which is anime-themed and hosted by Brian Smith and Anthony Askew. Brian's blog Awesome Engine is what got me onto this current Urusei Yatsura bent, since he's written reviews for the first two-thirds of the series.

Mamoru Hosoda's One Piece Movie 6

2012-01-24T22:56:00.015-04:00

I haven't seen a lot of One Piece. I think I caught a couple of episodes on TV once, and I know the basics of the show and characters, but I haven't seen anything that really made me want to seek out more. The series has some aspects I like, but they aren't the primary focus and it's too frustrating to see those elements perpetually sidelined for typical shonen fights. However I recently watched the sixth One Piece movie, Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island since it was directed by Mamoru Hosoda. While the story was nothing to write home about, the direction was great and the animation was fun. At times it was almost like a cross between Hosoda's other films and Masaaki Yuasa.

The character designs have been simplified enough that they can easily be animated, much more fully than most anime (including most of the other One Piece animation that I've seen). Compare this shot of the characters as they appear in this movie...

.... To this picture of their designs elsewhere.

I've seen people refer to that usual One Piece art style as "very simple," presumably compared to other anime, but to me it looks just as bogged down in individual hair strands, muscles and fabric wrinkles as almost all anime and manga these days.

Anyway, in this movie they're handled very loosely, and heavily stylized. The exaggerated perspective is probably one of the main things that reminds me of Masaaki Yuasa.

As with lots of anime over the last decade, it does suffer from some incongruous CGI like the giant fish in the above image... Other than this instance, it's mostly just used for moving backgrounds though.

And of course since it's a Mamoru Hosoda film, it's full of wonderful deep compositions and many scenes with nice muted colours.

The original character designs for the movie are also pretty fun:

I have a feeling the story would have had more weight if I were already invested in the characters from having watched the TV series, but even with my limited knowledge and no emotional attachment to them, it was still a pretty fun 100 minutes.

Some Anime I've Been Watching

2012-01-03T11:20:00.020-04:00

I keep meaning to post about various anime shows I've watched over the past few months but I haven't had time until now. So here's a big Frankenstein monster of a post, stitched together from half-written ones from months ago.

I watched Mind Game director Masaaki Yuasa's pilot episode for the series Vampire Kids, or "Nanchatte Vampiyan." His pilot film is much darker than the series itself eventually turned out, both literally and in terms of mood. I love these backgrounds from it. They have a great sense of atmosphere. It would be fun to work on something in this style, with limited pastel colours and distorted perspective.

Yuasa injected some of his usual idiosyncratic style into the film, although it was so early in his career that not all of his recognizable directorial traits were fully in place yet, and most of his input was abandoned when it became a full series. Some of the more extreme character animation, camera movement and non-sequitur gags give his presence away though.

I've also been watching some of Mamoru Hosoda's work. I really like the way he dispenses with shading on the characters. Most modern anime emphasizes heavily shaded, detailed drawings with very little movement, but he does the opposite. It creates a striking, somewhat flat look, balanced by his extreme (for animation, at least) use of depth in his compositions. And of course it allows the animators to focus more on the action.

See, no shading. Creates a somewhat old-fashioned feeling in the characters.

And this is what I mean about the extremely deep compositions.

Like just about everybody else, I was introduced to Hosoda's work in the 90s, watching Digimon. The single episode of the series that he directed, somewhere around episode 20 I think, had a completely different feel than the rest of the show-- much more low-key and contemplative. And of course, being set in the real world for once, it was much more based in reality.
I remember at the time, watching that episode (and even more so the two theatrical Digimon films he did), I was fascinated by seeing these familiar fantasy characters engaged in relatable real-life situations rather than fighting some giant monster, which I'd already gotten tired of, even as a ten-year-old kid. I particularly liked Hosoda's attention to mundane details, like kids running around their home in their socks rather than shoes. It sounds obvious, but most cartoons don't pay attention to that kind of stuff and I found this very refreshing as a kid.

More recently, I got to see Hosoda's films The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Summer Wars. Both of them retained what I liked about his earlier work.

I think my favourite work of his is still those two theatrical Digimon films though, maybe just for nostalgic reasons. They were some of the first anime I saw with decent animation, after being used to junk like Sailor Moon, Pokemon and Dragon Ball (although that one did at least have fun designs early on, before it started to take itself seriously).

Obviously I also like Hayao Miyazaki (because who doesn't?), but I find him overrated. I could name lots of other anime directors I like just as much as him. I think the main reason for his fame is simply that he's done so many family-friendly films and created an identifiable Studio Ghibli brand, which is now practically becoming a parody of itself. Generally, anime directors only get to do a handful of original films if they're lucky, most of the time being stuck working on existing franchises. Miyazaki did spend a lot of his early career on Lupin III, but because he was there when the series was just getting established, he was able to put a lot of his own ideas into it. Even today, the Lupin III anime is heavily based on what Miyazaki did with it early on. It's hard to pick a favourite Miyazaki movie, because I feel the same way about most of them-- I'll enjoy the majority of the film, but somewhere towards the end I get a bit tired of the overly sentimental, cloying characters and storytelling. His humour style is also incredibly tame and conservative.

Mamoru Oshii is one of those directors who was stuck slaving away on a series for a long time, and it happens to be another one that I like -- Urusei Yatsura. Based on Rumiko Takahashi's first manga series, the anime version was helped immensely by Oshii's presence; he often gave the show a surreal dream-like feel, and occasionally even brought a sense of depth to the repetitive throwaway plotlines and gags of Takahashi's original comic.

Not that the light, disposable aspects of the show are bad, by any means-- but it is really hard to explain why I like it so much. First you have to get past the fact that it looks so girly (see above image). You also have to understand that the reason its humour seems so familiar is because this is the series that established, if not invented, almost every anime cliche. It has been called the Japanese equivalent of the Simpsons, although that's an exaggeration -- even at its best, it was never nearly as dense or layered as the Simpsons. It's hard to imagine a time when face faults were unexpected and fresh, but that is literally how influential this series was. Just about every aspect of it was copied in some way. For instance, the female lead Lum's shtick of giving people electric shocks when she's mad was ripped off by the Pokemon anime.

The series never had a chance to become really popular in North America-- it was already pretty old by the time anime started to become popular here, so some people didn't give it a chance based solely on that. Furthermore, a lot of the more subtle verbal humour doesn't translate that well, because it's full of Japanese wordplay. Probably because of this, there's never been a successful English dub of the series. It would be almost impossible to reproduce the energy of the original vocal performances anyway. Some of the screaming on this show is hilarious-- sometimes louder really is funnier.

...Anyway, Mamoru Oshii's contributions to the Urusei Yatsura anime were summed up perfectly by his final work on it, Urusei Yatsura Movie 2: Beautiful Dreamer. He provided the original story for the film, and was thus finally able to delve completely into what he found interesting about the series. The result was an unusually quiet, atmospheric film in which the characters find themselves caught repeating the same day... Hey, it was nine years before Groundhog Day! Despite the bizarre story, he stayed true to the characters and their humour.

For a longtime fan of the series, it was interesting to see the characters thrown into a more somber story that made them take things a little more slowly and analytically, while still finding some room for the slapstick comedy elements. Of course later on, Oshii became better-known as the director of Ghost in the Shell, which is a pretty amazing movie, but I still prefer his lighter, earlier work.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T17:58:00.004-04:00

The Gutsy Frog On Brubaker's Blog

2011-12-07T13:14:00.004-04:00

Charles Brubaker just did a great series of posts on his blog about another 70s anime with pretty funky animation -- "The Gutsy Frog." I highly recommend reading them.

http://bakertoons.blogspot.com/2011/11/gutsy-frog.html
http://bakertoons.blogspot.com/2011/12/gutsy-frog-continued.html
http://bakertoons.blogspot.com/2011/12/gutsy-frog-part-3.html

Pooh Review and Muppet Musings

2011-11-27T17:40:00.039-04:00

Recently I've seen two attempts to bring beloved franchises back to their former glories. (Three if you include Sonic Generations, but I'm sure none of my readers want to hear about video games so I'll just say I loved it and leave it at that.)

Winnie the Pooh was designed as a throwback to the original Pooh shorts from the late 60s. I think in attempting to be faithful to the quiet, low-key charm of the classic shorts, they went too far and just made a movie where nothing really happens. The familiar wordplay arguments are taken to extremes here-- the characters spend the whole movie arguing about what they should do, and never get around to doing it. The songs were also completely tuneless. Still, it was definitely the best Pooh movie in quite a while. It did have its moments, and the animation and voices were as good as one would expect from Disney.

On the other hand, I flat-out loved The Muppets. I haven't paid much attention to the Muppets' output over the past decade but the last I saw, it seemed like they were still struggling to get over the various deaths (Jim Henson, Richard Hunt, Jerry Juhl) and retirements (Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson) that had shaken up the franchise. I'm happy to say that this issue has now been sorted out.

Steve Whitmire's Kermit still doesn't sound 100% like Henson's did, but he's close enough. Frank Oz's characters are now played almost perfectly by Eric Jacobson. I say "almost" because most of them are dead-on, but Fozzie Bear's voice alternates between sounding indistinguishable from the original, and being barely recognizable. He definitely has Fozzie's speech pattern right, which is no easy feat, but the timbre of the voice wavers a lot during the quieter moments. His Piggy, Animal and Sam the Eagle are consistently good though. The replacements for Jerry Nelson and Richard Hunt are also fantastic. Dave Goelz is still playing Gonzo, 35 years on, and seems to be in good health, so I assume he'll continue for a while.

The movie was directed by James Bobin and the new songs were written by Bret McKenzie. They were two-thirds of the main creative force behind the Flight of the Conchords TV series. I loved that show, so I enjoyed their contributions. You can definitely hear the Conchords touch in the lyrics, which were full of puns and sly phrasing. Also, this movie has one of the best versions of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" ever recorded.

This was clearly a movie made by Muppet fans. It was almost surreal seeing so many cameos by obscure characters and nods to past films, in a theater full of fellow fans reacting with cheers and laughter. The Muppets have been out of the public eye for so long, it started to feel like nobody else remembered them, let alone still liked them. Which of course is exactly what the movie is about.

I was worried it might feel too self-glorifying--"Jason Segel and his fellow Muppet-lovers convince the Muppets to mount a comeback" just as easily describes the behind-the-scenes events that led to the movie. But the human leads and the new Muppet character are likeable, and they stay out of the spotlight for most of the movie. Segel's enthusiasm was obvious whenever he was onscreen, and Amy Adams was adorable as always. The only time I actually thought about the real-life parallels was the ending, in which (spoilers? ...no, not really) everything works out and the Muppets are beloved once again. If the movie had failed at the box office, then that ending scene would've been uncomfortable to watch, but so far it seems to have done good business, which is a relief. I want this movie to do well. It deserves to.

I'm curious what the Muppets will do next. This movie was great, but they can't keep playing the nostalgia card. The team has shown that they can faithfully recapture the original magic, but now they have to show us some new tricks.

Robotnik Skipping

2011-11-18T09:12:00.005-04:00

This is a pencil test I shot about a year ago for school. It's not the best one I did, but it's my favourite. We had to animate a character jumping, and then skipping (I think the original idea was to have the character jumping rope, but there was a miscommunication and our class ended up doing this instead). Anyway, we had the option of either designing a character or using a pre-existing model sheet to work from, so naturally I picked Milton Knight's Robotnik design from Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog.

At one point the teacher commented that it was too rubbery and stretch-and-squashy. He questioned whether it was "on-model," so I showed him the hilarious model sheet, which includes the legendary direction "Keep it loose and distorted. Draw EXPRESSIVELY, not WELL." This clearly bothered him, but he allowed me to continue with the animation. He eventually had me correct a few things and tone some of the stretch and squash down, but this is an earlier version that I like better. The biggest mistake that sticks out to me now is the popping of the stripe on his back during the skip. I should've just left that off.

Yuzo Aoki's Crazy Lupin Movie

2011-11-14T22:52:00.009-04:00

I think I've finally found another animator I like as much as Rod Scribner and Jim Tyer, thanks to Ben Ettinger's Anipages blog (which has really been on fire lately with some amazing posts).

Remember when I did those posts about that weird Lupin III episode? Well, Ben not only told me who was responsible for the wacky drawings in it, he also told me what else they worked on in the franchise. If you're interested, just read his recent posts on Lupin III, specifically this one and this one.

I don't want to re-iterate too much of what he's written, but to make a long story short, it turns out there were two animators whose work I was noticing in that episode: Yoshio Kabashima and Yuzo Aoki. As I suspected, they co-directed the animation for the 1978 Lupin movie Lupin vs Clone, or The Secret of Mamo as it was called in the US. That movie has tons of really funny drawings too, but like the episode I posted the images from, the animation is often pretty limited, so the drawings don't really shine like they should.

After reading Ben's posts, I decided to look into the "pink jacket" Lupin III cartoons from the 1980s, since Yuzo Aoki had a much bigger part in them. This third era of Lupin was generally disliked by the Lupin fan base, for a few reasons. The music, colour and overall style are pure 80s cheese. (On a side note, Yuji Ohno, the long-time music composer for the series, renamed his band "the Super Sexual Transport" during this period. I just thought that was funny.) The stories became even sillier and more far-fetched than either of the previous Lupin TV series. For instance, take a look at these episode titles:

"Good Afternoon, Hell's Angel"
"Lupin has Come with a Tank"
"The Man Is Called the Death Garb"
"Virgin Mary's Getaway Strategy"
"The Copy-Man Comes Expensive"
"Code Name Is Alaska Star"
"The Alaska Star Is a Ticket to Hell"
"Pops Boils over with Rage"
"Plunder the Pyramid of Insurance"

I know, I know, you can make anything sound stupid by translating it literally, but I just needed to share those gems... Anyway, another reason people didn't like the 80s Lupin was because anime fans often have a very narrow definition of what constitutes good animation. Sometimes they're right -- the art was inconsistent, and occasionally just plain bad. But Yuzo Aoki's work on the pink jacket series and the accompanying 1985 movie was fantastic. Not much of his work on the TV series is available for immediate viewing online, but here's an opening sequence he did.

The Lupin III anime has never looked this much like the original manga by Monkey Punch. Apart from Aoki's weird design of Fujiko, you'd swear Monkey Punch just learned to animate and did this himself. The posing is so inspired and demented. And the stylization of details like the wrinkles on the clothing is really well-done. This is what I love about the Lupin comics, and Aoki's animation of the characters is just like watching the comic in motion. Even the well-animated 1969 Lupin pilot film looks watered-down to me now, compared to this animated distillation of the Monkey Punch style.

I have the 1985 movie on VHS, but I hadn't watched it in a couple of years until Ben's posts on Aoki, who was the character designer, animation director and layout supervisor for this movie. So he was almost completely responsible for its visual style.

The film is pretty much 100 minutes of the kind of hilariously drawn slapstick comedy in the original Monkey Punch comics, and sadly that's probably why it turns off fans of the other Lupin anime. This is Lupin III at its absolute craziest. It's a far cry from the stiff, formulaic tedium of the franchise today. It actually feels like this movie was written with the intention of giving the animators interesting things to animate, sometimes to the detriment of the plot or any kind of structure. I'm not surprised that this movie is so rarely talked about. It's kind of an anomaly -- too wacky (and in some sections, simply incoherent) for anime fans, and it's an obscure part of an overwhelmingly long-running franchise, so there's almost no way a Western viewer would see it unless they're specifically looking for it. Of course, it doesn't help that it's been out of print in North America for years.

This is a movie where Lupin and Zenigata ride motorcycles in and out of the various orifices on a giant face for no reason. The face changes its expression several times, and sneezes.

It's the kind of movie where Zenigata sends dynamite on a zipline attached to handcuffs he throws around Lupin's neck... And Lupin can make the dynamite turn around by holding up the appropriate sign. And of course when it does explode, the characters are just charred for a second before healing completely.

There's also a robot with a hat. It eats money.

...No, this is not a botched translation.

I have to admit that the story can be a mess at times, but certain scenes in this movie are among my favourites in the entire Lupin III canon. Screenshots will not do them justice, so here are some videos. (In case you're wondering, Lupin's name is written as Rupan in the subtitles because for a while, no US anime distributors were allowed to use the name Lupin. It's a long story.)

Watch Lpn Bbln Train in Anime | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

This is part of a scene in which Lupin and his pals are on a train being chased by Inspector Zenigata, and a bunch of gangsters. There are so many insane poses in this sequence, and it's great to see them fully-animated instead of just one or two per shot. It's still not quite "full animation" in the traditional Western sense, but that seems to be mainly on purpose; Aoki has a idiosyncratic sense of timing that involves a lot of short holds. I wish I could upload these clips in a format that allowed frame-by-frame viewing. BTW, don't you love all the weird little noises Yasuo Yamada does as the voice of Lupin? They really add a lot of energy and humour to the character.

Watch Lpn Bbln Rucksack in Anime | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Watch Lpn Bbln Crt in Anime | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

More funny animation and funny Yasuo Yamada noises.

Watch Lpn Bbln River in Anime | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

If you can find this movie, I'd recommend taking a look. It's very uneven, but you won't see animation quite like this anywhere else.

Fester Fish Fan Art

2011-10-25T16:50:00.008-04:00

Check it out-- fan art of Fester Fish! It's from Camgaloo on Deviantart, a joint account shared between CamBoy and GalooGameLady. This Jack-o-Lantern is incredible. Thanks guys!

5000 Fingers of Dr. Bebop

2011-10-24T15:23:00.004-04:00

I'm assuming everybody is aware of and loves "the 5000 Fingers of Dr. T," the 1953 live-action movie written and designed by Dr. Suess. If you haven't seen this movie, you should be ashamed. You are squandering the gift of life.

...Well to be honest, it's not that great as a whole (waaay too many forgettable songs), but the set design is amazing and Hans Conried is hilarious as the titular villain. I also love the Siamese-bearded twins on roller skates. The movie is probably best known, other than the Dr. Suess connection, for having inspired Sideshow Bob's last name on the Simpsons. The 'T' stands for Terwiliker, and the little boy he harasses throughout the movie is named Bart.

Anyway, yesterday while I was sorting through some recent drawings, I had this movie playing on my laptop, but with the sound off. Instead of the regular audio I was listening to my music library on Shuffle. I got as far as the hypnotic duel between Dr. T and his plumber, Mr. Zablodowski. It's already a really funny scene on its own, but it just so happened that "Tank!" -- the theme song from Cowboy Bebop -- started playing, and it actually kind of synced up! I immediately knew I had to share this with the rest of humanity. Witness the glory of "5000 Fingers of Dr. Bebop."

...At least, I think it's funny.

No News, Some Doodles

2011-10-23T18:16:00.011-04:00

Progress has been slow on the new Fester Fish cartoon, mostly because of school. I've got most of the story figured out, but I haven't boarded it yet. I'm really itching to get animating on it as soon as possible though... Anyway, here are some recent crappy doodles.

This Bugs is really messed up, but I think it's funny.

G-Bank$ Rap

2011-10-09T16:16:00.003-04:00

Mary Poppins is one of my favourite movies. Who doesn't love it? Only crazy people, obviously. Anyway, I decided that it would be improved if George Banks, the father character played by David Tomlinson, rapped over a hip-hop beat. So I made it happen.

I just hope the Disney lawyers don't take it down immediately. I tried uploading it a few times before but it was taken off within minutes.

Emotional Zenigata

2011-09-27T10:48:00.006-04:00

Here are some Zenigata expressions that caught my eye last time I watched the 1995 movie "Lupin III - Farewell to Nostradamus." Most of the animation in it is pretty boring and typical of 90s anime, but the odd shot is kind of funny.

Hagar the Cuckold

2011-09-13T11:03:00.005-04:00

I was sorting through some books in my room today, trying to find some to get rid of. Imagine my delight when I found this Hagar the Horrible strip, cut out and filed away between two books.

This is a real strip. Hagar's wife is having an affair with his dog. That's the only conclusion I can draw from this. There doesn't seem to be any joke, apart from Hagar's marriage that is. Hagar seems to be taking the news pretty well. I guess by this point their marriage was mostly for show anyway.

Digital Background Painting Class

2011-09-10T19:14:00.009-04:00

Yesterday I completed a two-week intensive Digital Background Painting course at school, before classes start full-time for Year 3. It was really fun and I learned a lot of Photoshop tricks. I'm also working on more Fester Fish cartoons, and some other smaller projects, but I don't have much I can show yet except for this work from the Digital BG class...

This drawing might be familiar to Fester Fans.... It's the usual 'Fester's house' establishing shot, only now I've finally created a daytime version. Now I won't have to keep using that awful attempt at a pre-sunrise version, seen in Fester's Nephew and Fester Goes Fishing.

And during the final class, we were told to do a night-time version of one of our paintings, so I did this:

So now I have a daytime version, a night-time version... and if I REALLY need it, that stupid early-morning version. During the course, the teacher gave us a bunch of really cool Photoshop brushes, which seemed like they might be good for imitating that early Hanna-Barbera look...

The drawing itself was done in about 30 seconds, so obviously it sucks, but I'm pretty happy with the colours and textures. I really want to do a cartoon with more of this abstract, flat, "modern" kind of background design.

And finally, finishing the in-class assignments early + messing around with crazy cool Photoshop brushes = "Fester A Go Go."

Blah. I know this stuff isn't that exciting, but I just don't have a lot to post at the moment. I'm busy working on the actual cartoons.

Mind Game (2004)

2011-08-04T09:46:00.007-04:00

I'd been meaning to check out this anime film for a while. I had heard a lot of good things about it, especially from the Anipages Daily blog (one of the best animation blogs out there, and the few that has intelligent, rational discussions about anime). I finally got around to watching it last night, and I was completely blown away.

I was expecting it to be a pretty bizarre experience just from the title, but I really didn't know anything about the plot. I assumed it was a heavy, serious psychological piece with a slow pace, with maybe one or two cool sequences. I definitely wasn't expecting it to be so... fun. The animation was phenomenal. Just about every scene had some kind of hilarious cartoony distortion in it, which is so rare in Japanese animation. The sheer amount of imagination on display was awe-inspiring. The variety of visual styles somehow managed to avoid feeling contrived, and actually gave a deeper understanding of the characters' emotional states.

The story and its structure were just as original as every other aspect of the film, but I can't say too much about that without spoiling some of it. The "throw-anything-in" directorial style might not be to everybody's taste, but personally I'd been waiting to see a movie like this-- that felt like it was jam-packed with a little bit of everything-- for a long time.

I'm still in shock from seeing it. Maybe I should have waited a couple of days before writing this so I could say something more objective about the movie. But I just couldn't contain my enthusiasm. Right now, it's definitely my favourite anime film, as well as one of my favourite films of any kind. It's a tragedy that it doesn't have any official English release, and the only way to see it is to either watch a blurry online video (as I did) or get a bootleg DVD (which I probably will as well, just so I can own it in some form).

If you haven't seen Mind Game yet, do it as soon as possible. It's a potentially life-changing movie. I can't tell how yet, but it will definitely affect my own work in some way.

But then again, I also re-watched Wayne's World recently, and that's still one of my all-time favourite movies, so what do I know.

Evolution of Fester

2011-07-31T09:12:00.013-04:00

These are mostly pictures I put up on the Fester Fish Facebook page, one at a time. Here they are all together, so you can see Fester's evolution.

Above: This is where it all started-- after watching hours of 20s and 30s cartoons in my History of Animation class, I was inspired to make a parody/homage. I quickly decided that the character should be a fish because it seemed like the most illogical choice. These are the very first doodles of Fester, dated October 8 2009. Early story ideas, seen here if you can read my primitive scrawls, include a nutty professor ripoff, and what would eventually become "Fester's Nephew."

Here's another really early sketch from Oct 8 2009, with the first real drawing of Slightly Smaller Fish.

It took me a while to decide whether or not Fester should have a bowtie. I decided not to include it because he was already too similar to Flip the Frog, and a bowtie would've meant another thing I had to draw in every frame. Fester doesn't seem classy enough for a bowtie anyway.

^From October 25 2009. Wow, these are terrible. Fester looks completely deformed. I was really struggling with the concept of doing expressions on him. An early version of the title card is also seen here, as well as some bizarre "fin-leg" things that would've made posing the character way harder.

Oct 27 2009... This is probably the first drawing of "Fester's Goil," eventually named Blottie. All the elements of Fester's design were pretty much set by this point, I just needed to get better at drawing them. I planned to have Joe Rabbit (from my Space Goose series) appear as a friend of Fester's, along with the classy robot from the "Banquet Bust-Up" episode of that cartoon. They may still appear in future episodes.

October 29 2009-- More experimenting with Fester in different poses. I have no idea what the moustachioed Fester in the trench-coat was for, but it makes me giggle. As does the word "moustachioed."

This is another early design of Fester and his girlfriend Blottie, from November 2009. At the time, I was in the middle of making the third Space Goose episode, so if you spot them as background characters in it, this is what they look like.

More early misshapen Festers! In "Fester's Nephew," Fester has a pet man-fish (the opposite of him being a fish-man, I guess). This drawing is the genesis of that gag, although here it's supposed to be Cary Grant. In the final cartoon, it looks more like Jimmy Stewart.

By this point, the design was pretty much set. Fester looks basically like he did in some of the first scenes I animated in "Fester's Nephew." I still had to get better at drawing him though.

Fester Fish on Facebook

2011-07-11T13:42:00.004-04:00

A few people have been telling me I should make a Facebook page for Fester Fish. So I did.
Here it is.

I hope you "like" it. Ha ha ha! Get it? Cause I mean both click the "like" button AND actually enjoy it? Ha ha ha ha!

...Seriously, hit the "like" button.

Anyway, there will be some good stuff on it that should make it worth the two seconds it takes to click the button. I'll probably post most of said Good Stuff here too, but I think the Facebook newsfeed is more convenient for most people.

A Bad Clampett Cartoon (gasp!)

2011-06-21T12:31:00.007-04:00

Last night I was watching the Daffy Duck Superstars DVD again, mainly because I was curious to re-watch Tashlin's Nasty Quacks. That cartoon's pretty bizarre, but before I could get to that one, I was struck by the mediocrity of the first cartoon on the disc. Tick Tock Tuckered is a Bob Clampett short from smack in the middle of his 1942-46 peak. Clampett's earlier filmography has a lot of ups and downs, but that period was mostly great. This particular cartoon is really unsatisfying. It's not terrible... it's just really bland, which isn't usually something you can say about a Clampett cartoon.

It's disappointing that the print on the DVD is a Blue Ribbon re-issue, because I'm curious who received the story credit. There aren't really any new or unique ideas in the short. Normally, even a second-rate Clampett short like The Wise-Quacking Duck has some fresh gags, but not this one. Given how great many of his shorts are, it's not surprising that Clampett also made a few stinkers. Everybody gets burnt-out sometimes. But it's striking how different this is from most of his shorts.

The fact that it's a remake of his first cartoon, "Porky's Badtime Story" probably means that he and his story men didn't have any good ideas but were forced to crank out something to fill the shorts-per-year quota. Clampett had a well-documented history of reuse, and indeed the cartoon he made right before this one, What's Cookin' Doc, is basically just a wraparound for a clip from an early Bugs cartoon. But at least WCD feels like a Clampett cartoon, during the parts that ARE a Clampett cartoon. Tick Tock Tuckered almost feels like a Lantz cartoon, and not a particularly good one. There's none of Clampett's usual energy, invention or great animation.

The animation, normally the highlight of a Clampett cartoon, is unusually sloppy, stiff and awkward (perhaps I'm being just a tiny bit unfair by comparing it to some of the greatest animation ever made... It's still way better than I could ever do). The only scene that stands out to me is Daffy shooting out the sun, which looks like Scribner's work. The rest is pretty unmemorable.

Here's a Youtube video of the short:

Clampett's trademark weird cuts are on full display -- he breaks the 180-degree rule when Porky is at the window, and there's a jump cut, which almost seems like a camera error, after the lightning strikes Daffy's umbrella.

Even the music seems like it's on autopilot. Most of the time it doesn't really follow the action on-screen, nor does the mood even seem appropriate.

I'm a HUGE fan of Bob Clampett, and I'm not trying to trash him at all with this post, but I think it's comforting to know that even one of the best directors in the history of the medium wasn't completely infallible, even during his prime.

The Greatest Video Ever

2011-06-11T20:53:00.006-04:00

This is the funniest video I have ever seen in my life. I first saw it a while ago, but it had since been taken down. I just found out there's another copy of it still on Youtube.

THE HANGOVER PART II IS SO BAD

2011-06-03T09:52:00.005-04:00

The Hangover Part II is awful. I haven't even seen the original, but I've heard enough about it to know that the sequel completely rehashes the same plot, but lacks whatever made it the hit that it was. There are maybe two jokes in the first twenty minutes that aren't actually just direct references to the events of the first movie, as if the filmmakers are hoping for cheap "recognition laughs" (the same problem Family Guy has had since Season 4). After that, it seems to become a beat-for-beat recreation of the events of the first film, only bigger and louder. Basically, this is the dumb frat-boy movie that the first one seemed like it would be, given the plot (and maybe the original was just as stupid, but if it was, it really doesn't deserve all the attention it got).

The whole thing feels incredibly rushed, and relies on every cheap, lowest-common-denominator comedy cliche imaginable. Among them are a monkey enaging in naughty human behaviour (a he chain-smokes and deals cocaine! HAHAHA), a car chase where everybody's screaming the whole time (they're smashing stuff! HAHAHA), sexual deviancy (a chick with a dick! HAHAHA), and that most common comedy crutch-- constant reiteration of earlier scenes, as if reminding the audience what's happening is somehow funny. I'm not talking about running gags, I'm talking about literally recapping what just happened, every few minutes.

On the acting side, Zach Galifianakis and Ed Helms give fine performances, but they can't overcome the terrible script. And it goes without saying that Bradley Cooper is the most annoying actor ever. I'm still trying to block "Limitless" out of my brain, although to be fair everything about that movie was annoying.

In other news... Well, I don't have much to report. I'm coming up with lots of ideas for more Fester Fish cartoons, but I haven't yet found one that I like enough that I'd want to dedicate the next six months of my life to it.

Time to Rest a Bit

2011-05-17T16:02:00.003-04:00

Lots of new developments on the Fester Fish Front: Joe Murray featured it on the KaboingTV Indie Showcase! Canadian Animation Resources did a mini-interview with me! I'm also discussing pitching it to networks.

Now that the cartoon is done, I can finally relax, because now I actually have a tiny bit of free time. I've been taking the opportunity to catch up on a lot of movies and anime I've been meaning to watch. Sadly there aren't a lot of Western cartoons I'm really interested in watching at the moment.

I saw "Bridesmaids" recently, and liked it a lot. Kristen Wiig is great, and pretty much the whole cast was really funny. Just like all Judd Apatow-related movies, it sort of sagged a bit between the big comedy centerpieces, but even the non-funny parts were enjoyable. I just wish they'd picked a different destination for the plane trip. Even though we didn't actually see any of the trip beyond the plane scene, going to Vegas is such a worn-out comedy cliche, and it invites cries of "Hangover ripoff" beyond already being a gross-out comedy about people preparing for a wedding.

Last night I watched Paprika, which was pretty enjoyable, and re-watched some of Cowboy Bebop. I love the structure of that series-- it's fairly short (26 episodes) for an anime, and it's mostly episodic, although there is a larger storyline that gradually unfolds. My favourite thing about it is that it plays with different genres and tones from episode to episode, while still feeling cohesive. As with Lupin III, a series that was a big influence on Cowboy Bebop and also varied in tone, I tend to prefer the sillier episodes like the blaxploitation-themed 'Mushroom Samba', and the suspense/horror parody 'Toys in the Attic', but the more serious ones are great too.

Thanks for spreading the word!

2011-05-11T11:34:00.007-04:00

I'm really happy with the reception Fester Goes Fishing has been getting, especially since it's only been online for two days. I was worried it might be too weird for most people. It's getting more views than I dared to hope for, mainly thanks to four people -- Jerry Beck for featuring it on Cartoonbrew, Christopher Signore for sending it to Jerry in the first place, Arin "Egoraptor" Hansen for 'liking' it on Youtube and Aaron Simpson for featuring it on ColdHardFlash. I can't express my gratitude to you guys for helping me out. And of course, thanks to everybody else who has watched it so far, commented on it and spread the word about it. I'm absolutely terrible at self-promotion, so I'm extremely grateful for all the help.

Fester Goes Fishing

2011-05-10T09:34:00.003-04:00

Whew... It's finally done. I'll probably talk a bit about it later.

A Word from Fester Fish

2011-05-03T07:10:00.001-04:00

It's almost done. Gimme about another week.

A Bunch of Short Reviews

2011-02-19T09:25:00.005-04:00

Here are some movies I've seen recently, and my brief, unorganized opinions on them. There may be some slight spoilers, but probably nothing too specific.

Cedar Rapids (2011)
Fun, but not particularly memorable, except for John C. Reilly's character. Everything he did was hilarious. Isiah Whitlock also stole a few scenes. Ed Helms made a decent leading man, and Anne Heche's character was interesting and likeable. I still can't think of Kurtwood Smith as anybody but "the dad from That 70s Show." The movie had a nice atmosphere, but as a whole it was just average. It was also very predictable.
6/10

Klute (1971)
This was really disappointing. I was excited about seeing the first two movies in Alan J. Pakula's "Paranoia Trilogy" after loving "All the President's Men", but this was just... really... bad. The characters weren't likable or particularly interesting, the story was slow and meandering, and for a supposed suspense thriller, there were really only one or two brief scenes that I found remotely suspenseful. The ending is a big disappointment-- the villain just kind of abruptly shows up and explains everything to the main character. The direction was surprisingly shoddy, given how much I liked Pakula's work in "All the President's Men." The shots were jarring and spatially confusing, for no discernable reason. Not much to recommend about this one, although it seems to be held in pretty high esteem for some reason.
3/10

Apocalypse Now (1979)
This was my second time seeing the movie, but my first time seeing the original non-Redux version. I really liked it the first time I saw it, but my complaints were that it was too long, and that there were a handful of scenes that seemed completely pointless. Turns out all the scenes I had problems with were the ones added back in for Redux. The original version is much more digestible, and while we don't get quite as much into Willard's personality, it's a more consistent portrayal. If he's so determined to get upriver as fast as possible, why would he stop to play practical jokes on Kilgore, hang out with Playboy Bunnies and have dinner at a French Plantation? To me, the Redux version was equally powerful, but less enjoyable because it felt bloated and excessive. Upon re-watching the film, my favourite sequences are still the surreal ones at the Doo-Long bridge and the lead-up to meeting Kurtz. Truly one of the greatest movies in history (both versions, but particularly the original).
Redux: 9/10
Original: 10/10

Pineapple Express (2008) and the Green Hornet (2011)
I saw these both in one day, and they're both written by and starring Seth Rogen (with Evan Goldberg as co-writer), so I'm reviewing them together. Pineapple Express was more enjoyable, mostly because I prefer comedy to action, and it focused on comedy, while the Green Hornet was more of an even mix of the two. I was disappointed that Michel Gondry's signature surrealism was mostly absent from the Green Hornet film, except for one scene towards the end. Both films were refreshing in that they eschewed the usual Hollywood romance plot-- Pineapple Express focused on the developing relationship between Rogen and James Franco's character, at times treating it as if it were a romance story, and he breaks up with his teenage girlfriend halfway through the film. There is no reconciliation scene later on, he just forgets about her. In The Green Hornet, while he and Kato spend a good chunk of the film fighting over Cameron Diaz, neither one of them seems to hook up with her at the end as anything more than friends. These are fun movies if you like Seth Rogen, especially Pineapple Express.
Pineapple Express: 7/10
Green Hornet: 6/10

Read This Bob McKimson Interview, Fool

2011-02-16T19:02:00.009-04:00

I was hoping to get some animation done this afternoon, but instead I've spent the last hour or so reading this extensive 1971 interview with Bob McKimson that Michael Barrier just re-posted. Everybody read it now.

http://www.michaelbarrier.com/Interviews/McKimson/McKimson.html

What an amazing read. This is the first time, as far as I can recall, that I've ever heard McKimson's feelings about his work, the other directors, or.... well, anything, really. Is this the only interview he ever gave? It's startling how easily he remembers everything, whereas most interviews about the Golden Age are filled with "I don't remember the cartoon you're asking about" or inaccurate recollections of dates and credits. McKimson is pretty much dead-on with everything. He seems to be a pretty reliable source, unlike just about everybody else.

There are so many great nuggets of information in this piece. McKimson comes off as very confident, and possibly a bit full of himself. It's completely justified though, and from what I've read, Chuck Jones was just as proud, if not more so. He was just less willing to acknowledge it. It's sad reading the parts about Rod Scribner though, and how McKimson eventually got his animators "under control" after they'd been used to "over-playing" everything with Clampett. I think it's unanimous that most of Scribner's work under McKimson feels extremely stifled and restrained compared to his earlier Clampett stuff.

The Chuck Jones Drinking Game

2011-01-10T20:23:00.004-04:00

I should preface this post by saying that I'm a big fan of Chuck Jones. He was unquestionably one of the greatest directors in the history of animation, if not film in general. This is especially clear on the recent Looney Tunes Superstars single discs, because these releases focus largely on the end of the WB studio's output, which means lots of Friz Freleng's indistinguishable blackout gags, and Bob McKimson's overly-talky TV parodies. When a Jones cartoon comes on, it's almost cause for celebration because you know it's going to be a lot wittier, and have much funnier drawings. This doesn't apply to the handful of forties cartoons on the sets, because there were more directors then, and everybody's cartoons were still pretty good at that point.

Anyway, I got sidetracked, but my point was that I like Chuck Jones. But the more of his interviews I watch/read/hear, the more I notice that he tended to repeat himself. A lot. This is understandable, given that these interviews come from a period of over thirty years, and as he got older some of his memories must have faded. I hope no Jones fans are offended by what follows, because this is just intended to be light-hearted fun. Without further ado, I present the Chuck Jones Drinking Game (a work in progress):

Take a sip every time he talks about how he wants to be Bugs, but in reality he is Daffy.

Take a sip every time he quotes or mentions Mark Twain.

Take a sip every time he uses George Santayana's "a fanatic is someone who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim" quote in reference to the Coyote.

Take a big sip whenever he uses his "it's not an X thing, it's a Y thing" phrase. This is kind of a cheap shot because it's very broad, but he does use some form of this phrase about once per interview.

Take a sip every time he mentions that kid who said "he doesn't draw Bugs Bunny, he draws pictures of Bugs Bunny."

Take a sip every time he makes fun of Leon Schlesinger.
(Take another sip if it's about his lisp.)

Take a sip every time he makes fun of Eddie Selzer.
(Take two sips if he tells the story about Selzer telling him not to make a bullfight cartoon.)

Take a sip every time he explains his "Illustrated Radio" term for limited animation.

Take a sip every time he lists the other directors at Termite Terrace without mentioning Clampett.
(Take another sip if he goes out of his way to specify "ALL the directors.")

If anybody can think of any more, post them in the comments.

Yogi Bear was Pretty Good

2010-12-29T19:51:00.003-04:00

I'm ashamed to admit that I went to see Yogi Bear, expecting to find perverse joy in its awfulness. Surprisingly, it was actually really funny and I enjoyed it in a completely non-ironic way. Of course, the actual storyline was pure Hollywood formula, and I found myself picking out the plot points I'd seen in other movies-- "here's the part where the hero loses confidence and is ready to give up until their friend gives them a motivational speech underscored by building sappy music"... "there's another throwaway joke that's going to become an important plot device later on"... "here's where the villain's gloating backfires and they accidentally reveal their evil intentions to the public," etc. But at least the cliches were done well, and if I was younger and less jaded (read: the intended demographic), I probably could have enjoyed them.

The humour was a lot smarter than I was expecting it to be from the trailers. There were one or two moments where I cringed (particularly at a rather half-hearted "ALVINNN!"-style scream from Ranger Smith at the end of the movie), but they were few and far between. Most of the time I was laughing with the movie, not at it, and laughing out loud, at that.

The characters were generally pretty spot-on in their writing, and as much as I still resent the casting of Ackroyd and Timberlake, they both turned in decent performances. Tom Cavanaugh was a pretty likeable Ranger Smith, and I loved how Anna Farris's love interest character kept calling him that throughout the movie. TJ Miller was fine as the other ranger. As pure designs, I still hate the way Yogi and Boo-boo looked, but in terms of functionality as part of a live-action movie, I have to admit that the artists did a good job of staying faithful to the classic original designs while adding all the fur, dirt, and textures they would need to blend into the real world. I certainly can't think of a better way of doing what they were trying to do (which sounds like a back-handed compliment, but I do mean it in a good way).

I'm not sure how I ended up enjoying the movie so much, when objectively I know I shouldn't have. I guess my expectations were just so low I couldn't possibly be disappointed. Still, I'd probably see it again if somebody asked me to.

Submitting Fester's Nephew to Festivals

2010-10-08T19:23:00.004-04:00

Today I submitted Fester's Nephew to Spike and Mike's Festival of Animation, The Animation Show (not sure if it's still running, but it's worth a shot) and the NSI Canada Online Short Film Festival. I'm planning to submit to others as well, but this is a start.

If anybody knows any particular festivals they think I should submit to, let me know.

Not really much to say at the moment, other than that I'm still working away on my next Fester Fish cartoon. I'm tweaking the storyboard a bit. I've also been inspired by reading Joe Murray's "Creating Animated Cartoons with Character" book to come up with ideas for more episodes and characters.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving, readers!

Help Milton Knight!

2010-10-02T08:42:00.005-04:00

Milton Knight is the brilliant guy behind Robotnik's design in Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, among many other, probably more notable accomplishments. But that's how I first found out about him. Anyway, he's working on a new animated short called "Caprice - Teen of Tomorrow", done in his own inimitable animation style. It looks like it'll be amazing, if he's able to get it finished.

But he needs our support! Here's the link to his Kickstarter page, with a video of some of the animation. Here's how it works-- if he successfully raises his target amount of money, you pay however much you chose to donate, and he gets it all. If he doesn't reach the goal, you don't pay and he doesn't get anything! There are some pretty cool rewards for donating, like getting original art from the cartoon, your name in the credits, etc.

What Aspect Ratio Should I Use?

2010-08-05T22:10:00.006-04:00

I'm starting the storyboard for my next cartoon, and I've got the plot mostly worked out in my head. It's gonna be another Fester Fish cartoon. On a somewhat related note, tomorrow will be my last day of work for this summer. I'm looking forward to having a couple of weeks off before school starts, and I'm hoping to get a big chunk of the animation done for the cartoon during that time.

I've recently gotten a laptop computer, which is most likely what I'll be doing the animation on. Since the screen is more of a short rectangle shape than the other computers I've used in the past, I'm considering doing the cartoon in widescreen. Most golden-age cartoons are 4:3 or so, so I'm concerned that doing it in 16:9 might distance it further from that 30's-40's feeling I hope to achieve. On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any practical reason not to make it widescreen when everything else these days is. 'Fullscreen' has become something of a misnomer, because now it mostly results in there being black bars on the side of the image.

Youtube, my TV and the computer I'm using have all switched to widescreen, so it would certainly make things easier for me to do it like that, but possibly at the expense of that potential "old-fashioned cartoon" feeling.
What do you guys think? Should I do my next cartoon in widescreen, or... not widescreen?

Toonzone Likes Fester Fish!

2010-06-28T17:50:00.001-04:00

Last week the kind folks over at ToonZone wrote a nice article about "Fester's Nephew" on their Cool Stuff blog. See the article here! They've also got an fascinating interview with a Futurama voice actor.

Adventureland is a bad movie

2010-06-26T09:05:00.006-04:00

Temporarily abandoning the criteria for my blog posts, I'm going to rant about something I don't like. Last night I rented the movie Adventureland, and I really didn't enjoy it. Here's why.

You could completely rearrange 80% of the scenes in the movie, and it wouldn't affect the story at all. Clerks is like that too, but the difference is that I find that movie pretty funny, and I like its characters. If the scenes in Adventureland were funny, maybe I wouldn't mind, but they're not. The whole first two-thirds of the movie is just people smoking pot and hooking up with each other. And the last third is just an attempt to get you to feel bad for the characters because they've done stupid things that have screwed up their lives. Instead, I just found myself thinking "you shouldn't have done that in the first place, it was stupid."

Before I saw the movie, I thought Jesse Eisenberg looked like a cross between Andy Samberg and Michael Cera, and after seeing him act, my opinion remains unchanged. His "fast, awkward and deadpan" acting style is straight out of the Michael Cera playbook, only it's even more annoying with him because you know someone else is already doing the exact same thing.*

And anybody else notice that Kristen Stewart's entire acting technique is mumbling, looking vaguely annoyed and running her fingers through her hair? Somebody get this girl an Oscar. She also puts a lot of odd pauses in her dialogue. Unfortunately she's neither William Shatner nor Christopher Walken, so it doesn't work. That, and her mumbling, just make it hard to understand what she's trying to say.

At least Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig's parts were kind of funny, specifically the part where's they're trying to glue eyes onto bananas to give away as prize toys. And Martin Starr's still got enough goodwill with me from Freaks and Geeks that I enjoyed his scenes.

I will admit that I didn't have much interest in seeing this, because I didn't think I was going to like it. However, I thought that because it was marketed as a stupid frat-boy comedy. I ended up not liking it because it felt so desperate to be deep and meaningful, and the characters were mostly irritating. And it just wasn't very funny, not even in the low-key ironic way it tried to be.

Finally, the most important reason why I didn't like this movie is that it tries to paint an accurate portrayal of teenage life, and yet in several scenes it completely throws reality out the window. The scenes in question? People keep complaining that the amusement park plays "Rock Me Amadeus" too much. Nobody can get tired of "Rock Me Amadeus." Fact.

*I don't really mind Michael Cera, I just find it annoying how he plays the same character in every movie. As Jon Heder proved, that eventually wears out its welcome. At first I didn't like that Cera had been cast as the lead in the Scott Pilgrim movie, since his awkward style doesn't seem to fit the energetic naivety of that character, but the trailers have disquieted my concerns. He still doesn't seem quite like the character from the comics, but it works for me.

Featured on Cartoon Brew!

2010-06-14T16:58:00.007-04:00

On Saturday, I woke up to find that "Fester's Nephew" had been featured on the animation news blog Cartoon Brew!!

I want to express my thanks to Jerry Beck for featuring me. It really boosted my viewership, and I got lots of great feedback from readers of Cartoon Brew.

Thanks, Jerry!
(I look forward to reading The 100 Greatest Looney Tunes!)

I'm going to start my next cartoon as soon as I can decide exactly what it should be. I've got a few ideas, but I'm not sure whether to do another Fester Fish short, another Space Goose episode or something different. Any preference, gentle reader?

Fester's Nephew

2010-05-29T10:24:00.003-04:00

Here's the Fester Fish cartoon. It didn't really turn out that great, but now that I'm finally done with it I can move onto something else.

Introducing Fester Fish

2010-05-28T13:19:00.001-04:00

Presenting a new cartoon star -- Fester Fish!!!
He walks! He talks! He'll knock your socks!
... Off.

His easygoing temperament and suave voice will have audiences rolling in the aisles. Look for Fester's first cartoon very soon!

More delays

2010-05-20T17:56:00.004-04:00

Well, suffice to say I've run into another delay. The exported video I mentioned in the previous post didn't turn out well, and Premiere has stopped working due to a weird codec I tried to use. Again, the cartoon itself has been finished for a few days; all these delays are just in trying to get a reasonably high-quality video file.

I'm thinking of buying Adobe Premiere Elements 8, to replace the old 6.0 version I have. It's very affordable, and seems to have all the features I want. It also seems to have more exporting options, which is exactly what I need. Even if my older copy of Premiere hadn't stopped working, I'd pretty much run out of things to try with it. Every video codec I've tried so far has either resulted in horrible quality or an unusably large file (I think Youtube has a 1GB limit, which should be more than enough for such a short cartoon). With the Space Goose cartoons I've used the DivX format, and that seemed to work fine for them, but for some reason when I use DivX on this cartoon, it looks atrocious.

Anyway, sorry that I'm getting into such boring technical detail. The cartoon should be uploaded any day now. It's 5 minutes and 2 seconds long, which I'm relieved about. I was worried it might end up being seven or eight minutes, which is too long for such a simple story.

Last night "Fugitive Goose" was screened at the Revue (thanks for coming, Zoran, Lee, Leah, Bruce and Louise!), and the audience reaction was pretty good, but I kept thinking to myself 'man, this is way too long'. And yet at the same time, I think, now that I can look at it a bit more objectively, the story moves too quickly, and is probably difficult to follow for many people.

Well, this new Fester Fish cartoon probably doesn't have either of those problems. If anything, it's too slow-paced and stupid. But I think the animation's better. You can decide for yourself soon.

Exporting Even As I Type

2010-05-18T09:40:00.003-04:00

I've finally got that damn cartoon finished.

Well, I was finished with the actual content a couple of days ago, but I've been having a really tough time figuring out how to export it best-- transferring the Flash files to the Mac and exporting them there only to find that the Mac can't handle the backgrounds properly... trying out every codec possible in Flash on Windows... transferring the exported files to the Mac to put together in Premiere and finding out (again) that the Mac sucks and only likes Apple formats, etc... Finally I decided to just use the older, slower version of Premiere on Windows. That seems to be working okay, and it's exporting from there right now. By the time I get home, it should be done.

I tried to add a very slight blur and some grain to the footage to hopefully avoid getting that overly crisp, cold Flash look. I guess we'll see how successful that is.

The cartoon will be viewable very soon, but before I upload it I also want to finish a small "introducing Fester Fish" teaser thing I was working on. I realize that at this point it's a little late for a 'teaser', but I think it's kind of funny, so I'm going to do it.

Anyway, look for the introduction and the cartoon within the next few days!

Almost Done, But...

2010-05-13T10:19:00.003-04:00

Well, I didn't end up finishing the Fester Fish cartoon for last night. I was pretty close, but I ran out of time, and decided to just submit the first episode of Space Goose instead, since I just had a DVD copy lying around.

I'd been hesitant to submit Space Goose to previous Drop Your Shorts festivals, for a few reasons. I feel like the other film-makers, who probably comprise most of the audience, might be annoyed that it's a cartoon, like "hey, that doesn't belong with our serious angsty black-and-white dramas!" They also might be put off by the fact that it's science-fiction. More than anything else, it's clearly not intended as a short film, but rather as part of a TV-style episodic series.

Oh well. The guy who runs the festival seemed happy to see another submission from me. He liked Slick Nick when I submitted back in 2008, and he even used it again at a "Best of" special screening.

The Fester Fish short will still be done soon, because I want to submit it to another show tomorrow at the Toronto Animated Images Society, but this time it'll actually be ready. I've only got a couple of hours of work left to do on it.

"Fugitive Goose" will be screened at the Revue Cinema on Wed. May 19 at 7:00. Admission is $2.

Wish me luck...

2010-05-12T10:37:00.009-04:00

My new Fester Fish cartoon should be uploaded within the next week. I'm submitting it to the Drop Your Shorts Festival at the Revue Cinema this evening, but it's not really ready yet. I've still got a couple of minor shots left that I forgot to draw, some scenes still don't have sound effects, and worst of all, I still have to export the scenes from Flash and put them on a DVD. No telling how long that will take... It's gonna be a stressful day. Luckily my boss is letting me leave work early so I can get as much done on it as possible.

I'm pretty tired right now. I only got four hours of sleep last night, cause I was (unsuccessfully) scrambling to get it done for today.

Space Goose Poster Image

2010-04-29T22:04:00.006-04:00

A friend wanted to use a comic cover or poster of Space Goose in a film he's making, so I did this. I don't know if he'll end up using it, but I'm fairly happy with how it turned out. It's pretty boring though, and it definitely doesn't reflect the tone of the series. It makes it seem serious, but with inappropriately bright, cartoonish characters. Hyugh.

... Well, anyway, that's what I did last night.

BONUS FUN:
Here's another picture I sent him, that I did during my Design and Composition course at Max the Mutt. I think it was supposed to demonstrate an emphasis on the diagonal axis.

IN THE WASTE DISPOSAL PLAAANNT

2010-02-23T23:07:00.009-04:00

Protectors of Universe is an incredibly bizarre DVD I picked up a few months ago at a used bookstore. It definitely falls into the "so bad it's good" category, or more accurately "so bad it's the most entertaining anime I've ever seen."

It seems to be a relic from the early 80's, but as far as I can tell it was never released until 2005. There's very little concrete information about it on the internet, other than that it's very, very bad, and that the producer, Joseph Lai, was also responsible for a series of sub-par kung fu movies in the 70's, before trying his hand at a few anime titles.

The visuals are fairly typical of a 1970's anime production, but filled with hilarious animation mistakes. The story is also pretty standard anime-- a group of teenagers pilot giant robots through space. But everything in this film is so inept that it really becomes a work of art. In every conceivable way it could fail, it does.

The dubbing probably stands out as the worst aspect, or at least, the most obvious. The English script is clearly written by someone who doesn't speak English very well. It's full of lines like "A victory is the best present for you" and "you are just like a coward."

The villain's name is Alfred -- yes, just Alfred. Other characters' names include Assistant Helen, Dr. Howard and General Larry.

Although it's got a cast of thousands, there seem to only be three to five voice actors, and I use the term 'actor' extremely loosely. There are either one or two guys with high-pitched voices and bizarre accents, who voice almost all the male characters. They tend to sounds like they were too close to the microphone when recording. There's also a woman with a British accent who plays all the female characters. And lastly there's a guy with a slightly deeper voice, and an American accent, who only gets minor characters. This dub is clearly aimed at a North American audience, so you have to wonder why they chose to have the guy with the most appropriate voice only play the incidental characters.

The original language version probably wasn't much better though. Even with great dialogue, this story would be full of demented plot points like the main robot jamming a space train into its rear in order to pull it to another planet:

Along with character designs and plot elements, the music is completely stolen from other anime productions-- I recognized the main theme from Crusher Joe, and most of the other music is apparently from a super sentai series called Changeman.

Some of the animation mistakes are pretty unbelievable:

That's right, a kid is looking out the window, and a different kid is looking back. For no reason. This is not explained or acknowledged. I can't imagine how this could possibly have happened. Was each version of the character drawn by a different person, with no communication, or was it just a single guy, deliberately trying to screw up the production?

There's also this classic shot, which tends to pop up several times during the various battles:

The blue guys are the villains, and their scenes are some of the best. Here's another classic:

In this one, the guy is knocked up into the top left corner of the screen, but he comes down on the right. These animators really didn't care about their work.

These scenes are also pretty funny:

I love how it shows the girl when he says "My name is Cyprian," and then pans over to him when he says "and this is my sister." This scene also makes you wonder how many people there are named General Larry?

This clip (above) demonstrates the "be as loud and close to the mic as you can get" acting technique. I also think it's hilarious when the cheesy rock music starts playing to signal the arrival of the Native American-themed robot.

It's a little-known fact that adding layers upon layers of echo can improve a fight scene exponentially.

The movie is also notable for having the worst "Red Hot Riding Hood" ripoff sequence ever:

Repeated footage of the same girl dancing past-- A line of girls lifting their legs up at a 90 degree angle without moving the rest of their bodies at all-- no wonder the guys go into stilted imitations-of-imitations of Tex Avery's wolf.

In short, if you haven't seen this movie yet, it is imperative that you do so immmediately. Otherwise you are just like a coward.

Kyle Baker's Plastic Man

2010-01-28T21:20:00.007-04:00

This was my favourite comic series ever. Hardly anybody seems to be aware of it now, which is unfortunate. On the other hand, their relative obscurity makes me feel like I'm in on some kind of secret, which is always fun.

The writing and art in this comic were absolutely hysterical. Sadly, it only lasted 20 issues, and two of them were 'guest' issues done by a different guy. The last batch of issues, comprising one long storyline, never got collected into a trade paperback, so I suspect they're pretty hard to find now. As such, I don't think I'm causing any trouble by uploading a few of my favourite panels from some of those issues... Sorry for the crappy quality. All those tiny dots gave my scanner a headache. These do not do justice to the actual comics.

The first four images are from issue #15, the fifth one's from #16 and the last ones are two consecutive pages from #17. The first few pages of that issue, showing the teenagers' party in full swing, are especially great, but I didn't want to scan all my favourite drawings-- this is just a tiny sample of the greatness.

New Cartoon Character!

2010-01-12T11:12:00.010-04:00

Here's my newest character. I'm currently working on a cartoon with him. It should hopefully be more like an old theatrical cartoon, and a little less talky than my Space Goose ones are. The character is loosely modelled after early 30's characters like Flip the Frog, Bimbo, Bosko, Mickey Mouse, etc. He's supposed to be a fish, but at the same time, he's not supposed to look or act like a fish. Sort of an exaggeration of how Flip the Frog didn't look anything like a frog for most of his career. That seemed to happen a lot in old cartoons, and I think it's hilarious.

His name is still undecided. I originally wanted to call him Fester Fish, but then realized that I'd stolen that from the Addams Family, so that wouldn't work. I mean, Fester IS an actual word, obviously, but using it as a deliberately gross name is exactly the same idea as "Uncle Fester".

So now he's probably going to be Flakey Fish, as suggested by my sister. It's a pretty good compromise between having the effect I want, and blatantly stealing an existing joke-name. It sounds a little cutesy to me though.

Other names I'm not really considering, but amuse me--
Flavio Fish
Fyodor Fish
Fineen Fish
Fidelio Fish
Hornyhead Chub (a real kind of fish... You learn something every day!)

Fester or Flakey - Which name do you think I should use? Or does anybody have a better one?

Anyway, here's a little statue thing of him I'm working on. I still need to paint it.

And of course this is my dog sleeping in a fetal position.

Lupin - Ice, Robot Part 3

2009-12-30T12:03:00.007-04:00

Lupin and the rest have brought the robot back to Dr. Pot's place. About to enter, Gavotte stops to observe "oh Baby, you are so damn bee-yootiful."

Again, this is just a shot of a guy opening a door, but I think it's really funny.

Inside, as our heroes look around and wait for Dr. Pot to get back. The lab is full of bizarre devices like a giant magnet. According to Lupin, it doesn't work.

Meanwhile, Jigen has trouble with a nose-blowing machine.

Suddenly, bullets fly through the windows!

It's Gavotte, come back to re-steal the robot.

This is one of my favourite shots. Apart from this great image, I like it because Gavotte yells "YAAHHHH!! SHOOT STUFF!!!"

Eventually they realize there's nobody there. Baby is not pleased. Nice cartoony stretching of the hat here. Cartoony stretching and squashing, which is the bread and butter of classic Western animation, is really rare in Japanese animation.

Eventually Lupin and Gavotte agree to meet at an amusement park at sunset, to exchange the robot for Dr. Pot.

All does not go well.

Dr. Pot and the robot wind up in the same roller coaster car.

Goemon slices the track with his "deus ex machina" sword, and Jigen lifts it up, in a helicopter. Only in a cartoon...

This causes the car to roll back to Lupin and Fujiko.

Gavotte doesn't like that, so he sends his men up after them.

Then Lupin makes Gavotte and Baby asplode.

But as the heroes are rolling away, who should jump down onto the car but Zenigata?

He announces that Lupin's under arrest, but then the car flies off the track (which Goemon cut).

Lupin and the heroes escape by holding onto the robot, which Jigen lifts in the helicopter using the super-magnet from the lab. Apparently it does work after all.

Dr. Pot is re-united with his robot, which as it turns out, has been broken and now only makes diamond-shaped ice cubes. Dr. Pot is more excited about that than he was about the diamonds.

And so Gavotte quits being a gangster and becomes a clown.

The End.

This mystery animator/layout artist/director was sometimes given material that didn't play to his strengths, similar to how Terrytoons didn't always give Jim Tyer the most appropriate scenes (versus Bob Clampett's Looney Tunes unit where Rod Scribner got the craziest scenes, Bob McKimson got mostly the low-key straight ones that required really solid draftsmanship, etc). Off the top of my head, I can recall one other episode he did at least part of-- "Zenigata Get You into my Life." That's one of the more dramatic episodes, and so he wasn't able to do as much with it. I don't remember thinking that it was that great, because he's best suited to funny comedic poses and flat staging, whereas in that episode he was required to do more 'straight' work. In Mamo the poses aren't quite as funny as these, but I'm not sure how exactly he was involved in it, so I don't know whether it was the fact that it was a bit more drama-oriented, or the fact that he was less involved in the animation. As I re-watch other Lupin episodes I'll try to find others where I can recognize the guy's drawing style.

I should point out that this episode is available on the final volume of Geneon's Lupin the Third DVD series-- Vol. 15, 'Thievin' Ain't Easy.'

Lupin - Ice, Robot Part 2

2009-12-30T11:27:00.007-04:00

Here's more from the cartoon.

This is a hilarious shot. The scene is showing us that this nightclub is a naughty place filled with gangsters, loose women and the devil's music (ragtime), and in the middle of it, we pan under a table and see that all the gangsters are tapping their feet in perfect unison. It's not a weird idea or anything-- it makes sense that they'd be tapping their feet to the music, but somehow I find it hysterical. Tapping your foot to music just seems like such like such a tame, wholesome activity.

Okay, so here are the characters who really occupy most of this episode. Gavotte the gangster, his moll Baby, and this weird kid named One-Eared Joe. They've stolen this robot from an eccentric scientist named Dr. Pot (why exactly is he named Dr. Pot?) that's supposed to 'cry' diamond tears. As I said, it's a weird premise, especially given that the robot doesn't actually cry, or do anything. It's just a static machine, and it barely even resembles a humanoid in the first place. You wonder why the diamonds wouldn't just come out of a hole or something. The 'crying tears made of diamonds' idea seems a bit under-developed... or should I say 'half-baked?' Maybe that's why he's called Dr. Pot. It was the 70's, after all.

So we've seen the robot make diamonds earlier in the episode, but now that it's back at Gavotte's place, it just shoots water.

Gavotte is confused. Also funny-looking.

As I said, One-Eared Joe is kind of a weird character. He just sits in the corner and laughs hysterically at Gavotte. Kinda seems like he's not all there.

But it never really explains why the kid hangs out with Gavotte and Baby (what kind of name is Baby? It's not just Gavotte's pet name for her, as everybody in the episode calls her that). It never really explains anything about these characters. I guess it's not really necessary, but it is a bit awkward at first.

Gavotte's voice and dialogue are great.
"Shut yowah yap One-Ear! Do I amuse you? Do I make you laugh?"
I think he's played by Tony Oliver, but I'm not 100% sure.

While trying to retrieve the robot, Lupin and his gang run into Zenigata. Normally he's obsessed with trying to arrest Lupin, but not in this episode. Instead, he's in town to see a Liza Minelli concert.

This is just a simple shot of Lupin inserting his key, but even it's kind of cool. It's better in motion though.

Eventually Lupin gets away, but Zenigata's obsession gets the better of him, and he hails a taxi, ordering the driver to "chase that car." This gag is sort of a twist on the old joke that was also used in the Muppet Movie-- Instead of just driving after Lupin without Zenigata, which is the standard joke, he strips down to his underwear, makes Zenigata fire a starting gun and chases Lupin on foot:

Zenigata observes that for a man his size, the guy sure is a fast runner.

Lupin soon gets the ice robot, while Gavotte's gone out for a drive. Look at Lupin's face in this picture, and tell me this wasn't the same guy who did the "Secret of Mamo" designs.

Zenigata sees Lupin again, and finally rips up his ticket in frustration. He gets another taxi.

It's the same driver, but he won't make the same mistake twice.

I love these poses. Notice the camera error in the last one, along the top of the image.

When somebody makes a turn in this cartoon, they really turn! Gavotte's face in this one also really reminds me of the Mamo movie.

More domestic abuse in Gavotte's basement.

"Dat's not a joke, One-Ear! You keep this up and pretty soon you'll be changin' yah name to No-Ear!"

Gavotte decides that boxing is the best way to get information about the robot from Dr. Pot.

Part 3 is on the way.

Lupin - Ice, Robot Part 1

2009-12-30T11:01:00.010-04:00

Some episodes of Lupin are better than others-- While most are light-hearted adventure/comedy stories, some tend to be more dramatic, and some are pure comedy. "Ice, Robot" is a particularly crazy comedy-oriented episode, from 1978. Storywise, it has a very bizarre premise, and it brings in a whole bunch of one-shot characters without really introducing them. The plot twists and turns with no sense of logic. So obviously I love it.

But the best thing about the episode is the art. The posing and staging are really cool, and better than most episodes. I don't know the details of how Japanese shows are produced, other than that it's somewhat different from Western ones, but it seems like there was this one particular Lupin director or animator or layout artist or something, who had a really unique visual style. He seems to have been the one who did the designs for the 1978 "Secret of Mamo" Lupin movie, although the poses in the movie aren't consistently great like this episode, so I don't know if he actually did the keys for it. If anybody reading this knows who's responsible for the designs in Mamo, let me know! It may have been the director, or the animation director, layout artist... I don't know what exactly he did, but he's good.

Anyway, back to the episode at hand. This guy seems to have done this whole episode, as almost every shot is great. Obserr-uv...

Right away it starts with a neat visual idea-- the phone ringing with the establishing shot inside of it.

Something I find funny about this episode is the idea that Lupin, Jigen and Goemon all live in same house together.

Look at this great composition. The characters in the room frame the doorway, which is itself a frame for the guy coming in, which is what we're supposed to be looking at.

These are a couple of nice 'establishing shot' pan backgrounds. I guess they're really more for mood than exposition.

I'll post stills from the rest of the episode later today.

Lupin the Third 1

2009-12-30T10:03:00.012-04:00

Lupin the Third is a really cool series, with a great premise and cast. The most well-known iteration is the second TV show, which ran from 1977-1980. It had a fairly unique art style that was different from most anime, although no animated Lupin ever really captures the intensity and cartooniness of the comics. Monkey Punch's original art is fantastic. It's got more energy than any other comics I've ever seen. Here are some images from it, although only the very last picture really captures what I'm talking about.

(Thanks to DrFurball from the LupintheThird.net forum for some of the pictures.)

But anyway, back to the TV show. Aside from the art, one of the great things about it is the music. Yuji Ohno is a genius. His jazz/funk/disco music always fits the action, while standing out from other shows. One of the first things I noticed when I started watching were the stings. You know how at the end of a lot of jazz songs, the entire band holds the final chord together? On this show, that's what you hear when a character sees something shocking, or realizes something important. It's hard to explain it, but it works great. He also gives all the characters their own distinctive themes. Lupin himself has the show's main theme song, and it's damn catchy.

Jigen's theme, "Tornado", starts off remarkably similar to Chuck Mangione's "Children of Sanchez" but then goes in a different direction.

Fujiko's theme, "Silhouette", sounds like 70's porno music, which is quite appropriate given her character, and the fact that the show IS from the 70's.

Goemon's theme uses some traditional Japanese instruments, but combines them with the usual guitar-bass-drums set-up.

Zenigata's theme is mostly played as a march (although there are jazzier versions). I could only find one of the more uptempo renditions on Youtube.

The Japanese cast is supposedly really good, but since I don't speak Japanese I can't really appreciate it. The subtitles also have a tendency to be extremely literal, killing some of the jokes. The dubbed version is more enjoyable for me, because the translators add lots of extra gags and puns (is there any other way to do it?), and the cast is great. Tony Oliver is perfect as Lupin, playing the role as a mix of "Jack Benny and Bugs Bunny", in his own words. Richard Epcar plays Jigen, and also rewrites the episodes from the literal translation. Meaning, he's the guy who adds the extra jokes. Lex Lang plays Goemon with the right mix of seriousness, pride and sarcasm; Michelle Ruff is great as Fujiko and Jake Martin brings a ton of energy to the role of Inspector Zenigata.

The chemistry among the cast is phenomenal, and one of my favourite aspects of the show. When I first heard the dub I was slightly surprised at some of the voices, but now I can't picture them any other way. The Lupin dub casts used by other companies are very disappointing in comparison. Obviously, the actors also perform dozens of incidental characters throughout the series, and their range is pretty impressive.

To end this post, enjoy this cool new version of the main Lupin theme:

Space Goose - Banquet Bust-Up

2009-12-14T12:25:00.003-04:00

The third episode of Space Goose is finished!

Highlights of AoStH

2009-09-24T08:59:00.008-04:00

The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog is an interesting series, which I liked as a kid and recently got back into. It had some good voice talent (Long John Baldry being the standout, but the whole cast was pretty funny), and the amount of names you recognize looking at the storyboard credits is incredible-- Milton Knight, Mike Fontanelli, Eddie Fitzgerald, Owen Fitzgerald, Howie Post, Vincent Waller and more. It's a who's-who of amazing animation talent.

Unfortunately, the actual episodes were rather inconsistent. Sometimes the writing was unbelievably poor, using the most tired, unfunny jokes you can think of. Other times, it was a magnificent blend of non-sequitur gags, incongruity, and cartooniness. You may have seen the Nostalgia Critic's review of this series, in which he criticized it heavily for its absurdity. I agree with his analysis, but not his opinion-- I love it for all the reasons he hates it. I think if you like extreme over-the-top cartoons in the vein of Bob Clampett, Tex Avery or John Kricfalusi, you might find something to like in this series. According to Milton Knight, the storyboard artists were encouraged to add their own gags and change the script, and this often comes through in the show.

In the aforementioned Nostalgia Critic review, two gags he specifically hated were the one where Grounder blows on his hand to turn it into a pumpkin, and where Scratch pulls a string and his hand turns into a beautiful hedgehog girl. I think these are hilarious moments. "Scratch needs to bring out a distraction for Sonic. So his hand turns into an inflatable hedgehog woman. Okay, what happens next?"
To really enjoy it, you have to look at it in the same way as a cartoon like "the Great Piggy Bank Robbery," where everything is funny that you accept the fact that everything happening is impossi--

--ble.

Anyway, the animation was about as hit-or-miss as the writing, due to it being outsourced. Sometimes the characters were distorted in funny, creative ways for a specific purpose, and other times they just weren't drawn very well. In at least a few episodes of AoStH, there was a gratuitious use of smears in the animation, to the point where every head-turn or slight arm movement is smeared. We're talking even beyond "Dover Boys" levels. I love smears, but you don't need them for every little movement. But it might have been done to save money on in-betweens, rather than for aesthetic reasons. It only shows up in a handful of episodes.

Anyway, the end result of all this is that, for me at least, the show is always entertaining or fascinating on some level, intentionally or not. For example, here are some of my favourite scenes from an episode I saw recently, "Full Tilt Tails." This episode is one of the more nonsensical ones, at least on the second DVD set.

The first clip takes place just after Sonic has tricked Robotnik out of some stolen junk (really, the cartoon opens with Robotnik bragging about how he just stole a bunch of garbage) while dressed as a hillbilly. The first great thing in this clip is Scratch's laugh. Yes, it's in every episode, but it's funny.
Then there's Robotnik's 'tip'. Obviously this is a pretty easy, old joke, but that's part of why I find this so funny. The angle on the robots' outstretched arms as they await the tip also makes me laugh. Finally, there's Scratch's confused, awkward reaction.

The second clip starts with Grounder coming up from under a table and saying "that was a pretty tricky hillbilly," a sentence which makes me laugh by itself. Then Robotnik says "bamboozled." That's a funny word. Even more funny is that he blames Coconuts for his failure to recognize Sonic, even though Coconuts hasn't even appeared in the cartoon up to this point. Coconuts is 'demoted' to 'mop-up duty', which he has been assigned to since the beginning of the series. When he says "where do I start", the intention is probably for him to be asking where he starts mopping up, but it's more fun, and just as easy, to interpret it as "where do I start in asking how any of this makes sense?" The icing on the cake for this clip is Robotnik's bizarre two-handed pointing gesture. Because it takes two hands to point at something.

Clip 3: Pretty straightforward. Robotnik's reasoning is sound.

Here, Sonic and Tails have probably picked the worst possible spot to sit down and have a discussion. A table precariously balanced on top of a mountain. And Tails calls Sonic out on his inconsistent rules.

Next, Tails ruins some sort of skydiving competition, angering everyone. My favourite aspects of this scene are the sausage man in the crowd, the two identical guys who mumble "how COULD you?!!" and "misery!" at Tails, and the furious british cat with the expanding head. "FRIEND-OF-HISAHYO?" The fact that Sonic is so quick to desert Tails is another odd thing in this scene. You'd think, being brave enough to fight all kinds of monsters and robots, he wouldn't be afraid of a normal person like that.

This sixth clip is probably my favourite: 'Plan B', in which Robotnik is obsessed with the term "boob", involves Grounder putting on a wig and speaking poorly. "Bad man in there steal my lollipop, and he left me only my stick!" It's possible that this is a reference to something else, but I have no idea what. Even if it is a reference, it makes no sense that someone would steal the candy part of a lolipop but leave the stick behind. It would be difficult to get it off, and your hands would get all sticky and gross.
Tails is immediately enraged by this act of theft, and shouts "WHAT BAD MAN?!!" He goes into a bar to find the thief, who Grounder makes sure to specify is 'wearing leather', and retrieve the lollipop... Even though by this point I'm sure nobody would want the lollipop. Inside the bar, a biker with a hilarious speech pattern starts beating up Tails after Grounder switches his story. Every line that comes out of this biker's mouth is hysterical. The delivery is just so ridiculous.
"DAAAUH... That'sterrible!"
"DAYDAUUUHH.... You better talk FAST, sonny."
Then Grounder and Scratch smile and wave at Tails, who knocks over all the motorcycles with a domino effect. For some reason the biker blames the robots.
"HEY!!! Yer-naw-lil-girl! DUHHHHHH.... you broke mah motorcycle! I-HATE-ROBOTS" [he manages to say it without punctuation]

The only bad thing about this scene is the bizarre, lame joke when Sonic arrives. "I guess I got here a little late. And I hate when that happens!" ... So Sonic doesn't like being late? ... Uh... Nobody does. That's not much of a joke. Not even half a joke. That's maybe a quarter of a joke or something. But even that can't ruin this incredible episode.

So then the logical conclusion to the cartoon is to have a turtle walk by and decide to lick already-chewed gum off the bottom of Tails' sneaker. Logical, captain. No wonder Robotnik hates turtles.

And of course, there's the well-known 'Sonic Sez' segment where it's revealed that Grounder smokes cigarettes. I love how it just opens without any explanation -- Groudner runs onscreen shouting "GIMME MY SMOKES!" at Tails, who has apparently stolen his cigarettes. Obviously the message of the piece is that smoking is bad, but it's hilarious that they chose to say that by portraying one of the main characters like this. It's not like they showed Grounder trying a cigarette for the first time, only to have Sonic slap it away and say 'that's not cool, fool' or something -- he's actually depicted as a chain-smoker.

It's pretty difficult to explain why I find this stuff so funny. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed these clips. I'll probably put up some more soon.

What's going on

2009-09-24T07:11:00.003-04:00

I'm going to probably be having more content on this blog in the future, starting now. Anyway, just to update whoever's reading this (re: nobody) about what's going on with me, I've just started attending Max the Mutt Animation School. It's pretty good so far, although honestly there's not a lot of actual animation-related stuff in the first year, so I'm not that interested in some of the classes. Life drawing is obviously very important for an animator, but I'm not so keen on the painting classes. I want to learn how to draw well, but not necessarily how to paint.

I'm working on a couple of animation projects right now, but both are going really slowly because of the amount of schoolwork I have. I'm about 2/3 done the third episode of Space Goose, and I'm also about halfway done a parody of some old anime.

Space Goose - Space Race 7000

2009-06-14T17:31:00.008-04:00

Here's the second episode. Well, I actually did a few months ago, before "Fugitive Goose," but I didn't want to release it until I'd already made another episode. This one served as a test/warm-up sort of thing, so that the real first episode would be a bit more polished and consistent.

Space Goose - Fugitive Goose

2009-06-01T07:55:00.005-04:00

Here's the first episode, entitled "Fugitive Goose!"

Space Goose Teaser

2009-03-10T08:37:00.005-04:00

Here's the intro to my next cartoon, Space Goose. It's about... a goose in space.

The title card for the first episode I did is on there, too.

This might not be the final version, at least audio-wise.

Frankenstein's Farm

2008-09-25T08:13:00.003-04:00

Here's my latest stop-motion cartoon. It only took a couple of days to make it, and I sort of got lazy towards the end of the filming day. The story sort of falls apart, and it's really not that great, but since I did finish it, I figured I may as well post it. I think there's a couple of mildly funny parts.

Slick Nick Private Dick

2008-07-18T08:19:00.003-04:00

Here's the cartoon I mentioned. I actually finished it at the end of June, and released it on Canada Day (July 1st) but forgot to post it here. Anyway, here it is. It's about a detective investigating the disappearance of a really bad rock band.

Slick Nick Private Dick
Uploaded by aalong64

The Oakwood Baron in "Terrorist Teacher Trouble"

2008-05-02T19:36:00.005-05:00

Here's my latest cartoon. I did it for my high school's film festival. There was a $100 prize for the most popular video, and I won! :D
Honestly, since I only had six days to do it, from start to finish, it's pretty awful, in terms of animation, story... basically everything. The other short that I've been working on, "Slick Nick Private Dick", will be much better.

Just an update...

2008-02-23T09:49:00.003-05:00

I realized that it's been a while since I posted on here. Not much has happened, other than my dad buying us an entirely-unnecessary Mac computer that we have no room for, and no use for... After my sister and I repeatedly telling him that we don't need, or want one. Kind of a silly purchase.

In other news, I'm working on a cartoon about a detective. I've got the characters designed, I'm currently revising the script and I've done some little animation bits like a walk cycle for the character. I'm happy with how it's going so far.

Oh, and I ended up getting 100% on that Music History cartoon. :)

Counterpoint - the Story of the Baroque Orchestra

2007-12-21T17:32:00.002-05:00

This week I did a cartoon as a project for the Music History part of my Band class. It's about the Baroque Orchestra, and is supposed to be about how it changed into the modern orchestra, but it sort of got a little side-tracked. Anyway, you can check it out here...

Or just watch it here.

The teacher (Mr. Greaves, as mentioned at the very end) seemed to like it ( his reply to my e-mail containing the link was "very excellent, mon vieux") although he did say, however, that he found the 80's action movie-style intro "disturbing", and that if that part wasn't there, he would be willing to show it to other people.

I guess he'll give me the mark for it when we go back to school after the holidays, so I'll probably eventually edit this post to show that. If I can remember to.

Citizenship Follies

2007-10-10T20:59:00.000-05:00

A couple of years ago in my Grade 10 Civics class, we had some assignment where one of the options was to make a comic about civics and citizenship. Obviously I jumped at the chance, especially cause the other options were probably "write an essay" or an oral presentation something.

Earlier today I found the comic while looking for a guitar magazine. It's kind of ruined, but you can still see some of the pictures and make out some of the writing. I think it's pretty funny. Note: It was technically a collaborative effort-- my friend Anthony did some very nice colour "tinting" for the panel backgrounds. We both got good marks, but you can barely see his hard work now, thanks to me leaving the comic in my civics binder.

Anyway, since it's so hard to read at some points, I've transcribed the text under each picture. Also I translated it into English (it was a French class).

This was the "rough conceptualization and colour guide" page where we came up with the characters. Actually I had come up with Matt the Cat and Bonzo the Bulldog at least a year earlier, but I felt like drawing them again before starting the comic anyway:

TEXT:
Matt the Canuck Cat (Smoke Grey!)
Bonzo the Mean Bulldog
Marco the French-Canadian Rabbit
Zoltan the African-American Elephant
CITIZENSHIP FOLLIES

Colour Guide:
Canuck Blue (Royal Blue)
Canuck Grey (Smoke Grey)
Inner-Ear Pink (Cerise)Page 1
Panel 1
"CITIZENSHIP FOLLIES"
By Aaron 10D (and Anthony)
Ah, Canada! What a nice country! Here's our friend, Matt the Canuck Cat! He's nice to everyone.

Panel 2
Today, Matt's going to the park.

Panel 3
Oh no! It's Bonzo, the discriminatory bulldog! He's really mean!

Panel 4
And here, we have Marco the French-Canadian rabbit! Uh oh, I think there's going to be some trouble here!
Marco: Hello, my buddies!

Page 2
Panel 1
Bonzo: Get lost, stupid francophone! Go eat poutine or something!
Marco: Oh, ok.
Matt: Hey, that's not good citizenship!

Panel 2
Later...
Marco: Boohoohoo... That was mean, but I DO like poutine.

Panel 3
Zoltan: I'm Zoltan, the African-American elephant!
Matt: Hello!
Bonzo: Ahh! Another outlet for my rage!

Panel 4
Bonzo: Go back to Africa! We don't want any big elephants like you!
Zoltan: WHAT did you say?!!!

Panel 5
Zoltan: BRAATTT!
Bonzo: Ouch!

The next day... At the hospital...

Panel 6
Matt: Zoltan, do you have something to say?
Zoltan: Uh, yes...

Page 3
Panel 1
Zoltan: I'm sorry for trampling you.
Matt: Good, good.

Panel 2
Bonzo: It's okay. It was equally my fault.
Matt: Ah, that's good-- you're taking responsibility!

Panel 3
Bonzo: I won't ever discriminate against other nationalities. I've seen the error of my ways.
Matt: Bonzo, you know what? I think you're a good citizen now! Come on, let's go eat some cake!
Zoltan: Agreeable!
Marco: Joyous!

Panel 4
Bonzo: This cake is superb!
Matt: Ah, yes!
Zoltan: Canucks, a French rabbit and an African-American elephant eating this cake together-- this is the true meaning of citizenship!
Marco: Cake is good, but poutine is the best.

Hope you enjoyed it. And more importantly, I hope you could read it.

Some music

2007-09-23T12:43:00.000-05:00

Okay, so... I don't know how, or if, I can post audio directly on here... If you know a good place to store files, tell me. I need some place where you can just click on them and they'll open, as opposed to having to enter a password and then waiting XX seconds like on megaupload.

Anyway, the point of this post is, I've got some music for you to hear on my new Myspace page:
www.myspace.com/aalong64

I'm not really that interested in the whole online socialization aspect of it (at least not at the moment), but it allows me to put up a few songs. :) Similarly, I've got a Facebook account, but I hardly use it. I created the account on a friend's suggestion, but I never got into all the applications like Vampire, Graffiti, etc.. Seems like a waste of time to me. Kinda like this blog, heheh. Except I enjoy doing this, and hopefully somebody's reading.

Veronica's Birthday Party

2007-09-18T21:35:00.000-05:00

This short took a little longer-- about four or five days to make, in early April 2006. It was made as a birthday present to my friend Veronica. Anthony and Connor are also real-life friends.

Starring...

Anthony as Anthony and Connor
The computer as Veronica
Ozzy Osbourne as the Conductor
Me as Everyone Else.

When I made this, Anthony had a crush on a girl, and at the time, I hadn't seen seen her, so I could only imagine what she looked like. Therefore, she's represented here by popular children's character Arthur the aardvark, mostly because my only female action figure, Princess Leia, was already used in the first short. Also I think it's funny that Anthony's character is in love with an anthropomorphic male aardvark. (Eventually, in real life, their relationship didn't really develop much. And even in this story, their romance has a tragic end. 'Twas not meant to be. But he's gotten over her.)

BONUS TRIVIA FUN YAY!:

Connor is highly eccentric in real life, and does talk kind of like that. A bit less stilted though.

Connor says 'BRAP' about his car because one time he shouted "I'm a farmer, BRAP!" in our English class. He often tries to use slang like that, with similarly tragic results.

Connor does not actually own a fancy blue car, as far as I know.

"Walk Don't Run" plays when Connor is trying to get onto the train because that was his favourite song when I did this video. I think his current favourite is the Coconut Song or something.

Anthony is Trunks because he likes Dragon Ball Z.

I am Sonic because I used to really like Sonic the Hedgehog.

Connor is Chewbacca because I couldn't find anything more appropriate.

Veronica is the cat because she gave me that cat for Valentine's Day.

May Ng really was her name. I think it's kind of a funny name.

Alvin vs. Roshi

2007-09-18T21:29:00.000-05:00

This is both my first stop-motion short, and my first real cartoon, period. Before this I'd done lots of conceptualizing, writing and testing, and I'd drawn quite a few comics, but this was the first real cartoon I actually made. As such, it isn't very good. It was completed, editing and all, in one day-- November 13 2005, and the whole thing was just improvised.

The story is that Roshi is trying to sleep or get ready for his big date or whatever, but Alvin has other ideas-- specifically, rocking out (or trying to, at least).

I was planning to do actual music for this, but I got lazy and decided to finish it all in one night, which is why the 'music' is just Alvin singing the same little tune over and over.

Okay, so...

2007-09-18T19:43:00.001-05:00

I'm trying to figure out which of my completed projects to post on here. I've got a few cartoon shorts, some of which I'll be posting for sure (more on that later). I'll probably be posting some music soon, too.

I've also got tons of hand-drawn comics, but the problem with those is that most of them were done at school, often during lessons. As such, the art isn't my best work to begin with. Furthermore, most of them are at least a year old, so they're not a good indication of my current drawing skills... Not that I'm really good or anything, but judging from my school comics, you'd think I was terrible. The writing is also very crude, since I generally just make them up as I go along, with relatively little regard for plot development or anything. When I get bored of the current storyline, I either suddenly send the characters off to do something else, or end the story abruptly with an out-of-nowhere conclusion. I might post some for entertainment value though-- There are a couple of mildly amusing ones.

This past week I've been working on a Lupin III comic. At school, almost all the comics I do are about already-existing characters, like Lupin III, or Archie characters. I'd prefer to draw comics with my own characters, but 1) I'd rather spend more time on them at home, than scribble them out at school, and 2) nobody would read them-- only a handful of people read my current comics, based on characters they already know. When I do ones with original characters, people aren't as interested, because I have to use the first few panels to establish the characters' personalities and such, which people find boring. One friend of mine (named Connor) did recently ask why I didn't do a comic with own characters though... Hmm.

Anyway, next post will have some media, I promise!

My first post

2007-09-18T19:22:00.000-05:00

This is the first post on my blog. I've been toying with the idea of starting a blog for a while now, mostly so I'd have someplace to show my cartoons, music, comics or whatever. My friend just started one recently, and in order to view it I had to make an account here. So thanks a lot Anthony, for giving me the initiative to finally start one. Now let's see if I can actually maintain it...