Lupin - Ice, Robot Part 3

Lupin and the rest have brought the robot back to Dr. Pot's place.


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 explode.


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 while his work still stood out, I felt like he works better for comedy. 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 1

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. 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. 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...

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.


I like this 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

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 I'm not sure any animated iteration of it ever really captures the insanity of the comics. Monkey Punch's original art is fantastic. It's got more energy than any other comics I've ever seen. I'll probably post more about it in the future. Here are some images from it.

Space Goose - Banquet Bust-Up

The third episode of Space Goose is finished!

What's going on

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

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

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

Space Goose Teaser

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.