Author: artofthecartoon

Tales From The Sketchbook: *Sigh*

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Warning! This will be a very rare glimpse into the personal life of a certain Art of the Cartoon blogger:

Last night, while watching this new anime series I picked a few weeks back, there was this particular scene that came up that got me so filled with emotion, particularly romance and love, that a certain person from my past came rushing back into my head (This particular scene will most likely become a Set the VCR moment in the future). A certain person that I still haven’t really gotten over. Suffice to say, I kept thinking about HER the whole night, and I could barely sleep. It lingered a little more today, and I decided to do something about it. And the only way I know how to handle these things… head to the sketchbook.

*Sigh*/ pencil on paper/ March 2009

sighYup, I went and drew HER! I know that seems odd, but trust me, it is very therapeutic. At least for me it is.

And the only reason I am posting this is because NOBODY WILL KNOW WHO THIS GIRL IS… unless:

1) You really know me

or

2) Looking at the picture, you can recognize who the girl is.

I can disregard #2, because throughout all my years of drawing, sketching, and being an artist, nobody can really tell who I am drawing unless I tell them. That’s when it becomes clear. Plus, I still don’t think my drawing skills are that great.

Hope you enjoyed this insight into my personal life!

Feel free to guess, just know that I’m fairly positive that nobody knows who that is

PS: If you do know who that is, keep your mouth shut =P

Review: Wolverine and the X-Men “Hindsight” parts 1-3 (pilot episodes)

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“Hindsight” Parts 1-3 (pilot episodes)/ Wolverine and the X-Men/ 2009

wolverine_visuel

Wolverine and the X-Men is the new X-Men animated series that debuted this past January on the NickToons network (With teenage Iron Man heading to NickToons as well, it seems like NickToons is the place for your new Marvel Comics cartoons).

I’m going to come right out and state this, I am a BIG fan of the X-Men: Animated Series from the 90’s , my taste favors the more Jim Lee style X-Men designs, and I believe that the X-Men: Animated Series from the 90’s was the most faithful to the comic book.

The next X-Men Series, X-Men: Evolution, even though many people enjoyed it and thought it was a better series, was a disappointment for me. Yes, the character designs were more streamlined to help with the fluidity of animation (as opposed to the bulky un-evenly animated X-Men from the 90’s), but the big No-No was making most of the characters teenagers and in “regular” high school.

So how does the Wolverine and X-Men pilot episodes stack up?

Two words: Very Promising…

Hit the jump for the rest of the review… Continue reading →

Beacon Hill Sound Transit Tunnel (Seattle)

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Since I live in the Beacon Hill area of Seattle, and also I have been ducking and dogdging the construction of this thing for the past 4+ years, I thought I would mention the progress of the Beacon Hill Sound Transit Tunnel.

Below ia an artist’s rendering (read: cartoon!) of what the Beacon Hill Transit Tunnel is going to look like. 

beacon1beacon2beacon31beacon43

The contruction for this thing has been going on for what seems like forever. Newsflash, The Beacon Hill Transit Tunnel will look nothing like the cartoons up above.  Did the artist even visit Beacon Hill, or South Seattle when he did these concepts?

At least they look nice… ah to dream…

Hammerman

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By request from Daps1…

From 1990 – 91, MC Hammer was arguably the biggest hip-hop star in the world. You can’t deny the fact that his break out hit “U Can’t Touch This” was catchy, and with it’s heavy (understated) sampling of Rick James’ “Superfreak”, it made heavy, HEAVY sampling of funk hits popular in future hip-hop songs. Hammer helped bring hip-hop to the mainstream audience with an entertainment style that no hip-hop artist had back then. 

But how do you know you when someone hits it big? They get their own cartoon series…

hammermanHit the Jump, to read more about hip-hop’s first animated series… Continue reading →

Iron Man: Armored Adventures

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It took them a while to capitalize on the huge movie success of Iron Man. Here’s the trailer for the new upcoming animated series on NickToons.

Let’s be real, I’m not sure I’m sold on the Tony Stark as a teenager premise. It didn’t work for me when X-Men: Evolution turned most of the X-Men into teenagers attending a regular high school. If done right, like Batman Beyond or Next Avengers, where the original heroes were homaged and played a vital role, maybe it could’ve worked. But Tony Stark just doesn’t work as a 16 year old kid for me. Tony Stark needs to be Robert Downey Jr. 

I’ll actually watch some of this before I pass more judgement. I will say this though, it already seems better than the last Iron Man animated series.

Actually, based on that catchy theme song, I’m not too sure anymore.

“I…I….AM…IROOOON MAAA-A-AAAAN!” Don’t tell me that’s not catchy.

More research required definitely!

2Pac: Do For Love (Music Video)

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While uploading my animation assignments to youtube yesterday, this random video popped up on the main screen. It was 2Pac’s “Do For Love” with Blackstreet. One of the forgotten posthumously released 2Pac songs, I remember this video back in 1997 and I thought it was a unique touch being all animation in getting around the fact that a live 2Pac wasn’t available (RIP Pac!). Still, I wasn’t too impressed with the animation back in 1997. In 2009, still not impressed, BUT now I do admire the fact that several animation techniques were used to produce this trippy video. 2D animation, 3D animation, claymation stop-motion, rotoscoping, among others came together to create something that, while not impressive in terms of animation, was still quite entertaining. Plus, no 2Pac music video ever looked like this:

“Do For Love”/ 2Pac/ 1997/ dir. ???

Listening back, I really do enjoy this song. It may find a rotation on my iphone. Plus, apparently according to wikipedia (so take this with a grain of salt),”Do For Love” actually rechopped J Dilla‘s production on a remix of the The Pharcyde‘s track Y? hmmm…..

Speaking of J Dilla, head over to my dude DJ Daps1 Thaswassup site. In preparation for his site getting to the 10,000 hit mark he has made available a Tribute Mixtape to J Dilla he made back in 2006. Congrats Bro! I’m not sure I’ll ever get to that mark. 

PS: Around the 3:07 mark in the video, where it was a mix of 2D and the 2Pac claymation, did that seem a little off to you? Maybe it was just me.

Isang Bagsak… One Down, more steps to come….

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Unfortunately sometime last week I must’ve hit the back of my head, or did something to it, since I now have this large and tender gash/ scab thing that hurts like a bitch! Which explains why I have been experiencing concussion-like symptoms for the past few days. Too bad I didn’t really take notice until it started to really, REALLY hurt last night after class. Anyway, luckily for me, last night was the last class/ lecture/Q&A for this quarter. Below is rare glimpse of me in class chattin’ it up and overall making a fool of myself with Matthew Garward, who was one of the animators for the video game Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. 

fanboy
Yes that's me with the lightsaber with "I AM NOT A FANBOY" written on the whiteboard

Apparently, I’m the troublemaker/ class clown. However, I fail to see what they’re talking about =P.

All kidding aside, since I started Art of the Cartoon to keep me motivated whilst attending school, I thought it would only be appropriate to share some of the assignments I have done over the past 3 months. Let me know what you think. Keep in mind, this is all basic shit. So for all those folks who told me to start adding sound and voices and stuff to my animation, hold up… I have to learn how to crawl before I can walk. (Hit the jump to see my progress… if you can call it that) Continue reading →

Bold Decisions that defined Film Animation

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Background note: This whole post was inspired by a comment by probrown1896, “Wall-E’s first dialogue-less 40 minutes are the finest 40 minutes in film animation, ever.”

walle

This got me thinking “Was it?… I know it’s up there in the finest moments of film animation, but finest “ever”?… I racked my thoughts to see if I could think of a better sequence. Like probrown stated,  I could “come up with dope scenes/sequences but I can’t think of 40 straight minutes.”

Then late last night it hit me what was wrong with my thinking. It was the “40 straight minutes” line  that got me tripped up. I was trying to come up with ONLY 40 minutes, and I believe that its not fair to judge films on snippets and sequences. For example, even though Wall-E‘s first half was SPECTACULAR, honestly the 2nd half was less than inspiring, the movie was still great mind you, but still I had to take into account the film as whole. Compared to say Nausicaa, which didn’t have the long awe-inspiring sequence, but was a little bit stronger and more consistent as whole. But all this is subjective (like all the reviews we do), so I tried to flip the script and make this objective. Here’s my attempt:

I went back and re-watched the sequence from Wall-E, still good as ever btw. Looking back though, it really  wasn’t “40 straight minutes.” There were more moments that stuck out more than the all-out 40 minutes. And apparently, even though, animation wise, it was still technically good, crisp, and posed well, Kung-Fu Panda was even more crisp, more fluid, and more well thought out in terms of animation (according to some animation students and teachers I asked) hence the reason why KFP won all the Annie Awards and Wall-E got nothing. 

So what made those first 40 minutes of Wall-E so memorable and one of the finest moments in film animation? Continue reading →

Filipin@s: Jac Lim

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International Working Womyn’s Day was this past Sunday March 8. I feel bad since I missed the event that happened in Seattle =(. 

7be10a0d6fb998a30887330dd2746d1a1Anyway speaking of strong womyn, I thought I would pass along this dope Filipina artist that I recently discovered about a week ago. Her name is Jac Lim, and on her deviantART page says she’s  currently residing San Pablo City. She’s a Game Developer, cosplayer, artist, comic stripper, facepainter, model, graphics designer, senior penciller, video editor. 

I’m not sure if she’s still doing her online web comic strip called “Pilya” which translates to naughty girl in tagalog.  Some of it’s really funny. Here’s two examples:

pilya_5_by_jactinglim1

 

pilya_18_by_jactinglim

Check out some of the other “Pilya” strips here