Inspiration

Review: BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad (anime)

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BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad/ dir. Osamu Kobayashi/ 2004-2005 (26 episodes)

beckseattle1I started the Art of the Cartoon blog this past January. When it first debuted, my marquee header was a little different, and my good friend and running partner, Angel, thought the anime character on my marquee was Koyuki, the main character from BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad (It was actually Naota from FLCL, but anyway).

After one of our runs, she played the opening song from the series on her car stereo and went off on what a good series BECK was. She mentioned it was about starting a rock band and how they got through struggles. This caught my attention and I was intrigued by what kind of series about a rock band would impress her.

A month later I saw BECK the complete series on sale at Fry’s Electronics. I was tempted, but I did not pick it up (money’s tight y’know). Over the next couple of weeks, I kept going back to Fry’s and staring at that set (there was only one left) wondering if I should pick it up before it was too late. It wasn’t until after my birthday, and a break from school that I finally decided to pick up BECK, and see what the fuss my homegirl was talking about.

So how was it?

Flawed. Actually, there were a LOT of flaws. HOWEVER, when a cartoon series is so powerful that it makes me do this:

sigh

You know that something went immensely right. In fact, watching BECK reinforced the reasons why I decided to get into the field of animation in the first place. Hit the jump for the rest of the review…
Continue reading →

The Lost Tribes of New York City

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The past couple of posts about cheesy early 90’s cartoon series have been fun, but I really wanted to focus this time on the “animation as an art form” aspect of this blog. 

I present to you The Lost Tribes of New York City by filmakers Andy and Carolyn London. 

A very creative aproach at urban anthrolopology, I must say. Using New York’s own everyday inanimate street objects to convey the people that inhabit said city made me smile a bit. It was a shrewd way of showing the voices that we overlook when thinking of NYC.

Still, I do wish it had a little more subtance. Instead of just showing us the voices we miss, I wanted to know WHY these voices were overlooked and WHY we should care about the overlooked citizens of NYC. But that’s just me…

It’s still a really dope animation.

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

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

The Notorious B.I.G. Inspiration…

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On March 9, 1997, Christopher Wallace aka Notorious B.I.G. aka Biggie Smalls, was gunned down in LA. Arguably the greatest lyricist of all time, he has inspired not only myself, but countless other visual artists, especially in the street art form that is graffiti. Looking at the images below, I don’t think it’s a stretch to state that cartoons and animation had a little bit of influence as well.

 

daily-dos-life-after-death1biggiegraf1biggiegraf3biggiegraf4biggiegraf2

I know there are differing thoughts on the role of graffiti in society, so I’ll leave that heavy issue for another post, but I will say this: Your tagger name and/or initials scribbled on a wall does NOT mean it is art! Have some inspiration or meaning behind anything you put up for goodness sakes. Plus, everybody’s scribbled their name on a wall at some point, be original please.

RIP Biggie Smalls

1000 HITS!

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It’s Watchmen Week! and guess what?…..

The Art of the Cartoon blog just passed the 1000 hit mark!

Many thanks to those who read this blog.  This inspires me to keep writing in this thing.  It only took a lil over 2 months, I never thought I would hit 1000 this fast, I figured people would get tired of my writing about cartoons and animation and stuff…

Anyway Watchmen Week…so enjoy this video…

WTF is Watchmen

Thanks Adam for the link!

Review: La Maison en Petits Cubes

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La Maison en Petits Cubes (House of Small Cubes)/ created by Kunio Kato/ 2008 (Japan)

La Maison en Petits Cubes (House of Small Cubes) won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film this Year. Fresh off the heels of the best acceptance speech ever (sorry Geo, the Man on Wire disappearing coin was good, so was Sean Penn’s sentiments on Prop 8, and the Heath Ledger win was moving, but this dude thanked his pencil, and the domo arigato mr.roboto made more sense after I watched the short film, all acceptance speeches from now on should handled by Japanese men):

I decided I had to take some precious time off of work and school to give this short film a look and review.

Synopsis

La Maison en Petits Cubes tells the story of a man living in house surrounded by water. As the water rises he must build another level to his house to stay dry. One day, he loses his favorite pipe in the water. As he descends into the waters through different stories, he relives the scenes of his life.

The Review

Subtle and simplistic, yet oh so very powerful. I was riveted more by the 11 minutes of this short film than I have by some full length animated features…

(hit the jump to read the rest of my review, and the video of La Maison en Petit Cubes) Continue reading →