Alright, I hope you all had your fun with the last post (Gee that really backfired! … Live & Learn).
Time to get serious:
(stares at screen in disbelief…)
I have nothing…
Well back to the sketchbook 😛 !
I’ll come back to this I promise…
Video
Review: Wolverine and the X-Men “Hindsight” parts 1-3 (pilot episodes)
“Hindsight” Parts 1-3 (pilot episodes)/ Wolverine and the X-Men/ 2009
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
Hammerman
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…
Hit the Jump, to read more about hip-hop’s first animated series… Continue reading
Iron Man: Armored Adventures
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)
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….
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.
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
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.”
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
Review: Watchmen (Film)
Watchmen/ dir. Zack Snyder/ 2009
Well it was a fun week of blogging. Watchmen week comes to its conclusion with this review of the live-action Watchmen film.
Many thanks to those who came to dinner at Sea Garden to celebrate the birthday of a certain Art of the Cartoon blogger. Many more thanks to the 10 folks who also came out, waited in line in the freezing cold for about 3 hours, just to indulge my geek ego and watch the midnight showing of Watchmen.
Now for the main event.
The Review
Ever since the end movie credits started to roll I have been trying to think of what to put in this review. At the very end, I just sat there trying to process what just happened on the big screen and in my head doing a quick comparison to the legendary comic book. Here are some of the questions that raced through my mind when Watchmen was over:
“Was it complete? Were the characters okay? Did this capture the essence of the graphic novel? Were the changes significant or were they easily overlooked? Did the film feel right? Was the original messages from the comic book also on the big screen? Should I take into account those who have not read the book? Do I compare this to the book? etc….”
For those who want the bottom line, here it is:
Go see this movie.
Be forewarned. You should read on though, because the reasons why you should see this movie is different from what you would expect. (I will try to keep the spoilers to a minimum, but there may be some minor spoilers ahead… hit the jump!) Continue reading
Set the VCR: Alan Moore Speaks! (The Simpsons “Husbands & Knives” 2007)
Alan Moore, writer of Watchmen, genius. He is one of the first writers to establish a literary and structural tone to comic books that rivals traditional novels. It’s no secret that Alan Moore is not a fan of the care-free licensing that major comic book companies (Like DC) take with writers’ characters. He has always decided to take his name off writing credits when a movie is made based on one of his many genius comic stories. With the disaster that was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie, Alan Moore became more frustrated with the whole licensing process.
Because of this, I don’t think he gets out in public that much. Actually, for many years I just knew him as that dude with the beard…
Yup, thas him! That’s all I knew of him. He never really seemed human, like if I ever met the dude I would cower in his presence. I never really heard him speak or got a sense of his personality until this fateful Set the VCR Moment: (there’s the jump!) Continue reading
Art of the Cartoon 