Whenever I look at the news lately this image keeps springing into mind:
Then again, real life is looking more and more like a Mel Brooks production. Isn't it?
Showing posts with label animated. Show all posts
Showing posts with label animated. Show all posts
Sunday, December 08, 2019
The perfect commentary
Then again, real life is looking more and more like a Mel Brooks production. Isn't it?
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Fun with animated GIFs!
Seems like lately I've been feeling extra wacky and I've no idea why. Maybe the twisted creature that is my id is retaliating against the general nastiness that seems pervasive too much. So the best course of action is to go in the opposite direction and do what I can to make people laugh a little.
Perhaps that's why I've been playing around with GIF-making apps the past few days. There've been a few that I've cranked out, so I figured I'd share them with y'all.
This first is a few seconds taken and edited from my first movie Forcery. In hindsight this should have been done a WAY long time ago. But in any case, here is Frannie telling her hostage George Lucas what she thinks about the "Han and Greedo shooting" thing:
Talk about toxic fandom!
Next up is a result of looking to see if this was already out there. And it wasn't. So I set out to fix it. A few seconds from the Coen Brothers' 2001 film O Brother, Where Art Thou? George Nelson ("Not 'Babyface'!!!") shooting a herd of cows with his tommy gun as he's being pursued by Mississippi's finest. Tim Blake Nelson's "Oh George, not the livestock" delivery slays me every time I hear it!
And finally... for now anyway... okay, lemme preface this a bit. In 1993 computer game company Infocom released Return To Zork. It was a technologically cutting-edge (for early days of CD-ROM anyway) journey back to the Great Underground Empire that gamers had first visited via all-text adventure in 1977. It had a live-action cast and for its time an extensive soundtrack. It was also baffling beyond all mortal reckoning! And completely unforgiving. Make the slightest mistake and you were dead. Or at least a mysterious guardian guy wearing what looked like strips of bacon would appear and take away all of your possessions and you had no choice but to begin the game all over again.
So at one point, when it's time to at last descend into the Great Underground Empire, the entrance to it is a trapdoor in a waterwheeled millhouse. And sitting atop said trap door is a guy named Boos Myller: bearded, wearing a pizza restaurant tablecloth and drunk as hell. It's up to you to figure out that you have to make Boos even MORE drunk, get him to give you the keys to his car and then drive him to pass out onto the floor and off the trapdoor.
Boos will forever be remembered for his oft-repeated line "Want some rye? 'Course ya do!" every time he pours you a glass of whiskey. And I thought it was fine fodder for a GIF but again, an exhaustive search couldn't find one. So I found that scene on YouTube and manufactured an animated GIF with it:
There'll probably be some more coming as I monkey around with this. Hadn't made an animated pic since that weird one of my head spinning around when I was in college. Using a film camera on a tripod, and eight shots of my head as I sat in an office chair and rotated 1/8th for each snap as I held the same face.
Telling you kids here and now: y'all have no idea what lengths we had to go through to cause mischief on the Internet back in the day...
Perhaps that's why I've been playing around with GIF-making apps the past few days. There've been a few that I've cranked out, so I figured I'd share them with y'all.
This first is a few seconds taken and edited from my first movie Forcery. In hindsight this should have been done a WAY long time ago. But in any case, here is Frannie telling her hostage George Lucas what she thinks about the "Han and Greedo shooting" thing:
Talk about toxic fandom!
Next up is a result of looking to see if this was already out there. And it wasn't. So I set out to fix it. A few seconds from the Coen Brothers' 2001 film O Brother, Where Art Thou? George Nelson ("Not 'Babyface'!!!") shooting a herd of cows with his tommy gun as he's being pursued by Mississippi's finest. Tim Blake Nelson's "Oh George, not the livestock" delivery slays me every time I hear it!
So at one point, when it's time to at last descend into the Great Underground Empire, the entrance to it is a trapdoor in a waterwheeled millhouse. And sitting atop said trap door is a guy named Boos Myller: bearded, wearing a pizza restaurant tablecloth and drunk as hell. It's up to you to figure out that you have to make Boos even MORE drunk, get him to give you the keys to his car and then drive him to pass out onto the floor and off the trapdoor.
Boos will forever be remembered for his oft-repeated line "Want some rye? 'Course ya do!" every time he pours you a glass of whiskey. And I thought it was fine fodder for a GIF but again, an exhaustive search couldn't find one. So I found that scene on YouTube and manufactured an animated GIF with it:
There'll probably be some more coming as I monkey around with this. Hadn't made an animated pic since that weird one of my head spinning around when I was in college. Using a film camera on a tripod, and eight shots of my head as I sat in an office chair and rotated 1/8th for each snap as I held the same face.
Telling you kids here and now: y'all have no idea what lengths we had to go through to cause mischief on the Internet back in the day...
Friday, December 23, 2011
"Peace on Earth" and "Good Will to Men"
The 1939 classic and still heartbreaking animated short, "Peace on Earth"...
The 1955 "remake" produced by none other than William Hana and Joseph Barbera, "Good Will to Men"...
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Animated THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. 'Nuff said...
What is regarded by many as the greatest Batman story ever told may be getting the DC animated treatment very soon...
Entertainment website Bleeding Cool is reported that The Dark Knight Returns is being adapted by the same team that worked on All Star Superman and the upcoming animated rendition of Batman: Year One.
Hailed as the defining treatment of Batman for the modern era, Frank Miller and Klaus Janson's The Dark Knight Returns is as bold and striking today as it was when it first hit comic book stores in 1986. The tale of Bruce Wayne - now 55-years old and having stopped being Batman ten years earlier - having the ultimate mid-life crisis and coming out of retirement into a world indifferent and even hostile to justice, not only broke new ground: it put Batman back on track to where he was perhaps always supposed to be.
I first read The Dark Knight Returns in the summer of 1989 (the summer of everything Batman) and ever since, I've been dreaming of a full-length feature adaptation of this story. Here's hoping that Warner Bros. won't be timid and will allow this film to have the hard "R" rating that it deserves. Yeah Warners, don't skimp on anything. Not even Bruno's exposed and swastika-tattooed breasts and buttocks (something that Batman creator Bob Kane confessed being mystified about). And however much money it takes, bring on Clint Eastwood to voice Batman!
Between that and nice long sequences of the scenes where Batman and his retinue are on horseback, this is already set to be animated glory.
(And hey, nice to have some good Batman news hot on the heels of those horrid costumes from the Batman Live show :-P)
Sunday, May 03, 2009
MAKE MINE FREEDOM: Amazing insight from a 1958 cartoon
Just over fifty years ago, Harding College produced a series of films "to create a deeper understanding" of American culture. This one, Make Mine Freedom, has been "re-discovered" in recent days and is making the rounds quite a bit across the Internet. Personally, I found it to be uncannily prophetic about the country we are living in today. Perhaps we should begin considering the wisdom of the past.
Here is Make Mine Freedom...
Monday, January 05, 2009
BRING ME THE HEAD OF CHARLIE BROWN
In 1986, CBS Television was presented with the following roughly-animated proposal for a new Peanuts holiday special. Apparently it was decided somewhere that Charles Schulz's classic characters needed upgrading to become more timely and "Eighties" in order to "reinvigorate the franchise". Network execs saw the proposal - a short film by Jim Reardon - and immediately and quietly chose to bury it within the CBS vault. More than twenty years later and thanks to YouTube, it has finally seen the light of day! Here is Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown...
(For the real story of Reardon and his hilarious short, mash down here.)
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Another classic GARFIELD AND FRIENDS: "Invasion of the Big Robots"
Garfield and Friends rates with The Tick as having some of the most twisted humor done for a Saturday morning cartoon. Like this episode, where Garfield wakes up one morning and finds that he's in the wrong cartoon! I love how the regular kind of Garfield and Friends animation gets mixed up with the futuristic Eighties-style for the Starwolf sequences. And then the Disney-ish look toward the end.
First airing on December 2nd 1989, here is "Invasion of the Big Robots"...
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
PEANUTS animator Bill Melendez has passed away
This is the third death that I've had to report in the past day or so. Hope this is not about to become a trend...
Bill Melendez has passed away at the age of 91. He was an animator who began work at Disney, and then moved on to Warner Bros. But it was a 1959 meeting with cartoonist Charles M. Schulz that would propel Melendez to everlasting fame. The two became fast friends after Melendez was hired to work on a series of commercials featuring Schulz's Peanuts characters. And after that, Melendez was the only person that Schulz gave permission to animate Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus and the rest of the Peanuts gang. A few years later Melendez collaborated with Schulz to produce A Charlie Brown Christmas: forty years later it remains a seminal classic of the holiday season.
In addition to the various Peanuts movies and television specials, Melendez also was involved with commercials using the characters (like this terrific spot for Regina vacuum cleaners featuring Pigpen: the only time he was ever depicted as clean!) and Melendez even contributed his voice for that of Snoopy.
Apart from his Peanuts work, Melendez was involved with animated versions of the comic strip characters Garfield and Cathy. And he also was part of the production of the 1979 animated The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe: to this day one of the most enchanting things that I ever saw on television.
Melendez earned 19 Emmy nominations for his work, and won six awards.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Opening intro for STAR BLAZERS first season
One of the greatest title sequences for a children's cartoon ever.
The theme song alone will make you want to go flying off into outer space on a World War II battleship with a bunch of other men...
Okay, so it wasn't originally called Star Blazers, the original Japanese title is Space Battleship Yamato, but it's still an awesome show no matter what language it's translated in :-)
Maybe someday the suits at Disney will finally give us that live-action version that's been promised since 1995. Would be cool to see what the wave motion gun would look like...
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
All kinds of DC Comics video goodness hits iTunes!
In the words of Geoff Gentry who first passed along word of this: "Get your debit card ready."
iTunes has just added the DC Comics Collection to its vast video library. You can now purchase and download the first several episodes of Batman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond and Superman: The Animated Series. It's also got Max Fleischer's animated Superman shorts from the 1940s, the first season of The Adventures of Superman starring George Reeve, the first season of Super Friends and the complete 2008 Aquaman series. Geoff adds that hopefully iTunes will soon add Justice League and I heartily concur.
But in the meantime, if you've never watched "Heart of Ice", the episode that first hurtled Batman: The Animated Series to critical acclaim, you can now enjoy it for two bucks via iTunes. And as soon as they make "Apokolips... Now!" Parts 1 and 2 from Superman: The Animated Series available, I'm gonna be acquiring those, too!
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Classic GARFIELD AND FRIENDS: "Truckin' Odie"
I've been scouting around for this one a way long time. First airing in November of 1991 on Garfield and Friends, here is one of the greatest Garfield cartoons ever (and a real highlight of Lorenzo Music's vocal abilities): "Truckin' Odie"...
Saturday, June 30, 2007
If I were a character on THE SIMPSONS ...
A few months ago it was "Chris as a South Park character". Now today, after all of these years of dreaming and courtesy of The Simpsons Movie website, I am finally a character from The Simpsons! Looks pretty much like me, right down to that weird bit of hair on the right-hand side of my forehead that does its own thing without going one way or the other on the part (it's not so pronounced just after a haircut but after a few weeks you really see it). My Simpsons avatar is also wearing denim jeans (my usual style) and dark brown shoes which are meant to be my hiking boots. Lisa thinks that brown and green are my best colors, so I colored "my" shirt brown. And since I'm somewhat of a "fight the status quo" sort, I put the upraised fist/sign of defiance on my shirt.Pretty nifty, eh? Head over to the movie's site to register an account and you too can be a Simpsons character! Thanks to Shane Thacker (who doesn't look too shabby as a Simpsons 'toon either) for the great find!
Sunday, May 27, 2007
STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS trailer soars online (and an update on TALES OF THE NEW REPUBLIC)
I must admit, when I first heard about this project I was more than a little skeptical. I mean, haven't the Clone Wars been depicted enough over the past five years? Guess I was hoping for this kind of effort to be made toward covering ground we haven't seen yet (like the interval between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hop, or the Old Republic era). That said, this looks "impressive... most impressive!"
Speaking of computer-animated Star Wars, a few days ago I posted a report about something called Tales of the New Republic
Mash down here for the new Star Wars: The Clone Wars trailer.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
STAR WARS: TALES OF THE NEW REPUBLIC
Check this cryptic page out for some amazing Star Wars artwork. We already knew that Lucasfilm was producing a Clone Wars animated series and that there was supposed to be a second animated project: is this it? The page says "Stop by this Friday to find out more". Since Star Wars Celebration IV is just getting started in Los Angeles and that Friday is the 30th anniversary of the first film, there's no doubt that all kinds of saga wackiness could be erupting over the next few days.Anyhoo, judging by this and the other pics on that site, me like!
