Archive for the ‘Animation’ Category

Weird-Ohs

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

One of my favourite artists is Bill Campbell. Quite a strange but common name, you might think it was just plain weird. Not too many people remember Campbell’s work, but I remember the resurrection of his work in the form of a 3D animation show on YTV (see below).

 

Bill Campbell is best known for his work on HAWK Model box covers in 1963. Such a creative genius when blending a 1952 Ford Pick-up, that’s “Tricked-out to the tits” with a monster behind the wheel. From what I recall reading on the Net, Bill was born to draw. Of course he started off using watercolors. But Bill’s path took quite a different turn and he was left to look for work. Bill finally landed a gig where he produced brochures and color art pages for Sears and Blomgren Brothers.

 

1943. Bill was inducted into the army, of course that didn’t stop Bill from drawing. During a leave from the service he got married, she gave birth to a baby girl months later, and Bill continued the fight. Afterwards Bill settled back into civilian life…whew…then got to work on a new portfolio. Eventually a little company called Hawk put out a call for artist. A few artists turned down the offer, but somebody suggested Bill Campbell.

 

He signed with the Hawk Company and stared cranking out wicked cool model box covers for all kinds of aircrafts, trains, cars, the works! While at Hawk, Bill met some interesting people. One of which was a man names John Andrews who was an already established designer. They had some pretty radical ideas, good thing that the Hawk company was a risk taker. The two paired up and turned out some of the most insane work of polystyrene you’ve ever seen! “39 Horrible Parts of Fine Molded Polystyrene”. I believe Bill Campbell and John Andrews work superseded “Big-Daddy” Roth’s work…Rat Fink…moving on! The collection of that particular work I’m referring too was ‘The Weird-Ohs’, which the 3D animation show went by the same name. He had a long stint with Hawk, as well as freelancing himself out to numerous other studios before he decided to retire. He would be 90 this year…

 

Live free, be weird and speak out!

 

 

 

Sick and Twisted

Thursday, February 26th, 2009

spikeandmikeIf you haven’t heard by now, Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation is BACK! After a five year hiatus, the gang that brought you such memorable classics like; No Neck Joe, The Hangnail, Tongue Twister and of course Doctor Tran is back with an entirely new collection of their sickest stuff yet! Attending the Sick and Twisted festival is such a ‘hoot’! I love the audience participation during the animated shorts, please be aware that there is some rowdiness during the show. Sometimes you’ll smell something a little ‘skunky’ in the air to. Of course the festival is playing at a new location, so those people might not be able to get away with ‘indulging’ themselves during the show. Be safe people, save that kind of ‘business’ to do in the privacy of your own home!

Rio Theatre
1660 East Broadway & Commercial Drive
Vancouver, BC Canada
www.riotheatre.ca
(604) 879-3456

Feb 20/09 – March 05/09
Monday-Thursday 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Friday and Saturday 4:30pm, 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Sunday 4:30pm, 7:00pm – 9:00pm

For the entire festival tour schedule, click here

Tickets are ONLY available at the Box Office!

More Than Meets The Eye!

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

transformers_dvd

Twenty five years after the very first episode aired on national television, the Transformers complete first season is now available in stores! This is the animated Transformers your boyfriend has talked to you about over and over again. These are the Transformers you played with in the 80’s when no mere Go-Bot would suffice. These are the Transformers you begged your parents to buy instead of those crudely moulded pharmacy toys they tried to pass off as the ‘original’. Then where’s the box mom? Where’s the box??? 

Some of you may recall there was already a Transformers DVD collection of the same hit 1980’s animation broadcast that was sold on the market. But what happened to it? Why did it get pulled from the shelves so quickly? Well a small blurb inside the DVD booklet tells it all. 

‘The Transformers DVD release prior to our 25th Anniversary Edition was missing animation shots seen in the original broadcast. We did extensive research, found the discrepancies between the original broadcast masters and the restored masters used for the last DVD release, reinserted the correct animation, and color corrected it as best we could to match the shots before and after. But because a one-inch master tape simply can’t hold up to the quality of the restored masters, you may notice occasional shots-or even scenes-in some episodes that seem slightly softer than others. Just take comfort in knowing that laser blasts have been reinserted, backgrounds have been corrected and Starscream is Starscream once again.’

My favourite episode is still “Fire in the Sky”. It’s the episode where the Decepticons begin to siphon Earth’s heat from the Arctic Circle, which causes the temperatures worldwide to drop. They soon discover Skyfire a powerful jetfighter and Starscream’s old friend from Cybertron frozen in the ice! Skyfire’s design is basically ‘taken’ from the Robotech series which is probably why I liked him so much. Robotech is a japanimation about futuristic jetfighter pilots who can transform their ships into robots and are charged with protecting the Earth Space Colony from alien invaders. I never owned Skyfire as a kid, but I had good friends who allowed me to ‘transform’ him. Remember, one wrong twist and you had a pile of broken plastic in your hands. Or worse yet for the collectors out there, missing weapons and parts!

I still have a single Transformer in the original packaging tucked away at home. Can you guess which one I have? Leave a comment with your answer! Here’s a hint, he’s an Autobot Micromaster.

Happy guessing!

 

Transformers logo and illustrations are copyrights of Hasbro

That Krazy Kat

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

Krazy&IgnatzA lot of people when asked “Who were the first cat and mouse team in comic strips?” typically answer Tom & Jerry or Sylvester & Speedy Gonzales. But very few know about ‘Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse’.

Krazy Kat was first conceived by George Herriman in 1903 when he appeared in a newspaper gag panel as a tiny black kitten with a white bow in the ‘washbolla’. Krazy was really no more than a black smudge on the page. But the cat continued to appear in George’s work until September 6th, 1903 when he got his first half page comic strip. Thus the Kat was born and given a name! He continued to grow in popularity and soon in 1913 regular “Krazy Kat” comic strips were found in pages of the New York Journal.

It wasn’t long afterwards that George took a simple mouse that appeared in the backgrounds of his comic strips and pair him up with Krazy Kat and the birth of the first cat and mouse team was born. Ignatz mouse was depicted as an angry straight man that reacted to Krazy’s mad off the wall insights and remarks. Krazy was a carefree indeterminate gender cat who constantly tried to ‘win’ Ignatz heart. The mouse, clearly offended by this would hurl a brick at the cat’s head, but Krazy took this as an expression of love. You could say there was also a bit of a love triangle, due to the fact that there was also a bull dog involved in later strips acting like the ‘protective’ boyfriend of Ignatz, but that gets confusing to follow.

And so, Krazy and Ignatz mouse along with a few other friends from Coconino Country told their tale in Sunday newspapers across the country week after week, then year after year! Biographically there really isn’t more to say about George Herriman’s career. He did go on to make a few animated ‘shorts’ of Krazy and Ignatz, but never really got to give the production the direction they sorely needed.

Feel free to do a little more research if you want to learn more about George Herriman’s contributions to comic strip art.

🙂

It’s a Betelgeusian Berserker Baboon!

Friday, September 4th, 2009

Okay, now who understands the title of this post? Anyone? Well it’s from Bucky O’Hare, written by Larry Hama, artist Michael Golden and colorist Cory Adams back in 1978. A great read if you like ‘animal comics’ and outer space themes.

Bucky O’Hare was this green rabbit in a British military outfit, welding a space blaster, leading a team of other animal characters against the toad empire. The toad-humanoid characters invented a super computer that ended up taking over their world ala Terminator so they started invading other planets to ‘feed’ the machine. The other animals started a military operation willing to take on the toads and thus the ‘Sentient Protoplasm Against Colonial Enroachment’ was born or S.P.A.C.E. for short.

But wait there’s more! Willy Du Witt was a bit of a brainy kid (human) who built this Photon Accelerator which transported him through a different space time continuum to the animal dimension. The animals take him for a shaved baboon and recruit him into their military coup against the toads. Willy was able to ‘jump’ back and forth but the teleporter closed trapping Willy in the wrong dimension. Willy then helps Bucky lead a few animals into battle against the toads and it plays out a little like a Star Wars clone, with Willy attempting to leap home every now and then.

Bucky O’Hare’s tale spun off into an animation series on the BBC for a 13 episode run. It followed the same storyline, with very few alterations. It grew in popularity enough in the 80’s to create a video game and action figure line by Hasbro . But this little icon got lost among the giants of the time like the Ninja Turtles, He-Man and numerous other comicbook characters that it just couldn’t hold ‘shelf space’.

Check out the intro below and post a comment about what you think of the cartoon.

All right ladies! Let’s croak us some toads!

Stronger Than All The Rest…

Saturday, September 12th, 2009

astroboyAstro Boy was the very first japanimation cartoon I saw when I was a young boy, growing up in the 80’s. My sister and I would watch Astro Boy together after school and there was always a heated debate as to what the error was in Astro’s debriefing report at the end of the show. Typically Astro Boy would make an ‘error’ on purpose in his debriefing report to the professor and the viewer had to guess what fact he had lied about. In most cases it was fairly obvious, but sometimes they threw in one that was really confusing to sort out the details. So my sister and I would argue about who was right regarding the inconsistencies, she always won in the end.

Astro Boy was created in 1952 by one of the great ‘Manga’ art masters; Osamu Tezuka. The origins of Astro Boy were unclear to me until I stumbled across the original 1963 black and white broadcast of the animation show on VHS tape. The creation of Astro Boy was responsible by the head of The Ministry of Science, Dr. Tenma whom had created the android in an attempt to preserve the memory of his little boy whom had died in a car accident by creating a metal version of his son. He soon realized that the metal contraption could not express ‘human’ emotions and the very sight of the soulless android caused Dr. Tenma to greave. Sickened by the monstrosity he created, Dr. Tenma abandoned the little android at the Robot Circus where Astro was mistreated and forced to perform pathetic circus acts for groups of taunting humans. It was at one of his performances that the good doctor; Professor Ochanomizu the new head of the Ministry of Science took in the little robot and taught Astro how to become more human. He witnessed Astro’s incredible strength and ‘super powers’ and guided Astro Boy to become the city’s guardian against renegade robots and robot hating humans. I have no idea what happened to the creator of Astro; Dr. Tenma, I’m sure you’ll have to refer to the manga comics to find out because if memory serves me in the cartoons he goes through a bout of depression and disappears from the storyline almost entirely.

So that’s the story in a nut shell, numerous media sources state that there’s a CG animation movie soon to be released in 2009 along with the original 1963 broadcast on DVD. We’ll just have to wait and see if it comes true or not, frankly I’m a little tired of all the 3D animation movies that have been released year after year let’s see some ‘traditional’ animation feature films or better yet more ‘stop-motion’ animations!

If you’re interested in the whole Astro Boy universe, step into your local comic book store and request a copy of the manga adaptation or look for the DVD’s of the 1980’s rendition already in stores.

Enjoy!

Illustrating Techniques of the ‘Toaster’

Monday, May 17th, 2010

With most of my illustrations I start by blocking in my characters in non-photo blue pencil. I prefer the Staedtler 0.5mm mechanical pencil lead, but feel free to pick up the wooden pencil ‘Copy-Not’ type. I draw in the non-photo blue because let’s face it, when you’re ready to scan if you’ve made a mistake or make additional changes the scanner won’t pick it up. After the rough sketch is blocked in, I go over the illustration again in a thinner 0.3mm black lead and clean up any lines that might affect the image when scanned.

Next I scan the image or character at 600 dpi and save it as bitmap. I take it into Photoshop and run a series of ‘Actions’ I’ve developed to clean up the scan, convert the image, resolution, create selections, and even folder directories of the original scan and the working copies! You gotta love Photoshop for helping save you time by developing basic ‘scripting’ in the form of a palette anyone can use! Still within Photoshop, I complete the coloring and special effects, save the working copy before I run yet another ‘Action’ that will save another ‘flattened’ copy in a different folder to use for the final greeting card layout. I’ve always preferred the motto ‘Better safe than sorry’ in saving multiple copies of my digital work after experiencing several losses.

Using the flattened image, I complete the layout in a nicely reduced file size and my illustrations are ready to be developed at the local print shop! Each finished card measures 4.25 x 5.5 inches and comes with one standard white envelope and is printed on 12 pt card stock paper with a glossy finish. You get two greeting cards on a single 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of cards stock.

This ‘Action’ palette has really saved me time in a number of different ways. Namely the multiple copies in different stages of completion, where you can go back to a ‘pre-flattened’ copy file and change the color of the character and other aspects of the image. Seeing as how I’m typically scanning in black & white drawings, it made sense to write an ‘Action’ to clean up the fragmented pixels and other commands so I didn’t have to continually do the work over and over again for every new scan. Don’t forget to add the ‘Save Copy’ and set up folder directories in your ‘Action’ it’s a great way of ensuring you have a backup of the illustration!

Enjoy