12 Principles of Slacking

Nothing could prepare me for this piece of 'news'

2006-11-03T11:57:00.000Z

Courtesy of IMDb's 'StudioBriefing'

'Flushed Away': No Feat of Clay

Although numerous reports have referred to the upcoming Flushed Away from Aardman Features as a "claymation" movie -- that is, one using Plasticene figures and stop-frame photography like the company's previous Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit -- it now turns out that the characters in the feature were all created with computers. Today's (Thursday) Los Angeles Times reported that the filmmakers wanted to keep "the same distinctive design aesthetic" of the original Aardman movies, but that they also wanted to open up the movie (to show the Paris sewer system, for example). Aardman director David Bowers told the newspaper, "If we had to do it in stop-frame, it would have been a much smaller and much dryer film, that's for sure."

No words can describe my horror of how stupid this article is, nor can they describe the sheer noises of frustration I made.

DVD Troubles

2006-10-02T13:06:00.000+01:00

It has come to my attention in recent days, a gross misuse of DVD marketing.

The labelling of 'editions'.

As much as I hate VHS tapes they used the terms 'Special/Collector's Edition' wisely. These days it's commonplace to refer to a bog-standard 1 or 2 DVD title with 'Special' edition. This is incredible as it's usually the only edition available, rendering it pretty average. But the bigger of the two crimes are the 'Collector's Edition' titles.

The only actual 'Collector's Edition' DVDs that should be called so are the ones that actually COME with shirts/prints/booklets. That shit is what people trade their life savings for on eBay. Adding in a commentary or two and a leaflet from your friendly neighbourhood DVD shop hardly cuts it for the fans. Go back to making 'Special' titles. For example, I don't think I could possibly know of anyone who would be proud of wanting this as a collector's item:

Honestly, I didn't make this shit up. It's a real DVD.

Now that's what i'm talkin'bout!

2006-09-17T20:12:00.000+01:00

October 24th

ANIMATION REVIEW - Help! I'm A Fish (2000)

2006-09-14T18:00:00.000+01:00

Directors: Stephan Fjeldmark, Michael Hegner, Greg Manwaring.

Possibly the most straightforward title for an animated feature we'll ever see.

I saw parts of this on TV a month ago, and didn't think much of it. Though I felt I had to give it a second chance, and review the DVD (because the name kept haunting me).

First things first, Help! Is a Danish 2D animated feature. The US/UK cut is the usual redub of Canadian/American/British voice talent to rope the audiences in. This last fact alarmed me when I saw the name 'Alan Rickman' on it. Anything with Rickman means he will have the most screen time because he has..... to..... annunciate.... every.... last.... word.

The Plot

Three children, Fly (the cool kid), Stella (his younger sister) and cousin Chuck (fat nerd without the comedy aspect) go fishing and accidentally discover the labs of eccentric professor MacKrill. He shows them a potion to turn people into fish, and how to make an antidote (which must be taken within 48 hours). After a set of 'bizarre and wacky circumstances', they all end up as fish (a flyfish, starfish and jellyfish respectively), set loose into the ocean. There they must deal with finding the antidote and a troublesome fishy dictatorship.

The Look

The only thing people ever wanted to mention about this film when I asked was: 'It has a very nice intro.' They weren't kidding. A fantastic series of shots passing through some brilliantly rendered marine life. It's almost a shame it's the best part of the film, because the spectacular toonshading on the fish should have set the standard for the rest of the CG fish in the film. Alas, after the intro all of the non-effects computer animation is sub-par.

It goes from this:

To this:

The 2D animation is one of the strong points for the feature. The characters are interesting to look at, and are drawn so that they have soft body mass, instead of rock-hard anime standing still bodies. The timing ranges from pretty snappy to quick & smooth, which keeps interest going. Luckily no sign of human character rotoscoping, so it all looks fluid on either ones or twos.

Colour design is fun and appropriate for all settings, which is also helped by some creative camera angles and lens-emulation.

The Script and Sound

The film runs a little short at 78 minutes. Seeing as the plot isn't very complex, it doesn't require much time to set up. The script is fairly competant for such a short film, so no worries with dialogue really. However, there are some mind-blowingly large gaps in plot, such as how Joe (the dictator) managed to set up an underground lair, army, and transportation system in less than a day (in a film set around 48 hours). Though these things will fly over the kids' heads, so I guess they could justify letting that chunk slip.

It does seem odd that all-American children seem to have Canadian parents, but most Europeans can't tell the difference.

If you can withstand the style of European pop music, then this film is for you. There's plenty of it. I guess we should be lucky, as they didn't re-write the music with some even worse American/Brtish pop teams.

Overall

Despite running short and just not being as good after the intro, it's still a fairly entertaining watch. In this case, less film equals more animation. This one's more for kids and marine life enthusiasts. I give it a B- because of how good that intro is.

What the hell went wrong with entertainment this time?

2006-08-31T12:03:00.000+01:00

Marvel Babies, I shit you not.

Full story by Jim Hill Media here.

Pee-Wee's Playhouse and classic cartoons

2006-08-30T21:35:00.000+01:00

It had occured to me recently that the classic cartoons edited into various episodes of Pee-Wee's Playhouse never had any official listing or credits. It was also around this time that by chance, ReFrederator started releasing public domain prints of Golden Age shorts, some of which were chosen to be in the Playhouse. I started to look these up, so that a proper list could be added to something like Wikipedia. Here is a rough version of what i've managed to find so far.

*note* Some episodes used chunks from the same shorts, just at different parts.

01: Fresh Vegetable Mystery (1939)
02: Ants in the Plants (1940)
03: Unkown
04: Smile, Darn Ya, Smile! (1931)
05: Unkown
06: Goldilocks and The Three Bears (1939)
07: Molly Moo-Cow and the Butterflies (1935)
08: Unkown (Flip the Frog)
09: Jack Frost
10: Mary's Little Lamb
11: Somewhere in Dreamland
12: Smile, Darn Ya, Smile
13: Bunny Mooning
14: Phillips Broadcast of 1938
15: To Spring
16: Makin' Em Move
17: The Sunshine Makers
18: Tom & Jerry - Piano Tooners
19: Phillips Broadcast of 1938
20: Unknown
21: Unknown
22: Ship of the Ether (aka Ether Ship)
23: Unknown
24: Farm Foolery
Xmas Special: Christmas Comes But Once a Year
25: An Elephant Never Forgets
26: Hunky and Spunky
27: The Stork Market
28: Spring Song (no king)
29: To Spring
30: (no cartoon)
31: Unkown (no king)
32: Song of the Birds
33: (no cartoon)
34: Little Lambkins
35: (no cartoon)
36: One More Time
37: Farm Frolics
38: The Little Red Hen (no king)
39a: College Capers
39b: Humpty Dumpty
40: Fin and Catt
41a: Unkown (Joop Geesink Dollywood production)
41b: Sinkin' in the Bathtub (1930) (no king)
42: College Capers
43a: Unknown
43b: Balloon Land (no king)
44: (no cartoon)
45: (no cartoon)

Dear 'Political Correctness' Campaigners,

2006-08-27T13:37:00.000+01:00

Please stop trying to protect children from your own inability to bring up them up properly. You've done more than enough damage to animation history, for the sake of making yourselves even worse parents.

With love,
The World.

Monster House

2006-08-25T15:34:00.000+01:00

Fantastic lighting, cinematography, sound design... So why ruin it with motion capture? Not one ounce of life in the human characters, unless their lifelessness is supposed to add to the creepiness of the actual film. Robert Zemekis and Spielberg seem to have only half-learned a lesson from how badly The Polar Express came out.

Did you ever notice...

2006-07-23T10:17:00.000+01:00

... That in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, Princess Toadstool had really meaty arms?

Maybe they should have set it in The Spinach Kingdom.

ANIMATION REVIEW - The Magic Roundabout (2005)

2006-07-23T00:42:00.000+01:00

Directors: Dave Borthwick, Jean Duval, Frank Passingham

CONTROVERSIAL STATEMENT
I thought the original 1960s The Magic Roundabout was boring as hell.

For those new to the subject, The Magic Roundabout or 'Le Manège Enchanté' was a French 1960s stop-motion animated tv series by Serge Danot. It gained cult status in the UK after Eric Thompson completely re-wrote the scripts to appeal to a cynical 60s audience.

Having been brought up in the cartoon bliss of the 80s, and cartoon horror of the 90s, the 60s didn't hold much interest for my tv animation taste. The sparse white landscapes and odd flowers/trees didn't really hold my imagination (well, not until Pocoyo came along - i'll get to that another time.) To make matters worse, the 'far-out' re-written UK scripts just seemed so placid and about five inches away from Oliver Postgate-brand Valium narrating. The characters didn't hold my attention either, with almost emotionless appearences. It usually came on as a sign to change the channel to something I could enjoy, something fun (and probably with explosions.)

A good 40-something years on, and someone decided to try and revive it as a CG animated feature. The moment I read the news, I could only dread what they'd try to do with it. I foolishly put it on my to-avoid list. As a joke, my parents had bought me a whole bunch of cheap animation DVDs for my 21st. This was one of those DVDs.

Since I just got around to watching it, I thought i'd write the review while the memories (and some scars) are still fresh.

The plot

Sugar-fiend Dougal (Doogal for the Americans) on his usual spree of candy-nabbing causes a cart to crash into the Magic Roundabout. This unleashes Zebedee's (local wise man-sping-thing with all the magical clicks and whistles) arch nemesis, Zeebad. He freezes up the roundabout and scarpers. After the panic with the least interesting characters trapped within the now-frozen roundabout, Zebedee turns up to see what he can do to help.
After the "what can we do" plea from all, Zebedee gives out some background on Zeebad and his fiendish plan to freeze over the world, once he finds three magical diamonds. Yes. Magical diamonds. I groaned too.

Oddly enough, the same three diamonds will unfreeze the roundabout and once more lock Zeebad within it. And so he sets the motley crew of oddball characters on their quest. You pretty much get where the plot goes.

The Look

The first surprise was that it was a joint France-UK production. Which meant that the original creators at least got a say in what went down in the original edits. It's good to see those marketing scoundrels still haven't cut the middlemen out yet.

The second surprise is that there were landscapes. Glorious landscapes! This didn't go down too well with the original fans, though they should know better than to expect a faithful 'update' of a 40 year old animated tv series. While it was nice to see the environments, there wasn't that much too them. Mostly simple grass landscape/small village/baren icelands/evil ice lair and volcano to boot.

However, one set that stood out in a positive light was a south-american inspired ancient temple.

While still looking within-budget, you can tell the layout artists had a blast designing some of the smaller details in the buildings, effort definitely not wasted.

Third surprise: ANIMATION! The amount of 'budget' or 'art film' animated features these days usually have a money system that works something like this: 70% marketing, 20% celebrity payroll, 10% production. Despite models looking quite smoothed-down and cheap, a lot of the money looks like it actually went into animating the characters. I'd have to say that's where the film really shines. There's no clear hierarchy of who gets more animation per shot (Over the Hedge, i'm looking at you!) Everyone gets a fair act. The animation follows the 12 principles, which makes the characters a lot easier to watch. A vast improvement over how the characters originally moved and emoted 40 years ago.

The Script and Sound

The overall appeal of the voice acting wasn't too thought out. Being a post-Aladdin animated feature, the marketing department hit the lowest common denomiator: celebrity voices. Half the cast are probably old enough to have been in the original tv series, which leaves their characters sounding a bit out of place. I mean, they cast Ian 'you shall not pass!' McKellen as Zebedee, a very vibrant and energetic spring-being. Just so I make that statement clear as possible, here's a comparison:

The younger members of the cast also don't quite get it right either. Try telling your kids Kylie Minogue's rendition of Florence actually has a soul, because it sure doesn't seem that way. Some of the older actors also tried to be 'down with the kids'. Only the kids they're talking down to are in their 40s-50s. Wheras the real kids get Dougal, who seems to be too chirpy for his own good.

The plot is very hit and miss. While smaller parts like the 'romance' subplot are often left out in the cold (and you couldn't really care less about them), the main plot itself manages to hold on to the audience just long enough for the film to work. Though there is plenty of action and chasing from A to B, you don't really feel that excited, even when the whole thing is over. The script does manage to keep interest with the different tiers of jokes. Beyond the usually corny kids jokes and puns, we get some of the more mature gags that the film sprinkles about. As a bonus to the older members of the audience, there are some fantastically blatant drug references that shoot straight over kids' heads. For those who never saw the Magic Roundabout (especially those of you in America), there were all kinds of rumours that the original 60s version had hidden drug references. Dougal's addiction to sugar being a cocaine addiction, and Dylan's laziness being attributed to being stoned all the time.

The director must have felt some pity for the parents attending, so HEY! 60s-80s music. Doesn't quite go with the orchestrated soundtrack, but they chose some appropriate tracks none the less.

Overall: A so-so plot for kids and some good animation, ruined by misguided celebrity casting and mostly unimaginative visuals. C+

Note: I hear that the American cut, "Doogal" is a far worse affair. As it's both in iMDB's top 100 worst films AND top 100 worst animated films lists, you may want to track down the UK cut.

2006-07-21T23:00:00.000+01:00

Hello, to cut things short and to avoid yet another vomit-enducing welcome message, i'll get to the point.

I am George Edwards, an Animation Design student at DeMontfort University in Leicester, England. As a way to keep each other on the course informed on cool animation/vfx/film-related stuff, we set up a series of blogs (blogspot and wordpress) to post our thoughts on work we've done or seen.

To start with, here's a piece i've been working on since May.

WMV file, 1.5 meg. Click picture to load video.

It started off as a test to see how a simple IK rig in Maya could be animated to walk up stairs. After a while, I accidentally moved him beyond the stairs, and wondered how he'd react to that.

I love cartoon physics, so it also became a test to see how i'd animate someone walking on air/realising they're walking on air/trying to stay there. If anyone's reading out there in Blogtopia, please let me know what you think. Always good to have some constructive criticism.

It's getting late, so i'll update another day with a review of a good or bad film/animated feature.