The year is 1983 and as an art school student me and my buds are convinced that the era we were in was a low point for animation — except for Anime! Even though a generation has grown up loving He-Man we tested the dude, because his D&D routine wasn’t half as cool as Star Blazers or Mobile Suit Gundam. Looking back I still stand by my thesis of the lack of quality in Filmation productions, but now I can see how a generation of kids could look fondly back on this stuff. Read more…
Back at Comic Con in 2008 Ralph Bakshi gave an amazing interview on how to survive in tough times. As a creative working person this inspires me a great deal, so I’d like to share some of my take away points from Bakshi’s insights. Read more…
Editor’s Note: This week we’re lucky to have film critic Joe Strike offers us his insights and first impressions of the films The Day the Earth Stood Still, Desperaux, and The Spirit.
I tell you, the synchronicity around here can really get to you sometimes. The other morning I went to see The Day the Earth Stood Still, or as us folks in a hurry like to call it, TDTESS (which is stupid since they’re all one-syllable words anyway). Weekend morning shows are $6.00 at my just-up-the-street cinema, I thank you from the bottom of my recession, AMC. Read more…
You’ll have to wait until January 22nd, but in the meantime here’s the trailer for the Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekidou (the DX Pack) dance game for the Wii. Anime fanboys and fangurls will be able to hop along with Haruhi Suzumiya — the official website is here (in Japanese) and you can purchase the game here. I can really see this game being a real hit with the cosplay crowd at anime conventions! Read more…
Going through my Flickr stream I came across an image titled Name That Anime Slot Machine so of course I knew I had an interesting challenge ahead of me! The slot machine was spotted in an Ohio antique mall —the only real clue I had was that it was based on a baseball manga or anime series. Now while there are tons of baseball manga (and all sorts of sports manga in Japan) I realized that it had to be from a show popular enough to merit an anime series. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 22, 2008 in Animation
Warner Bothers is ripping off Arthur Rankin who was half the team behind so many of those great Rankin/Bass cartoons from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to ThunderCats. Due to an “accounting error” Warner Brothers claims that it’s too late to pay Mr. Rankin in a dispute that now goes back over twenty years: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 20, 2008 in Animation
Hey! Hey! Hey! It’s 1977 and the Cosby Kids are celebrating Christmas — what’s funny is when I was a kid watching this show I had no clue that Bill Cosby was doing so many voices of the characters. I also had no clue that the show was based on a comedy routine that Cosby had put together in 1967 based upon his childhood experiences of growing up in Philadelphia. When the show was on the air I thought of it as a sort of animated sitcom and I was never able to quite see beyond the low budget Filmation animation — but looking back at it one is sort of amazed that Cosby was able to get a animated series about African Americans on the air that was educational! Keep in mind that what was shown on Saturday morning TV was about as far as you could get from PBS.
Over the years I’ve kept running into the same group of 3D retro-styled characters in Japanese printed advertising and that at first reminded me of Rankin-Bass style stop motion characters but have their own original look. I was guessing they might be stop motion since they were photographed rather than drawn or rendered.
On doing some research I figured out they came from a mid 1960s series Hyokkori Hyoutan-jima (ひょっこりひょうたん島) which translates to something like “Unexpected Gourd Island” and the characters were puppets rather than animated. They have to be Japan’s most famous puppet TV show though of course the Muppets are seen all over and “Saku Saku” was trendy for a while.Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 15, 2008 in Animation
Who has a notebook you can write in to kill? DeathSponge NotePants! It’s funny but when you kitbash SpongeBob SquarePants with Death Note it sort of reminds me of Sweeney Todd.
Posted by Guest Author on Dec 14, 2008 in Animation
Editor’s Note: This week animation industry insider Joe Strike gives us a second take (my photo tour is here) on the Too Art for TV 3 gallery show that features the fine art side of New York’s animation industry:
Williamsburg Brooklyn is so goddam hip they won’t let you off the subway at the Bedford Avenue stop if you’re not wearing shades & one of those little mini-beardy things just under your lip. Fortunately I fooled the border guard (“wow, look over there – a latte grande!”) & made my way to the Erebuni Gallery on Roebling Street. (Why is a street named for the family that built the Brooklyn Bridge closer to the Williamsburg one?) Making my way to the gallery I spotted big big lights which had lit up the loft building across Roebling for ABC’s Life on Mars:Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 12, 2008 in Animation
Within the last hour I’ve been twittered by everyone about verymelon.com a website setup by whattheanime.com. The entire site is nothing but a looped clip (shown above) from the anime series Konjiki no Gash Bell (which translates into English as Zatch Bell! – 金色のガッシュベル!!) which is subtitled by Anime Destiny. For those not in the know the show is a fantasy themed comedy series that ran from 2003 until 2006. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 10, 2008 in Animation, Cinema
I got a very bad feeling about this film about 57 seconds into this trailer when the Transformer styled vehicle appears. To me it looks like the film is taking itself a bit too seriously…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 8, 2008 in Animation
What’s interesting about this is that the Deputy Dean of Russian Literature and Intercultural Communication at the Pushkin Institute of Russian in Moscow (how’s that for a cool job title?) feels that the show doesn’t promote pedophilia in an outright way, but does so subjectively with humor (i.e. it’s subversive!): Read more…
Anime and manga expert Gia Manry is now the managing editor or Anime Vice a well done website which is worth adding to your RSS reader. Vice is a video rich community focused site which has quite a few user friendly features — and is already stocked with a wealth of cool content. I really loved their up and coming release section and of course their cosplay photo collection has to be seen. The devil is in the details and one can tell that Gia sweated those details to put together one of the better fan oriented encyclopedias that I’ve seen in a long time (and as a blogger it’s nice to have other places to link to rather than ANN or wikipedia).
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 7, 2008 in Animation
This Friday was the opening night for Too Art for TV 3 which is the third annual fine art exhibit which features the work of professionals in New York City’s animation business. The show is running until December 15th at the Erebuni gallery which is located at 158 Roebling Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 5, 2008 in Animation
It looks like 20th Century Fox is settling in on a name for this film, in fact they’ve already already taken the web domain DragonballEvolutionmovie.com. For a generation of anime fanboys (and fangurls) Dragonball has a cherished place in their childhood, and I hope Hollywood doesn’t get it wrong (although from what I’ve seen Im not too hopeful): Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 2, 2008 in Animation
If you hate what Hollywood does to anime classics (or perhaps just dread the thought of it) you’ll love this parody flash film which comes from Happy Harry Toons in England.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Dec 1, 2008 in Animation
What’s so odd about this Japanese commercial from 1984 is that it features the Flintstones meeting space aliens who have a vague anime feeling to them. What’s also strange about this advert is for the Lake Hotel is that the animation breaks away from the limited flat look of the original series in several shots — it’s very weird to see Fred Flintstone walk toward the camera.
Editor’s Note: This week animation industry insider Joe Strike takes us to a charity auction where the who’s who of NYC animation embrace their inner fanboy to swap goodies and gawk at cartoons.
Whatever possessed me to raise my hand? I went into the ASIFA auction on November 20th, as broke or broker as anyone else in the USA today, just to see who was there and what was going on… before I knew it I was bidding on a 1926 copy of Animated Cartoons, by one E.G. Lutz, a copy of the book that taught Walt Disney how to animate (or so the legend goes), for a mere $60. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 27, 2008 in Animation
On Thanksgiving Day of 1950 NBC presented The Rootie Tootie Thanksgiving Party which was sponsored by RCA. By December after the sponsor dropped out the show went by the name Rootie Kazootie. What’s impressive about this early piece of television history is that this special includes an appearance of both Kukla Fran and Ollie and Eleanor Roosevelt. The show lasted until 1954 and had an audience of between 2 and million kids which in turn inspired a line of comic books and other collectables. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 26, 2008 in Animation
As an animation fanboy I always love it when a cartoon makes a reference (visual or otherwise) to the medium itself. This clever animated spot from the English animation studio small time inc. shows a series of flipbooks that tell the sad tale of a little black dog. To me flipbooks are sort of the “gateway drug” to learning the basics of animation, so they have a special place in my heart!
, a copy of the book that taught Walt Disney how to animate (or so the legend goes), for a mere $60. 