Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 25, 2007 in Animation
Chorlton and the Wheelies was an animated stopmotion series that ran from 1976 until 1979. The series was created by Cosgrove Hall films for the ITV station Thames Television, and named after the location of the studio, Chorlton-cum-Hardy in Manchester, England.
This strange show takes place in Wheelie World, which is inhabited principally by the “wheelies”, a race of anthropomorphic creatures who locomote by means of wheels. They have three wheels each: two large ones at the front, and a smaller centred one at the back. The wheels are replaceable, and suitable wheels grow on vegetation found in Wheelie World.
This is from the episode “Happiness is Dragon Shaped” from 1976:
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 23, 2007 in Animation
It looks like Imagi (a studio based in Hong Kong) will be producing a computer animated version of Gatchaman (known as Battle of the Planets in the United States). The film is expected to come out in 2008 and will be directed by Kevin Munroe. Above is concept art from the Imagi website.
The studio is also planning an Astro Boy feature in 2009:
“The long-awaited Simpsons movie debuts this summer. Part of the hook for the animated feature is that the filmmakers say they’ll reveal what state the fictitious “Springfield” is a part of. For some added incentive, the film’s producers want the many real-life Springfields across the country to compete to host the film’s premiere.
Chad Pergram, a radio reporter for Capitol News Connection, interviewed several members with Springfields in their districts last week. According to Pergram’s report, the favorite so far appears to be Springfield, Ore., because Simpsons creator Matt Groening hails from nearby Portland.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 18, 2007 in Animation
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Gumby, all 200+ Gumby episodes will soon be available in full length on YouTube and other video sites. Each episode includes the original soundtrack and has been digitally remastered by Art Clokey, the son of Gumby creator Joe Clokey. The first Gumby episode, Gumby on the Moon, is here:
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 15, 2007 in Animation
They should have done this years ago! John Musker and Ron Clements are co-directing this new film, so it looks like Disney is starting to go into a much better direction at long last:
“The Walt Disney Co. has started production on an animated musical fairy tale called “The Frog Princess,” which will be set in New Orleans and feature the Walt Disney Studio’s first black princess. The company unveiled the plans at its annual shareholders’ meeting in New Orleans.
John Lasseter, chief creative officer for Disney and the Disney-owned unit Pixar Animation Studios, said the movie would return to the classic hand-drawn animation process, instead of using computer animation that has become the industry standard. He called the film “an American fairy tale.”
“The film’s New Orleans setting and strong princess character give the film lots of excitement and texture,” Walt Disney Studios Chairman Dick Cook said. Disney said its new animated princess — Maddy — will be added to its collection of animated princesses used at the company’s theme parks and on consumer products. The film is set for release in 2009.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 15, 2007 in Animation
Alex Toth passed away last year at the age of 77. Along with Will Eisner and Jack Kirby, Toth is considered one of the giants of adventure comics. ASIFA-Hollywood’s website AnimationArchive.org has a great collection of high resolution scans of his model sheets for shows like Birdman and Sampson.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 14, 2007 in Animation
If you want to learn animation from one the best, here’s your chance! Shown in this series of videos is animation legend Glen Keane, the animation director of Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and Tarzan holding a lecture at Cal Arts in the early 90s (found via Erlend Dal Sakshuag):
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 10, 2007 in Animation
I discovered Włatcy Móch via YouTube, the show is an animated comedy series from Poland and reminds me a great deal of South Park. There’s very little information on the show in English, but I was lucky enough to find a wikipedia entry for Włatcy Móch, however it’s in Polish (and Google has yet to make a Polish to English translation tool). But from what I can see the show went on the air in 2006 in Poland on TV4 and is now in it’s second season. About 13 episodes have been made so far (the show is in it;s second season), and the title seems to refer to the novel “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding.
Here is part one of the first episode (lesson one):
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 5, 2007 in Animation
All of my fanbiy friends have been talking about this for weeks: The anime film Paprika is hitting theaters May 25th and is well worth checking out:
Here’s an overview of the plot:
“29 year old Dr. Atsuko Chiba is an attractive but modest Japanese research psychotherapist whose work is on the cutting edge of her field. Her alter-ego is a stunning and fearless 18 year old “dream detective,” code named PAPRIKA, who can enter into people’s dreams and synchronize with their unconscious to help uncover the source of their anxiety or neurosis.”
“A Hollywood outsider whose independent shop popularized computer animation, Mr. Lasseter, 50, might seem an odd fit for a studio built on old-school cartoons and the mythology of Snow White and Cinderella. But since Pixar was acquired, Mr. Lasseter has been heralded as a latter-day Walt Disney, a cultural arbiter who can rekindle the spirit of Disney’s famous animation at its theme parks, on store shelves and in a theater near you.
Since the days of the 1928 Mickey Mouse classic “Steamboat Willie,” animation was Disney’s undisputed long suit. But after a recent decade-long parade of disappointments, most famously the 2002 bomb “Treasure Planet,” the studio was desperate for a change of fortune. It abandoned its hand-drawn tradition in favor of computer-generated fare. In the process the keepers of the Magic Kingdom lost much of their cultural cachet.
Enter Mr. Lasseter who, along with a close team of handpicked animators had made Pixar this generation’s premier storyteller with an unbroken string of hits including “Monsters, Inc.,” “Finding Nemo” and “The Incredibles.” The first filmmaker to run Disney’s animation operations since Walt Disney died in 1966, he said he wants to reclaim the studio’s golden era.”
…What I like about the article is that Lasseter seems to understand what makes Disney special is traditional 2D animation, so he’s not trying to make it Pixar. I also love the fact that John respects the idea of “the story” above all. And if I had to bet, my thinking is that we’ll be seeing some nice animation coming from the magic kingdom in the next few months.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 3, 2007 in Animation
One of my favorite underrated anime shows from the 80s is Super Dimentional Space Century Orguss which came out in 1983. Becuase the show came after Macross and featured transforming mecha the show has been a bit lost to time (also it wasn’t rolled into Robotech so most American anime fanboys didn’t get to see it).
What made Orguss so special to me was the first episode which set up a pretty unique plot. The show starts off with a global world war going on over the ownership of an all important space elevator. I don’t think I’ve seen a sci fi show before or since (and it’s been twenty years now) that has ever featured a space elecvator as part of the plot. Then there is the next plot twist, in additional to the usual atomic, biological and chemical weapons — a “dimentional bomb” has been created to fight the war.
This made for a pretty exciting setup for the series. What follows is the dimentional bomb going off and sending our hero into an anime version of “Land of the Lost”. The human character from our world then teams up with an odd assortment of other worldly characters. In addition to the interesting plot and characters the show was very well designed, the characters looked great and the mecha matched. Even the costume designs were interesting, even if they were inspired by the Flashdance fashions of the era.
I recently came across a great website on the show which is well worth checing out, it even features a special toys section (which was half the fun with any show from that era):
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 2, 2007 in Animation
When most people think of anime the first thing that comes to mind are giant robots and never ending magical martial arts battles. But what I like about “My Family” (ATASHIn’CHI あたしンち in Japanese) is that it doesn’t feature a slick look (instead it feels like a traditional cartoon) and focuses on a humorous look at the everyday daily life of a “normal” family living in Japan.
As with most anime “My Family” got started in June of 1994 as a humble four frame comic that ran in the Japanese newspaper the Yomiuri Shimbun. In 2002 the manga was turned into an anime tv series, and now over five years later there are well over 100 episodes of the show. The tv show was so popular that in 2003 they also created a full length feature film. “My Family” is also very popular in China where it’s know an “Our Family” (我們這一家 in Chinese).
The first thing I liked about the show are that character designs remind me a bit of “Peanuts” with a dash of “Beavis and Butt-head” thrown in. The plot of the show follows the Tachibanis family, consisting of a housewife mom, a salary-man dad, and two teenager daughters Yuzuhiko and Mikan. The mom has a very stubborn personality and is concerned about every little trivial matter. She also follows a nurotic “can do” mantra where she applies a “haste makes waste” mindset to every situation. Even if you dont understand Japanese the humor is easy to follow and entertaining to watch.
Here’s a segment from the first episode (in Chinese):
“I’m still trying to riddle this one out. On February 24th, the American Anime Awards were broadcast on The Anime Network and IGN.com. According to the AAA site, “To be eligible for an award, anime or manga must be available in the U.S. during 2006.” Now, please correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that just about everything released before 2007? “Available” is a pretty broad term. Regardless, only four of the twelve categories have anything to do with actual animation, with one category for “Best Comedy,” (FLCL…what? Azudai wasn’t even nominated) one for “Best Feature,” (Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children…NOT A SINGLE MIYAZAKI FILM WAS NOMINATED) leaving only two, “Best Short Series” (FLCL, again) and “Best Long Series” (Fullmetal Alchemist…nope, Eva wasn’t nominated) to pick up the slack for the roughly 42 billion other titles. There was only a single slot for “Best Manga” (Fruits Basket), with the rest consisting of American voice actor awards, packaging and music.”
It’s funny but he’s saying pretty much what quite a few of my fellow fanboys were thinking. But at the same time I think the local industry here needs some encouragement to produce a higher quality product. So my suggestion would be this:
I think it would be much more interesting if instead of having fifty million catagories you just have one single “Best in Show”: one for movie, one for a tv show and just one for a manga. This way the award would mean something instead of being a general pat on the back to everyone in the industry.
Next I would eliminate the “People’s Choice Award” factor to the show. In fact to judge the show I’d invite professionals from the Japanese animation industry to judge how their work is being translated. Then to top it off I’d invite some American pros who are known in their own right, like say a well known director like Quentin Tarantino or a well known comic book artist like Frank Miller. Having these high profile folks would raise the credibility of the show and make winning mean something.
Although getting to the core of things, the very concept of the show itself may be flawed. I tend to find that the hardcore fanboys who LOVE anime are tracking what’s going on right now in Japan via torrents or YouTube. By the time the shows air on the Cartoon Network for this audience it’s already over. And while folks watching the stuff on the Cartoon network are also fanboys, they aren’t the hardcore types who’d vote or even care about who won an award.
So in the end it’s the hardcore fans who determine what’s popular because they’re up on things and tell their friends what to check out. In fact I’m now hooked on Bleach because I heard about it on a podcast, but wanted to watch it on my couch instead of downloading it. So in a way that podcast mentioning Bleach is what gave it “an American Anime Award” for my valueable leasure time.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 28, 2007 in Animation
This is a new series of commercials for a ringtone service in the UK called Vizzavi, what I like about this series is that 3D animation has a very nice “puppet feeling” to the look of the character designs:
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 27, 2007 in Animation
“Horn OK Please” is a claymation film that was a collaboration between animators in India and Northern Ireland. The film was produced last year by Flickerpix Animations, and it follows a monotonous day in the life of an Indian taxi driver named Lucky. Lucky’s goal is to earn enough rupees to buy the air-conditioned taxi of his dreams. I love the attention to detail that was put into the set designs for this project:
There’s also some other interesting work on the Flickerpix website worth checking out:
“Futari ha PreCure (Pretty Cure) is a set of fighting magical girl stories featuring a pair of junior high school girls. There are three series, PreCure (2004), Max Heart (2005), and Splash Star (2006). In all of the series, the magical girls have to fight to save earth from evil alien enemies. Most of the components of traditional magical girl anime can be found, such as long transformation sequences, magical items, cute pets, magical phrases, and magical attacks. However this anime has some of the most violent contact fighting scenes among magical girl anime. There’s quite a bit of sports involved too.”
And for your hardcore fanboys the official website for Futari ha PreCure (ふたりはプリキュア) is:
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 26, 2007 in Animation
This entertaining music video was created by doing animation on whiteboard. It’s for the elctro music group Minilogue, for their song Hitchiker’s Choice:
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 25, 2007 in Animation
I love the job that Disney done of turning Pucca into an animated tv show. They managed to stay true to the strong graphic look of Pucca without giving up the comedy and storytelling required to make cartoons fun:
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 24, 2007 in Animation
Fans of the “cartoon modern style” will get a kick out of the well designed look of this 1968 episode of the French aimated series “Les Shadoks”:
Les Shadoks features quite a bit of offbeat philosophical humor, roughly translated the first principle of Shadok logic is “Why to make things simple when you can make them complicated? “
According to Wikipedia here’s some interesting bacground info on Les Shadoks:
“Les Shadoks was the invention of the seminal French cartoonist Jacques Rouxel (February 26, 1931 – April 25, 2004) and became a major French TV phenomenon in the 1960s. The Shadoks were bird-like in appearance (in the tradition of cartoon birds they had beaks with teeth), were characterised by ruthlessness and stupidity and inhabited a two dimensional planet.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 21, 2007 in Animation
It’s always amazing to me to discover all sorts of lost gems on YouTube. My latest discovery is an old BBC show called Pinky & Perky which features two singing pig puppets that sound quite a bit like Alvin and the Chipmunks. The show ran from 1957 to the early 1970’s on British television and featured cover versions of many pop songs of the day. And as with any kids show there was a ton of merchandise associated with Pinky & Perky, everything from toys to books to records.
The following clip features host Jimmy Thomson (who also had a few roles in various episodes of the Benny Hill Show):
“Laurie Gordon, Ryan Larkin’s producer, manager and good friend expressed her profound sympathy today at the passing of legendary Canadian animator Ryan Larkin. Larkin died peacefully in his sleep, Wednesday, February 14, in St. Hyacinthe, Quebec following a long-term battle with cancer. Larkin was 63.
Most recently, Larkin was working with Gordon on an animation film “Spare Change” about his experience as a panhandler on the Main in Montreal, Quebec; it was going to be a comeback project for Larkin. Gordon will continue to work on “Spare Change” in Ryan’s memory. Details can be found at www.ryanbango.com.”
Here’s a wonderful gem of a film he animated in 1965, titled “Syrinx”:
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 17, 2007 in Animation
With Oscars coming up most of the public attention will go to mega-blockbuster films featuring mega-movie stars, which to me is sort of sad because what the Academy Awards should do is highlight smaller films that are creative and deserve our attention. A good example of this is the overlooked cateogory for animated shorts which is filled with goodies that should be exposed to the film going masses (or even us animation fanboys and fangirls).
“The Danish Poet” is a quirky animated short film worth checking out which is up for an nomination this year. The style of the animation reminds me of children’s book yet the sense of humor is very sophisticated and philosophical. What’s also nice about the film is that in an age of computer graphics, the film instead uses the good old fashion method of 2D cell animation (although they did cheat and do all their coloring on the computer, but you get the idea). Director Torill Kove is up for her 2nd nomination, and what’s also interesting is that the film is a Canada-Norway co-production.
