What do Kratos and Nathan Drake do between battles? Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank? Maybe they just eat bagels. Or at least that’s what the guys at Robot Chicken think. They did a cool little commercial for Sony to promote Playstation All-Stars: Battle Royale and I just enjoy the style of their stop-animation. It’s a pretty fun look at the characters, but all this does is make me want a game in this art style. Watch the video below. Read more…
Like livetune? How about Megumi Nakajima? Maybe school girls traveling through time and space, bizarre colorful worlds, and ancient Japan in a desperate attempt to get to school? What do you mean that doesn’t make sense? Come on now, this is anime. Logic and rules aren’t exactly a priority here. This recent music video for livetune’s song, Transfer, with Megumi Nakajima, is really cool and blends surprisingly well with the music. Check it out! Read more…
Batman vs. Superman is one of those match-ups that usually bug me. One of them is an extremely intelligent, paranoid sociopath, while the other is a nigh-invincible alien who can throw anything that bothers him into the sun. Writers will try to even the odds, since Batman is as big a name as Superman, but realistically, there’s no way that Superman wouldn’t just punch Batman to death before he could execute any of his plans. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Oct 16, 2012 in Animation
If you’re into classic old school animation you’ll want to be watching Turner Classic Movies this weekend. From 5pm until well after midnight animation historian Jerry Beck will be showing Max Fleischer’s Gulliver’s Travels (1939) , Max Fleischer’s Mr. Bug Goes To Town (1941), UPA’s Jolly Frolics , some silent animated films from NYC from back in the day and Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
Cartoon Network is 20 years old this year, and October 1 was filled with lots of party-themed reruns of classic series. At 6:58PM, the channel closed its celebration with a two-minute tribute to its cartoons, mixing together modern and older characters in one fun segment. Read more…
Two big games got new cinematics this week to promote their updates! World of Warcraft has upcoming Mists of Pandaria expansion, and their opening video is mighty impressive – no matter how much you complain about Kung-Fu Panda. On the other end, Team Fortress 2’s Mann VS. Machine update went live recently and the new short featuring Red and Blu Team partnering against a robot menace is also quite cool. When will Blizzard and Valve just make us some straight-up CGI feature-length films? Come on! Read more…
Kickstarters can be annoying sometimes, given their popularity, but a ton of good still comes out of it, such as John Kricfalusi’s Cans Without Labels. Based on his own father’s penny-saving habit of buying food cans lacking their labels, John wanted to finish his latest cartoon using the help of the internet, and he got plenty of it. They’ve reached their Kickstarter goal of $110,000 and have gone a little over, too. There’s still a few days left if you’d like to donate and get in on the Kickstarter rewards. Watch the video above for John to sell you on the concept better than I ever could – plus he’s a great storyteller!
Posted by Tim Sheehy on Aug 1, 2012 in Animation, Tech
Like many of you, I’m always looking for new reasons to dust off my iPad or Kindle. To be fair, I use them for everything from casual gaming, to streaming films, and reading books, but being the creative type that I am, I’m never really satisfied. I’m constantly looking for new outlets for my creativity, and with their touch-based interface, you’d think visual art would be a natural fit for such a device. Unfortunately, it’s not always that simple. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve come across some fantastic applications, and I’ve managed to create some impressive works — at least, by my own standards — with just my fingers, but sometimes you just want to have a tool you’re more accustomed to. Introducing the Sensu Brush.
Recently Brad Murphy, a self-proclaimed Star Wars fanboy, penned and directed this awesome Star Wars fan-film, featuring C-3PO and R2D2. The duo find themselves trapped when a group of Jawas decide to hijack an experimental Mon Calimari starship. It’s not quite on par with Star Wars: The Clone Wars, but that’s because it was pieced together in just three months by the recent graduating class of DAVES (Digital Arts and Visual Effect School). An impressive effort, all things considered — especially for a student film! I hope they all move on to successful careers in the industry.
Disney has certainly experimented with the world of video games in its films before, but their upcoming Wreck-It Ralph looks to be a nostalgic romp through classic games (or their knock-off equivalents). Ralph is a riff on Donkey Kong, and his “Mario,” Fix-It Felix, has left him feeling unappreciated and stuck in the repetition of the game. So, he leaves and begins hopping from game world to game world, hoping to find a new place to fit in. The trailer unveils a truly amazing scene, though: Bowser, Dr. Robotnik, Bison, and Zangief along with other popular game “bad guys” sitting in a “bad guys anonymous” meeting. Trust me, if that doesn’t get you excited, just to see those characters interact for one scene, then I don’t know what to tell you. Wreck-It Ralph arrives in theatres November 2nd.
Posted by Michael Pinto on May 31, 2012 in Animation, Cinema
The kind folks at Chronicle Books have supplied us with two amazing bits of preproduction art for the upcoming Pixar Disney film Brave. Make sure to click on each illustration to see it at full size: Read more…
Disney XD’s upcoming TRON animated series TRON: Uprising, won’t be airing until June 7th, but for those of you who don’t want to wait, you can catch the entire first episode online. Although it’s not a live-action sequel, the animated series seems promising enough. It certainly has everything you’d expect from a TRON series, from Light Cycles and Identity Discs to spandex outfits, so its about as close as you’ll get to a sequel — at least, for the time being. They even managed to snag decent stars for the voice cast, including Elijah Wood, Mandy Moore, and Pee-wee Herman himself, Paul Reubens.
Beware the Batman, more like beware the bad voice acting, right? Here’s a teaser for Cartoon Network’s next animated Batman series, Beware the Batman. I have to admit, it seemed promising until I heard the voice over. Making an animated Batman series without Kevin Conroy as the voice of Bruce Wayne/Batman just seems wrong. Of all the actors to ever voice the role of our Caped Crusader, Conroy’s performance remains unrivaled — an opinion that seems to be shared amongst fans. Voice acting aside, we’ll have to wait to see if the rest of the show lives up to its potential. A few story elements are being shuffled around — Alfred, for example, will be a gun-toting ex-secret agent while Katana, a member of the outsiders, will serve as his new sidekick in lieu of Robin. How any of that is suppose to make the series better is beyond me, so don’t ask. Beware the Batman premieres next year.
On Disney this June, it looks like we’re getting some more Tron in our lives. Tron: Uprising will be a new CGI cartoon (with the main character being voiced by Elijah Wood) set in the existing Tron universe in which they’re searching for a new Tron. This could either be very cool or very bad – that said, this short teaser does look nice. At the very least, CGI is a perfect artstyle for this series given the setting! Read more…
The last time I looked at a show with comic timing this good was when I was watching Ren & Stimpy back in the day. I have no idea if an entire episode of Super Best Friends Forever can keep up this sort of pace — but if it can it may be the best thing in a long time!
I’m a big fan of Genndy Tartakovsky’s work – and I bet many of you are too. Just the mention of Samurai Jack, Dexter’s Laboratory, or the Clone Wars series are enough to get people excited, so I like to keep an eye out for whatever he works on next. We’d gotten teasers and small bits of info about “Hotel Transylvania” here and there, but here’s the first official trailer. Yes, it’s CGI. I’m a little wary, but also hoping that Tartakovsky magic will pull through. Read more…
Japan has its fair share of strange commercials, but this latest one for Disney’s Tokyo resort has to be one of the most adorable ads I’ve ever seen — so much, that the animated short has me convinced that I’d sit through an entire animated series centered around it. The 30 second anime short tells the story of a little girl and her time spent visiting the theme park over the years, from her first time as a kid, to meeting her future husband, eventually growing old together. It’s well animated, and the cute rendition of “A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes” fits it so well. Am I weird for wanting them to make more of these? I’ve included a bunch of screenshots from it after the jump.
Big news for Avatar fans out there: today, on Korra Nation, you can watch the premier of The Legend of Korra, the new sequel to The Last Airbender. It’s up now, giving you an introduction to the story and characters. Personally, I think it looks great, so let’s hope Nickelodeon treats it right. The premier will be on TV April 14th, but no dates yet for the following episodes. Read more…
I remember a time when the only thing Michael Bay did to ruin a film was add a few too many explosions. Now he seems content ruining our favorite Saturday morning cartoons — I’m not sure how we let it come to this, but something tells me it’s all you who went to see Transformers in the theaters, just to stare at Megan Fox. Earlier today, Michael Bay caused a bit of a stir when he let slip that his upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film wouldn’t feature any mutants, but rather aliens. Yeah, that’s right, he actually said they’d be from an alien race, so let me ask — was sitting through three of films starring Shia LaBeouf really worth this? Read more…
After much vagueness and waiting, the release date for The Legend of Korra (sequel to Avatar: The Last Airbender) has finally been announced: April 14th at 11am. Sooner than you thought, right? It could be even sooner as Nickelodeon is running a Facebook promo to unlock the premier episode early. If they garner 100,000 likes on their Facebook page, they’ll release the episode on March 24th, presumably on their website. They also released a new trailer to hype the announcement as well, so check it out after the jump! Read more…
Hey, it’s uprfront time again, when the TV networks do their best razzle-dazzle to get the advertisers excited over their new and returning shows. Nickelodeon’s particularly good at this (not that I’ve been to that many all told) and yesterday’s was no exception. Once again the network took over the Jazz at Lincoln Center venue on Columbus Circle and invited several hundred ad agency folks and a few media reporters (hi mom!) to the event. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 14, 2012 in Animation
Here’s a preview clip of Super Best Friends Forever from Lauren Faust who is the evil genius behind My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. And from what I can see Lauren has brought her magic tricks over to the DC Comics universe. This show will appear on Cartoon Network…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 13, 2012 in Animation
If you’re lucky enough to live near NYC this Thursday Joe Strike will be interviewing animation legend Fred Seibert at MoCCA: “After putting MTV on the map with a series of unforgettable, no-two-alike animated ID spots, he took over the creatively exhausted Hanna-Barbera studio and engineered a turnaround that brought some of the country’s most innovative young animators to its doors. Their creations – The Powerpuff Girls, Dexter’s Laboratory, Johnny Bravo and others – put Cartoon Network on the map. Moving onto an association with Nickelodeon, Fred midwifed second batch of creator-driven cartoons including Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!, Fanboy and Chum Chum and The Fairly Oddparents; Frederator Studios’ latest series, the surreal Adventure Time with Finn and Jake is a major Cartoon Network success.”
Fans of Marvel’s animated universe are getting ready for next month’s premiere of Ultimate Spider-Man — well, most of them any way. Some are still wondering what happened to Marvel’s The Spectacular Spider-Man which ended its run after two seasons, despite being well received by fans and critics alike.
