Craig McCracken’s The Powerpuff Girls was one of Cartoon Network’s best series. Beneath the pink-colored veneer was a wonderful action series with strong scripts and smart jokes. Cartoon Network is reviving the characters for a new special to be aired on Monday, January 20, 2014 at 7:30PM. Unfortunately, going by this new trailer, the whole thing is animated with unattractive CG, trying to give it a flat look. It’s also lacking vibrancy, like some of the color has been sucked out in the interest of making the world look more realistic. It could still be good, but it’s a shame that so many people seem to have practically abandoned 2D animation in favor of trying to do the same thing with CG. Read more…
Yes, you read that right. Shinichiro Watanabe’s new anime series, Space Dandy (about a dandy man in space) will air on Cartoon Network a day before the show airs in Japan! Not only that, it will be dubbed! What a massive undertaking. CN’s Toonami block will be expanded along with it and the first episode will air January 4th at 11:30pm. That’s really impressive that FUNimation was able to pull together a dub that fast as well as airing it before the Japanese premiere. I hope this does well for everyone involved, because I’d love to see more of this in the future! Read more…
YouTube’s Geek Week is going on right now, and while much of it is silly “crazy geek stuff” there’s some interesting stuff too. Cartoon Network has uploaded a video of the intro of Adventure Time — remade with LEGO bricks. Granted, everything under the sun has to be done with LEGOs at one point or another (I’m pretty sure it’s a law of the internet at this point), but this has some creative use of perspective to created the effect of the original opening. No where in the video description is who made this for them though – unless they chained Cartoon Network interns up in their basement and forced them to do it. Read more…
The first footage of Cartoon Network’s next Adventure Time and Regular Show games is out! Both Adventure Time: Explore the Dungeon Because I DON’T KNOW and Regular Show: Mordecai and Rigby in 8-Bit Land are being made by WayForward, the 2D masters who also made the previous Adventure Time game Hey Ice King! Why’d You Steal Our Garbage?! However, the new AT game isn’t a 2D sidescroller with an overworld (a la Zelda II) like the previous one was. The new game is a multiplayer dungeon crawler, where you can play as Finn, Jake, Marceline, and Cinnamon Bun — yes, Cinnamon Bun! But of course, it’s got that Adventure Time charm, so I’d expect it to me more than just another Gauntlet game. Read more…
Dexter’s Laboratory, one of Cartoon Network’s best shows ever, had 78 episodes with 221 segments and one special, which is quite a long run. However, there was one segment that never aired on TV called “Rude Removal.” It involves Dexter removing the rudeness from himself and his sister DeeDee, resulting in two foul-mouth versions of themselves. A lot of (censored) swearing follows, so it’s understandable that they wouldn’t show it to kids. It’s been shown at festivals and conventions, but now it’s available online for anyone to see. Check it out! Read more…
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…
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.
The other day, Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim played a little April Fool’s joke by bringing back their Toonami anime blockfor an evening. They caught a lot of fans off guard, by marathoning classic Toonami programming like Astro Boy, Big O, Outlaw Star, Gundam Wing and more — they even had Steve Blum return as the voice of T.O.M. the robot, going as far as reviewing Mass Effect 3. When Toonami left the air a few years back, I remember fans calling it as an end of an era, well now it looks like they might get a chance to revive it. Adult Swim is asking its fans to voice their desire via twitter with the hash tag #BringBackToonami. Read more…
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.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 14, 2008 in Animation
I just caught an Adult Swim promo for The Drinky Crow Show which is based on Tony Millionaire’s indie comic strip Maakies. The animation looks pretty good and the theme song is by They Might Be Giants which scores extra points in my book. The show is set to premiere on November 23, 2008.
