Do you want more hours in the day to do what you want to do? Do you want to get more things done faster? Do you want to do this without feeling tired all the time?
My answer to all those questions was, “yes,” and I found how to do it.
I’ve been “hacking” my sleep.
I tend to only sleep about four hours every night.
Here’s the three reasons why I now “hack” my sleep.
1. There simply isn’t enough hours in a day.
I needed more hour to work on my stuff. I’ve got way too many things to do and not enough time to do it. So sleep had to go.
There’s 24 hours in the day. Depending on what time I wake up, and leave work, I spend about of 2 – 4 hours in transit driving between work and home. Yeah, I live far away from and work and traffic is just awful, depending on when I leave for work.
24 – 4 = 20 hours
Once I’m at work I spend eight hour there, sometimes a bit more, not including lunch, which would makes it nine hours.
20 – 9 = 11 hours
If I get home at decent time (around 6 or 7 o’clock) I spend that time eating dinner and being with my kids. They usually go to sleep around 8pm.
11 – 2 = 8 hours
Depending on traffic, I might get an hour extra around this time.
Even if I stay up, an hour more, I only have one, maybe two hours to work on my own stuff before I need to go to sleep, otherwise I can’t function.
8 – 1 = 7 hours
So that’s seven hours of sleep or so then I and have to start it all over again.
I just don’t have enough time. I needed a way to get more. So I cut out sleep.
So I was listening to Lean into Art extra lean cast. It was episode #13. You can only listen to these podcasts if you sign up to the Lean into Art newsletter.
Anyway, Rob brought up this iPhone App he was using that woke him up at the right times during his sleep cycle so he didn’t feel too groggy when he woke up called: Sleep Cycle iOS App.
I found it intriguing so I downloaded it and tried it out.
I loved. It’s great.
This got me thinking about sleeping and sleep cycles. I did a little bit of research about it on the internet and found myself going down this crazy rabbit hole about sleeping less by hacking your sleep.
Here are the article I read that changed my sleeping habits:
I was convinced into trying it. I was excited about getting more time to do what I needed to do.
And you know what, it worked.
So the method I’m using is called the “Everyman 3.”
I sleep four hours, haven’t broken the three hour mark yet. For some reason I just keep falling back to sleep immediately after I wake up when I do that. I sleep four hours between 12am and 4am.
I get up, go to work which takes me an hour around that time.
At 9am I take a 20 min nap. I continue working.
At 2pm I take another 20 min. nap. I work til quitting time. My drive back is around 1.5 to 2 hours, depending on traffic.
Then I eat and spend time with the kids. They go to sleep, at the latest 9pm, and now I get three to four hours to work on my own stuff.
That’s HALF A DAY.
And I don’t really feel tired except as nap times get closer.
Do I recommend it?
Yes, although it means being very disciplined about your nap times. And you have be comfortable with the idea that you won’t get the pleasure of lounging in bed anymore.
I mean, you have to get up soon after your alarm rings, otherwise, what’s the point. You’re doing this to get more time to do things.
What do you think? Will you give this a shot? Let me know.
Bart: “I’m still checking Japanese TV. Isn’t it that cartoon that causes seizures?” (Bart watches and has a seizure) Marge: “Bart, what are you doing?” (Marge is having a seizure) Lisa: “Hey, what the…” (Lisa is having a seizure) Homer: (comes in, checks around) “Alright.” (falls on the ground and fakes his seizure)
I like watching all kinds of animated cartoons, and because I grew up watching anime, I have no problem with it, so today, I’m going to be giving you my top ten Japanese animated series.
You can either watch the video or read the transcription below. There are videos to promo spots and opening credits below if you want to get a taste of what the shows are like:
(Some of the links below are affiliate links. Thanks for your support.)
Intro
I’m El Salvadorean. I grew up in El Savador. They showed Japanese cartoons on TV all the time.
I was exposed to Miyazaki very early on, when I was three because I watched the show called Heidi that he happened to do layouts on, and his good friend Takahata was the one that directed, but I also liked Battle of the Planets, and I also liked watching Mazinger Z, and those were my cartoons growing up.
Then, I watched all American cartoons once we moved here when I was six, but I was always very partial to Japanese cartoons.
I mean, I liked them. They were very influential in my life. I have no prejudice against them. There are a lot of people that have prejudice against them because there is some really, really raunchy, bad stuff in them a lot of the time, and I totally understand because – yeah, but for me, there’s some incredible animated shows that are just absolutely worth watching, so here’s my list.
10. Robotech.
Robotech, Okay, this was my cartoon growing up. My parents didn’t allow me to watch more than an hour of television every day, thirty minutes of which were dedicated to watching Robotech.
Robotech was my soap opera. This cartoon was not the watered-down cartoons of the ’80s like He-Man and Thundercats and G.I. Joe and Transformers.
In this cartoon, people died. This was serious. This was serious drama. Bad stuff happened, there was a war going on, people actually died. It was crazy.
My mom – it’s funny, my mom didn’t let me watch G.I. Joe. Why? Because it was too violent. Really? The hadn’t been watching this sucker, because people actually died in this, while in G.I. Joe, the bullets never hit anybody, right?
The only reason it’s my Number Ten is because it hasn’t aged well, it hasn’t aged well at all. It’s not a very good-looking cartoon once you get halfway through the season.
I mean, it’s just – they really started cranking these suckers out, and you can see the quality just gets worse and worse and worse, but it is absolutely worth watching all the way through in spite of the fact that the artwork starts suffering pretty badly by the end.
9. Future Boy Conan
My Number Nine is something that I didn’t become aware of until about a couple of years into Simpsons, and that is Future Boy Conan.
This is a TV show written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. It’s a TV show, so it’s a series, I don’t know, twenty episodes long?
Future Boy Conan is very reminiscent of Island in the Sky. It’s almost got the same characters. Conan is very much like Pazu, and Lana is very much like Sheeta in Island in the Sky, but Conan, he’s like – he’s a really tough, very strong kid, and he’s got the most amazing set of toes.
Yeah, toes.
His toes are his superpower, but he’s like a superkid.
It’s insane, and it’s basically about this boy who just lived on this island with his grandfather, and then, this nation was chasing this little girl, and he has to go save her.
It’s incredible. If you can find a copy of Future Boy Conan, I highly recommend it. I have a Chinese copy of the TV show, subtitled in English.
It’s hard to find. I’m sorry that this is my Number Nine.
The story is incredible. Miyazaki, of course, Miyazaki’s storytelling is dead-on incredible. This is a great, great series. Future Boy Conan.
8. Slayers
My Number Eight is silly, wackiness, crazy, super low-budget Slayers, the TV show.
Slayers is about Lina Inverse, who’s a sorceress. She tends to destroy everything that she touches, and she saves people, but only by basically destroying their town.
It is silly, crazy madness. It is really low-budget. The characters hardly move, things slide in and out, and that’s why it’s funny. Part of the charm of this cartoon is that it’s so poorly animated, and yet the stories and the characters are so funny, they crack me up.
It’s a fantasy world, and it’s kind of like Lord of the Rings, but complete silly, wacky, making fun of fantasy tropes. It’s great.
Slayers, the television show. The television show, not the movies. The movies aren’t as fun, and they’re really, like, more high-quality than the TV show, so I highly recommend the TV show, not necessarily the movies.
I don’t own Bakuman. The only way I’ve seen Bakuman is online, on these, you know, fansub versions of TV shows.
I actually reviewed the Bakuman manga a few blog articles ago, but Bakuman is basically about two boys who want to become manga artists, and it’s their adventures, and you get to learn all about the manga-creating industry, and it’s awesome.
I highly recommend it, and, if you want to know more about that, then you can go to my article that I wrote.
Fairy Tail is relatively new. It’s on Netflix streaming, so you can watch it there, but it’s very, very, very much like the Slayers, only better animation – for Japanese television, anyway.
It’s very, very silly, and, again, it’s fantasy universe. The characters are completely whacked-out, deranged weirdos, which is exactly why it’s fun.
You know, the characters blow up every town they try to save, and that sort of thing, so it’s very formulaic as far as Japanese standard comedy goes, but I liked it because it’s right up my alley in that kind of crazy, weird humor thing.
I like the Japanese animation humor. This reminded me of Slayers, and it does other things that Slayers doesn’t do. It’s really a lot of fun, so I highly recommend my Number Six, Fairy Tail.
My Number Five – my Number Five, I also don’t own, it’s also on Netflix streaming, is Fullmetal Alchemist.
Fullmetal Alchemist – high-octane adventure about a boy who screwed up his alchemical thing trying to bring his mom back to life, ended up ruining his brother’s life by trapping him in a suit of armor because his body got destroyed.
He also lost his arm, so he has this metal arm – and their quest for this Philosopher’s Stone so that the boy can give his younger brother’s body back.
It’s exciting. It’s very cool. It’s a fantasy world, and it’s very dramatic, and it’s a lot of fun. I highly recommend watching this show. It is Fullmetal Alchemist.
Yes, it’s Naruto. Why? Because it’s got great fighting.
It’s the same kind of show as things like Dragon Ball Z. It follows the same kind of tradition as that and One Piece and that sort of thing, only the reason why Dragon Ball Z, One Piece, and all this other stuff is not even in my list is because I just don’t like them.
I understand them but they didn’t do anything for me. Naruto, for some reason, did, and it’s very formulaic, it’s a very Shounen Jump formula.
You’ve got the spunky protagonist who’s the, “I’m going to do it! I’m going to be the best!: archetype.
Then you’ve got all the rivals who also want to be the best, and then everybody ends up fighting, but then they become friends because they fought, and the whole – it’s that same sort of Shounen Jump formula of battle manga genre, but I liked Naruto a lot.
You know what it is? It’s because everybody’s got some kind of, like, variable powers, like they all get their little specialty, and it’s always fun when each one of those guys has a specialty like that, and there’s something about that that is kind of reminiscent of a superhero for me, so maybe it’s just like that whole Justice League superhero, everybody’s-got-a-super-power kind of thing that I kind of liked about it.
And the characters are a lot of fun, too, and the fighting, and the drama.
Okay, so, this, I’m going to make a disclaimer, there’s a ton, a ton of Gundam, all right? I’m talking about the original 1979 Gundam. I’m not talking about Gundam Wing, I’m not talking about Gundam 00, you know, I’m not talking about Gundam Stardust Memories, or whatever. And, by the way, I’ve seen all of that stuff. No, I’m talking about Gundam, the original 1979 – so, this show was exactly the same type of show that Robotech wanted to be. It was highly influential.
You can totally tell where Robotech was just lifting stuff in here verbatim.
Unlike Robotech, the quality of the work stays consistent throughout the entire series. On top of that, the stories get better. So, at first, the stories are, like, kind of kiddy-ish, it seems, and then, little by little, the series gets deeper and more complicated.
Unfortunately, it does have Amuro, who’s a very, very whiny protagonist, but I guess, I mean, for a teenager in the middle of a war, you can kind of excuse the fact that he’s kind of stuck in this position of being this warrior when he was never supposed to be.
It’s got, by far, one of the most awesome endings to a series ever. I mean, it is super great, the way the series ends. Mobile Suit Gundam is my Number Three.
Okay, so here’s the problem. What we know as Robotech in the United States, in Japan, was called Macross, and Robotech was basically – they took, three different Japanese cartoons, and then they made it into Robotech as if they all were part of one giant cartoon, but that’s not really what it was.
Macross spun off into its own series, and they did a lot of different things. They had Macross Plus, and then they had Macross 7, and they had Macross II, and there was a lot of different Macross. I think I’ve seen pretty much all of them.
Not all of them were all that very good. Some of them were beautiful, but the stories kind of stunk. Stuff like that.
Macross Frontier is incredible. It takes what was great about Macross and updates it.
It takes – well, basically, it takes the formula of the first show and kind of redoes it with different characters, but, because it takes the formula, it veers from the formula, too, so it veers from it at just the right times, so that, if you are a fan of the original series, it throws you off because you expect things to go one way, and they go the other direction, and it really does throw you off, and the story is great, and the mecha is great.
Unfortunately, there was one thing that I didn’t like about Macross Frontier is that it’s not hand-drawn mecha. The Veritech fighters, or the Valkyries, they’re not hand-drawn. They’re CG.
You get more dynamism out of them, but there’s something about hand-drawn giant robots that is awesome by the very fact that they’re hand-drawn, and they still look good.
There’s something about that art form that the Japanese animation studios have really nailed that I love, and I’m a little upset that Macross Frontier isn’t hand-drawn mecha, but that doesn’t destroy the show.
The story in it is fantastic, very dramatic, highly recommended. Macross Frontier, my Number Two.
This is, believe it or not, a Mecha show. Even though it looks like a girl romance cartoon, it is not a girl romance cartoon. It’s got this gigantic monstrous Mecha in it. It’s about a girl who is a runner, and then, for some bizarre reason, she gets thrown into this magical fantasy world where she has to help two guys – both the guys, they have this armor, and then the armor is actually these gigantic robots.
It’s dramatic, it’s great, I love the world, I love the Mecha, the bad guy in it is, like, ridiculously awesome because you love to hate him.
The artwork – I love Escaflowne, the main robot in it. Imagine Norse mythology and that sort of thing, but kind of married to this fantasy Mecha-driving world, and you kind of get Vision of Escaflowne.
It’s got fantastic music. I believe I even bought the soundtrack because I like it so much.
My all-time favorite animated Japanese series is Escaflowne, and I haven’t seen it anywhere. Run by Bandai – I guess it was to sell toys, and they must not have sold a whole lot of toys.
They did a movie, a Vision of Escaflowne movie, which was nowhere near as good as the series. I love the series. I highly recommend it. If you really, really like Mecha, like I do, give Vision of Escaflowne a try.
So that’s my top ten. There’s a lot. There’s a lot of anime. I’ve been watching anime forever. I mean, I had ten years of binging on anime. I’ve seen a lot, so I would like to say that I know what I’m talking about. I haven’t seen every single thing. It’s impossible.
So, if I missed something that you think was great, let me know. Based on my obvious tastes, if you’ve seen what I’ve recommended, let me know what you guys think. If you’ve seen Vision of Escaflowne, let me know, because it’s a little bit obscure, I think.
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Focus Group Guy: [after showing the kids some Itchy & Scratchy cartoons] Okay, how many of the kids would like Itchy & Scratchy to deal with real life problems like the ones you face every day?
[the kids cheer]
Focus Group Guy: And who would like to see them do just the opposite, getting into far-out situations involving robots and magic powers.
[the kid kids cheer again]
Focus Group Guy: So you want a realistic down-to-earth show that’s completely off the wall and swarming with magic robots?
[the kids all chat at once about it being a great idea]
So one of the greatest animation directors on the planet is Japanese and his name is Hayao Miyazaki. Today I’m going to give you my top ten Miyazaki movies.
You can watch the video below or read the post with the links. I’ve embedded a trailer to each movie below:
Some of the links below are affiliate links. Thanks for your support.
Intro
I got exposed to Miyazaki while working on The Simpsons. Hayao Miyazaki is said to be the Walt Disney of Japan, and he’s made movies like Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle, things like that. That’s kind of how some people know him for, those three movies, because now his movies are being distributed by Disney.
So I decided to make a list of my top ten Miyazaki movies. So, let’s begin.
10. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
Now this is not the video, this is actually the manga, and the reason I’m bringing up the manga is because the manga is actually a bazillion times better than the animated cartoon.
The manga was actually written and drawn by Hayao Miyazaki. It is epic, and there’s like, I think of this volume, of these I think there’s like three or four, something like that.
The movie itself, the actual animated movie, it’s not my favorite. It’s okay. The manga is much better, if you want the full story, this is much better.
Nausicaa the movie felt like it was, like, act one. And it really does show you that it is act one if you read this manga series, but as an introduction to Miyazaki I don’t mind it.
It’s a little bit too dire, I don’t know, there’s something about the way it feels, but that’s why it’s on my number ten. I still like it a lot but I’d rather read the manga than watch the movie over and over.
Princess Mononoke, it’s Miyazaki doing like a PG-thirteen animated movie. Most of his movies tend to be very family friendly. Princess Mononoke is not family friendly.
There’s a lot of gore and it’s very adult, but it deals with really adult themes, and as far as adult I mean mature, not immature adult themes, you know what I’m talking about, when people say “adult” you think of the most immature high school kind of pornographic stuff, which I find ironic.
It’s a very mature theme about humanity’s desire to be industrious and nature’s desire to not be destroyed by human industry and the war between these two ideas that are both good in and of themselves, but come into conflict when one suffers because of another. And it’s a beautiful, beautiful movie.
So that’s my number nine, if you haven’t seen it, Princess Mononoke, you should watch it.
Now The Secret World of Arrietty is one of the newer Miyazaki movies. It’s based on The Borrowers and it’s fantastic.
It should go without saying that every single one of Miyazaki’s movies are drop dead beautiful. The backgrounds are always incredible in every single Miyazaki movie. Arrietty is no exception.
The thing that I like the most about Arrietty, besides the story, the story is really great, but I liked the feeling of being small, like these little people that live under this house, and the perils of everyday life living and being that tiny. Just to get a drink of water, it was really great, because you can see that it was a drop.
Unlike any other, like, Disney or even Bluth animated movies where you’re talking about something small, this one actually felt like it was small.
It wasn’t, like, a reinterpretation of the big making it look tiny and then there’s this big dolly ride or something. No, this was actually, the water, the way it looked, the props that they used, there was nobody walking around with swords, it was needles and things like that that would actually be stuff that you would actually use. I really enjoyed that sense.
So, highly recommend TheSecret World of Arrietty.
7. My Neighbor Totoro
I saw the Japanese version with subtitles the first time I saw it, and then eventually Fox started distributing it.
Beautiful family movie about two little girls living in the mountains in Japan, something like that, where they meet the spirit of the forest by the name of Totoro who looks like a big, gigantic, fluffy rabbit, but he’s ginormous.
It’s great, this movie influenced Avatar: The Last Airbender, because you’ve got the cat bus, the cat bus has multiple legs, and then suddenly in Avatar: The Last Airbender, you’ve got the buffalo, the air buffalo who also have the exact same legs, same everything.
It’s a beautiful little movie, very dramatic, heart wrenching. It makes you feel like a little kid, and that’s the best part about some of Miyazaki’s stuff, it’s just very observational, stories are very true to life, and you just feel for these characters.
No singing, no dancing, none of that stuff, and it’s not very formulaic, yet this works. Very magical. My Neighbor Totoro, fantastic movie.
Porco Rosso is the very strange story about a man who became a pig, and he’s a World War I pilot. But he has a pig face because of a curse, or I forgot, but it’s just something that he kind of did to himself.
It deals with really mature themes that are not necessarily little kid friendly, but when you watch it, and I mean, you sit down and you look at the art and the imagination and the locations, and as strange as it is, it also has this very comical story about this stuff, and it’s so, so great, so fantastic.
I love Porco Rosso. It was one of my least favorite, it was one of the ones that I was like, meh, take it or leave it, until I saw it just recently, like seven months ago, six months ago, I re-watched it again, and my jaw was on the floor.
It was so good. I must have matured, I must have finally gotten to the point where it’s like, oh, now I get this movie, it’s fantastic, oh my gosh, and the art and the airplanes, and they’re all hand drawn. And it’s just so good.
Watch Porco Rosso, it’s so good. I can’t recommend it enough.
This one was distributed by Disney. Story about a girl who turns into an old woman, and ends up in this magical castle that walks around on legs.
Yeah, totally crazy, kind of Baba Yaga-ish looking castle. It’s good. There’s something about the magic in this, I like the whole idea where the wizard, Howl, has this raven king kind of thing, he’s a wizard, and he’s got this raven motif which is a lot like the raven king, kind of.
If you’re into fairy tales and you understand about the raven and all that sort of stuff. So, yeah, highly recommend it, I don’t know, it’s a beautiful thing, it’s a beautiful movie.
The castle’s fantastic, it’s a little quirky at the end, it has a really bizarre ending, and it’s open to interpretation. It’s worth watching. I liked it a lot. Howl’s Moving Castle.
Okay, so this is Miyazaki’s first feature animated movie. Lupin was a character created by Monkey Punch. He’s a manga character, he’s a thief, he’s always getting chased by Inspector Zenigata.
One of the very first things in this movie is a ridiculous car chase where he’s chasing this girl being chased by gangsters. One of the best car chases on film. It’s just crazy awesome, all hand drawn, the cars are all hand drawn.
You’ve got to understand that this is exciting cinematic car chasing in an animated cartoon with hand drawn cars.It’s awesome.
Then after that it just gets wilder and crazy and it’s just fantastic, it’s just, you know, Indiana Jones-ish kind of action adventure, packed with the guy who has to save the princess. It’s great, and I love, love, love this movie. My number four, Lupin the Third: Castle of Cagliostro.
This fell down quite a bit. This was my number one movie for a very long time. This was one of the first Miyazaki movies I was ever exposed to and I was kind of blown away by it.
Indiana Jones action adventure style stuff, just like Cagliostro in a completely different way because this is actually looking for archaeological, you know, mythological place.
It’s an island that floats in the sky that supposedly hold treasure and everybody’s after it, and these two kids are the key to finding it. Specifically, this little girl. And it’s exciting, exciting, exciting.
You’ve got airships and sky pirates and evil, corrupt governments and it’s very Indiana Jones-ish. So I highly recommend this one, Island in the Sky.
The reason I like this, I’m really into fairy tales, I really like the motifs of fairy tales and this is very, very, very much a fairy tale.
Starting off with going into the fairy tale universe, and knowing the rule of not eating the food in there because usually when you eat the food in fairy you end up becoming a prisoner in fairy, and then things go bad for you. Well, this is very much like that.
It’s a little bit Alice in Wonderland-ish, it’s a little bit of stepping into fairy and having to deal with all these fairy spirits and how to survive in fairy land, but it’s a very Japanese fairy land. I mean you’ve got witches that are very, very reminiscent of Slavic witches, like Baba Yaga, and it’s good, it’s fantastic.
This girl has to survive in a fairy tale land. She goes in a little girl and comes out a mature young woman. And it’s great, it’s great.
Kind of creepy, but fantastic. My number two is Spirited Away.
1. Kiki’s Delivery Service
This is the strangest one out of all of these. My personal taste is strange.
Kiki’s Delivery Service is about a little witch that has to become independent on her own. She turned fifteen, and apparently in her culture, once you turn fifteen you go out on your own and you build a life for yourself somewhere by yourself.
If you’ve watched Spider-man 2, they ripped off this story.
She has to kind of find herself, she kind of loses herself, and there’s even a section where she meets an artist in this movie where my friend, my Japanese friend, told me that he believes that Miyazaki put his own voice in the conversation that Kiki has with her friend the artist, and it’s a conversation about art, and it helps Kiki with her problem at the time.
You also have got Gigi, the best cat ever. This is the Disney version, isn’t it, yeah, the Buena Vista distributed one.
The translation, the dubbed version of this, is awful. AWFUL!
Phil Hartman does the voice. Now, Phil Hartman, you know, great actor, tragic death, BUT should not have been given the voice of Gigi. If possible watch the subtitled version because they kind of kill this movie with the dub version. I really didn’t like it.
I watched it without subtitles for the first time in Japanese, and then I watched it with subtitles, and I loved it, and then I watched the dubbed version and I was like, this is awful. What happened to Gigi, my favorite character in the movie, the little cute, super black, little cute cat that you just want to squish it because it’s such a cute cat.
I highly recommend Kiki’s Delivery Service. That’s my number one.
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So what do you think? Have you watched any of these movies? I bet you haven’t.
I highly recommend these movies. Hayao Miyazaki is by far one of the best animation directors on the planet.
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What’s Your Top Ten?
If you’ve seen these movies I’d like to know what you think about it, and if you haven’t and you start watching them, let me know what you think. Leave a comment.
Dr. Hibbert: Well, only one in two million people has what we call the “evil gene”. Hitler had it, Walt Disney had it, and… Freddy Quimby has it.
When I was getting into the animation industry and trying to become an animator, I really, really enjoyed watching and studying Disney movies. Today, I’m going to talk to you about my top ten Disney movies.
You can watch the video below or read the post with the links. I’ve embedded a trailer to each movie below:
Some of the links below are affiliate links, thanks for your support.
Studying Disney Movies
I couldn’t get enough of Disney movies, once upon a time. I say once upon a time because, now, I’ve studied them, I love them, they’re fantastic, but my tastes have changed so much.
I don’t mind family movies. I love family movies. I have four kids. Four kids, okay? We watch a lot of family movies. I love having something to watch with them.
But, as a work of art, for me – look, as an animator, watching Disney movies, I watch them in a very different way. I don’t watch them just purely for entertainment purposes. I watch them for a lot of different things.
Disney movies, I love to watch, because they’re always, always, always technically beautiful and fantastic. But, they tend to be very samey. If there’s a critique from me about them is that, at least lately, they’ve been very samey. They took more risks early on.
So, here’s my top ten:
10. Tarzan
Tarzan, my Number Ten. Why?
I don’t like the comedic sidekick. That stuff always bugs me, and the stuff with the comedic sidekicks in here really, really bug me. Like, really.
But the reason it’s my Number Ten is because Tarzan‘s awesome! And there’s action, adventure, and excitement. And there’s just fighting, and it’s Tarzan! It’s Tarzan.
Seeing him go through the jungle and the way that Tarzan’s drawn and animated, and the characters are great. And the foliage and the background, the way it’s painted on there. There’s just a lot of great stuff.
It’s exciting. I do enjoy this movie, and, you know, Glen Keane, what can you say? He’s the lead animator on Tarzan.
Fantastic movie. It’s a lot of fun. My Number Ten is Tarzan.
Now, Snow White was the first movie. It still holds up. It is beautiful. The animation is beautiful. It just works. And it works, and it works.
There’s a reason why this sucker is a classic.
So, my Number Nine is Snow White.
8. Fantasia
I’m going to cheat. I’m going to say Fantasia, and Fantasia 2000.
A masterpiece in just pure animation. The music is great. It’s hard to beat what an incredible work of art this is.
I sure did not appreciate this for a very long time, growing up. It wasn’t until after I got older and understood animation, and all those other things, that I really, really started opening up to this movie.
My Number Eight is Fantasia.
7. Little Mermaid
Little Mermaid: beautiful music, it’s responsible for the new renaissance of Disney animation.
Great. Fun. Very exciting. Classic. Disney formula stuff.Great movie.
Little Mermaid, my Number Seven.
6. Bambi
Incredible animation, again. Water colors are fantastic in this thing.
It’s an amazing movie. Highly influential movie, too.
Bambi is my Number Six.
5. Aladdin
I remember when this came out. It was senior ditch day, and I ditched school to go watch Aladdin.
So, I was in there by myself, freezing, while watching Aladdin. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed this movie. I laughed, I cried.
Great designs. Glen Keane animating Aladdin. It was very influential on me with that crazy mouth, that, you know, with the teeth, that Glen Keane tends to do a whole lot. And then you just try to copy it as an animator, and it looks like a copy instead of something that is you know, sort of looking like real life like you’re supposed to.
I really enjoyed Aladdin. Arabian nights, fantasy. That’s, that stuff was you know, right up my alley.
I really like the Peter Pan story. The Disney version is a fantastic telling of the story.
This is such an incredibly well animated movie. It has a great sense of magic and fun.
The character designs are fantastic. How can you not like Tinkerbell, such cute girl design.
Captain Hook is so fun to watch. His acting is dead on.
Not the most Native American politically correct movie, it makes the movie unusually funny. I love watching this movie. It make me feel like a kid when I watch it.
Pinocchio is, hands down, one of the greatest animated masterpieces ever. The Monstro whale sequence is mind-blowing. The acting, the animation. It’s creepy as heck.
When I was growing up, I hated, hated this movie. I didn’t want anything to do with this movie. This movie creeped me out.
Nowadays, when I watch this movie, I’m just in awe of how incredibly beautiful and well-animated – the story’s dark.
It’s – oh my gosh, it’s so good. Monstro the whale, like I said, is incredible. I can go on. I’m not going to.
2. Beauty and the Beast
Beauty and the Beast, what can I say? There is a reason why it won the Oscar for Best Picture. It’s fantastic.
Unfortunately, if you watch the animation now, you can see the flaws in the animation. Well, I can anyway.
Like, I can see when the animators changed, and there’s just some wonky drawings of the Beast in here, and all kinds of stuff.
Like, I can’t un-see the errors in the movie. In spite of being able to see that with my crazy animation eyes, this is a fantastic movie. It still holds up.
I hate the fact that they added an extra song. It kind of slows down the movie and messes up the pace, but, overall, it’s a fantastic movie. It still holds up, and it’s great.
1. Sleeping Beauty
Why? Because it is, hands down, the most beautiful animated Disney movie that’s ever been done.
If you know anything about animation, first of all, the backgrounds. The backgrounds are works of art, just the backgrounds themselves. This is just worth watching, just because of the backgrounds.
Okay. But then, on top of that, it’s a masterpiece of animation, and the designs of the characters are really graphic.
On top of that, the fact that the ink and paint department, which was an actual ink and paint department, it hand-inked every single line, so that it had a different color. So, like, if you looked at the colors – like, they do that now digitally, but they had to do it by hand on cells when they did this movie.
Okay. So when you look at, you know, Aurora’s hair, and it’s a yellow, and it has a yellow self in line on it, and then it’s painted yellow on top of that, somebody had to hand, with a brush, ink that hair – you’ve got to understand, it’s about twenty-four frames per second, which means the drawing has to be exposed for one or two frames at a time for the animation to work.
Insane that it was all hand-inked, every single one of those drawings. Okay. That alone is incredible.
All right, but, then, on top of that, it’s got the greatest Disney villain in it.
Maleficent, giving nightmares to little kids since 19-whatever, 40 or whenever this movie was made.
My sister, when she was little, she had the record of Sleeping Beauty, and she never listened to the second side where Maleficent showed up because it scared the crud out of her. She turned into a dragon. It’s awesome, an awesome-looking dragon.
Like, it’s – come on. Number One, the best Disney animated movie. At least, according to my personal taste.
What Say You?
What do you think? Am I crazy? Let me know. Let me know what you would have picked as your number, as your ten top favorite Disney animated movies.
I had fun doing this list.
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Then, I heard that they were going to make an animated TV show. I was like, that’s cool, I hope it looks like the Genndy shorts because that would be awesome! And if they just do it like this, it’ll be like the best animated cartoon ever.
Well, they didn’t do it like this. They ended up going CG. I mean, I was kind of disappointed because I really, really enjoy the Genndy animated Clone Wars cartoon.
My Personal Background with Dave Faloni
One of the King of the Hill alums, Dave Filoni, ended up getting hired for it and it’s really interesting because we knew him at Film Roman because King of the Hill was produced at Film Roman, which is the studio that I work for on The Simpsons, and we were basically in the same building.
I kind of knew Dave because he was a real good friend of my father, who was a background designer on King of the Hill. And, during the Halloween parties at work, he almost always did some kind of Star Wars thing, or something really elaborate with Star Wars, or something else.
But he was known to be this incredible Star Wars nerd and suddenly he is actually helping produce this show, so it’s like, that’s really interesting.
The Pilot Episode is Weak
I’m sad to say that the pilot episode which was released theatrically, I think, was pretty lousy for this is a taste of what’s coming up and how, and this TV show’s going to be awesome because of this! And then you watch this movie and it’s like *SAD TRUMPET SOUND*, you know. It’s like it wasn’t all that good.
Genndy Clone Wars vs. Filoni Clone Wars
It was CG. It kind of looks a little bit like the Genndy’s designs, but the Genndy designs were much more pushed and I like them more. The designs in this CG version were a little disappointing after watching the Genndy thing.
I keep comparing the two, and I really shouldn’t because they’re two different styles and things like that. But – I don’t know why, but I just keep going back to the Genndy, because I guess that’s my first exposure to this style.
They did push the characters, and I think that’s one of the best things about this show is how pushed and unrealistic-looking they look. It’s very caricatured, very cartoony, and that’s one of the things that I liked.
So, I watched this movie and I wasn’t impressed with the story. And, I was like well, meh, okay, but let me give it a chance because I like Star Wars and I need my Star Wars fix, right? So, I started watching the actual series.
Okay, so there’s five seasons, I’ve only watched four out the five as of the time of this recording. After watching what I’ve watched, I have to admit, I got sold.
After I watched the first season, I was like, that was really cool. Like, they had some really, really good, interesting stories in there. So, I got the second season. The second season was even better. And, the third season was even better.
The Style of the Show
They just keep building on these things, and they just keep doing all these things that I just find fascinating, and it’s incredible. Now, not every show is a hit. It’s really inconsistent as far as story arcs.
They attempt to have like three- or four-episode story arcs, where it’s just, they’re in a planet and something’s happening, and so it’s thirty minutes per episode. And by the time you watch three episodes, you kind of get like, almost like a mini-movie. And there’s like an arc, and then they just change an environment, and then something else happens for a couple of episodes, and then that’s the end of that.
I find that very cool. I like that style of storytelling. They explore the characters more. It’s amazing what they can come up with as far as stories because this is supposed to take place between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, and they fill it up with all kinds of really fantastic stories.
Unfortunately almost always, any time Jar-Jar shows up in the cartoon, it’s gonna be a pretty lousy series of episodes.
There’s some drop-dead fantastic stories. There’s one that – if you’re a fan of Dune, they totally play with the Bene Gesserit kind of thing and the Water of Life, and all that stuff, and I think that’s great.
Did you Watch This?
If you’re a Star Wars fan, you’re already watching this. I don’t even have to sell the idea of watching these cartoons, but if you are iffy about wanting to watch it or not wanting to watch it or not knowing if these things are any good, yeah. If your like that guy, you’ve got to watch the cartoon.
It’s a lot of fun. It’s a type of animated cartoon I wish they’d do more of. I like the dramatic action-adventure-type cartoons. And this is the stuff that I get drawn into more, especially because, you know, it’s arguably science fiction, it’s more like science fantasy. It’s a lot of fun.
I highly recommend it. There’s some stuff in it that’s just like, that is so good, you say, “Oh my gosh, that’s cool.”
So, let me know, have you watched this whole series? I know that’s something awesome happens in season five with one of the characters, and I’m dying to go find out what happens. I’m rushing through to watch it all so I can watch the fifth season.
Have you seen the show, do you like it? Let me know. If you haven’t seen it, would you be willing to? And why haven’t you watched it? I’d like to know actually if you haven’t seen the show, and what’s keeping you from watching it. That’ll be a really interesting conversation.
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Do you want more hours in the day to do what you want to do? Do you want to get more things done faster? Do you want to do this without feeling tired all the time?
I was convinced into trying it. I was excited about getting more time to do what I needed to do.
Robotech, Okay, this was my cartoon growing up. My parents didn’t allow me to watch more than an hour of television every day, thirty minutes of which were dedicated to watching Robotech.
My Number Nine is something that I didn’t become aware of until about a couple of years into Simpsons, and that is Future Boy Conan.
I don’t own Bakuman. The only way I’ve seen Bakuman is online, on these, you know, fansub versions of TV shows.
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Macross Frontier is a sequel to Robotech.
This is, believe it or not, a Mecha show. Even though it looks like a girl romance cartoon, it is not a girl romance cartoon. It’s got this gigantic monstrous Mecha in it. It’s about a girl who is a runner, and then, for some bizarre reason, she gets thrown into this magical fantasy world where she has to help two guys – both the guys, they have this armor, and then the armor is actually these gigantic robots.
4. Peter Pan
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