MOVIES – Why You’re Missing out if You Haven’t Watched Coraline.
My all time favorite of the current batch of feature animated stop-motion movies is Coraline. And today, I’m going to be talking about it.
You can either watch the video below or read the transcription:
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Current Stop Motion movies
Studios have really stepped up and made stop-motion incredible. The last movie that came out – which was ParaNorman– I really, really enjoyed.
I thought it worked really well. The animation was incredible. The designs were fantastic. But, I still don’t think it was as good as Coraline.
It Was a Neil Gaiman Story
One of the reasons was, of course, it’s an adapted version of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline short story. I think he wrote it for his daughter.
The 3D Worked
I actually went to the theaters and I watched it in 3D. It was one of the few movies that I’ve actually gone to the movie theater to watch in 3D that I thought was appropriate to be watched in 3D.
I thought it really worked.
The stop-motion here is, of course, quality stop-motion. The designs of the characters are really quirky and very, very cool.
How It’s Like Miyazaki’s Spirited Away
In a lot of ways, this kind of reminds me of Miyazaki’sSpirited Away.
It’s the same kind of genre where you’ve got a little girl with parent issues, and somehow she and them end up being thrust into this fairyland- this fairy world, this kind of magical world- where the little girl ends up having to step up and take charge, and become something other than what she is in order to triumph over the situation.
This is very similar to that.
This is a little girl who has, again, parental issues. They’re not paying attention to her. And then, she has to move to a new house where there’s this little secret door.
And that door leads to a parallel universe where it’s like the ideal situation, the ideal parents, everything that she ever wanted.
But there’s a catch.
It’s a Dark Fairytale
So, it’s kind of creepy.
It’s one of the things that I liked about it. It doesn’t follow the generic rules of American animation. And I’m very critical about American animation when it comes to this sort of thing.
I’d like the genre in America to expand. This is a really good example of where it can go.
It’s still a family movie, but it kind of pushes the boundaries so that it’s a little bit more of an acquired taste because it has very disturbing horror elements to it, in the exact same way that a movie like Pinocchio had the same kind of horror elements in it, where it’s kind of disturbing.
I think Dumbo may have had similar things like that too.
If you’ve watched The Nightmare Before Christmas , it’s kind of like that, because it’s the same director. And no, Tim Burton did not direct Nightmare Before Christmas. It was Henry Selick.
Henry Selick directed that movie. He directed James and the Giant Peach. He also directed Coraline, and he directed Paranorman.
Henry Selick is actually doing some really fantastic work. I highly recommend, if you have not seen Coraline, you should definitely it.
Whether or not this is good for your kids to watch, that’s a different thing.
See, that’s why I like the movie. It’s not necessarily for everyone. It’s not sugar-coated. It pushes the boundaries a little bit, so that it’s a little creepy, but the story works so well.
I don’t know what it is about this movie, but it’s just great. I like everything about it. I watched it so many times.
Paranorman is on Netflix streaming. Coraline is not. And it so should be.
It should be viewed by more people. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it.
Coraline, adapted from a story from Neil Gaiman, directed by Henry Selick. Great, great movie.
What Do You think?
If you’ve seen this movie, let me know. What do you think?
If you haven’t seen this movie, why haven’t you? Did it not grab you? Did it not make you want to see it? I’d like to hear your opinion.
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All you have to do is sign up for the newsletter. I tend to also send a newsletter every week. Mostly, for the last few months, I’ve been talking a lot about the Simpsons.
ANIMATION – Can the General Public Tell the Difference Between 2D animation and CG animation?
The Simpsons Quote:
Homer: This place looks expensive. I feel like I’m wasting a fortune just standing here. I better make the most of it. [Homer burps]
Something has come to my attention that’s kind of odd to me working in the animation industry, but I found this to be relatively true. I’ve asked on my Twitter page about this and my Google+ page and I found a few things out, but it’s still inconclusive.
So here is what bothers me.
The general public, the non-animation aficionados or geeks or fans or employees don’t really know the difference between 2D animation and computer generated animation.
That’s what this post is video/post is all about. You can watch the video or read the transcription below:
It all Started at Figure Drawing
I was speaking with a friend of mine at figure drawing at work. On Tuesdays, we go figure drawing. We got to talking and one of the things that my friend, Richie Chavez, said kind of struck me as odd, which was, that the general audience doesn’t know the difference between CG and 2D animation.
I didn’t believe him. I’m like no, that can’t be right.
An Eye Opening Conversation at a Kid’s Birthday Party
But then I went to a birthday party for a family friends’ kid. Now this is a family friend. They know what I do for a living, okay? They know I work in an animated cartoon.
At this children’s birthday party they were showing The Owls of Ga’Hoole and Lilo & Stitch. That was what was on TV. And while they were watching Lilo & Stitch I decided to go up to one of my friends.
It was his child’s birthday. They were watching the cartoon. And I went up to him and I asked him so, do you know how this is done? Do you know the difference between the hand-drawn 2D stuff and CG? And he turns to me and he says,
“Well, now that you mention it, I kind of have an idea that there is a difference, but I’ve only recently become aware of it,” And I asked him,
“This cartoon, Lilo & Stitch, CG or 2D?” And he’s like,
“I’m not sure,” I mean seriously, he didn’t know. He did not know the difference between hand-drawn.
Explaining the Difference
I told him one is, you know, a computer generated puppet that you move around. There’s more to it than that, but it’s generally, the gist of it is that you have a computer generated puppet and you move him a little bit and then you take the picture and you move him a little bit and take the picture.
Sort of like that. It’s not really how it happens, right? But I just kind of wanted to get his head in, thinking that way.
And then I told him in 2D, you do the same thing but with drawing. You hand draw the thing and then you put it under the camera. You take a picture and then you do the other drawing. You take a picture. Then once you have 24 drawings of those or 12 drawings of those exposed twice, for 24 frames there’s one second and the same kind of goes for CG.
Sometimes they go with 30 frames a second, sometimes with 60 frames a second. But I was trying to explain to him the difference between a hand-drawn thing and a CG thing and the difference in the way it looks.
What’s Your Experience with Non-animation Fans?
By looking at the movie, you should be able to tell the difference. So I guess my question is, is your experience the same as his? Can you tell the difference?
When you’re a fan of a thing you tend to be really into the thing. So you kind of know more than the general public.
But if you are part of the general public or better yet ask your mom that’s not in to this stuff. Ask your spouse, whoever it is that is not into this stuff. Ask your friends who are not into this stuff. Ask them if they know the difference between 2D and CG animation.
I would love to know the answer because if you are a fan then you are not the person I want to hear from. I want to hear from the people who aren’t fans, because I would love to know if they can tell the difference.
So yeah, leave a comment at the bottom of this blog.
This is the sequel to Man of Steel. I would have liked another stand alone Superman movie before they introduced other Superheroes, so we could flesh out Superman’s character a bit more.
Batman is arguably, more popular, he’s going to overshadow Superman in his own sequel.
Normally you’d think that if Superman and Batman fought, it’s no brainer, Superman wins right? Well, no. For the last 30 years, just about every time Superman and Batman fought, Batman would win. So…yeah.
If they keep to this tradition then Superman would lose to Batman in his own movie. That would suck.
I was going to do a video about why all this bothered me but then I saw the video below. This guy says EXACTLY what I was thinking and feeling about this whole thing. EXACTLY. It’s amazing.
He cusses a lot so be warned. Oh, the only thing I don’t agree with is that Christian Bale should play Batman. I actually don’t want him to, otherwise, I agree with what this guy says. He basically said it all for me.
What do you think?
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“I’m not normally a praying man, but if you’re up there, please save me, Superman!” ~ Homer
So I’m a big Superman nerd. I’m a big Superman fan. I love Superman. And I thought I’d give you my two cents on Man of Steel and all the things around it and all the arguments I’ve been getting into about the movie.
You can either watch the video or read the transcription. That said, there’s A LOT of links and videos below. LOTS more. This video only covers SOME of what I’ve got to say. So scroll down for the rest of it:
Some links below are affiliate links. Thanks for your support.
My Favorite Superman Movies
Now, Man of Steel and Superman. Like I said, I’m a big fan of Superman. I love Superman. My favorite Superman movie is All-Star Superman.
What? It’s not the Christopher Reeve Superman that everybody else— the Donner Superman— what’s going on? What is wrong with you?
No, All-Star Superman is my favorite Superman movie, okay? You now know my tastes and where I’m coming from and how different my tastes are. My second favorite Superman movie is Superman vs. the Elite. I love that movie and the story in it.
I like the Donner movie just fine. I liked watching Smallville. I watched all 10 years of Smallville. I’ve watched and own all the episodes of the Bruce Timm Superman animated cartoon. I watched Superman in Justice League and Justice League Unlimited and in Young Justice and in Legion of Super Heroes, all those animated cartoons.
I’ve seen every single animated movie that they’ve made of Superman. And on top of that I also happen to read the comics as well.
What I DIDN’T and DID Want to See in Man of Steel
Okay, so I go in to watch Man of Steel. Here are the things I do not want to see. Let me start with that. What I don’t want to see from Man of Steel going into the theater is:
The Donner movie. I do not want to see the Richard Donner Superman movie redone. I want this new movie to have nothing to do with the Donner movie. I don’t want the actor to look like Christopher Reeve. I don’t want to see Lex Luthor being a big joke. That’s great for the Donner movie. It worked great for the silver age. Fine. I didn’t want to wait half an hour before I got to see Superman or an hour before I got to see Superman because he’s living his life in Smallville. So here’s another thing I didn’t want to see.
I did not want to see Smallville The Movie. I did not want to see young Clark growing up, pining over Lana, having relationships with his teenage friends, growing up on a farm, discovering his powers. I saw that. It was called Smallville. It went on for 10 years. I don’t want to see that again in a movie. It’s been done.
So already, two things I did not want to see from this movie, Smallville: The Movie and the Richard Donner version of the movie remade. What did I want to see?
I wanted to see Superman punch somebody in the face. I wanted to see Superman have superpowers and fly around and have super fights and be super. That’s what I wanted to see. I wanted to see that Superman. If he was Clark Kent sometimes fine. But I just wanted him to be mostly in the suit being Superman, fighting giant gorillas or whatever almost like an updated version of like the Fleischer shorts where it was basically just an excuse for Superman to be super. That’s all I wanted to see in this movie.
So I go into the movie and guess what I got? Pretty much everything I wanted to get from this movie. To the point where it was almost too much of everything I wanted.
So in a lot of ways be careful what you wish for. On the other hand, I can’t complain because I got it everything I wanted and I got too much of what I wanted which was okay with me. I left happy.
So if you haven’t seen the movie I am going to spoil it now. Stop reading if you haven’t seen the movie. You can come back to this later, but at least now you know two things.
One, I liked it and
it’s not Smallville: The Movie and it’s not like the Richard Donner movie.
Now that you know that, you can go watch it and then come back and read the rest of this.
The Spoilers Begin
I’ve gotten into all kinds of arguments about this movie with friends who basically wanted this to be the Richard Donner movie. And because it doesn’t hit every beat it’s no good.
It’s like a bunch of people who grew up with Batman: The Movie from the 60s and then going to watch the Tim Burton version or the Chris Nolan version and deciding that it’s too dark and where’s the zap and the pow? Right? I have a problem with people that keep trying to shove the Donner movie into this movie because that’s not what it is.
Superman, the Dick Donner movie, was done in the 70s. It’s done. Superman in the comics has moved on from that, gone past the silver age into the bronze age, into the iron age, into the modern age, into The New 52.
He’s a different character. In its trappings and the way it feels there’s lots of different stories. Man of Steel felt a lot more like a comic by the name of Superman: Earth One . The first volume felt a lot like this. It had a lot of similarities to it. In Superman: Earth One Vol 1, Clark was even pushed into becoming Superman because of an alien invasion just like in the movie.
What I Didn’t Like
A few things I didn’t like about the movie and very there are only a few.
Yes, there are plot holes as big as a truck but I’m going to link below to some articles that defend the movie.
This Superman movie was great, BUT I’m also going to link to this hilarious critique of the movie done in almost a MAD Magazine style and it’s hilarious. There’s just a lot of, kind of goofy stuff about the movie that just kind of doesn’t work, but that’s okay. I completely ignore those things because Superman got to have super fights in this movie.
But the one thing that really, really, really bothered me was Jonathan Kent and his portrayal. And I’m going to link to two really great videos from Smallville, that really shows what I would have liked Jonathan and Clark’s relationship to have been like in Man of Steel:
And here’s one of my all time favorite scenes from Smallville where Clark talks to Jonathan’s ghost years after his death:
And that’s me comparing Man of Steel to that Smallville, but here’s the thing about Jonathan that I thought kind of needed to be there. I wanted him to be much more supportive and less paranoid.
It’s okay to be guarded and trying to protect Clark, but I did not want him to be so negative to the point where it was as if he did not believe in Clark and did not believe in his son. And it was just like, what? You saved a bus full of kids, maybe you should have let them die. I mean, really? And it’s like, “yeah, don’t save anybody, ever.” Really?
You could have at least had him go,
“Well, uh, you know, find a way to do it without being seen,” or something like that, right? But it was really cold. It was a very cold portrayal of the character who is traditionally very, very, very supportive.
And the way he ends up dying was lame. It was dumb. Everything, everything that Jonathan did in that scene in the hurricane before he dies he could have allowed Clark to do and he wouldn’t have had to use his powers.
Jonathan wouldn’t have had to die. Clark couldn’t die. It was a win-win. It felt so forced and lame. There wasn’t a good reason why Clark shouldn’t have been doing what Jonathan was doing while Jonathan protected his wife.
The Two Biggest Critiques of the Movie
The two big critiques of the movie is Superman kills Zod and Superman doesn’t save people while he punches Zod into buildings. Besides the giant plot holes that you can drive trucks through, that one is the main complaint. The the death toll and Superman kills Zod.
First of all, let’s not forget that the Tim Burton Batmankilled a ton of people and eventually tied a gargoyle around the Joker’s leg and threw him off a building. So yeah, Batman in that movie killed people.
In the Chris Nolan version he indirectly kills Ra’s al Ghul, you could argue. He didn’t save him, right? But he has a code against killing mostly because at least, my logic is that, he experienced murder. He knows what killing is like. He understands the pain that death and killing somebody leaves, what it can do.
In the Man of Steel this Clark Kent doesn’t. In Man of Steel, you don’t get a fully formed Superman until perhaps near the end of the movie when he’s destroying the drone. Perhaps that is the fully formed Superman we were waiting for and he really only has a few lines of dialogue.
In the rest of the movie, Superman is not complete. He is not Superman. Just because he’s wearing the suit doesn’t make him Superman. It just makes him Superman in training.
So, the first time he’s ever let loose was on Zod’s face.
“You think you can threaten my MOTHER!” and he starts whaling on him, right? He’s never been in a real fight. He’s always been holding back. So he starts getting into a fight with a bunch of Kyptonians.
He knocks them into an empty place. They knock him back into Smallville. And then he has a big fight, it’s all he can do to be fighting much less saving people. He can barely save himself, right? He’s barely trying to hold on and do what he can.
Same with Zod. He fights Zod. He punches Zod into outer space. Zod comes back and knocks him back into Smallville. I don’t know if it was Smallville or Metropolis, I would have to see the movie again. But the point is he knocks Zod into space, tried to get clear him of the crowds and the places and Zod takes him right back.
You could argue that Zod strategically picks this, Metropolis, to fight in because he’s a tactician. Superman is not. Superman is not thinking and he’s knocking, punching Zod across into buildings and stuff because he’s not thinking. He’s just fighting Zod.
He’s trying to survive. He’s trying to deal with the matter at hand. He is not Superman. He doesn’t think the way Superman thinks yet because he hasn’t been in a situation like this. He ends up killing Zod in an impossible situation.
Zack Snyder has said that the reason why they put that into the movie even though originally it wasn’t, Zod was supposed to be sent back in the Phantom Zone with all the other Kryptonians, was because he wanted to show the reasons why Clark doesn’t kill, why Superman doesn’t kill.
He basically killed the last Kryptonian. He understands the pain of what he did. He doesn’t want to ever go through it again.
The flaw, of course, being that he didn’t get enough chance to grieve about it. We never got to see him really, truly process it and grieve. It just kind of— the movie turned happy too quickly, so you didn’t get that effect.
But that was the logic behind it. I was okay with that logic, as long as you pay it off in two ways in the next movie:
He makes sure that the next super fight he has, he tries not to have the same thing happen again to Metropolis, and
He doesn’t kill again.
It sets up Lex Luthor great. It sets him up as the savior of Metropolis who put Metropolis back together after the two aliens destroyed it. It creates a great antagonism.
So I think that, to me, as long as it gets addressed in the next movie, it would make it okay. There’s nothing I can think of, unless they put more flashbacks with Jonathan, that can fix Jonathan at this point. I thought Jonathan was really poorly written.
The Stuff I Really Liked
Overall, I loved Man of Steel. I loved it. I thought it was great. I had a lot of fun watching it, except for Jonathan Kent.
I liked Jor-El being an action hero. I liked how he was a maverick, so maybe he was trained to fight by Zod.
I liked how Clark got his suit. Where did that suit come from? Come on, man, where did the food come from in Star Trek? Replicators, right? Who’s to say that there’s no replicator room or was an ancient piece of armor or the armor can’t be created by the machine run by Jor-El? I don’t have any problems with that stuff.
I don’t mind Lois immediately pretty much knowing who Superman is from the very beginning. Not having the traditional Lois doesn’t know that Clark is Superman thing. Yeah, let’s skip that. Go straight to the other thing. Because if Smallville has taught us anything, it’s that if you don’t know Clark’s secret, you are pretty much a useless character in the show. And you look like a big dope because you can’t help Superman out.
So yeah, I liked Man of Steel. I thought it was great.
I think you should read the comics to get acclimated if you only know the Donner movie. Nostalgia doesn’t make Man of Steel bad. It just makes you nostalgic.
If you liked the Donner movie, buy it and watch it. But if you want something else, go watch Man of Steel. It’s a different movie. It’s a different take on Superman. It’s still Superman. It’s just not the fully formed Superman that flies out of the fortress of solitude in the Donner movie fully formed. We’re watching the actual formation in this movie.
Some Last Thoughts
All right, I’m sure you disagree. There’s many of you who disagree. Chime in. I don’t mind.
Oh, if you don’t like how long those fights took there’s a video of a very well choreographed fight that is very, very similar to that fight. I put it down below. Go watch it.
One more thing, somebody on Facebook wrote this about the movie:
I had some problems with the movie, but at the end of the day I’m willing to cut Snyder a little slack. He only had to bring the most iconic and difficult to adapt superhero to the screen for a 21st century audience, satisfy the nerdboys like us who were going to dissect everything he did, and bring in the casual fans who they really need to make the movie profitable. As Hollywood movies have ballooned in costs, this one cost right at about 450 million to make and market, I’m sure some artistic choices were sacrificed because he had the studio up his ass. Let’s not forget that The Dark Knight was the second film of the trilogy, after Nolan had established that he could sell his Batman Universe and was given some leeway from the suits. Batman Begins was nowhere near as ambitious. Textbook origin story.
All in all MOS satisfied my summer movie requirements, and like you said Graham the effects were very well done. And there are much worse superhero movies in the Cosmos. Green Lantern anyone…
All right so, I think that pretty much sums it up. And those are pretty much my feelings, too. Give it some slack. All right. That’s my incredibly long rant on Superman.
Superman having an epic battle in metropolis, destroying the place and punching villains through buildings is nothing new. It’s just new to some. Case in point:
Seemed familiar right? A lot like this? (Don’t watch if you haven’t seen the movie):
And here’s the cover art for Action Comics #3 of the New 52, showing how happy people are at Superman for being an alien that tends to destroy their city. Pay close attention to the newspaper subheading the guy is holding at the bottom of the drawing:
And let’s not forget that Superman kills Zod in Superman 2:
I don’t know about you but I think the Man of Steel version had more of a reason. I mean, Zod was helpless in Superman 2.
Also, as flawed as Man of Steel was, at least it didn’t have “what the heck?!” moments like this:
Also, the first episode of Superman the animated series from the 90s had a very action adventure Jor-El as well:
WRITING – Four Things to Think About When Writing a Novel Part 1 of 4
Simpsons Quote:
Lisa: ”Miss Tan, I lovedThe Joy Luck Club. It really showed me how the mother-daughter bond can triumph over adversity.”
Amy Tan: “No, that’s not what I meant at all. You couldn’t have gotten it more wrong.”
Lisa: ”But…”
Amy Tan:”Please just sit down. I’m embarrassed for both of us.”
Hi, this is a four part series about “things to think about when writing a novel”. This part one. In this post I’m going to be talking about where to start a story.
You can watch the video below or read the transcript:
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The Beginning
I’ve been my wife’s editor in her series, The Gray Tower series. Her first book is called The Tower’s Alchemist. The second one is called Dark Rift. The third one is called Circadian Circle, and I’m currently editing it. So I have that editor on the brain kind of a thing. There are a lot of things that I tend to look at when I’m reading her manuscripts.
I’m trying to make sure that the story’s going to be as good as possible, of course. But there are certain things that I’m really honing in on. Some things she’s gotten really, really good at that I don’t have to call attention to t anymore.. But there are some things that she still continues to do that I think could improve.
So, today I’m going to be talking about one of the bigger things that I think is really important when writing a novel. And that is the beginning of the novel. That’s where you get hooked, right? In any kind of story at all, you kind of want to make sure that you hook the audience immediately when you first start reading- at least the first chapter maybe.
In Medias Res
Just try to really like especially show what the reader’s going to be in for in the first chapter, what it’s going to be like, what’s going to happen. One of the best ways to do this is to start your story in medias res. In medias res is Latin for starting in the middle of the action. I keep telling this to my wife. Sometimes she likes to just start her story just in a conversation or something.
Well, it’s not the best hook. Often times, there’s really nothing happening. It’s all setup. I always get on her case about it. Usually what I tell her is start there, but keep writing until you get to somewhere interesting, then start there where it starts getting interesting and get rid of the first part. If it’s all setup and there’s a lot of things that need to be done, you can somehow put it back in.
The Movie LIMITLESS
There’s a movie called Limitless, starring Bradley Cooper. And it’s great, because what happens is at the beginning of the story, you see Bradley Cooper’s character on top of a building. He’s at the edge, he’s about to jump.
There’s obviously somebody at the door trying to get in, and he’s going to jump off the building and kill himself because it’s better to do that than to confront whatever’s trying to bash down his door. That is like, in the middle of the story. You immediately get hooked. You ask yourself,
“What the heck? And say, how did he get there!?” Then you flashback to the rest of the movie. It eventually loops around, and you start off back there where he was on a building.
But the whole point is to start where it’s good, and then work your way back. It’s really very important.
How it’s Done in The Tower’s Alchemist
With my wife’s book, originally— and I don’t think it’s a big secret, because she used to have both first chapters of her first two books, both of them online. In Tower’s Alchemist, when you read the book, the original first chapter was what is now, chapter two. If you look at chapter two, it’s good, it’s a conversation between two characters in the intelligence agency office right before her lead character got an assignment.
That’s great, and it sets up the world, and the conversation of these two characters, but it’s really dull because, you’re starting the story on a conversation in an office. And even though that’s the chapter where you get the catalyst to the rest of the story, what the story’s going to be about and the character’s sent off on a mission in that chapter, you don’t get a flavor or taste of what you’re in for.
If you read the actual chapter that’s in the book now, chapter number one, it starts off in the middle of gun fight. And basically, the entire first chapter basically goes, this is what you’re in for- this kind of action, this is the world that we’re going to be in, this is who you’re fighting, you’re fighting Nazi’s and then there’s like a monster in there, and then there’s Cruenty in the woods, and there’s magic being thrown everywhere. And it’s like, what!? You know?
You understand, from that first chapter, that’s what you’re getting in the book. Then, you can slow down and then rebuild back up to that. And that’s exactly what Alesha did. She wrote a really great first chapter, and then she was able to slowly build into the next chapter by moving chapter one into chapter two and creating a brand new chapter one which establishes the world. And it’s not just the throwaway prologue type of thing either, because what it does is it sets up the character’s motivation for the rest of the book.
That first chapter sets up the character’s personal motivation. You can actually see why the character is thinking the way she’s thinking in chapter two by that point. It’s great.
Pay Attention to the Beginning
So, that’s my first recommendation, to start in medias res. And like I told her, it’s okay, don’t kill yourself, just start writing wherever. Just start writing wherever. The moment it starts really getting good, that’s when you cut off everything before and that’s where you ought to start. Okay?
Those are just my tips. It’s one of the many things that I look for when I read my wife’s manuscripts and her story, and make sure there’s something that hooks the audience from the very beginning.
Alright? So, I’ll talk to you about the next thing, next time. And if you want to get a free book, Art of Luis Escobar, which is me, you can subscribe to my newsletter. Just put in your email and you’ll get a free digital copy of my ‘Art of’ book. Okay? So, I’ll talk to you next time. Bye.
MOVIES – Can’t Wait to See Man of Steel movie
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If you’ve read my blog for a while, you know that I’m a huge superhero nerd. I love superheroes. But my favorite all time superhero is Superman.
He is definitely NOT the most popular. Arguably, I’d say Batman is. There is a LOT of people who think Superman is just lame.
They often say, “I can’t relate to Superman, he’s too overpowered.”
At some point, I’m going to have to write a post as to why Superman is awesome. BUT maybe I won’t have to. Maybe the Man of Steel movie coming out (as of the time of this writing) tomorrow will do the job for me.
I’m hoping that the movie will do to Superman what the first Ironman movie did for Ironman.
I really hope I don’t end up having to write a post on what Man of Steel got wrong.
All that said, I couldn’t get my mind off Superman for the last two weeks. But what to do? Well, I decided to re-watch as many episodes of the last three seasons of Smallville as I could.
The show is really the only way that you can really binge on a good modern live action take of the Superman myth. All the other live action Superman’s are either really dated or don’t get it.
Especially the last three seasons. They were exceptionally good. Those season introduced more DC characters combined than they the entire run put together. I mean, they even introduced the Legion of Superheroes for the first time in a live action setting. That is awesome! And it was written by Geoff Johns too.
So if you’ve seen Man of Steel and want more Superman or you’re like me and just want to watch live action Superman stuff before going to watch the live action movie, go watch some Smallville.
THE SIMPSONS NEWS – Agreeing To Do Work That You Don’t Know How To Do And Quickly Learning How To Do It.
Simpson Quote:
Aim low. Aim so low that no one will even care if you succeed. ~ Marge Simpson
When the opportunity presents itself, to do something that you haven’t done before artistically, take it.
Over my years on The Simpsons, I’ve had opportunities to work on other Simpsons things besides the show.
Sometime I accept to do work I’ve never done even though I tell the person I have. Especially if I know I can learn to do it quickly.
It’s a little trick I learned in my animation class in high school. Basically taking on a project that you don’t know how to do and then quickly learning how to do it.
What I’m going to be talking about this week is how I did this and ended up cleaning up a few scenes of a Church’s Chicken commercial.
You can watch the video of read the text below it. It’s practically the same thing. The only difference is that I posted some images from the scene I cleaned up. You can also see the final commercial below.
And make sure to scroll down and read about the special audio surprise I have in store for anyone who’s opted in to receive e-mails from me:
Advice From My High School Animation Class
I used to go to a regional occupational program (ROP) in a different high school from mine. There they taught animation. The teacher in that high school was very well connected to the animation industry and that’s where I got my start.
One of the big pieces of advice our teacher gave us was, if someone asked us if we could do something artistically and if we knew that it would be possible for us to learn how to do it but we didn’t know how to do it yet, we should say, “yes” to the job.
“Oh yeah, I could do that. No problem,” and then very quickly go learn to do it. that isn’t to say that you should do something so out of your skill set that there’s no way for you to learn how to do it. but agree to something that your reasonably certain that you’ll be able to do.
How I Ended Up Doing This
This is an example of what I did many years ago as I was doing Character Layout on The Simpsons. I was on the show for about five or six year by that point. There was a producer I didn’t know that just walked into my cubicle, perhaps by recommendation. He introduced himself and then asked me,
“Can you do clean up?”
And I’d never done clean up. All I had done at that point was Character Layout and that’s a very different skill set. I had also animated and inbetweened but I hadn’t ever done any clean up. Nothing that I had done up to this point required me to clean up my roughs in any final way.
Well, I knew how to inbetween so I didn’t think it would be that difficult to do clean up. So I said,
“Oh yeah, I know how to do clean up.”
So he says,
“Oh good, because I have this giant stack of drawings. Can you clean this up by this date next week?”
“Oh yeah, I do that all the time,” He smiled, thanked me and waked away.
As soon as he was gone I went into complete panic mode because I hadn’t done any clean, ever.
Crash Course Time
So I immediately got up, went to the phone, and called up a good family friend of mine that happened to be a clean up artist at Disney,
“Dude, you have to have lunch with me TODAY. You got to tell me everything you know about doing clean up.”
That day I drove over to Disney, we went to the his desk, he showed me what he was doing and how he did it and basically gave me a lesson on clean up during lunch.
Then I came back to the studio and started working on the clean up job.
The Result
It turned out fine. It was good work. I did a professional quality clean up job.
I had never done it before. I had just been taught to do it. As I did, I got better at it. But it wasn’t super difficult for me to do.
I had enough experience at that point to be able to pull something like that off. Learning clean up wasn’t too far off from my general experience that I didn’t know what I was doing. It turned out I knew how to do it well.
There’s more to clean up than just pretty lines. It’s also doing good inbetweens AND there was a part that I was asked to reanimate and time as well.
Clean up itself was just a skill I needed to know to round out my education and it wasn’t a big barrier.
I hope this is helpful and instructive.
Just remember, if you don’t know how to do a thing but you’re reasonably sure you’ll be able to learn it quickly and handle it, go ahead and accept the job. As long as you then quickly learn how to do it.
You get more experience that way. You learn more skills and your perceived value increases.
Here’s The Final Commercial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqXvmPYBc50
Special For All My E-mail Subscribers
Sit in on an audio conversation with Simpsons artists.
In this week’s e-mail, I sent out an audio recording of a lunch conversation I had with my friends and co-workers: Paul Wee, Tommy Tejeda, and Herman Sharaf.
You basically get a virtual seat at one of our many crazy and fun “comic book Wednesday” lunch conversations.
If you want to hear it, opt in before Thursday of next week and I’ll send it to you. Who knows, if everyone likes what they hear, there might be more to come.
MOVIES – Superman: Man of Steel
So Awesome. I hope it’s as good at the trailer makes it seem:
I was assigned Act 1 of episode 2 of this new season and man does it have a lot of rewrites. LOTS of work for me this week.
I was mostly finished with roughing out the fixes when the director came into my office and asked me to start on Act 3 once I was done roughing out Act 1.
So Wednesday I started Act 3. Needless to say, I won’t have the final finished version of Act 1 done by the end of the week.
At least Act 3 wasn’t as heavily rewritten. That’s gonna help out a lot.
MOVIES
Now here’s a movie that’s gonna make a TON a money. I really should buy Disney Stocks:
ART
ALRIGHT! I’m really cranking out these pages considering I’m working on them like, twice a week. It’s cool, since most of the planning is done. There were are a few spots where I left the final decisions of what I was gonna do to this part of the process. Specifically pages 30, 32 and 33. More on that below, underneath page 30:
At this point in the story, I knew I wanted to make what the characters where talking about visual. So thought a cut away would be good, I just didn’t really know exactly what the cut away would be. I decided, since my character is Conan-ish, that the cut away should look like a Frank Frazzetta painting. I google some paintings and basically did parodies of the them.
Here, I was just trying to show a little bit of the day in the life of the character, so you can see that he used to have jobs but the sorcerers always ruined them for him. He doesn’t say it in the dialogue so I decided to add the information visually.
For more comic and stories written by me, CLICK HERE.
If you like what you read, please consider signing up to my rss feed.
The act I’ve been given for this week has some HEAVY rewrites. I told my director I’d try to be done by the end of the week, but it’s pretty bad. I’m not exactly sure I’ll be able to make it. We’ll see how it goes.
Wednesday night, I showed my director my rough fixes for my act. Usually it takes me about a day or two to rough them out. It almost took me three for this one. I spent about a three and a half hours going over the act with my director. It was a very creative and exhausting experience. By the time it was over, it seemed to me that I had more work to do than I did before we started. And that was AFTER I had worked three days on the roughs already. I think the act is better off for it. I just wish I had more time.
…and now for something totally different…
Further down in this post I’ll be writing about GATCHAMAN. As I looked for pictures to use, I stumbled on these fantastic Simpsonized versions of the characters, courtesy of the FELIX IP blog. Go over to his site and give this artist/art director some love.
ART
(For those of you coming in late to these posts, if you want to read what my project is about, CLICK HERE to learn about the general world the story takes place in, and CLICK HERE if you want to know the story itself.)
Since I just wasn’t happy with what Rob’s design looked like (still), I tried doodling a version on the first piece of paper I had on hand. It so happened to be the last page of revision notes I had for the show I was working on a week ago. The notes are cryptic if read out of the context of the episode.
I liked the doodles and I used them as a model sheet:
I changed the model of Rob’s face from last week. I also added the raven on Rob’s shoulder:
I then began to clean up the drawings, and as usual, have lost something of the “life” from the roughs.
If you notice, the background is blue in some of the drawings. Why? Because that will be the color of the sky BEFORE the bad guys show up.
I’m going to give myself permission to mess around with these drawings a bit more. Especially the raven’s wings in the first shot. Still, they are just about ready to be colored.
Before I even began to do a clean up line, I experimented with timing out the scene, just to make sure it would work. I even thought of roughing out some “anticipation poses” and an “overshoot” pose but I’m not sure it’s what I want. It may plays just as clear without them. So far, it looks like it’s going to look good. Once I’m done cleaning up the last pose, I’ll begin coloring. Doing that will give me a guide as to how long it will REALLY take to finish my “Illustrated Film”. At that point I’ll make the decision whether or not to render out all the drawings or not.
BOARD GAMES/VIDEO GAMES
If you’ve read my blog for while, you know I love playing board games. The problem is that I don’t have anyone around to play them with. Once in a blue moon I might get a game in, but it doesn’t happen very often and my games just sit there collecting dust. Occasionally I play with my kids but they’re 4 and 2 1/2 years old. It’s not quite the same thing.
Sometimes, the only alternative is to play a video game version of a board game. The thing is, most of my favorite games don’t HAVE video game versions…or so I thought. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon this “Geeklist” at Boardgame Geek:
Though DOMINION is not exactly one of my favorite games, it IS a game that I own that I haven’t gotten to the table almost at all and I’ve been dying to play it. This gives me a happy alternative. To download this game, CLICK HERE.
Then there’s a the homemade unofficial MAGIC: THE GATHERING video game. MAGIC is one of my favorite games (CLICK HERE for my review), so it’s nice to be able to play it whenever I’d like. This one turned out to be a pretty darn good homemade game.
And last but not least. The game that got me the most excited. One of my favorite games, (if not my all time favorite game) DREAMBLADE! (CLICK HERE for my review) So AWESOME! Now I can play DREAMBLADE whenever I want. Hurray!
Of course, none of these video games actually replaces playing the game against a human being around a table, but it at least makes you feel like you’re getting a little bit of board gaming done.
I recommend you look at the list to see if you can find a video game version of YOUR favorite board game.
WEBSITES/MOVIES
I forgot who linked to this on Twitter. My guess is that it was ShermCohen. In any case, I thought these storyboard where inspiring. I really want my “Illustrated film” to have this much energy and clarity. I thought I’d share the link below:
Last Friday I went on fellow CARTOONISTATed Seko’s IDIOT ENGINE podcast. It was a lot of fun and if you haven’t heard Ted‘s podcast, you’re really missing out.
Here’s the link to the podcast, if you’re interested:
Not much to write about THIS week. I managed to finish up Act 1 of show 12 last Friday and this week I’ve been working on Act 3.
The big news for me was that my old board revisions partner has decided to go freelance and is no longer doing board revisions. This meant that another person took his place. A SIMPSONS veteran from a while back. Last week was his first week and he’s playing catch up on how everything works the same way I did when I first started. Wish him the best.
ART
(For those of you coming in late to these posts, if you want to read what my project is about, CLICK HERE to learn about the general world the story takes place in, and CLICK HERE if you want to know the story itself.)
I’ve been really trying to get the coloring of the drawing done. It’s pretty much there. I’ll need to add and clean up a few things but this is pretty much the way it will look:
Once I do the slight adjustments, I’m going to begin experimenting on the movement. I painted it all using Storyboard Pro. I’m not sure how much all the line work is going to slow down the program. I hope it’s not much, otherwise, this was all for nothing, or at the very least, will take me longer to do if I need to use another program. I hope I can do what I need to do.
What I did above was, take my old value study:
and used it as a guide for my colors. It helped a TON and I’m going to do it again with just about everything I do with color from now on. It took a lot of the guess work out of what I needed to do next and how I need to approach coloring it.
MOVIES
A lot has been said about how 2D, hand drawn animation, is dead. It is now obvious to me that the people who say that, haven’t watched THE SECRET OF KELLS.
THE SECRET OF KELLS is a movie the glorifies and thrives on it’s hand drawn, nature. Taking it’s art direction from illuminated manuscripts from the middle ages (specifically, The Book of Kells) THE SECRET OF KELLS bombards you with moving art like no movie has ever done.
I watched the movie awestruck at how beautiful it all was. I couldn’t believe it. I would have wept if it wasn’t for the fact that the story kept me my attention well enough so that it stopped me from doing so.
That brings me to the other thing that blew me away. The story wasn’t based on a fairytale (though it has a fairy in it) and wasn’t a musical. It wasn’t what most western animated mainstream movies tend to be about. Heck, it wasn’t even what most Anime tend to be about. This movie was about the very odd subject of monks writing an illuminated manuscript of the four Gospels historically called, The Book of Kells. It’s also the story about an abbot who’s lost touch with what’s truly important, while he tries desperately to defend his community from the coming of the viking marauders. The main character of the story is a boy who’s caught in between the love and obedience he has for his uncle the abbot and his love for illuminating manuscripts.
I loved it. Especially since I love the middle ages. It’s the only non Catholic animated movie I’ve ever seen that treats religious life as a normal way of life and makes no judgments upon it.
I can’t say enough good things about this movie. If you haven’t watched this movie, you owe it to yourself to do so.
THE SECRET OF KELLS proves that 2D hand drawn animation isn’t dead. Why? Well, even though CG can do many wonderful things, there is no way that a CG film could capture the 2 dimensional artistry that THE SECRET OF KELLS has produced.
For more comic and stories written by me, CLICK HERE.
If you like what you read, please consider signing up to my rss feed.
I was VERY grateful for our two day work week this week. I’ve been feeling burned out and the time off really helps. This week I started on a new crew. Time to start building up another show.
ART
I got working on my sister‘s second logo this week. I told her I kinda liked what I had originally done with the logo in my first pass. She then told me she did also BUT she didn’t think the pose itself captured the Yoga pose quite right. She told me it lacked the right energy.
I gave it another shot. I even added a yellow “energy” wave to try to sell the energy. I pushed the pose as much as I dared and then after I was done I grabbed the drawing (I drew this on the computer) and I pushed it some more. This is what I sent my sister:
She told me she like it but she didn’t want the yellow so I took it out. I then went in and cleaned the drawing up just a little bit more and it was done:
MOVIES
I’ve made no secret that I’m not a big admirer of the newest Star Wars movies. They’ve kinda messed up Star Wars quite a bit. I do enjoy watching both versions of the Clone Wars Cartoons (the 2D ones AND the 3D). Especially because they are made by Star Wars geeks that KNOW what makes Star Wars cool. I happen to know that the Clone Wars guys actually argue with George Lucas over some of his lame ideas. They’re my heroes.
Anyway, one of the worst Star Wars movies ever made was The Phantom Menace. If you don’t believe that it’s a bad movie, watch the film below. If you DO think it’s a bad movie, watch the film below as well, it’s going to make you laugh. If you are interested in film making or storytelling and want to know what is needed to tell a good story, watch the film below as well. It will learn you something.
WARNING:The following movie contains bad language but is darn funny:
MOVIES
I went to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie starring Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes. I enjoyed it quite a bit. I’ve read a few Sherlock Holmes stories as well as watched a few Sherlock Holmes TV shows and movies. The familiarity with the character’s previous adventures, helped me feel like I knew the back story of a lot of what is spoken about by the characters in this new movie. This new version of the characters is very different and yet I still think it felt right. Still, it was definitely a very “American” Sherlock Holmes and Watson. They acted more like cowboys than British gentlemen but then again, it DOES take place during the TIME of the wild west, so it wasn’t too inappropriate. In any case, I enjoyed the movie, and I hope they make more.
With the help of quite a few extra people, we managed to finish the show on time and in good shape. Such good shape that some of us had a small break during the day to relax after we finished our last scenes. Those are the best days.
Now I’ve moved on to help another crew. Back to the grind stone.
FAMILY
This is a bit embarrassing. Especially since I’ve known about this for the last five months but I’ve forgotten to mention it on this blog. I think it’s about time I let everyone know that Alesha is pregnant. We just found out this week that it’s going to be a BOY! I’ve been so excited about this new baby since I found out she was pregnant. To be completely honest, this is the first time I’ve been excited about having a baby. The first two times I had a difficult time being excited because I was too busy being worried about it. I didn’t know how we would handle a baby or what it would be like and all that. This time around, I don’t have any of those worries. I’m very excited. Yay!
MOVIES
(This is a spoiler free review)
I went on a “date” with Munchkin this weekend and watched The Princess and the Frog. It was her first time at the movies. She behaved incredibly well. She got tired of being in the theater about half way through the movie but she didn’t complain. She was a bit fidgety but she stuck it out. It would be nice if there were intermissions on kids movies, so the kids can stretch their legs.
Overall I thought it was entertaining. It felt good to see a 2D movie again. It felt very much like snuggling up with a warm blanket on a cold day for me. I liked the main character in the movie very much. My favorite character was the villain. He was done very well. I like that he wasn’t super powerful. That his power came at a price. The setting was great and I loved the backgrounds in the movie. It had really well composed shots. There were lots of great moments in the movie and I didn’t even mind the singing. In fact, I kinda wanted them to sing more for some reason. I almost felt that the movie need more musical numbers. The first song of the movie went off into a different art style and it looked fantastic. I wished they had done that with all the musical numbers. 2D features, should take advantage of the fact that they’re in 2D and that they can get away with that sort of thing.
However, the movie did have some problems that bothered me a bit.
The main one is basically this: After a five year hiatus from 2D animation, the best Disney can come up with is more of the same? Isn’t this the thing the got everyone tired of 2D Disney movies to begin with?
Also, from the start, BEFORE I even watched the movie, I didn’t like the way the much touted “first Disney black princess” was being shoved down our throats only to spend most of the movie looking like a frog. Watching the movie, my fears where confirmed. I didn’t like that at all. ESPECIALLY since she’s so darn charismatic and likeable as a human.
I also had absolutely no idea what ethnicity the Prince in the movie had. I still don’t.
And speaking of the other characters, there where WAY too many of them. A lot of them could have been done without. Especially Louie the alligator. The firefly in the movie was the REAL secondary character of the movie. He actually moved the story along and had some of the most touching scenes in the movie.
My taste in animation has changed over the years, I thought this movie was WAY over animated. The characters moved WAY too much. It bothered me. Just about every scene was overly hammed up. There was very few, truly natural looking acting in the movie. I thought the main bad guy had the best animation in the movie.
As far as the story goes, I thought it was trying to say too much. There was too much going on with too many characters and each character seemed to have two motivations for everything they did and they each learned two lessons if not three. I was talking to a friend of mine at work and we couldn’t quite pinpoint what the message of the movie was.
But, I think the thing that bothered me the most was the whole frog thing. I mean, I know that that’s what the movie is about, but I couldn’t help but think that there was another way for the character to have learned her lesson. It seemed to me that, they started out with the idea of The Princess and the Frog. Then, they thought it would be cool to turn it on it’s head as well as make it take place in New Orleans, which is fine. Then they decided to flesh out the main character and her background. But once they did that, the character kinda took on a life of her own. Suddenly they had this character that could really drive a story, a character who needed to “take over” the story. She needed a specific story that was catered specially for her…only…they had this frog thing that they had started out with. Instead of just letting the lead go her own way, they forced her to be in this frog story that they had originally created her to be in and it felt forced somehow.
Perhaps they over wrote the character. I can’t help but compare this character to the one in Hayao Miyazaki‘s Howl’s Moving Castle. Both characters were enchanted into becoming something else, and through that enchantment, discovered what they lacked and changed to become better rounded people. But in Howl’s Moving Castle the main character wasn’t charismatic or driven from the get go, so she grew into that role as the movie went on. Meanwhile the lead in The Princess and the Frog, had all kinds of good qualities to begin with, it was overkill to have her learn the lesson she learned by becoming a frog.
I seem very critical about the movie. And I am. I enjoyed myself never the less. It’s not a bad movie. I still recommend the movie because I know most people won’t even begin to think about the movie in the term I just laid out. It’s an entertaining movie to watch and has a lot a really great moments.
Munchkin said she liked it. Isn’t that enough?
ART
I finished the color pass on my sister‘s logo. Here’s the final color:
My sister had specific colors she wanted. I was thinking of something a little different and it was interesting to have to get out of my “color comfort zone”. I tend to use the same colors, over and over again. It was a nice change for me.
MY WEB COMIC
For those of you who are missing my cartoons, I just thought I’d let you know that once I’m done with the logo designs, I’ll try to start them up again. You also might be happy to know that I’m already on my way to producing an eleven page short gag comic starring The Black Terror Kid. Once I start getting the pages finished I’ll start posting them here on the blog in their own page.
The writing is done, the thumbnails are finished and the pages are under construction.
Here’s a sneak peek at the rough version of the first page:
When I look at this device, all I can think about is how I could apply it to comics or animation. It would be so easy for people to read online comics this way. As well as the way that the machine may revolutionize comic strips. I think perhaps comic strips might go from being static images to animated images. Instead of comic strips, imagine you get a Ghettomated cartoon like Jim Lujan‘s. If he can crank one out in a month, he can have it ready for a digital magazine no problem.
My all time favorite of the current batch of feature animated stop-motion movies is Coraline
I actually went to the theaters and I watched it in 3D. It was one of the few movies that I’ve actually gone to the movie theater to watch in 3D that I thought was appropriate to be watched in 3D.
So, it’s kind of creepy.
a little bit, so that it’s a little creepy, but the story works so well.
, Clark was even pushed into becoming Superman because of an alien invasion just like in the movie.
, starring Bradley Cooper. And it’s great, because what happens is at the beginning of the story, you see Bradley Cooper’s character on top of a building. He’s at the edge, he’s about to jump.
as I could.
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