THE SIMPSONS NEWS

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.

What did I think of the movie?

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:

…and speaking of web comics…

VIDEO

I came by this the other day on Twitter (Follow me on Twitter).

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.

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