In the early 90's I was exposed to anime and some phenomenal stuff at that too. What attracted me to it was the attention to details. One could follow shadows into the furrows on a character's brow; split screen action shots and many other gimmicks. If you've seen the cartoon series Samurai Jack one can see each and everyone of these cliches in one episode. Today the anime scene sucks and can be compared to Bollywood movies- garish in use of colours and unrestrained melodrama.
The Running Man was directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri. Its split up into two parts and uploaded onto youtube by someone considerate. Yoshiaki Kawajiri was also behind the Ninja Scroll series and the 'World Record' episode in the Animatrix. Enjoy the wonder that was yesterday's anime.
Part 1
Part 2
Showing posts with label animation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label animation. Show all posts
August 19, 2007
June 30, 2007
Genesis - Land of Confusion
An old favourite with wonderful lyrics. Puppets in the video were created by the guys behind the show Spitting Image .
June 12, 2007
April 18, 2007
Growing Up in the 80's (Part 1): SUPER TED!
In the 80's, I grew up watching cartoons & programs mostly produced in the UK. I've seen most of the stuff produced by Cosgrove Hall and then some. So in a series of posts I'll introduce you to some of the best stuff I have ever seen till date. Around that time a lot of anime-esque shows were gaining popularity and most kids my age preferred watching violent crap like G.I. Joe and mecha shite. I loved the non-violent stuff produced by Cosgrove Hall. I think this was because I started reading voraciously around the time and most of the cartoons were based on popular children's books. These cartoons were unlike the melodramatic soaps (read as pokemon & anime) of today. To start of the series we have Super Ted! He needs no introduction as the following clip says it all.
It still is one of the coolest intro for a cartoon in my book. Note the orchestral score in the background. One important thing about Super Ted is that he looks like an ordinary teddy bear. But at the first sign of trouble he says his magic word & unzips his ordinary guise and becomes SUPER TED! Incidentally, The magic word was given to him by Mother Nature. We never hear the magic word when Ted mumbles it. Ted tells us that it is so because its a secret. The wee bastard!
Ted lives with two friends on Planet Spot - Spotty Man (voiced by the 3rd Doctor Who -Jon Pertwee) and Blotch (a female version of Spotty Man). The Villain is Texas Pete and he is an American and definitely not nice . Pete has two cronies - a timid Skeleton who loves kittens and soft things; The other guy is a fat guy called Bulk (he is the duh-dumb type). The show was originally produced in Welsh and later dubbed into English.
For further entertaining stuff about SuperTed look here and here.
It still is one of the coolest intro for a cartoon in my book. Note the orchestral score in the background. One important thing about Super Ted is that he looks like an ordinary teddy bear. But at the first sign of trouble he says his magic word & unzips his ordinary guise and becomes SUPER TED! Incidentally, The magic word was given to him by Mother Nature. We never hear the magic word when Ted mumbles it. Ted tells us that it is so because its a secret. The wee bastard!
Ted lives with two friends on Planet Spot - Spotty Man (voiced by the 3rd Doctor Who -Jon Pertwee) and Blotch (a female version of Spotty Man). The Villain is Texas Pete and he is an American and definitely not nice . Pete has two cronies - a timid Skeleton who loves kittens and soft things; The other guy is a fat guy called Bulk (he is the duh-dumb type). The show was originally produced in Welsh and later dubbed into English.
For further entertaining stuff about SuperTed look here and here.
February 26, 2004
Home-Made Explosives & Shootings
Day 3: Finally finished a 2 second shooting cannon sequence. 15 drawings in all- the cannon cocks up, shoots a cannon ball (duh!), does a jump for a recoil & falls apart. This would have been a flash if I had used a Flash MX (PC program). But when it comes to pen & paper its like manufacturing a cannon. The scene showed the cannon centred & lenghtwise; it had a wheel too. The fuse burns out, the cannon cocks up in a staggering fashion & shoots wonderfully... Look Ma no hands! But the X-Factor that screwed this piece was the wheel. The wheel had to respond to the cocking cannon by squashing itself, this took a day to get right. I found that sqashing & skewing it corrected the problem. Next phase recoil. For the recoil I had to rely on my sense of timing, i.e, "BE ONE WITH THE CANNON" (echo effect). Got that part fantastically wrong. The cannon looked like it floated back along an arc after shooting. So I had to decrease the arc radius & VOILA!! cannon shoots & recoils!
A line test is a preliminary movie of the rough drawings, that comprises the animation. Line tests save a lot of time & pain when it comes to getting the desired actions right. Sometimes the actions look almost right but ur eye lingers on this one 'thing'. U play the footage at different speeds & still don't get a clue abt whats going wrong. This explains the 3 days for the 2 sec cannon blast.
Next comes the part that sucks. Clean up! Its a painstaking process of neatly tracing out the rough drawings for the final shoot. We had this instructor, Sudeep. He claimed that he sucked at clean-up & hired people to do it for him. In his words " For this u need patience. Its a womans' job".
Concentration is tantamount. Tomorrow, must remember to kick Vikas's ass before beginning drawings. He happens to be the local hyperactive pest. Speaking of kicks, have u noticed that Charlie Chaplin movies had awesome kicks. The kicks where normal but the affect was devastating on the big brute's posterior. What actually happened was this, the actors acted really well, they had to exagerate actions as it was a comedy & u had no sound for the movies then. They kicked in such a way it compensated for the lack of sound too. But what made it funny was the reduced frame rate. The time delay between kick & effect on ass was very small. This also explains the walks in those movies, they were fast. Accepted frame rate today is 24 frames per second i.e, 24 drawings or stills per second.
A line test is a preliminary movie of the rough drawings, that comprises the animation. Line tests save a lot of time & pain when it comes to getting the desired actions right. Sometimes the actions look almost right but ur eye lingers on this one 'thing'. U play the footage at different speeds & still don't get a clue abt whats going wrong. This explains the 3 days for the 2 sec cannon blast.
Next comes the part that sucks. Clean up! Its a painstaking process of neatly tracing out the rough drawings for the final shoot. We had this instructor, Sudeep. He claimed that he sucked at clean-up & hired people to do it for him. In his words " For this u need patience. Its a womans' job".
Concentration is tantamount. Tomorrow, must remember to kick Vikas's ass before beginning drawings. He happens to be the local hyperactive pest. Speaking of kicks, have u noticed that Charlie Chaplin movies had awesome kicks. The kicks where normal but the affect was devastating on the big brute's posterior. What actually happened was this, the actors acted really well, they had to exagerate actions as it was a comedy & u had no sound for the movies then. They kicked in such a way it compensated for the lack of sound too. But what made it funny was the reduced frame rate. The time delay between kick & effect on ass was very small. This also explains the walks in those movies, they were fast. Accepted frame rate today is 24 frames per second i.e, 24 drawings or stills per second.
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