lunes, 28 de febrero de 2011

Attraction (4°C)


Before starting to comment on Attraction, the short movie that Studio 4°C made as a PSA for The National Institute for Preventive and Health Education in France, I must say that it freakishly cool!! For those not in the know, the piece is an interactive short meant to teach you the dangers of smoking. It is interactive, yeah, but the cool part is the way you interact with it. I don't want to spoil the experience for anyone, so go to the site and check it yourself.

On a side note, the music was made by the amazing french artist Danger, which I interviewd some time ago and you can read that interview over here. Studio 4°C is also working in the remake of ThunderCats, that's supposed to come out sometime this year.

Strictly speaking, I don't know if I'm more aware now that I watched/played with the short. I don't know if it was patronizing their public in their depiction of smokers. It probably was, by demonizing tobacco companies in a childish way and making everyone less intelligent and more ignorant in the process. But it was so blantantly awesome that I almost find it hard to critique. The tragic irony lies in that they're raising a critique to the "coolness" with which tobacco brands are being marketed. It employs the same strategy as their competitors to get their point across, rather than focusing on raising awareness or educating their public.

So, in the end, it is superficial at best and manipulative at worst, but it certainly manages to be the coolest PSA I've seen in my life. At least it is not this crap.

domingo, 27 de febrero de 2011

Film Art


I have just spent my whole afternoon watching film art. There are a lot of great things out there, things that, from an artistic point of view, put our regular movie posters to shame. But among such many great works, I would be negligent to name just a few. So I'll just post these two that re-imagine their movies as if they were comics. The first one is from Easy Rider, by Scott Campbell, and I like the indie-comic approach that. The second one is a rework on The thin red line by Jeremy Jusay and, even if I find it less inspired, is noteworthy nonetheless.

viernes, 25 de febrero de 2011

Megamind's censorship


Today Megamind's DVD is out for sale, but that's not what I want to talk about.

Have you noticed that, during the movie, the rock songs never quite get to that part of the lyrics that you would say aren't appropiate for children? For example, "Highway to Hell" by AC/DC gets interrupted right before the world "Hell" is spoken. In the movie this is done through what I recall is a boombox going on and off the track. But that's not the only example, just the most sparkling one.

During Guns N' Roses "Welcome to the jungle" (here performed by the industrious Richard Cheese), the lyrics go "we are the people that can find/whatever you may need/if you got the money, honey/we got your disease"; but in the movie the last two verses are interrupted by dialogue from the characters.

I didn't find this interupted my experience with the movie at all, but found it curious how they managed to choreograph whole scenes in order to censor one part of the lyrics.

Anyways, these are the examples I remember. I didn't go back through the whole movie to see how much this happened. If anyone got more examples from this or other movies, I'm all ears.

jueves, 24 de febrero de 2011

And that's why I love these guys

Trails of Tarnation


Black Coffee: Chapter 1 of Trails of Tarnation from New Picture Agencies on Vimeo.

Do you remember the Perry Bible Fellowship? It suddenly stopped updating and I just forgot about it's existence. What's even stranger is that his creator, Nicholas Gurewitch, has done some animation work for the BBC. Yes, everyone I love leaves me for the BBC.


Elite Fleet Ep. 2 - The Broken Code from New Picture Agencies on Vimeo.

Anyhow, it also seems that he will be making a live-action webseries, now, and I, for one, am very excited about it. The whole story:

Nicholas Gurewitch is the mad cartoonist genius behind the Perry Bible Fellowship comic strip, one of the only web comics ever worth reading. He’s now turned his eye to a live action web series called Trails of Tarnation, a 12 parter about Derek and Jeff, two cowboys on the run from a corrupt Sheriff.
In the first episode, Black Coffee, the boys seek out a good strong cup of joe.
Here’s the official site.
Via: Badass Digest

martes, 22 de febrero de 2011

Star Wars' pixel-art by Mark Hamil's son


I think it's pretty sweet of him. And I love Mark Hamil. He'll always be my favorite Joker. The whole story goes as follows:

So out of the blue last night, Nathan Hamill sends me an e-mail sharing some cool art with me. In case you couldn't tell by the last name, Nathan is the son of Mark Hamill, better known as that one guy from Star Wars.
The image was "born out of [Nathan's] love for Star Wars and Nintendo" and it's based on the moment where Han Solo and Chewie won the Millennium Falcon from Lando Calrissian in a game of Sabacc. Get the Zelda reference? Nathan originally created the piece for the So Analog Show at Designer Con last year where you can see the image on a custom created Nintendo Entertainment Cartridge.
Nathan's blog has a lot of cool art on it in fact, including this disturbing DuckTales image.

It's strange that his dad ain't in the picture. But I won't get all freudian about it.

via: Destructoid

Editorial: The Simpsons



I’m through with The Simpsons.

I’m not going to enter a cynical speculation about how they have outlived their own creativity a long time ago. Throughout the more than twenty years I’ve been watching them, we have some good times and bad times together. They have changed, and probably they’ll keep on changing, but so have I. It’s not anyone’s fault, really, our relationship just grew cold and stale and routine started caving in between us and we just grew tired of each other. We grew apart and I suddenly noticed that the things they do now aren’t meant for my amusement anymore. I tried really hard to make it work, but I’m just tired now.

viernes, 18 de febrero de 2011

Tomm Moore - Interview



I know it's been a while since our last interview. As a matter of fact, due to personal reasons, it's been some slow weeks.

But enough of that. Here we have an AMAZING interview with the AMAZING Tomm Moore (Secret of Kells, from Cartoon Saloon). I'd like to offer mad props to Pablo, who edited the video. And I know it sounds cocky coming from us, but it really looks great. I'm trully thrilled!

He even did subtitles. Sí, ¡subtitulos en español para todos!

Hope you enjoy watching it as we enjoyed making it.

jueves, 17 de febrero de 2011

Kidscreen Summit




Since last Tuesday, after the Valentine’s Day sugar-hangover, we were in the Kidscreen Summit in NYC. If you’re around you can probably find Max who’ll delight you with his suave presence and will be able to talk about our IPs and projects at ease.

If you’re not there, you can join me on envying Max from afar. But no, seriously, I’d like to formally wish Max the best of lucks on his journey.

viernes, 11 de febrero de 2011

'90s all over again


Did you know that MTV has their cartoon properties from the nineties online? I spent last night watching The Maxx once again on their website and, for the first time in my life, in a quality superior to VHS or crappy cable signal. About The Maxx, I still prefer the cartoon over the comic. The story closes quite well leaving some ambiguity and mistery about Maxx's and Julie's relationship, and I don't have to face Mr. Gone's backstory, which still gives me nightmares (Good God! It cannot be unseen!). Did you know that The Maxx was in a Sonic comic? I mean, THE MAXX! A character that's involved in stories of rape and children without eyes is in a Sonic comic. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Oh, well, I think that later today I'll be watching Aeon Flux and I'll try to get rid of the memories of that awful movie.

martes, 8 de febrero de 2011

Simon Pegg preps up Brad Bird for acceptance speech



So, Brad Bird received an Annie not long ago. He was not there to receive the price himself, but we can see the talented Simon Pegg helping out Bird in the wording of his sentences on his acceptance video. It's nice to see talented people playing along.

Oh, there was a certain famous scientologist helping him out too!

Axe Cop - The movie


Axe Cop: The Movie - Part 1 from Peter Muehlenberg on Vimeo.

A fan made a fan-made movie based on legendary badass Axe Cop's titular webcomic. Axe Cop is a webcomic writen by a 6 year old called Malachai Nicolle and drawn by his 29 yeas old brother, Ethan Nicolle. And it is awesome. In one episode, Abe Lincoln becomes a nuclear god as part of a convoluted plan to change his sex and marry Axe Cop. I'm not kidding.

The movie tells the story of Axe Cop's first episode, where we get to know the origin story of this character.It was directed Peter Muehlenberg.

jueves, 3 de febrero de 2011

Indie Sketches


This is the coolest thing I've seen all week. We're pretty used to sketches of animated series and features popping here and there, but video games, in this aspect, are a rara avis (yeah, I handle Latin, bitches!). They might come as an extra in some fancy DVD, pre-order, golden or platinium or plexiglass edition. But what about indie games? Well, now we can take a peek at those too! Thanks to amazing site GAMESTORM, you can start fulfilling all your voyeuristic indie pleasures! I know I will.

martes, 1 de febrero de 2011

When two worlds collide


Three worlds explode:



FYI, the two persons in the first photo are Steve Carrell and Ricky Gervais, who play the same character in the different versions of The Office and are doing a little opening sketch for the US version of the aforementioned show. In the bottom picture we can see three versions of Mark Zuckerberg (of Facebook fame), including the allegedly original, opening for SNL.