Cartoonist Day

Alberto Breccia. AKA God.

Not long ago was animatiors day. Today I found out that here in Argentina, we celebrate cartoonist day (Día del dibujante).

It seemes that the date might have been selected to remember the passing of legendary comic book artist Alberto Breccia (there might be other reasons, but this one's the nicest). If you're Argentine, he needs no introduction. If you're not, go and google his amazing skills.

Well, once again, I'd like to congratulate everyone that can grab a pencil and make something beautiful. But with all this celebration around I have to ask: don't you ever work, people?

A method to its madness

There's a hidden email address.

Many of the things I like often get accused of being too random. This is a continuous debate among the fandoms of any given form of narrative: the one between the random and the you-just-don-t-get-it factions. Get in any 12 Oz. Mouse, No more Heroes or David Lynch forum thread and there’ll be people on both sides hurling their feces across the room. These discussions have become so clichéd that they are no longer boring, just plainly annoying. But I’ve been wondering if it was always that way.

Acually, I’ve been wondering a lot, lately. For example: I used to have to explain what “meta-language” meant, and now there are TV shows that self reference their humor as “meta”. We all know that nerd culture has become commercially successful, but we don’t, that often, ask ourselves how has that changed the way we perceive the world, and especially narrative, in its consumption and development. Don’t worry, I don’t even pretend to tackle such big subjects in one post. But I wanted to let you know this subject might become a series.

Anyways, back to the randomness debate…

Bill Plympton – Interview

I know I promised it a long time ago, but it is finally here. Our interview with Bill Plympton.

The man needs no presentation at all. He makes and distributes his own films, all by himself. He’s kind of the king of independent animation.

A few things that were left out of the final cut:

    1) It seems that Bill is talking with some people at MTV that want to start a new internet animation channel, and they want to get him highly involved. There’s nothing official, but good luck with that, Bill!

    2) My beautiful voice. Now, seriously, that was a blessing in disguise. This was my first interview of this kind and I was kinda nervous. The new ones are coming better, but lots of thanks to Bill for his patience.

Also, he mentions in the interview the Guard Dog Double Jam, an effort to re-make his Oscar-nominated short with the help of 70 animators. Check it out! One of them could be you!

Extra Credits - Facing Controversy

I was going to talk about last night’s South Park episode, about the reference to Miyazaki’s masterpiece My neighbor Totoro and last year’s reference to The killer joke (Thursdays are, after all, kinda my South Park days). But I’m not going to do that anymore.

In case you haven't heard of it yet, this is Daniel Floyd, James Portnow and Allison Theus’ show, Extra Credits, where they discuss different aspects of the video game industry. Daniel and James started making this kind of videos a couple of years ago under the name of “Talking about these”. The insight and the quality of their analysis set them apart from the rest of the video reviewers out there. They wrote some powerful stuff, but it took them ages to cook up new videos. Luckily, The Escapist cut some kind of deal and now we have them once a week.

The video I posted is a re-make version of last year’s show, and that’s why the references in it may not be that fresh. But I think it still is somewhat moving, and definitely worth a watch.

Back to the Future, re-building the past

It’s been almost 25 years since Back to the Future graced the silver screen with its presence for the first time, and we’re bound to see all kind of homage and revivals. Luckily, this time around there are no revamped versions to stir up the fandom but, instead, we’re getting a video game from Telltale Games (Sam & Max, Tales of Monkey Island) based on the adventures of Marty McFly and Doc Brown.

We all know that the translation from the big screen to the gaming world has one of the most infamous histories of our time. Most licensed titles tend up to be rushed and downright broken, due to the greedy efforts to milk the franchise of all that is worth while the hype’s still high. Nevertheless, there’s a new kind of game based on movies that doesn’t need to be butchered by release schedule of their film counterpart. These games are based on nostalgic and cult classics, revived to tell, once again, new tales from their dormant worlds. Among these we can count Evil Dead, Ghostbusters, The Warriors, The Godfather and, of course, the aforementioned Back to the Future.