Batman: The Brave & the Bold

CHECK OUT THE NEW BATMAN CARTOON!!!



That looks AWESOME!!! SPECTACULAR!!! MAGNIFICENT!!! AND the show focuses on something totally new: Batman working with other heroes. And NOT Superman, Wonder Woman, or John Stewart Green Lantern, no no. This show is all about utilizing lesser known characters. I LOVE lesser known characters! They're the most interesting! PLASTIC MAN for Christ's sake! Amazing! The art direction looks amazing. While I love the Bruce Timm style, it's become pretty familiar. First Teen Titans, that's pretty alright. Legion of Superheroes was next to break the Bruce Timm stylistic touch, looked just as good as Teen Titans, maybe better. Now this Batman cartoon. Blows my mind. Way too cool. I know I'm a total dork, don't care. This cartoon looks very promising. Just check out that Black Manta!



I LOVE BLACK MANTA.

I swear that the guy who drew this has read my diary. I have way too much love for this next image. The highest legal amount of love. The highest amount of love that I can have for it without risking legal repercussions.


Cool, exciting, interesting secondary characters. Refreshing art direction. Awesome Batman costume. Where could they go wrong? I'm not that pumped about the Blue Beetle looking like the current Blue Beetle:



Instead of the old Blue Beetle, which is obviously better.



I'll let that one slide though. I love the Dick Sprang inspired style. Here's a real "Spranger."



Starts tomorrow on Cartoon Network at 7 central. I'll let you know what I think about it.

Gerald McBoing-Boing (1951) Opening Sequence

I started watching the great 1951 UPA short, Gerald McBoing-Boing again, and forgot how cool the opening sequence was, so I decided to post it up for ya'll. This is obviously a really important piece of 1950's animation, if not the most influential animation and design of its time. The entire video is posted below the pictures, I highly encourage you to watch it. I'm highlighting this opening sequence because I haven't seen something this neat in any recent cartoons, and professionally-made and distributed animated shorts are pretty scarce nowadays. Sorry about the edges of the pictures getting cut off. That's Blogger's fault.



Directed by Bobe Cannon, an ex-Looney Tunes animator from the 30's and 40's and a UPA mainstay. Story by Dr. Seuss! McBoing-Boing animator Bill Melendez went on to voice Snoopy and Woodstock in all the Peanuts cartoons, though he sadly just passed on. He also was an animator on some Looney Tunes. Designer Bill (William T.) Hurtz went on to direct some Rocky & Bullwinkle episodes, as well as the 1989 feature Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland.





















Boing!

Boing!

What a cool way to introduce the characters and the scene! Here's the whole thing:

United Airlines "Heart" Commercial

I found this on Shannon Tindle's blog. Another great stop motion commercial from United Airlines. Done with real paint on real paper in real life. I wish I had the patience and skill to do something like this. Click the picture to watch!



Here's another United Airlines commercial done the same way, but in a different drawing style. This one's really cool too. Not as high quality though. D:

Cryptids pt. 1

We have an assignment in Digital Illustration class in which we have to draw 3 cryptids. This is the first of my 3, the dreaded Ninki Nanka from the Congo, a 50-foot crocodilian type creature reminiscent of mosasaurs. I've been reading a lot of Jack Kirby's 1978 comic Devil Dinosaur lately, which is where I'm drawing my inspiration from. Here's some of Kirby's Devil Dinosaur work. The comic is about a red T-Rex type creature and "Moon Boy, the first human." It's a comic about a giant red dinosaur that rules the valley while this little ape-man rides around on his back and gives him orders. What more could you ask for?



Every issue of Devil Dinosaur seems to have a killer 2-page splash. Maybe I'll post more of the splashes later.

1960's Viewmaster Images

These are some scans of Viewmaster slides from the 1960's I found around the web. Viewmasters work by using two photos of the same subject taken at slightly different angles. What you end up seeing is a stereoscopic image, 3-D if you will. Because these are scans of just one slide at a time, they won't look stereoscopic to you. I'm just going to assume you've all used a Viewmaster in your lifetime, and if not, you'll go here: http://www.3dexpo.com/parallel.htm Onto the images. The subjects in the slides are real-life 3-dimensional statuettes and sets. I guarantee any Hollywood 3-D CG takes on these characters wouldn't look nearly as great as these.

First, some Flintstones slides. Aren't these amazing?









I want to have one of these sets in my house. They're so damn cool. These Yogi Bear slides were linked to on Cartoon Brew recently, and rightfully so.






Awesome. Just awesome. Disney got in on it too.






This one's pretty hilarious...



Somebody baked Elmer a little too long.



And finally, something from the Charles Schulz camp. These translated to 3-D especially well. On a side note, if you haven't seen any Peanuts animated specials since you were 5, give them a try again this coming appropriate holiday season. They're a lot funnier than I remembered them being.

HAND'S BREADTH FROM DANGER

A long time ago, I did some films that I don't talk about anymore. This is one of those films. I provided the voice acting in this, Owen Dennis's 2006 epic, Hand's Breadth from Danger.

Here's another old underrated Owen Dennis project I was part of, Aquarium in the Corner.