Rankin/Bass

Yeah, I just posted about it on LJ, because, I dunno, why not?
http://checkeredgeek.livejournal.com/41177.html?mode=reply

RIP Emru

I'm sad. I've never even met the guy, but I'm sad. The most unbiased, logical and articulate animation critic and enthusiast has passed away. Will there ever be another guy like him? I find that when many critics and bloggers write about animation, they can sound biased, inconsistent, occasionally difficult to understand... Emru wasn't like that. I remember his Wall-E and Kung Fu Panda reviews being very well thought out, while others were either blindly praising or bashing said films. I won't name names. I loved that his main complaint about Kung Fu Panda was the abundance of fat jokes. He is, after all, a panda. Who else would have thought of that? This was a guy who was thoughtful. Yes, thoughtful. Not fueled by anger against Adult Swim or Seth MacFarlane, just a thoughtful person who knew a lot about animation.

Emru Townsend was an expert on a wide variety of animation. I mean, this encompasses the likes of Looney Tunes, The Nine Old Men, Frederick Back, Norman McLaren, Rock and Rule, Ralph Bakshi, Aardman, anime and manga, animation installations, and just about anything related to animation, comics, cartoons, etc. Part of the diversity of FPS Magazine was due to the diversity of its contributing writers, but Emru himself had such a wealth of knowledge on the subject, he could have written the whole damn magazine himself. I'm not saying he should have, I'm just saying he knew a lot.

I'll still check FPS every day like I normally (try to) do, but Emru was FPS Magazine. It's still a great publication, one of the best out there. I know for a fact that Tamu, Kino Kid, and the whole FPS Staff are going to keep the website running strong.

Well, anyway... he will be missed. One more thing though. For those of you who donated bone marrow in reaction to Emru, keep donating when you are able to. If you didn't donate, but wanted to, you can still help save someone's life. Visit Heal Emru for more information.

whoa...

School

Well, I'm in school now. I'll be juggling that with my own personal creative time, practicing my drawing skills and following Preston Blair and John K's lessons. I've already started, but I'm slow and a perfectionist. I need to stop over-thinking things. Hell, I might even start going to the zoo to draw animals. Maybe that's too pretentious. I should probably stick to drawing my girlfriend or my cat for a while.

I'm taking sculpture though, which should be good. I've always loved sculpture, and I feel like it will be a good skill to develop. I'm also taking photo, which I'm mostly clueless about, but it's also a good skill to have.

Oh, and thanks to Jenny Lerew for the comment on my last post! I'm pretty happy that someone from the industry has looked at my blog-- and who worked on cartoons I grew up on! She also corrected me on one of my many embarrassing and pretentious Cartoon Brew comments. I've said some stupid things in my time, but I've never been corrected so warmly.

On Laziness

I love my girlfriend. I bought her a book of Dan Decarlo pin-ups. She loved it so much, she got me this book:
The Classic Pin-Up Art of Jack Cole, Published by the good folks at Fantagraphics.

I'll talk more about Jack Cole later, but right now, all I have to say is that he's really inspired me to get off my ass and do something. The guy had almost no art background, other than a mail-order cartooning course. This reminded me of John K's cartooning course, so I figured I should take action.

Here's another thing that motivated me to stop being lazy:


And then of course, this Brew post...

Turns out I was stupid

Upon looking at Cartoon Brew's recent post, and finding the Lauenstein brothers' website, I now realize that I was in fact being stupid. According to their website, they worked on a number of commercials involving the characters from Balance. I've looked on their website before, so I don't know why I didn't notice this before.

They don't actually list the Sega CD commercial on their website, but this is probably because it's not really worth mentioning. The commercials they do mention are for MTV and several PSA's, which are more impressive than a promotional video for a video game console that failed miserably.

I was watching a tape of Liquid Television recently, and saw the sequence with the Balance guys, and was even going to post about it... but then I read the CB post... so, yeah.

Balance and Sega-CD ad

So, here's something I've been meaning to talk about for a while, even before I started this blog. It's been bugging the hell out of me.

I saw the Oscar-winning German animated short film Balance (1989) when I was about nine. It was one of those shorts that really got me into foreign animation, and also helped to show me what the medium of animation is capable of.



While watching videos on YouTube, I stumbled across this (the part I'm talking about comes in after 45 seconds) :



The similarities can't be denied. The look of the characters, their actions, the object of interest that is in front of them... well, you be the judge. It's worth noting that this is the European Sega CD commercial, and this may have something to do with it. I really have no idea if the two are related, or if it was a work of plagiarism. I can't find any info about it anywhere, and yet I feel like I'm being stupid by wondering. Hopefully I'll figure this out...