What What??

Big Shout out to the WhatWhat people for adding my work to the LogoMojo collection on their site!

Thanks Guys!

Steamboy

I don’t think anyone can deny that Otomo is a genius. Akira was my first (and indeed most peoples first) known experience of watching anime. The quality of animation that went into Akira, still to this day has not been beat.

Otomo is one of three Japanese animation directors (the others been Miyazaki and Anno) who have the freedom and the budget to do pretty much whatever the fuck they want! Metropolis (based on work by Tezuka) and Memories (in particular “Cannon Fodder”) both have an air of quality, which not while not as good as Akira, still rain above most western efforts at exciting action/adventure animation.

Steamboy, Otomo’s latest film to date is probably his worst. Don’t misunderstand me the film is fantastic!

But Steampunk is a tough nut to crack, the majority of people simply wont accept or understand this type of sci-fi and trying to explain it in one movie is too much for the viewer. This is also shown in the film “wild, wild, west” which was a Hollywood flop. It’s a period based sci-fi, which is been used to reflect the overwhelming increase of today’s technology. Understand? Good then you qualify to watch the film!

Otomo’s script for Steamboy, while not as self-indulgent as Oshii’s films (Innocence: GITS 2 springs to mind) is jumbled and slows the action down quite a bit. Though making everyone other than the main character “corrupt” is quite clever. I also enjoyed that they included “Robert Lewis Stevenson” as a main character, but to make him corrupt as well, that is genius!

My only other problem is with the visuals, the films is amazing to look at, but suffers from the same as most of today’s digitally coloured films. It lacks the raw quality that Akira gave, things like the digitally airbrushed shadows on the characters has always looked awfull, as when I first saw it in the “Lion King”. The steam or explosions, look no way near as good as the one used in Akira and the backgrounds (though fantastic and well researched) lack the quality of colouring that Akira or Metropolis has.

Overall though the film is great, the ending is spectacular! As with all of Otomo’s films. But chances are you would enjoy it more if you know and understand the theory behind “Steampunk” sci-fi before attempting to watch the film. If not, you could be left confused.

Comments on the blog!

For some reason, i have selected that any member of joe public can comment on my blog, but it seems to revert back to only signed up members of blogger?

I not sure why this keeps happening, but i'll try and get it fixed ASAP!

Mickey Mouse in Living Colour

Here's a picture i drew for the wonderfull "everybody needs 2 draw mickey once" project. Go a head, try it your self! :)

Feature animation backgrounds: real vs style

I recently had an argument with Bill Wray about the use of realistic style backgrounds in feature animation (the only reason it was an argument was because of miscommunication and i infact whole heartily agree with bill). It has been brought to my intention that very few feature cartoons over the past decade have had stylised backgrounds. The only features that i can think of are:

The Powerpuff Girls Movie,
Spongebob Squarepants movie,
Teacher’s pet movie.

All of which have had to prove their own style on television first. Is this because studios don’t have faith within the movie going audience in appreciateing stylised backgrounds, or would not be able to associate and therefore would lose interest instantly?? Studios should have a little more faith in the audience!

Though i wouldn’t want realistic backgrounds (such as those in Studio Ghibli movies) to be totally abandoned in anyway and i would hate to see every feature just having cheap knock-offs of mary blair work, i would like to see producers and studios have more balls when it comes to design in features.

Demon days

Got the new gorrilaz album today. Great stuff, however i dont think the music is as good as the last album.
Also my samurai jack season 2 dvd set turned up today, so i think i'll spend tonight watching that!!! :)
Still trying to figure out the limits of this new blog site and howmuch i'm able to customise it.

hiya all!

welcome to my blog! theres nothing here yet, as i'm just started!