Hoops and Yoyo

If you have ever received an e-card through the email from someone, you have probably come across Hoops and Yoyo. They are an animated duo that was created by Hallmark. Highly annoying, but seriously funny. The animation is very minimal, but at the same time strait foreward and in an in-your-face style. I beleive they are flash animated cartoons. As they are made by Hallmark, they are different cartoons that are available holiday and special event based.

The detail and range of animation is very minimal. As you can probably tell its what the characters do and say in the shorts that keeps me going back and checking to see if there is a new one. The characters kind of pick up and set down in a straight sort of hobble to walk. The heads of the characters move as a real one shouldn't. If a real head moved in this manner, it would twist itself off. As we dicussed in class, the charaters over exaggerate their movement to show what they are really saying or thinking at the moment.

The first time that I came across them was in an emailed e-card from my girlfriend for valentines day. It was pretty funny. You can find the card that I got here. The third animation is probably one of the funniest light-hearted things that I have seen on the internet. You would have to have seen the Godfather series to get it though. You can find their website and a whole slew of shorts featuring the two of them at Hoopsandyoyo.com.

Cool World

Alot of people have seen animation mixed in with live action. But Cool World really made this idea popular. You might be thinking that Who Framed Roger Rabbit made it mainstream, but I disagree. I really did not care for the latter. But when I was in the third grade Cool World really caught my attention. I was too young to understand most of the adult themes, but my parents took me to "R" rated movies since I was in kindergarten so I understood most of it.
The character Holli Would played by Kim Basinger and the Noid, Detective Frank Harris (a live action person living in a cartoon world), played by Brad Pitt was really a new concept to me. I liked the fact that the movie dealt with more adult themes than Roger Rabbit, even though I was only about 9 years old. The overall plot was that Holli Would wanted to "get with" (for lack of a better word to make a "G" rated blog) Frank Harris to become human, and feel what Humans could feel and cross over into our world. The world that she lived in was the Cool World, thought to be created by a comic book artist that was in jail. Her ultimate goal was to combine both worlds so that she could literally get the best of both.
The animation in this movie I think was flawless. They animated the emotions of the characters perfectly. There were two animated characters that looked human. The rest looked like they were out of a 1930's era cartoon. Even the way that the characters referred to the police as poppers related to this. I also think that the interaction with the human and animated characters were better than Roger Rabbit. This movie was definitly ahead of it's time. I would recomend this movie to whoever has not seen it.

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The Original Superman

The animation of the first Superman cartoons are very rich in color. But one thing that I found lacking was the actual animation in the cartoon. It seemed as though the frame rate was very slow. That and there alot of quality drawing that were not actually moving. The characters moved very rigid as well. I think that the animators tried to focus too much on the coloring and the detail of the cartoon and left out the animation part of it. It resemebles mostly a comic strip that moves. The voices are also a little low and sluggish. It seems that the Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons flowed better than this one did. The Superman cartoon was also missing another key point that defined cartoons of the day- Comedy.

Comedy is what drove the cartoons in the 1920's and 30's. It was a way for the care free people of the 20's to entertain their fast paced lives and for the poverty ridden people of the 30's to escape theirs. But Superman did not draw upon this key ingredient. Instead drew upon the audiences preexisting knowledge of the superhero and made him move. Nothing more, nothing less. I think this cartoon was just meant to be eye candy for the people who loved him in his comic book and comic strip.

A quick deviation- I can't beleive Popeye was in the Coast Guard. A big icon like that mixed with the lax reputaion of the Coast Guard just doesn't sit well with me. One thing about the Popeye cartoons that I noticed was that although the characters were not drawn to a realistic human like appearance, the animation flowed very well and was fairly complex. The sound was a little shoddy though. It sounded like the characters were mumbling most of the time. I do not know if the cartoon was made like this or if the sound was not remastered.

On a side note- here is a testament to saying that with a little digging, you can find anything on the internet. The first 10 Superman cartoons by Max Fleischer can be found online to view for free at http://superman.ws/fos/thescreen/cartoons/.

Homestarrunner.com

It was an internet sensation when I was a freshman. Homestarrunner.com. It's a website full of short flash animation cartoons revolving around the Homestar Runner, Strong Bad, and other characters. They even spawn off other cartoons as the inside jokes between the characters go on. There is usually one or two new cartoons to watch every week. The center of attention is not the Homestar Runner, it is actually Strong Bad. Every week he answers an email sent in from an actual person. Each of these emails can be broken down into these stages.
Strong Bad reads the email on his computer out loud. He severely mispronounces the name of the writer everytime, so that it makes fun of it. Stong Bad then answers the question from the email through an elaborate animated story. It is often way over the top. The cartoon then goes back to the image of the email on Strong Bad's computer screen as he finishes up talking. When the cartoon ends, the animation stops. This is the part I like best about the Stron Bad Emails. If you wait long enough, something usually funny will happen. You can also look for easter eggs, hidden points in the screen that when pressed will activate a secret animation. There are usually several of these on the end of an email. A secret is that if you press tab, it will highlight one by one all of the secret spots on the screen that activate the animation.
One interesting thing that connects Homestarrunner.com to our class is that the Brothers Chaps (the creators and animators of the show) like to copy the techniques used in the old days of animation. They reinvent the characters of the cartoon and place then in look alike animations of 1936. The characters move and act as if they would in the early days of animation. In an interview that I can no longer locate on the internet, the creators of the cartoon say that they enjoyed that period of animation and when they do this segment, they actually enjoy it the most. The way the animation glows and the gimmics are right there with the old days of animation.
The Brothers Chaps similarly do the same thing with putting their characters into a look alike japanese anime. The way the eyes look, the way their mouths move and the way the characters jump seemingly forever are portrayed perfectly. The Brothers Chaps do a great job with these three types of animation. If you havn't ever been to Homestarrunner.com, I highly recomend checking it out at http://homestarrunner.com. There is alot there, so I would recomend finding the chronological order it was made so that you can understand what is going on.

Prince Akhmed and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children

Being from the year 2005, I have to say that at first the silhouette animation didn't quite appeal to me. I wasn't much for the documentary either. But, when we got into watching Prince Akhmed, I started to get interested. Even though the animation was old and it was not in English, I think it added to the experience. It really made me use my imagination more to try to follow the story. Like we discussed in class, the silhouettes were human looking, but exaggerated to make a better impression. The Prince and the female that he meets have normal features, with plain looking faces. The bad guy (I should call him because I don't know his name), on the other hand, has very exaggerated facial features like a long crooked nose and mouth. He also changes into unpleasant things such as a bat, which distinguishes him to be the bad guy.

Outside of class in the animation world, something big just happened in Japan. Last night Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children was released on DVD. This movie is made by the remenants of the studio that produced Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within. As some know, The Spirits Within was almost a complete financial disaster for Squaresoft. The movie had nothing to do with any of the loosely related video game series Final Fantasy, and those who were avid players were mad. This sort of paved the way for two of the most popular Role Playing Game giants to merge. So Squaresoft and rival Enix merged to make Square-Enix.

This is where Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children will do better. This time the movie is based on the most popular game in the series, which is actually the most popular video game of all time (based of sales), and hits number 1 on most greatest games of all time lists as well. It uses the same great CGI animation style that The Spirits Within used but relies on more familiar faces and characters to pull it off. The animation is great and fluid, the best you can find in the industry. You can see individual hairs on the characters, and it flows just like it would in real life. Same goes for the clothes and facial expressions.

The movie is more for nostalgia though. It recreates some of the most memorable scenes in the games for viewers to enjoy as flashbacks. It just came out last night, and is already available on the internet. Even though it was in Japanese, I was able to follow the story. It was kind of like watching Prince Akhmed. I highly recommend it to anyone who is either a fan of animation or the game.

If you want to check out the trailers for the movie, go here.http://www.square-enix.co.jp/dvd/ff7ac/
If you look hard enough, you can find the entire movie as well. It's worth the hunt.

History of Animation and Robotech

I never thought that I would spend over $2,000 to sit in class and watch cartoons. I guess for that much money I would have to study them as well. As for chapter one in Maltin, I found it incredibly dull. I don't want to leave my thoughts on this chapter as being bad. I thought that a cartoon appearing to be able to go behind something to give it more depth was somewhat interesting. Why hadn't they thought to do that before but to just draw it in. Also I thought that it was unreal that audiences refused to believe that they were watching a truly moving picture, and not a trick with wires. How did they expect someone to manipulate wires to do such things?

Well, most seemed to write about their favorite cartoon. I might as well go ahead and put it out there since this is a class on the history of animation. And although this particular piece did not originate in America, it did sweep our nation in one of the first cartoon crazes ever. Robotech. I used to be a Robotech junkie. Anyone who is my age or older will remember this classic masterpiece. It wasn't known just for its innovations in coloring styles and and varied shades that was soon repeated up until today, it was mostly known for its moving story line. It is sort of the first cartoon soap opera. And it hit big in America. And I freaking love it. (I know I'm not supposed to say that but seriously, go check it out. You'll be sucked in from the first episode.)

As I said before, Robotech did not originate in America. I could actually say that is half true. Robotech is a series that came from Japan in the coolest time period to ever hit the earth- the early 1980's. But it didn't all come from one series, it was actually three. Macross, Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber Mospeada. These three animes from Japan had nothing to do with each other. But the producers at Harmony Gold decided that it would be a good ideas to take these three separate animes, and make them one cartoon with three generations called The Macross Saga, The Robotech Masters, and The New Generation. They also dubbed the show to make it so that they flowed into one another and had a common relative plot. Personally I like the "first generation" in which the ship called the Macross is centered. But I am going to leave it at that since this is a history of animation class. I'll leave it as a breif history of robotech without going into the plot. And yes, I was so much of a junkie that I bought the entire seven season collectors "masterpiece" set worth about $350. Maybe in a couple of years it will be worth more.

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