Some Lego Stop Motion and Shak Budisen Movie Update

Here's my entry into the overpopulated world of lego stop motion. I mostly just made it for fun. The Shak Budisen movie is really coming along. There's almost 4 minutes of completed voices, animation, sound and music, so Shak is aimed for a winter release instead of summer. The Shak Budisen movie will be one of, if not the last Shak cartoon I make so I'm moving on after this. I may make another trailer. I probably will just revise the old one.

Soap Opera vs. Nature Show: Human Stories vs HUMAN Stories

Has anyone out there ever put two spiders in a jar, hoping to see them fight to the death. I sure know I have. Now, I like TV just as much as the next man, but when you turn on the tube you're essentially paying people to do the same thing, an in my future, I'd sure love to see those things. TV shows are like nature shows focused on the animal we find most fascinating: ourselves. Basically, what is the key to the story of any TV show: battles or relationships. Isn't that basically what nature shows are after. I loved to watch nature shows when I was from around 8 to 10. Maybe its because watching animals fight and mate is a less sophisticated version of humanity. Eventually, we move on to watching people do it, and that's how our media works. The more actual day to day life is in a show, the less popular it becomes, with a few exceptions. Maybe the same children who dreamed of wrestling with crocodiles are watching TV staring with great anticipation into what their adult lives could be. And maybe a decade or so later they'll be sitting in front of the tube looking back at what they think their life could have been, or desperately scrambling to salvage it before the onset of aging. Of course what most of them don't realize is that TV is an incredibly condensed version of the interesting parts of life, which is why I sometimes enjoy episodes of a a show where almost nothing happens. Its refreshing. Of course, on a nature show, probably 75% of the time they're shooting is just walking through the jungle looking. But we don't have to look anywhere but the screen. Lucky us!

Here's What's Happening

I've got a couple of new posts coming up but I haven't gotten around to posting them yet. Coming soon is the new rant: Soap Opera vs. Nature Show: Human Stories vs. HUMAN Stories. The first almost three minutes of the Shak Budisen movie have been animated, voiced and scored, and I've got some thoughts on posts I've wanted to do, but school is starting to wear on me again meaning I have less time to work on this stuff. As of now there are 15 minutes 'till the start of school so I can't really write the posts I want to write right now but I might as well post something so here it is.

The Dark Knight Review

If there's one thing about the Dark Knight, it is fat. The amount of stuff crammed into it is enough to make it seem horrendously obese.But don't judge it by its fatness, its a very entertaining movie bogged down by excess. The first half-hour is in fact, very boring and I was beginning to wonder what all the fuss was about. Unfortunately, the amount of action they manage to cram into the next two hours requires that kind of set- up in order to remain comprehensible, which, thankfully, it does. After getting all of its characters introduced, Dark Knight launches a thrill ride of darkness, death and irony. Heath Ledger as the Joker dominates every scene he's in and you can't really see enough of him, and the effects used to create "two face" Harvey Dent are both impressive and gruesome.Unfortunately, the incredible tension created by the joker, and the excellent subplot of Harvey Dent, are marred by a fairly unnecessary beginning, with long scenes used to set up very brief, albeit interesting scenes later in the film. None of this stops the Dark Knight from being entertaining, but steers it out of masterpiece territory. Another bad point is its uneven pacing. After about an hour and a half, Nolan gets the pacing down, creating a fast paced action film with some excellent moments providing commentary on human nature, with one of my favorite scenes being one where the Joker puts a detonator on two boats, one full of prisoners and one filled with refugees, and asks one to blow up the other before he destroys both. In contrast, however the "crime drama" parts are painfully slow. All in all, some poorly paced and largely unnecessary segments can't drag the Dark Knight down, but keep it from being the fast-paced super powerful film it has been hailed as. Score: 7.9 out of 10

Back in School

I am ugh, "finally" back in school. Hopefully my doodles can be developed into new cartoons and movies, but unfortunately I will have less time to work on projects and post on this blog. I may be able to see "the Dark Knight" on either tomorrow or wednesday so look for a review.

Flash Animation Using the "Model System" and New Shak Budisen Models

With Shak Budisen I use the "model system" which, although simpler than drawing the frames individually, makes the animation look a lot worse. Basically by right clicking or control clicking (for PC and Mac respectively) on a selected drawing and then selecting convert to symbol you can save a drawing in your library. Then, by creating a duplicate and hitting edit using the right click options, you can create a moving version of that model. This is very convenient because instead of drawing the characters and their motions every time you can just drag and drop preset animations from the library and by dragging the frames in the timeline repeat them as many times as you want. The disadvantage is that, although these repetitive models are good for just characters standing still and talking, you cannot create specific action animations, which is why in Shak's Aikido there are a lot of non-model drawings of Danny. Here are some models from the upcoming Shak Budisen MovieShak's eyes are closer together, and his mouth movements are designed to synch better. I especially like his angry animations this time around. Danny has the most radical new model as he is sporting a brand-new goatee. Nilfenburger is also featured as he will become one of the major characters of the film. 

Shak Budisen: The Movie set for next summer.

One of the most spontaneous ideas to spring from a random sketch was this "movie" that I hope will make it to the web at between 10 and 30 minutes, which is long considering that most Shaktoons are only about two minutes. The film was born when I drew the main villain of the film, the alley man, who I sketched absently. I liked the character so I made the drawing into a movie poster, then a movie trailer, and hopefully, a movie. Here it is  I haven't developed the story much beyond what I said in the trailer. Nilfenburger from Slick Capewill be in it but with more lines and a different voice, and although the Alley Man is the featured villain I plan on very little story and a lot of strange guest stars.

Thoughts on: 28 Days Later, Cast Away, and I Am Legend

For my first "thoughts on" post I will discuss three films, two of which have similar stories, and two of which have similar problems. One is probably my favorite movie. The others are excellent for the first two thirds and then are marred by a horrendously sappy ending that is completely out of tone with the rest of the film. Lets start with 28 Days Later.

A group of people break in to a facility and free a bunch of captured chimpanzees. A worker pleads with them not to let them go because they are infected with "rage" but the liberators pay no heed. 28 days later, a man named Jim wakes up in a hospital bed, and finds he is in an empty city. That is the beginning of one of the most visionary movies I have ever seen. It manages to effectively be a horror film, a survival film, a zombie film, an emotional film, and social satire. The characters in 28 Days Later are incredibly human, so they do not fall prey to the same situations many less believable characters fall to. They don't often split up, making sure not to lose each other, but as one of the "family" groups so often seen in films and novels, they work effectively. In fact the only reason one of the characters dies is because of compassion for a dead man. 28 Days Later was written by a novelist: Alex Garland, and the narrative shows it. As beautiful images of the English countryside and flesh eating monsters blend seamlessly together to create a story that manages to be both meditative and exciting, and the story is full of unexpected plot points because of the situation. Let me just say that the unexpected plot points are one of the things that I love about the genre. With other movies you are trying to find the treasure or get the girl or win the war, but in a world that is hell on earth you just have to survive and keep going in a direction without a map. When the characters find a goal and achieve it, they find that there isn't the security that they were looking for and that they have to move on. Garland's novel-like narrative is beautifully complemented by Director Danny Boyle's visual style, as well as the music of Godspeedyou Black Emperor. Boyle's photography uses slightly lowered image quality to its advantage, making the beauty and majesty still remaining in this post-apocalyptic London seem as surreal as it must seem to the characters. Humanity has gone to hell, but the world is still spinning, still green, and still eerily beautiful, ugly people fighting in a world that seems happier without them. Boyle's other cliche-breaking achievement in this film is not relying on the dark to create fear, but to make the daytime scary as wel. He creates a fear not so much for ones own life but for the loss the other characters will experience and have experienced. However, there is one curiosity to the film. There were two filmed endings, a happy one, and a sad one, both of which maintain the surreal feel of the film, although the sad one is more effective, and the happy one is a crowd-pleaser, both are good enough not to mar an excellent film.

Now on to Cast Away, the film with a fascinating beginning and middle, and a stifling interminable end. After introducing the characters, a truly frightening plane crash sequence leaves a postal worker stranded on an uninhabited island. Thus begins a fascinating survival saga. The first part of this story has virtually no dialogue, yet manages to show the character's duty to his job as well as his sheer desperation. The rest of the story begins when he creates for himself an "imaginary friend" of sorts, using a Wilson volleyball that was in one of the packages on his plane, which allows for dialogue and should get co-star billing above the other human actors. The story then details his survival and escape, and then his return to society. However, once he returns to society, the entire film falls to pieces. What was once a story about the will to live becomes another "girlfriend has moved on but he wants her back" story. The wrap-up to the love story is nowhere near as powerful as the wrap-up to his life on the island with Wilson, which is truly touching, rather than the phony ending.

I Am Legend is basically a combination of the two. Its about a man and his one, non-speaking friend, struggling to survive and to have the will to survive in a post-apocalyptic world ruled by diseased humans. When the film opens with a woman stating she has created a cure for cancer, followed by a wide shot of a deserted New York City, it may seem to be a 28 days knockoff. It is anything but. I Am Legend focuses on aspects of the Zombie Horror genre that are not typically explored. Instead of focusing on the survival of a "family group" fending off hordes of the undead, Legend focuses on the endeavors of one lonely man attempting to find a cure. Everything about what has happened is revealed in flashbacks, which are the only scenes with human dialogue. Dr. Neville's (Will Smith) only companion is his dog, Samantha, who leads him into some exciting and intense sequences, as well as saving his life, as he fights the disease that has taken over the world. That is what the first hour of the film is like, and its a blast. It manages to be emotionally satisfying, action packed, and distinguish itself from its other post-apocalyptic zombie predecessors. Unfortunately, that's only the first hour. From there, the film loses all of its momentum and all of its vision to become a typical Hollywood film. All this happens because the filmmakers felt the need to add two more characters, even though the film was better off without them. The characters are Anna and Ethan, although the latter should be called "silent kid" as he does not have a single line in the entire film. Anna merely serves as a catalyst to end the movie, and silent kid as a catalyst to create one of the "family groups" that characterizes so many films of this genre. It is like Cast Away in proportions of bad and good. The dog is Wilson, and Anna is like the postal worker's ex-girlfriend, who show's up just in time to blandify the film. It's disappointing, because the first hour is amazing (except for the poor CGI animation) but it falls flat to deliver a formulaic ending.

Television Reviews: My Plan of Attack

Near the beginning of this blog, I started writing an episode by episode guide to one of my favorite cartoon series': Samurai Jack. I assumed I would write 52 separate capsules, one for each episode. However, once I had finished watching the show I had much less drive to write reviews and they became less and less frequent, so I have decided on how to do this. I will write one big review block for each season, with capsules for episodes I particularly enjoyed or did not enjoy, and flat out scores and basic credits and summaries for the ones that do not get full reviews. I will then do a season wrap-up and a DVD review. I hope to do this with other series' besides Samurai Jack.

Game of the Week: Trogdor

Game: Trogdor
Why: Many levels of awesome Peasant Stomping Action
Play it

New Potter Trailer and Movie News

I'm sure most of you have seen this already, but here it is anyways I usually find that movies strip books down to their action only, ignoring important dialogue. However, for this particular Potter story, I strongly hope that most of the awful sappy teen drama is taken out. The trailer definitely seems to be focusing mostly on the pensive and not on the drama stories. There are some interesting stories in this week's weekly ketchup from ROTTEN TOMATOES, as well as some really dumb ideas (Why wont WB learn Looney Tunes + live action = crappy movie) oh yeah, spoiler alert...Sony, Venom is dead, like, as in deceased in one of the most wasteful deaths in any Superhero movie EVER. Of course, now that I think about it, Spider Man 3 is pretty bad. Ok, really bad (I love the first two) but anyways, time to stop ranting and let you read the article. click here