Animotion and Car Tunes

[Spram]

So I just saw "The World of Tomorrow" on Netflix after reading millions and millions of articles claiming it to the best movie of the year or at least the best animated and/or short of the year.

I liked it. I like Don Hertz's style, but maybe the hype ruined it for me. To be honest, this is more like a good Newgrounds flash animation than anything else. Interesting, but it didn't change the way I see the world. I thought the short was going to be some mind-blowing, paradigm shifting 17 minutes, but it was just some neat little animation (the animation itself wasn't anything to write home about).

(I wrote the above on a Don Hertzfeldt subreddit, the rest is for your eyes only )

Ok, now I'm sad. One person does funny-enough crude animations and is considered a genius and wins prizes left and right. That would be ok. I liked both "The World of Tomorrow" and "Rejected" but there are a lot of animators, artists and filmmakers doing the exact same thing (sometimes with even less crude animation) and will never get the recognition he gets. This brings me more existential anguish that "The World of Tomorrow" could ever give me.

Neat short 7/10

[Thad]

That's true of any creative pursuit, though. Only a fraction of creators are going to be successful.

Just do the best you can and don't quit your day job. I think that's all any of us can do.

[Mothra]

Last two episodes of Gravity Falls 100% delivered. Really happy with how this ended.

Highlights for me were Bill drawing a burning smiley face across the continental united states, and of course, Dippy Fresh:

[Mongrel]

I love that he looks like that kid that used to be in Wendy's ads.

[Mothra]

I feel like he's wearing almost exactly the same outfit as one of those Burger King Kids Meal kids

[nosimpleway]

The animators were told something along the lines of "Draw Kid Vid from the old Burger King commercials, but don't go look up what that character actually looked like. Just do it from 20-year-old memory."

The color scheme is just about spot on down to the lime-green accessories, though.

Note: Dippy Fresh died on the way back to his home planet.

[Mothra]

Something about the DF makes me laugh so, so fucking hard.

[Mongrel]

I feel like he's wearing almost exactly the same outfit as one of those Burger King Kids Meal kids

Oh right! That's what I was thinking of, not Wendy's.

[Büge]

[Healy]

New image for the DuckTales reboot (woo-oo) Looking good so far!

EDIT: Eh, fuck it, let's post the image inline:

C'mon, greedy fuck-off Scrooge McDuck!

[Thad]

Cartoon Brew: Toonz Software Used by Studio Ghibli and ‘Futurama’ Being Made Free and Open Source

And another barrier to entry falls.

[Thad]

Netflix's new Voltron series looks really good.

[Healy]

Looks good to me, too! But why they gotta be coy about Princess Allura piloting one of the lions?

[Healy]

Whoa!

(Maybe this is a sign I should get back on the Adventure Time wagon.)

[Thad]

I miss the theme song, but enjoying it aside from that. (And I kinda love that Lance is clearly just Sokka.)

[Brentai]

I'm actually kind of upset that it took me all the way to the end of episode 2 to figure out what Pidge's deal is. I must be getting old.

[Thad]

I didn't get it until they spelled it right out. Which is fine, because they were deliberately manipulating my expectations as an existing fan. My wife's reaction was "Wait, we weren't supposed to know she was a girl?"

It's not just a clever exploitation of my blind spot, it's also an elegant solution to the show's most glaring flaw: only one female character, and she's a princess. That shit may have flown in Japan in 1981, but it sure didn't feel right in an American cartoon in 2016. It was weird enough that I wondered why they didn't do something about it, but expected enough that I didn't realize they had.

[Brentai]

I didn't get it until they spelled it right out. Which is fine, because they were deliberately manipulating my expectations as an existing fan. My wife's reaction was "Wait, we weren't supposed to know she was a girl?"

I think to some extent they were deliberately manipulating my familiarity with the medium: I was thinking "man they really made Pidge look and sound like a girl" from the moment she appeared to the moment that they finally show that picture in full clarity, but I had written it off as casting a female to voice a little boy and making him look a little too Western Anime.

Coran's reaction to it suggests that the animators sort of knew what they were pulling, too.

Meanwhile Allura's reaction makes me seriously wonder if this is going to end with Lurakatie.

[Büge]

[Brentai]

If you watch Bojack Horseman for the catharsis and don't expect any of the jokes to ever actually be funny or even bearable then you're in for a hell of a surprise this season.