Who would have guessed that the best love story of the year would feature robots instead of humans? I sure wouldn’t have, yet it’s not that I doubted Pixar could pull it off, I just wasn’t really sure what WallE was about. It wasn’t until recently that we found out WallE was about a robot trying to find his companion, but I never expected it to be a full blown love story.

WallE starts out simple enough, with the robot going about his normal routine of cleaning up what is essentially a post apocalyptic earth. The first 20 or so minutes doesn’t feature a lick of dialogue, yet the audience can’t help but fall in love with WallE almost immediately. I could easily have watched an entire movie of WallE just going about his normal day because Pixar has made it that interesting. WallE’s opening moments captivate the audience in much the same way that Tom Hanks does during Cast Away. You simply can’t take your eyes off of him.

Many people probably remember the old Bonkers series that used to come on the Disney Afternoon, but I imagine many people forgot about the show Bonkers originated from called Raw Toonage. In a confusing series of events, somehow Disney developed these two shows at the same time, with the idea that Raw Toonage would show that Bonkers did have a career as a cartoon character before losing work and joining the police force in the real world.

Anyway, Raw Toonage was sort of Disney’s stab at what Warner Brothers had seemingly mastered with Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs, in that they wanted to create a variety show of sorts. Each episode would have a bunch of different shorts with different main characters, and the episode would be hosted by another well known Disney character like Goofy, or even Tale Spin’s Don Karnage. The show wasn’t particularly memorable, or good even, but it had a few bright spots. I recalled this old short called “Badly Animated Man” and decided to look it up on Youtube, and sure enough, it was there. It’s a pretty good stab at the sorts of cartoons that were out around then.

“Good Breeding” is a senior thesis film by Smorgas Board regular, Alex Berry AKA “josephmcklay”. He shared the early pencil test version of it with us back in January, and has since gone on to finish it up. I think he did a bang up job on it, and thought I’d post it up here for everyone else to get a kick out of it. Congrats on a job well done, Alex!

A buddy of mine sent this clip over to me the other day, and I really dug it. Its rendered to look like an Atari 2600 game with square-ish, simplistic characters running around playing paintball, but they are animated well and the short moves along at an entertaining pace. I followed Lovesport’s link to the rest of his (or their’s?) shorts. They’re all done in a similar manner, but I was surprised to see that these are done in 3D as in one short, “The Dogs”, the camera zooms in tight to reveal space and vollume on the characters. Enjoy!

I’m a heterosexual male and I like boobs. Theres been a lot of politically-correct propaganda getting tossed around out there that might make you feel guilty or ashamed for making a statement like that. However, I feel totally justified in this feeling… its a part of who I am. Thinking back to my childhood, I remember some of my first exposure to ‘mammarous gigantus’ being in the form of cartoon breasts on various afternoon television shows. The time from 3-5 PM was a magical time. It was time to turn the lights down low, light a candle, lock the door and tune in to some hot cartoon boob action.

After a quick stroll through memory lane and a few strategically placed google image searches I have compiled some of the cartoon chesticles that hold a special place in my mind. Journey with me back through the 1980’s as we take a look at some of the cartoon T (and a little bit of A) that I hold near and dear…

During the latest Shamoozal Radio Podcast, The General Johnny Manf asked what an animatic was. I know I often use that term a lot when I make an update, and even though Phil answered Manf’s question during the Podcast, I’ll go into it a bit more here just to help educate our readers about the animation process.

Above is the animatic we used from GFG#1, “Rated ‘M’ For Molestor”. Read more after the jump about how and why we even bother with this step in the first place.

Clay’s got another great interview up over at Animationpodcast.com. This time its with Ken Duncan whi Clay has worked under while he was an inbetweener at Disney’s in the early 90’s. Ken was the lead animator on one of my favorite Disney heroines, Meg, from Hercules. Ken’s a bit more more reserved than say, Nik Ranieri, but has has a ton of professional experience to draw from, and he has some interesting things to say about how he animates. Its good stuff, so go check it out.

I came home from work today and after eating dinner ran a few races in Mario Kart Wii. I’m finally on the 150cc circuit, and it’s proving to be worthy of the Mario Kart title as it seems every time I play it now I become enraged by an onslaught of Red and Blue Shells at the finish line. I found little solace online either as for some reason or other every one there was destroying me, too.

In an effort to keep myself from throwing my Wii Remote out of the window, I popped Chicken Little into the ol’ PS3 for some Blu-Ray goodness. It’s been sitting on my shelf at least since last September, but I always forget I have it there. It had a decent idea at its core, but it somehow got off track in multiple parts throughout the movie. I feel like the committee that was running Disney Feature Animation at the time was too busy trying to cram in as many pop-culture references as possible, and I’m sorry but the pig character has to go. I don’t even remember his name, but I do know that he was Chicken Little’s equivalent of Jar-Jar Binks. Every word out of his mouth made me cringe.

This clip was originally on the laser disc release of “The Lion King”, but has also been included on the more recent release of the DVD. This particular transfer is from the laser disc which is probably not the best, so at times the image is a tad blown out. However, its still a really great example of all the work and planning that goes into animation. This clip is a progression reel for the “Elephant Graveyard” sequence, and is inter cut with various stages from storyboard, rough animation, to clean up, there are a few shots with final ink and paint. There’s some really nice character animation in here with Simba and the hyenas, and I particularly like the layouts as we track the cubs as they fall through an elephant spine and then as they run through the ravine to the dead end.

I saw this animated short posted over at Cartoonbrew.com this morning, and was pretty blown away by it. It almost lost me in the first few minutes as it didn’t seem to go anywhere, but then it erupts and turns into one of the best animated pieces I’ve seen in a long time. The narration is in French which a commentator at the Brew posted a rough translation of. The short is basically about what it is like to be bound to a wheelchair, and about how he yearns to do things people normally do. The narrator then speaks about how when you can’t move normally, you begin to create movement and space within your own mind as the short moves into a more organic stage.

Embedding has been turned off, so I can’t post it here, but certainly follow this link and check it out.