Disney Bastardization #2 - "Bambi Meets Flower"

Here's my 2nd Disney Bastardization video. Like the last one, this clip also comes from Bambi. It's the scene where Bambi meets Flower the skunk for the first time.

Everybody knows that first impressions are always the most important. Let's see what Bambi thinks of Flower, shall we?:

Cute, isn't it?

Hope you liked it! More to come soon!

& the Oscar Goes to...

Well, the Oscars are over & the winners have been announced. Being an animator, plus the fact that I don't really care that much about "Best Makeup" or "Best Supporting So-&-So", my focus was mainly on the "Best Animated Feature" & "Best Animated Short" categories.

I'll start off with the shorts: Peter & the Wolf was the winner & I'm glad it was. I've always loved Peter & the Wolf (especially the music) & out of all the P&tW adaptations I've seen, this one is by far the best out of the bunch. I'm usually not that big a fan of stop-motion, but the animation in Peter & the Wolf blew me away.

As for the feature category, I was a bit mixed. Even though I thoroughly enjoyed Ratatouille, I believe that Persepolis really deserved the award. Sure, I think Ratatouille had some great animation (even for CG) & I think Brad Bird is a genius, but Persepolis has that certain something that I can't quite describe...

Eitherway, I'd like to say congrats to all the winners & nominees.

Disney Bastardization Time!

Before the hilariousness of ElCid's Bambee, there was this:

Years ago, Thad K. over at Animation ID made a few videos called "Disney Bastardizations". The point of these videos was to ruin the point of a classic Disney scene using only sound effects (make sad scenes happy, fun scenes scary, etc.). At the time, these were probably the funniest videos I had ever seen online.

Unfortunately the videos were removed, I think because he posted the videos on Youtube, where the Disney people spotted them & made him take them down. Since then, I wanted to bring back these hilarious videos somehow, but I didn't have the ability to do that. Now, after learning a few tricks, I can finally bring these babies back.

My favorite of the videos he did was of the infamous death scene from Bambi. Since the video has been gone for a long time, I had to recreate the video myself using Windows Movie Maker. This will be the only scene I will recreate, the rest will be completely original works.

Finally, I just want to say that all credit for this video goes to Thad. This was all his idea, not mine. & Thad, if you see this & you're upset that I'm doing this without your permission, I just want to say sorry in advance, & if you want me to take it down, let me know & I'll take it down without any trouble. Thanks & enjoy!

Just by adding that one sound effect, it completely changes the mood of the scene! Look forward to seeing more of these in the near future! Now if only I knew how to put these on my iPod...

"StreetWise"

Here's something I thought I posted a while ago:

Back in September, I drew out & submitted this for a magazine called 'InkStains'. It got turned down flat, probably because it wouldn't look so good in black & white print.

I later adapted this into a script & storyboard for Storytelling class & got a 'A'. At least it amounted to something in the end.

Oh, & here's a little behind-the-scene trivia: I based the look of the homeless man off of my father. "No offense, Chim!"

"I gots me a new Ipod, 'baybah'!"

Well, my old iPod finally bit the big bazooka. Now that my little music player is in the big recycle bin in the sky, it was finally time to pick up a new one.

I went to my local Apple Store in Roosevelt Field Mall (most crowded store in the mall) & waited on line for a helper. I thought about getting one of those iTouches, but I heard they were glitchy, plus the largest size they got is a 16G deal. PASS!

I finally chose my prize: a whopping 160G iPod Classic (first Coke, now iPods?)! Not only do I have plenty of room for all the Three Dog Night, Creedence Clearwater Revival, & Bob Seger my ears can handle, but now I can put videos on it! But $1.99 for a 7 minute Disney cartoon? Pfft, I'll pass.

Thanks to a handy little program called [top secret, cant tell], I can put any video I want on it! Here's what I got so far:

Fantasia (FAVORITE MOVIE)

Fantasia 2000

The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (What... I like SpongeBob!)

"Axe Me Another" Popeye cartoon ("I'll do anything that you'll do")

"In the Bag" Disney cartoon

"Hell's Bells" Disney cartoon (I... LOVE... UB!...)

"Pigs is Pigs" Disney cartoon

"Lifted" Pixar Short

"One Man Band" Pixar Short

"The Moon & the Son: An Animated Conversation" by John Canemaker (GO JOHN!)

10-minute preview of Ratatouille

"Gulliver's Travels" by the Fleischer Studio

& "Smile" (I have no idea how I got it. Where the hell did it come from?!)

That's what I got so far, plus over 1,770 songs and over 1,500 pictures... & I still got 145Gs left!

I have no reason why I posted this, but I did, so that's that. What a waste of a good post, huh?

More Juggling

I'm back with a little more on cartoon juggling.

These next two clips I'm going to show come from two different studios in two different time periods. These two might not constitute as "real" juggling, but I think they count eitherway.

This first clip comes from Popeye's debut cartoon: "Popeye the Sailor" from 1933 by the Fleischer Studio. Does anybody know who animated it?

I especially like juggling when it's timed to a beat (musical or not) & as everybody knows, everything in Popeye cartoons is timed to a beat. Even when the characters are just standing around they bounce to the music.

Back to juggling... in most cases, the juggling act is the gag itself, like the Donald Duck clip I posted before. In this case, the juggling is an add-on to make the "Hit the Nerd" gag funnier. They could've had Popeye hit the "nerd" millions of other ways, but what better way is there to help introduce Popeye to animation than to show what his muscles can do. Although his arms may be huge & bulky tumor-like lumps, he can still pull off a little style & grace with them. Such dexterity!

Besides, this is a Fleischer cartoon, everything has got to be funny & rubbery!

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This next clip comes from Disney's Sword in the Stone, exactly 30 years after Popeye's animated debut. In this scene, Merlin (transformed into a squirrel for this particular sequence) fiddles around with an acorn.

Even though he's only playing around with one acorn, he's still juggling it up in the air, off his feet, etc. This scene is probably influenced by the Harlem Globetrotters.

Unlike the Popeye scene, there's a lot of things going on here:

First off, this is Disney animation, so everything has to be more realistic (even though there's a blue talking squirrel juggling acorns). While the balls in Popeye felt like weightless ping-pong balls, this acorn has weight. There are no cartoon physics here, there's mass, momentum & inertia in action going on.

This was animated by Frank Thomas, who by 1963 had over 30 years of animation experience. He knows a thing or two about realistic motion, after animating lifeless marionettes, dogs, cats, deer, humans & hundreds of other characters. Besides, Thomas was a perfectionist, so everything he animated had to be perfect before he let it go to final color.

Like the Popeye clip, this juggling is timed to music, but unlike Popeye's juggling, there's a lot of nuances in the action. While Popeye's timing just went "boink! bink! boink! bink!...", this juggling is timed to a unique melody with unique lyrics. Certain actions are done in relation to the music & words of the song. For example, when Merlin say's "explanation", he flutters & spins the acorn to the sound of the word. In "discaboomeration", he catches the acorn on the accented "boom" & rolls it down his arm as the "-eration" rolls out of his mouth.

& like the Donald Duck clip, Merlin is interuppted by an outside force, this time by a homely, love-crazed girl squirrel. Merlin is surprised, embarassed & by the end of the song, know's how this is gonna turn out (just look at that expression on his face in those last few frames!)

Just watching this animation as a normal everday viewer would think that was cute or fun. But when an animator like me watches it, I wonder "How in God's name did he pull that off?!" Frank put a lot of thought into this little scene, & boy did he make it soar!

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& I know what you're thinking... you think I have no idea what I'm talking about, do you. Well, half the time I don't. Still, I put a lot of thought into animation like this. Besides, I'm only a novice when it comes to doing animation myself, so I don't the experience like some people do. Plus, I have a hard time putting them into readable, understandable words & sentences. I'm dyslexic in that way. There are definitely people out there who can do this better than I can.

Now I need your help! If any of you know of any animated juggling scenes that I haven't mentioned yet, let me know & post those too! Thanks!

Happy Valentine's Day!