Disney's Teacher's Pet

I must say until recently I had never heard of this film. I'm pretty sure I don't recall hearing about it in cinemas, and I sure as hell have never seen the TV series which is said to exist. What recently attached me to it, however, was the art style. I recognized it from somewhere, but couldn't quite put my finger on it, all I knew is I'd seen artwork here and there in this style and had liked it a bundle. It turns out the artist is Gary Baseman, who, thanks to renting this DVD, is now one of my favourite illustrators. This probably has more to do with the documentary of the guy on the DVD than the actual film, but that's not to say the film was bad. The musical numbers may of been cringe-inducing, but I sure did love the animation. It looks very much like a mix between cartoon's of the 1930's, with the rubber hose limbs and gormless expressions, and a hint of the twisted humour you'd normally expect from Spumco and Marv Newland. The film is completely based on baseman's art, right down to the canvas texture of the backgrounds.

Quite simply, it doesn't look like a Disney movie, though they sure did like to remind us it was a Disney film with a collection of brilliant references. For example, one of the best scenes in the whole film is right at the beginning with a full-on Pinocchio parody, with the characters all drawn in Baseman's art style and Pinocchio dancing like something out of a Betty Boop cartoon, bashing his head on a table edge in the process. The Pinocchio references re-occur a few more times within th film, along with some cameos by Cinderella and the seven dwarfs, as well as a scene where the main character, Spot, actually speaks of the "Twilight Bark" (as seen in use in 101 Dalmatians) and even says to his owner when he says his never heard of it "Seesh, we've really gotta renting you more classic animated movies!" Even the Walt Disney castle at the start of the film is drawn in baseman's style! Great stuff.

Kirikou and the Sorceress

I've been trying out a trail run of an online DVD rental service called Screen Select recently, in which they send you a disc, and as soon as you send it back they'll start sending whatever's next on your list. So far I've rented out Lilo & Stitch 2, which was an above-average follow up to the original, an just today Kirikou and the Sorceress, a French animation recommended by a mate at Uni who did this film for our group's recent presentations on animation's of our pick (I did Fantasia 2000, for those interested). I must say I was rather impressed by this film, as I have been by a lot of animation I've seen come from France.

It's based on a African folk tale, and a rather bizarre one at that. For starters, the title character Kirikou starts talking while still in the womb of his mother, then simply walks out of her. This tiny little kid, about the size of a puppy, can also run about like Dash from the Incredibles and seems to already have plenty of knowledge of the world, despite only just entering it. The Sorceress of the title is the villain of the movie, attempting to kidnap the villages' children and make sure hey have no water left, but there's more to this bad guy than you'd first think, but I won't go into that as that'd spoil it. Kirikou saves the kids on two occasions, sorts out their water problem, and goes on a mission to meet his Grandfather who knows exactly why the Sorceress is so evil in the first place.

The art style in this film is unique and inspiring, using a great selection of colours and textures. I particularly like the Sorceress' servant creatures, which compared to the smoothly animated human characters have a deliberately jerky movement. My favourite character in the film is the servant that watches the village from the top of the Sorceress' hut, who has a great range of subtle expressions for such a simple design that can only move it's Neck, eyes and mouth. This film, is certainly a breath of fresh air from the usual animated family films we see from Hollywood, which always seem to fall under the talking animal/objects category a whole lot.

One thing that might put some parents off would be the traditional clothing all the Indian characters wear in this film, as in, not a lot at all, so there's a whole lot of nutidy in this film, but it's all perfectly innocent and doesn't distract from the story in the slightest. It's a real shame to hear that a movie aimed at families is only allowed to be shown late at night on American TV because of this, as this is a great film that deserves more attention than a lot of the big-budget family tripe released every year. All animation fans should give this a rent at least, if they haven't done so already.

TNC Update, not a lot else.

As I said I would a while ago, I've finally got around to updating the Illustration section of the site, with a slight redesign, some pictures added here and there and new pages set up (such as another Oekaki collection, and even a fanart page). When I've made more, I'll add a icon page too (So far I only have two worth posting though, so there's no point as of yet).

OsakaSim, the greatest desktop thingymabob in recent memory.

In other news, did I mention that as soon as I had to gave in my coursework when I got back from Florida, they gave us all time off until the 30th so they can mark it? Yeah, so I've pretty much been doing nothing recently, except getting myself back up to date with Manga-Gaga (as in, getting issues ready ahead of time, so all I have to do is add them each week), planning one of the next animations for the course (It's titled Traffk, but I will say no more until more is developed.), watching the Osaka simulator do random things (I nabbed the full version from an image board), and playing on my Dreamcast a whole lot. This is probably the reason why I haven't done anymore Bloggomic's since...because there hasn't been any real life events worth documenting. Wah wah wahhh.

Teaser picture! Omg. Wtf. Bbq. And all that rubbish.

Joel Trussell's Cartoon Cockfight

You just got to check this bloke's work out. I saw his latest music video piece, "War Photographer" for Jason Forrest quite a while back, but only just discovered his website, Cartoon Cockfight, that contains two previous, equally stunning flash animated music videos, along with loads of brilliant sketches and illustrations like the one above. Click on it to go to the site.

Bloggomic #1

(Click for full size.)

Yeah, a Blog Comic: Bloggomic. Just an idea I had this morning I thought I'd try out, because when I come with with ideas for comics they don't always fit in with Manga-Gaga. If I were to continue these, there wouldn't be any particular scedule, just issues when I feel like it, just a simple 4-panel doodle series.

Orlando Report

Got back yesterday morning about 1-2pm after a horrid trip back, thanks to a 4 hour delay for the first plane that made us miss our 2nd plane. Good thing we (That's me and my parents) managed to get onto a plane a few hours later that night thanks to three people who checked in but vanished. If it wasn't for them, we would of had to have stayed in Toronto overnight in a hotel until 9 the next (Sunday) morning! The flight back always seems to be worse than on the way there, and this is the second time we've been on a plane that's been delayed due to something on Canada's side. Must be something to do with all the snow they get out there. When we were leaving Toronto to get home, they had these spray-gun robots clean all the snow off the wings.

Anyway, the holiday went pretty well, except a few mishaps (mainly my Dad losing his glasses on Xmas Day) and the fact that it was a lot, LOT busier than when we went last year. At least last year, the crowds calmed down in the second week, but not the case this time. The Universal and Sea World parks were easy enough to get around (we did the Universal Parks on Xmas day and managed to do almost every ride in both of them), but the Disney parks were just horrendous. I swear Disney must let way too many people into their parks, they should maybe consider bringing down their daily limit of visitors, as it felt like there were a million people in one park at times, which equalled queuing ages for everything (even the bogs), and crowds just about everywhere.

As for shopping, we just about bled the area dry this time, visiting just about every mall there is there, and a whole lot of other places too. A few places did some sales, including Hot Topic with it's 50%-then-50%-again deal they do every so often on random weekends which was nice. While I can't say I saw many decently-priced DVDs I was after this time, I must say we found quite a lot of lovely books to add to our animation book collection. These included The Art of Finding Nemo ($10 off for not having it's paper cover), Of Mice and Magic by Leonard Martin, a huge book on Hanna-Barbera cartoons (from Tom & Jerry to The Powerpuff Girls), a bizarre video game art book called Credit 00: I Love Game Graphics, a great book on Mickey Mouse and my two favourites (and the most expensive, at $35 a piece, which in itself isn’t bad when converted back to pounds) we brought back: The Illusion of Life by Disney Veterans Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson and a 15th Anniversary Street Fighter art book, which contains pretty much every official non-VS game piece of SF art ever made. Beautiful.

Food wise, the place mainly consists of Buffet joints and Fast Food outlets (they have a lot more chains than the UK does). Due to the long days out we opted for the buffets, with Ponderosa and Golden Corral being the best of the 4 different buffer chains we tried. I sure as hell couldn't eat like how we did in those places any old day, only when I know I will be walking it off! I seriously don't know how some of the guys I saw in those places packed it away, 2-3 plates was enough to fill me up.

New Rides? MGM had a car stunt show which was quite fun, Epcot had a ride called Soarin' in which you flew over a huge screen of California with the wind and smells in place and..er..there wasn't really a lot else from year. I suppose it's hard to expect much new in one year, really. he weather was a lot better this year, at least, with only a spec of rain on Xmas day rather than the heavy shower we got last time. We stayed at a hotel rather than a villa this time, as we noticed when there was 4 or us a villa was too much room, and a hotel's cheaper. We stayed at the Florida Mall Hotel, a fancy looking place that was directly linked with...well, the Florida mall. Harr.

New Year's eve proved to be a lot less hectic in Disney MGM Studios' than it was 2005 in Universal, funnily enough. We found an area near the back of the park where they had set up millions of Christmas lights that apparently took since August to put up that tuned out to be rather empty compared to nearer the center of the park, where we watched the fireworks (a whole lot of them) go up at midnight where they weren’t playing music over the top, so we just got the bangs of the fireworks and no crowds, which was nice. We also saw a bloke bend down on his knees and propose to his girlfriend a few minutes before midnight. Aww.

Actually got over our fear of outside big roller coasters too, by actually hopping onto Kraken at Seaworld for having a short queue. I've always loved the indoor ones, The Mummy's Revenge and Rock N' RollerCoaster, but for some reason thought I wouldn't like the outdoor ones. I ended up loving it though, and had wished I've never passed on them before. I would have gone on The Hulk also, but the queues for that one never seemed to slow down, the two days we went to Universal.

Went to DisneyQuest twice, a place in Downtown Disney that's sort of like what SegaWorld in London used to be like, only with less impressive rides (excluding the Cyber Space Mountain) and FREE arcade games. Sadly, the A.F ranking I left in the top 20 ranking on Marvel Vs Capcom 2 had been pushed off the chart, with some guy called 'PAT' almost filling the whole chart up. I played it against this guy who had only played Marvel Vs Capcom 1, but knew what he was doing, although he didn't mange to beat me at it. After completing the 1P mode once he had gave up, I walked off for a bit only to walk by later and find him using my team (same character, same mode's) on some other bloke who was whupping his arse big time. I had a crack too, but was thrashed also. Was this he infamous PAT? I dared to ask, but he certainly knew what he was doing, dodging and countering everything I threw at him.

The place also had a multi-game machine in the retro area with about 50 games on it, including Street Fighter 2 and...shocker...1. For some reason, Street Fighter 1 is never easy to find, as it's barely been ported to anything (I used to have a poor port on the Amiga, though). Anyway, enough me geeking out about video games, I'm talking about that like it was the highlight of the whole trip! There was also the Popeye water rapids (possibly the wettest thing outside Blizzard Beach), the G-force that makes your face melt on Mission: Space, the daft plastic hats they gave out at MGN new years eve, Snorkelling with stingrays and fishes in Discovery Cove, the stunning 3D show at Magic Kingdom that is almost a follow up of the Sorcerer’s apprentice (with Mickey now being the Sorcerer), the daft animatronic Bear Brigade show that had me pissing with laugher, and just looking at the beautiful stuff they had in the Art of Disney shops.

We actually ended up buying a Fantasia 2000 globe that was in one for $125 as all the regular Disney Globes (which my mum collects) this year were tacky and horrible. So yeah, we had a great time none the less, although we'll probably not go back for a good while now since we seem to have got everything we could possibly get out of the area after 5 visits over 15 years. Maybe we'll try thr orignal California one for some change next time, when ever that may be.