Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/10/07/a-blog-full-of-gorgeous-hand-d.html
…
1 Like
Speaking of gorgeous hand-drawn animation, Ralph Bakshi is going to start a Kickstarter tonight. @Medievalist might be interested.
“We’ll be revisiting characters from “Wizards” and “Coonskin” in new, short thought poems written and animated by Bakshi.”
3 Likes
These are really beautiful! I love that people share their sketches, single frame or otherwise. They often have even more personality and charm than a finished product, and are often ideas that would never have seen the light of day if they had to even wait for a short to be born into.
I hope we’re seeing the beginnings of a hand-drawn renaissance and the end of the fetish of 3D animation. It has it’s place, but is the sibling of hand-drawn, not the successor. I wish a studio would have the balls to make a feature-length hand-drawn superhero movie before all the good will for superhero adaptations runs out. Avengers movies are basically 3D animated features at this point. How cool would it be if comic book movies actually looked like comics. With the budgets these films attract, you could employ some top-flight talent.
5 Likes
I do love good 3d animation, but it certainly shouldn’t be used for everything.
2D, IMHO, is generally more expressive. And there have been some decent 2D super hero movies. The Dark Knight Returns was excellent. I have high hopes for The Killing Joke, though I heard they fucked up the Batgirl story they added to the original.
2 Likes
The cats reminded me of Richard Scarry’s work, especially the expression on Mama Cat.
1 Like
Somehow they keep getting Batman right in 2D. I love the animated series, but haven’t seen The Dark Kinght Return (just put it on hild at the libarary though) but love the book.
I keep imagining a feature Superman with the charm and incredible aethetic and smoothness of Fleischer Superman, or an Avengers the whimsy/gravitas and artistry of a Ghibli feature, or even a Bhakshi spiderman (I might actually get off my ass and contribute to that kickstarter you linked to)
I am also bummed that the animated Hellboy efforts have missed the mark so broadly so far. if a studio could actually capture the minimalist, brutal art style and tendency toward beatiful tableau it could be spectacular.
1 Like
The animated The Killing Joke was weird mostly for the shoehorned-in Batgirl-Batman fuck scene, but also for the surprisingly cheap animation.
Others will doubtless chime in with objections to using rape as a means to establishing the bad guy’s badness, but I still don’t quite get that. You show a villain murdering someone, that tells you the villain is a murderer. You show a villain raping someone, doesn’t that tell you that the villain is a terrible person? Is the objection based on the possibility that a degenerate reader/viewer might get off on it?
2 Likes
I watched the creators’ justification for it beforehand, and was completely on board with their reasoning, but on watching it, yeah. The prologue was extremely awkward, weird, and unnecessary, and felt nothing like the rest of the story. And the animation was shockingly cheap for such a high profile adaptation. I didn’t have any objection to the rest of the story – the rape, etc - because, well, it’s The Killing Joke, and they followed the original comic very closely. If they’d made the story without the awful things that happen to Barbara, it’d kind of deflate the whole second half of the story.
It’s interesting that Disney has been turning to 2D more and more lately, notably with the new TV series adaptation of Tangled, which looks pretty great. They’re also doing an upcoming Big Hero 6 series in 2D, and possibly one for Frozen. Pixar has been rumored to be playing with ideas for a 2D-animated film for awhile, as has Laika.
And one of my favorite bits of animation from recent years is entirely hand painted: The Dam Keeper.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
