The Happiest Place on Pandora!

Yep, there will now be an "Avatarland" at Walt Disney World's Animal Kingdom. As a Disney Theme Parks fan and James Cameron fan this news couldn't be any more perfect.

But even better than that have been the reactions across the Disney fan sites. Oh my God, they've been so much fun to read.

Bring on 2016.

"Super" Violence

SPOILERS APLENTY!

I was watching James Gunn’s Super the other day and I had a great time. I thought it was a very funny and very dark take on super heroes and super hero fans. One thing I noticed while reading reviews and reactions from people on the net was that they were very put off by the violence. Gunn's cavalcade of carnage really seemed to really disturb some people.

I found this interesting because all the violence in Super struck me as very over-the-top and silly. Whenever Rainn Wilson as the Crimson Bolt hit someone on the head with a wrench, the person didn’t just get a bump on the noggin, their skull cracked open. Characters don’t just get shot, they all get shot in the head so the maximum amount of blood can spurt out. At one point Wilson drops a cinderblock on a prostitute.

Now, that might not seem funny until you see the movie. The way that joke is set up it looks like a frame from a Looney Tunes cartoon, and with that in mind, it’s not hard to picture Bugs Bunny holding the cinderblock right over Elmer Fudd’s giant head.

So violence is very comic in the world of Super. James Gunn is a veteran of Troma, and that gleeful love of carnage is very evident throughout the movie. There’s a scene near the end where Ellen Page gets shot in the head, and rather than tastefully suggest the damage, Gunn decides to show all gore, which includes half of Page’s head blown away.

That shot always gets a reaction from people because cute little Ellen Page now has half a head. But while I thought it was sad that her character died (and her character is a highlight of the film), I also thought it was pretty funny. The violence in this situation struck me as so crazy and so excessive that the only reaction was to laugh.

As I mentioned before though, most people seemed to be really apalled by the shot. I suppose the easy answer is to say I’m jaded and sick or that the audiences were just a bunch of wimps. But I think the real reason for this disparity is the film's tone. People seemed to take the story a little more seriously than I did.

James Gunn mentioned on his Formspring account that he always saw the film as more sad than funny and that a lot of people agreed with this view. I can definitely see that interpretation as the film treats its characters very sincerely and Wilson’s craziness can read as real to a lot of people.

That’s not how I saw it though, as Super appeared to me a little more overtly comedic. Wilson is such a sad sack that he states early in the movie that he’s only had two happy memories in his entire life. Kevin Bacon gives his most William Fichtner-esque performance as a mob boss that has a thing for brown eggs. There are a number of sequences inside Wilson’s mind that are incredibly bizarre, including tentacles opening Wilson’s head and a dipping a corn dog into his brain. Ellen Page in particular epitomizes the film’s tone as she’s a super hero-wannabe that just wants to abuse people. She’s a psychopath that thinks she’s awesome. She’s violent, sad and funny.

For me, Super was an arch and darkly humorous satire of super heroism. Others saw it more as Taxi Driver-type character study of a sad individual in the grips of mental-depression (the film’s ending is definitely Taxi Driver homage). Neither view is necessarily correct, but it does explain the reaction to all the violence. I think the film’s a big joke so the violence to me is intentionally stylized and ridiculous. If you see the film as a drama and are deeply invested in the characters, then all the violence that the Rainn Wilson and Ellen Page dish out and take in will be deeply disturbing.

Tone is something of a nebulous concept as you can’t just type “darkly comic” or “depressing” into Final Draft Pro, but it is an important aspect of film that can change how the viewer interprets the film. If Gunn set out to make a sad film, am I wrong for seeing Super as comic?

Yes.

No, wait! I’m not, because you can’t control how everyone interprets your film. But that’s OK, because if you’ve made a good film, then it can be appreciated for reasons you didn’t necessarily intend. I mean, shit, you think anybody’s interpreting Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star?

So if you ever watch “Super” with me, don’t be freaked out when I laugh at Sean Gunn getting his legs broke by Ellen Page ramming into him with her car. I think it’s supposed to be funny!

Development Sketches

 

Here are some sketches I did for an unproduced short film. I had a lot of fun developing the relationship between the girl and her cat, and the short was going to be fairly experimental (I was watching a lot of David Lynch films at the time). Unfortunately my passion for the project ran out right around the storyboard stage, so the short remains unfinished.

For now anyway.

Skribble Lennon

This might be interesting for some of you. A few weeks ago I submitted a drawing to Deviantart's Skribble contest. The goal was to make a drawing using only this:

Tall order, huh? Back in high school, my art teacher used to give us scribbles and ask us to create finished drawings using the scribble as a base. Because of that I actually had some experience, so I thought the contest might be fun.

For whatever reason, when I saw the scribble, I saw this:

  

I've always been a fan of simplicity in drawing, and I thought the skribble would be a great jumping off place to create a caricature of John Lennon. So after drawing the caricature and inking it on paper, I scanned it into the computer, and it looked like this:

The missing lens and hair would be replaced by the scribble. One thing I noticed was that the drawing was skewed a bit to the left. After doing the flip test (where the drawing is flipped horizontally) I realized that the drawing was definitely flawed. For some reason I had never been concerned about skew in my artwork previously, but noticing it here really concerned me. I mean, I'm entering a contest, the drawing should look good.

Unfortunately I didn't have time to go back and redraw Lennon (I was about to leave for vacation), so I used Photoshop to unskew the drawing as best I could. As handy as that feature is, it's a bit like cheating, and I'd rather correct errors like that beforehand. I mean, Michelangelo didn't have Photoshop, did he?

Okay, so it looks pretty good. I've fixed the skew, erased some lines, and used the skribble to create both sides of Lennon's head. From here I simply colored the lines based on the colors used on the Imagine album.

I had to tweak the colors here and there, but all things considered I think it looks pretty good!

Alas, I didn't win the DeviantArt contest, but I'm glad I entered. I'm not sure I would have created this without a little nudge.

Oh, and I'd like to thank Brian Brittigan. He introduced me to the flip test awhile ago, and I've been kicking myself for not employing it earlier.

Updates!

Hey, folks. I'm still around and kicking. In case you haven't seen it yet, I have a new blog dedicated to my monster art, and you can find it at Many, Many, Monsters (there's a tumblr too). I'm having a lot of fun coming up with crazy creature designs, and I think you guys might enjoy it as well.

I've been having a great time writing for Suite101.com, and I have a bunch of new articles that I think you'll like. There's an article on Joe Johnston's adaptation of the Dave Stevens' comic, The Rocketeer, an article about Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant's hilarious new screenwriting book, Writing Movies For Fun and Profit: How We Made a Billion Dollars at the Box Office and You Can Too!, and a review of the 80s teen classic, Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

I've also got a bunch of secret projects in the works, so stay tuned, there's a lot more fun on the way.

Fedora

This fedora is for a new shot I'm working on for my demo reel. I'm not much of a modeler, but I'm pretty happy with this.

Village of the Giants

I've got a new article up, this time a review of the Bert I. Gordon classic, Village of the Giants, starring Tommy Kirk, Beau Bridges, and Ron Howard.

Village of the Giants has long been a guilty pleasure of mine, and my review is an attempt to explain what's so appealing about it. That's an impossible task as the film is so damn strange, but I feel it's a worthy effort.

I also have a review of Savage Steve Holland's One Crazy Summer up. One Crazy Summer is one of my favorite movies, and I try to watch it every year around the beginning of summer.

I hope you like them!

Meanwhile, Back on Monster Island

Hey, it's been awhile. Here, have a cartoon.


For some reason, I decided to get a DeviantART account. Hopefully I won't be bitten by the Anime Virus and draw nothing but Naruto fan art from now on. We'll see!

Bye Bye Birdie

Hey, I've got a new article up on Suite101.com. It's a review of the Ann-Margret classic, Bye Bye Birdie.

Bye Bye Birdie is a weird, weird movie, and it's dated as hell. But there is something oddly appealing about the film, and as my review notes, Ann-Margret is easily the highlight of the film. Seriously, the minute the film turns away from her character's story, the film just grinds to a halt.

Writing

Hey, I've got a new gig writing for Suite101.com. My profile is here, and my first article about the Brian De Palma film, Obsession, can be seen here.

New Cartoons

Fun in the Sun(?)

Summer Magic

Knock it Outta the Park

I'm Back

Hey folks, sorry for not posting in a while. As cliche' as it may sound, I've been incredibly busy lately.

For one thing, I submitted an animated short to the Washington Filmworks 2010 Viral Video competition, and somehow it won. You can see the short here.

The short was popular enough that it got the attention of Tony White, who very kindly invited me to his "2D or Not 2D Animation Festival." Make sure to buy his books.

Fun times.

I've brought this blog back from the dead because I've found a really terrific article that sums up my frustrations with the "animation elite." You can read it here on Dave Levy's excellent blog. You'd think a medium as open-ended and diverse as ours would spawn artists who respect all styles of animation, and not just that of the golden age's, but you'd be surprised. Why would anyone want to limit animation's potential?

Animators are weird people sometimes.

Make sure to buy Dave's books too.

I'll leave you with a drawing. Here's a storyboard panel from my short. As with most drawings, the original sketch has a little more vitality than the fully-inked drawing. Oh well...