Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everybody! I Got my pumpkin carved and some good candy beside me, so only thing missing here now are some ghostly stories to celebrate the weekend! So here are a few classic Goldkey comics from the '60's and '70's to get you in the right mood, well... they're not really scary, but hey! I still have to be able to sleep!

Speaking of sleeping, first off is from the vault of Hanna-Barbera 'The Cat's Meow' feautures 'Mr.and Mrs.J.Evil Scientist' from the third issue of their comic books series from 1965, followed by a crazy 'Wacky Witch' story about bad luck from issue 12, October 1973.
Have fun everybody! (If you want you can click to enlarge the images. Hitting the 'show original' link afterwards and clicking that image will give you the high resolution files).

 

Rockstar counting down to show GTA V.

After months of speculation and much anticipation it's finally here! Yesterday, Rockstar Games officially announced the next sequel to their controversial record breaking video game series, Grand Theft Auto V. They revealed their official logo for the game (above) and said they'll have the first trailer up in a week on their website. Hope their servers will be able to withstand the huge spike in traffic next week! The trailer will go live on November 2.

UPDATE #1 11/02/2011: Check out the first offical trailer HERE.
UPDATE #2 11/16/2012: Check out the 2nd trailer and all info on main characters HERE.

Record Breaking games.

GTA IV released on April 29, 2008 for the PS3 and Xbox 360 sold more than 3.6 million copies on the first day of release, grossing over $ 500 million dollars. which made it into the Guiness Book of records as 'Highest Revenue Generated by an Entertainment Product in 24 Hours'. The PC version was released on December 2nd that year, while the game also spawned two consecutive expansion packs 'The Lost and the Damned' and 'The Ballad of Gay Tony', which enabled you to play completely new levels with new characters in the same setting, 'Liberty City' aka New York City. The total series of GTA video games have now sold over 100 million copies world wide! Who said crime doesn't pay?

Above: Iconic artwork for all the GTA covers is created by Rockstar's senior artists Stephen Bliss and Anthony Macbain.

Rockstar history.

Rockstar Games was founded in New York in 1998 by the british game developers Sam and Dan Houser with Terry Donovan, Jamie King and Gary Foreman. But the first GTA game was developed by DMA design in Edinburgh, Scotland, known for their popular 'Lemmings' games. It was published in October 1997 for the PC by BMG Interactive, the new technologies division of BMG entertainment, also owner of numerous record labels including Arista, Ariola and RCA Records, which was the main reason why brothers Sam and Dan Houser were working for them in the '90's, because they wanted to become Rockstars!

From left to right: Sam Houser, Terry Donovan and Dan Houser. The three of them even went to the same school together (Saint Paul's School). After working for BMG for fives years, Donovan was VP of marketing for Take-Two from 1999 to 2006. (Photographs by Jordan Liles).

GTA 2 was also created by DMA and published on October 25th, 1999 for the PC and the Playstation, just ahead of Sony's release of the PS2 in March 2000. When BGM's interactive video games division was aquired by Take-Two Interactive it was transformed into Rockstar Games, which bought DMA in 2001 and turned it into Rockstar North. Currently Take-Two has ten Rockstar studios actively involved in the creation of the videogames franchise, but all major GTA games are still developed by Rockstar North in Edinburgh, U.K.

Home is where the heart is. Offices of Rockstar North in Edinburgh, U.K. Thanks to MathewBest for this amazing photo! (click to enlarge).

Grand Theft Auto III was developed by DMA/Rockstar North and released for the PC, PS2 and Xbox on October 22, 2001. It was the first real 'Rockstar' GTA and had the graphics and designs that have now become iconic to the series. It also had the various music stations and fake ads we all love now. Set in 'Liberty City', it was the first GTA in 3D (the first two were 2D and had a 'top down' view) using the RenderWare game enigine, developed by British game developer 'Criterion Games', also responsible for the 'Burnout' racing games, the critically acclaimed First Person Shooter 'Black' in 2004 and last year's racer 'Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit'.

On October 13th, Rockstar announed a 'Tenth Anniversary Special edition' of GTA III for mobile devices such as the iPad 2 and the iPhone 4S, the Android phones and tablets and the Samsung  Galaxy Tab.

Rockstar also released a 10 year anniversary poster and a limited-edition 1:6 scale action figure of Claude, the main character of GTA III. It will come with two sets of clothing, including his Liberty City prison uniform. It also has all the weapons from the game: a bat, knife, grenades, pistol, sniper rifle, and an assault rifle and is produced by collectible figure maker Sideshow. GTA I and II are part of Rockstar's Classic downloadable series and freely available at Rockstar's site.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was actually the fourth GTA game Rockstar developed. Released on October 1, 2002 for the PS2 and later ported to the Xbox and the PC. Inspired by Brian De Palma's drug trafficing gangster classic 'Scarface' and Michael Mann's NBC TV hit series 'Miami Vice', it was set in the 1980's in 'Vice City' and focused on former inmate Tommy Vercetti aka the 'Harwood Butcher', a member of the Liberty City Mafia, and his dealings with the Cuban and Haitian gangs. It was the best selling game of 2002 and was released on the Mac App store on August 25, 2011.

GTA San Andreas was Rockstar's fifth console game in the franchise, released for the PS2 on October 26, 2004, it became the best-selling game of all time for Sony's video game console. Changing Liberty and Vice City for the West coast of the US, it focussed on the lives and gang related activities of Carl 'CJ' Johnson and his 'Grove Street Families' gang fighting the 'Ballas' and the 'Vagos' for their territories in 'Los Santos', 'San Ferro' and 'Las Venturas'. 

Released for Sony's PSP handheld in October 2005, 'Liberty City Stories' was again set in Liberty City in 1998 and therefor serves as a prequel to GTA III. Also developed for the PSP and released in 2006, 'Vice City Stories', was a prequel to 'GTA: Vice City'. Created by Rockstar Leeds in the U.K. (formerly known as Mobius Entertainment), it was again ported to the PS2 in March 2007.

GTA IV was released on April 29, 2008 for PS3 and Xbox 360 and ported to the PC in December that year. It used the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE) developed by Rockstar San Diego, formerly known as the Angel Studios who created the first 'Midnight Club' race game exclusively for the PS2 in 1999 and several sequels after Take-Two had aqcuired the studio in November 2002. In 2004 they were responsible for the western game 'Red Dead Revolver', a predecessor of last year's immensly popular western game 'Red Dead Redemption'. Two expansions were released in 2009 as DLC: 'The Lost and the Damned' and 'The Ballad of Gay Tony'. It is expected that GTA V will be released in 2012 and will also have downloadable content and episodic gameplay, extending the original single player.

Fantagraphics' classic Mickey vol. 2 out tomorrow.

Fantagraphics' second volume of classic Mickey Mouse comic strips by Mr. Floyd Gottfredson will be out tomorrow, but it seems that the slipcase box set, collecting both volume one and two will be arriving later than expected, so guess I'll have to wait a little while longer, 'cause I went with the box set, which is obviously way cooler and fits nicely with their classic 'Peanuts' sets I got here on the shelf.

Also, it seems like Fantagraphics has signed many contracts with foreign distributors for publication abroad, seeing they're stating on their site that they will not be able to deliver outside the US anymore. I had pre-ordered this one a while ago so hopefully I'll still be able to get this somehow, otherwise I'm gonna have to find a workaround, because of course I want to have this in English with the original lettering!

The stories in the second volume titled 'Trapped on Treasure Island' include: 'The Great Orphanage Robbery' originally published from January 11 to May14, 1932 and 'Mickey sails for Treasure Island' published between May 16 and November 12 1932 (both of course with inks by the great Al Taliaferro), 'Blaggard Castle' written by Webb Smith published between November 14 and February 10 1933. 'Pluto and the Dogcatcher', also from Februari 1933 and 'The Mail pilot' from februari 27 - June 10, 1933 were both written by Ted Osborne. Also included are 'Mickey Mouse and his horse Tanglefoot' published from June 12 to October 7, 1933 and 'The Crazy Crimewave' (with a script by Merrill de Maris) from October 9 - January 9 1934. All stories have inks by Ted Thwates, except for the first one (on the second he cooperated with Taliaferro).
It also includes 'Return to Blaggard Castle' from Disney Adventures no. 3, 10 and 11 from August / September 1993 writen by David Cody Weiss with art by Stephen DeStefano.

While the stories are restored from Disney's originals and negative proofsheets, the book also includes over 50 pages of supplementary features, with rare behind-the-scenes art and vintage publicity material and has great paintings by Gottfredson from all stories. But I still think the covers could be way better though, looks like they're designed for a tall book, rather than for wide oblong books, which they actually are.

Here's a little clip from the guys at Fantagraphics, showing us how to hold a book with two hands!

MTV's Beavis and Butt-head return!

When music was still made with actual music instruments and Justin Bieber wasn't born yet, MTV had one of the coolest animated shows: Beavis and Butt-head. Two slackers who would comment on everything and anything, mostly culminating to a supreme definition of two words that would say it all: 'this sucks!'

Created by Mike Judge (who also directed the brilliant 'Office Space' in 1999, which is still one of my favorite comedies) the show ran for 7 seasons from 1993 to 1997. Over those four years 200 Episodes were created and a feature film, 'Beavis and Butt-head do America', in 1996. Good to know: this show was mentioned during a U.S. Senate hearing in 1993 on violence on TV! (Althought Senator Ernest F. Hollings called the show 'Buffcoat and Beaver', which became a running gag on the show!) Judge, a UCSD graduate with a bachelor of science in physics said about the Beavis & Butt-head 'it's my favorite thing that I've ever done. It's the thing I'm most proud of '.

MTV president Van Toffler has said that the idea to bring Beavis and Butt-head back on the air came to him while he was watching a videoclip of Lady Gaga: 'I felt like there was a whole crop of new artists and what the world sorely missed was the point of view that only Beavis and Butt-Head could bring'!

Last year MTV finally asked Judge to revive this amazing 90's show and create a whole new season. According to Judge 24 episodes (12 half-hour programs) will definitely air, the first episode, titled 'Holy Cornholio', premieres this week on October 27! Check out the trailer below and prepare to be time warped!

Get More: Beavis and Butt-Head, Full Episodes

Classic Hanna-Barbera on Blu-ray.

Beside all the spectacular CGI animations that are coming our way on Blu-Ray just in time for the Christmas holidays ('Cars 2', 'Kung Fu Panda 2', 'The Smurfs' and Dreamworks' 'Dragons' compilation ('Gift of the Night Fury' and 'Book of Dragons') there will also be some great traditionally animated classic cartoons available in high def for the first time, as Warner will be releasing the first volume of their 'Tom & Jerry' Golden collection on October 25th on Blu-ray. All the classic cartoons have been digitally restored and are presented in 1080p full HD for the very first time!

Gene Deitch and Chuck Jones.

In October 2004, exactly seven years ago, Warner started published their 'Spotlight' collection on DVD, containing all the theatrical shorts of their complete 'Tom & Jerry' library from the 1940-1958 MGM era,which were directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera themselves.

In Europe, The Gene Deitch era shorts (thirteen cartoons produced between 1961-1962) and the Chuck Jones cartoons (34 theatrical shorts directed by the famous Chuck Jones between 1963-1967) were part of the 12 disc single-layer collection, while the US edition only collected the first 114 Hanna-Barbera shorts. In 2009 Warner published the 'Chuck Jones collection' for the US seperately with some extra documentaries, not part of the earlier European release.

The first volume of the 'Golden collection' will collect the first 37 cartoons, created between 1940 and 1948 and include the Academy Award nominated 'Puss gets the boot' (1940), 'The Night before Christmas' (1941) and 'Dr Jekyll and Mr. Mouse' (1947). It also includes the Academy Award winning shorts 'Yankee Doodle Mouse' (1943), 'Mouse Trouble' (1944), 'Quiet, please' (1945) and 'The Cat Concerto' (1947), which received the Award for 'Best Animated Short'.

Critisism.

The Classic collection contained 159 of the 161, while the 'Spotlight' collection had 112 of the 114 cartoons created by Hanna-Barbera. In the US, 'Mouse Cleaning' (1948) and 'Casanova Cat' (1951) are on the banned cartoon list and were excluded for stereotype racism: An African-American maid called 'Mammy Two shoes' often appears in the cartoons (althought you never see her face), based on the 'Mammy' character from 'Gone with the wind' (portrayed by the actress Hattie McDaniel). Strangely enough, the two banned cartoons were part of the European collection, which had two different cartoons omitted without any given reason: 'The Million Dollar Cat' (1944) and 'Busy Buddies' (1956).

Above: original cel drawing of Mammy for one of the Tom & Jerry cartoons.
Originally voiced by African-American actress Lillian Randolph, a lot of the scenes starring Mammy Two Shoes had a redubbed track, done by voice actress June Foray (known for her work on 'Cinderella', 'Rocky & Bullwinkle'. The original voice was altered because of the stereotypical African-American dialect. (The soundtrack was later redubbed again by comedian Thea Vidale after Turner Broadcasting had acquired the entire HB cartoon library and studio while planning to launch the Cartoon Network 24-hour tv channel). There was a lot of critisism on the editing of the cartoons in the original collections, where Mammy Two shoes was sometimes cut altogether and other characters were taken out by zooming/panning on the original footage (like in 'His Mouse Friday' where an African savage was cropped out). The Golden Collection will be newly restored from the CRI negatives and sometimes even from newly discovered prints. All cartoons will be included uncensored, even the banned cartoons, which are restored from their original nitrate negatives.

Below: original model sheets from 'Jasper & Jinx' aka Tom & Jerry, dated August 8, 1939 (MGM/Cartoon Network archive).

Bill Hanna & Joe Barbera.

In 1937 William Hanna and Joseph Barbera had both started working for MGM's animation studio, setup by Fred Quimby in August 1937 to create animated shorts that would run in front of any MGM produced feature films. Hanna had studied engineering at UCLA but had changed his career to work in animation. He had worked at the story and layout departments of the Harman-Ising studio since 1931, until Quimby came along, looking for talented staff members for his new studio and asked to join him.

The Tom & Jerry team with their seven Academy Awards in 1952. From left to right: Ed Barge, Irv Spence, Dick Bickenbach, Joe Barbera, Bill Hanna and Ken Muse.

Joe Barbera was originally a banker, who had studied accounting at the New York University. But he had always dreamt of becoming a cartoonist and was good at drawing. After he succeeded in selling several of his drawings to magazines he decided to make a living out of it and joined the Van Beuren animation studios in New York in 1932, where he worked as an in-betweener and later became animator and story man on their 'Tom & Jerry' series. No, not the colorfull cat and mouse chases Hanna & Barbera would be producing, but early black & white sound cartoons starring two guys (their names would later change to Dick & Larry in 1950 when Van Beuren sold all their cartoons to 'Official Films' for distribution on TV.

When the Van Beuren studios closed down in 1936 Barbera joined Paul Terry's Terrytoon studios in New York (famous for their 'Mighty Mouse' and 'Heckle & Jeckle' cartoon shorts). In 1937 he left for California and started working for Fred Quimby. While Hanna directing three 'Captain and the Kids' cartoons for MGM (based on Rudolph Dirk's popular 'The Katzenjammer Kids' comic strips), Barbera worked as an animator on the cartoons of Harman and Ising (Rudolph Ising and Hugh Harman had formerly worked for Disney and created the anti-war animated short 'Peace on Earth' in 1939, which was nominated for an Oscar. Rudolph Ising also created 'Barney Bear' for MGM in 1939 and they both won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short in 1940 for 'The Milky Way').

In 1939, 'Puss gets the boot' was the first animated short Hanna and Barbera created together for MGM. And although it was a single short project which was nominated for an Oscar that year, it would become the first in a long series of 'Tom & Jerry' cartoons, Although that wasn't the actual character's names back then. The original modelsheets from 1939 show the characters were still called 'Jasper & Jinx' back then. Hanna-Barbera's cat and mouse theme proved very succesfull and they wrote and directed 114 shorts for MGM between 1940 and 1958.

Because MGM closed their animation department abruptly in 1957, Hanna and Barbera decided to found their own production company Hanna-Barbera and start creating animation specifically for television. Being on a tighter budget, they introduced limited animation and literally created dozens of popular animated shows and a seemingly endless stream of memorable cartoon characters like 'The Flintstones', 'Scooby-Doo', 'Yogi Bear', 'Top Cat', 'The Jetsons', 'Huckleberry Hound' and many more. Using limited animation meant they would recycle backgrounds and only animate certain parts of a character's body, which took a lot less drawing (instead of 14.000 drawings for a seven minute cartoon they needed 2.000). Their technique did not only rescue their business, but also helped save an entire industry.

Artwork from some less known shows Hanna-Barbera created for TV. Above: 'The Magilla Gorilla Show' (1963-1964). Below: model sheet of 'Penelope Pitstop', one of the characters on 'Wacky Races', an animated cartoon show between 1968-1970 about rivaling race car drivers and their race through the USA. She later got her own series 'The Perils of Penelope Pitstop' (1969-1971).

James Curran's 'Tintin' title sequence.

Here's something that's been buzzing the web a few days now and it's pretty awesome: James Curran of Slimjim animation & design did a personal title sequence of Spielberg's upcoming 3D animated Tintin movie. Based on the 24 comic books he made references to every book in the unofficial title sequence, which will propably be better than what Spielberg had in mind for the movie (well, still not to late to change that of course!)

The track he used was taken from the terrific score of the animated series 'The Adventures of Tintin' from 1991, which was composed by Ray Parker, Jim Morgan and Tom Szczesniak. If you want to see more from James, go to http://www.slimjimstudios.com. Great work, Jim!

John K. on 'the Simpsons', show canceled?

This week fans of the Simpsons were in for a surprise, as animator John Kricfalusi ('John K.'), creator of the 'Ren & Stimpy show' had animated part of the opening sequence for the episode 'Bart stops to smell the Roosevelt'. But while John's work on the show was quite astounding, the producers of the series were in for a shock themselves, when FOX decided that this season would be the last.

FOX announced that the series had to take a huge budget-cut in order to survive and later even suggested the series would definately end next year, even if the cast would be okay with a lot less income, meaning the voice actors would earn at least 45% less.

Dan Castellaneta (Homer), Julie Kavner (Marge), Nancy Cartwright (Bart), Yeardley Smith (Lisa), Hank Azaria (Moe the bartender, Chief Wiggum and Apu) and Harry Shearer (Mr. Burns) make about $440,000 per episode. The reason given for the cancellation was that, althought the ratings dropped considerably (20% over the last five years), the cost of production only seems to be rising. Others however figure that the contracts Newscorp, the owner of FOX, has for worldwide syndication, will earn much more if the show was cancelled today. When production of the serie would stop, it would give opportunity to negotiate new deals for the reruns. Some say the contracts in today's market are at least 750 million dollars worth more (the original rerun deals were signed in the mid 1990s). Over the last two decades the show has been on the air, Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp already made more than $ 1 billion dollars off the show.









Above: designs by John K. for couch-gag scene. The voice cast agreed with a 70% pay cut if they would get a small piece of the back end profits of the series, but that idea didn't go well with FOX. The negotiations are now over and it's been decided to keep the Simpsons on the air for two more seasons, until 2014, so season 25 will have the very last episodes.

Have a look at the Simpsons intro below. John K's stuff begins at 00:50.



Banksy's intro.

John Krisfaluci's creative opening sequence for the episode of last week wasn't the first time the producers hired a known guest artist to do the so called couch-gag in the intro. In 2010 the producers had contacted renowned British street artist Banksy to come up with an original intro. Known for his critical statements in his graffiti, Banksy's identity still remains unkown today.

(Above: Posters for Banksey's documentary, hiding his identity behind a mask (right). Was it his art or the mask that got the Simpsons producers excited? He sure looks like Bart to me!)

The producers never met Banksy and contacted him through the producers of his film 'Exit through the giftshop'. (in the movie he appears only rarely, face hooded and voice distorted). The film was nominated for an Academy Award in 2010 for 'Best Documentary' (which was won by Charles Fergusons' 'Inside Job').

Personally, I think Banksy never guessed the producers would go through with it. In his intro you see the Korean animators working at an assembly line, living under the worst of circumstances underground and being abused to create the Simpsons episodes week after week. ('The Simpsons' is created by AKOM productions in South Korea which of course is a lot cheaper than having the work done in the US). There's even a unicorn held prisoner in the sequence, it creates the holes in the dvd's that are sold worldwide! Still, his ideas for the opening sequence were carried out almost exactly as he had designed it. (The segment was lightened after critique from Nelson Shin, founder of AKOM animation and designer of George Lucas' original lightsaber).

For more on John Kricfalusi, visit his official blog or check out what he had to say about his cooperation with Matt groening in an interview he did posted over at cartoonbrew.