Happy Thanksgiving!

To celebrate thanksgiving, I thought it would be fitting to post this classic Bugs Bunny/Elmer story from December 1943. It was featured in the 26th issue of the 'Looney Tunes-Merrie Melodies' comic series, published by Dell Comics from 1941 to July/September 1962. A giant 246 issues were published in total. Western continued the title from 1975 to 1980 under their 'Gold Key' imprint, but the earlier Dell books still taste best! Enjoy your dinner everybody and have a great weekend!

New books on animation!

Focal Press just released some very cool books on digital character animation. 'Character Animation Fundamentals' by Steve Roberts was published this week and uses traditional 2D animation concepts while showing you how to apply them when designing digital characters in 3D space. Roberts has been working in animation for over 25 years, which won him two IVCA awards and the New York Film and Television Award. He is currently Senior lecturer in Character Animation at Central St Martins College of Art and Design, formerly known as the 'London Animation Studio' and part of the six colleges that make up the 'University of the Arts London'. Roberts has worked for Disney, Warner Brothers and the BBC and explains all about his traditional and digital workflow in his latest book. The companion website includes 20 fully built and rigged models which you can use to animate with and more than 50 tutorials, teaching you how to build and animate these. It also has 140 2D and 3D animated movies as examples.

Another title you might enjoy is Lee Montgomery's 'Tradigital Maya', which was published on November 15th. As with Steve Roberts' book, this one too uses traditional animation principles to learn you character animation and develop your skills in 3D animation, specifically in Maya.

Although many aspects of the techniques discussed by Montgomery will of course also translate to other animation software, this book is part of a series of 'tradigital' books, which also features other software specific titles 'Tradigital Blender' by Roland Hess and 'Tradigital 3ds Max by Richard Lapidus, both published earlier in June and October. Montgomery has worked as key animator on Rockstar's succesfull video games series 'Grand Theft Auto' and 'Manhunt' and is currently senior level member of Autodesk Media & entertainment software support team, while also being an active moderator of Autodesk's AREA forum. Many of the techniques used and provided by Montgomery rely of  Disney's 12 fundamental principles of animation, as featured in Frank Tomas and Ollie Johnson's 'Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life', which is highly regarded by the industry as the bible on character animation. If you don't have it, you should definately consider buying that first.







Above: the principles of animating a character apply to any given object. Whether it's a person, an animal or even a jet fighter, as Montgomery thoroughly demonstrates in his new book. Below: first published in 1981, 'The Illusion of Life' is still the must-have classic on animation. Written by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson (below seated), two of Disney's 'Nine Old Men', master animators on many of Disney's classic animated features, such as 'Pinocchio', 'Bambi' and 'Cinderella'.

Pixar releases full length trailer of 'Brave'.

Today Disney/Pixar released the theatrical trailer for their new CGI animated feature 'Brave'. Set in the 10th century mystical Scottish Highlands, the story tells of Princess Merida, a brave archer who defies all traditions and has to fight off a beastly curse to restore peace in the land. With the voices of Scottish actress Kelly MacDonald and Kevin McKidd, who also voiced Captain John 'Soap' MacTavish for Infinity Ward's 'Modern Warfare III' video game (which was released last week and has officially now broken all sales records: 1.5 million people bought their copy on the night of November 8/9, 6.4 million copies were sold that day generating $ 400 million within the first 24 hours).

'Brave', originally titled 'The Bear and the Bow', is directed by Marc Andrews and Brenda Chapman. Also responsible for story development on Disney's 'Beauty and the Beast' in 1991, Chapman wrote the screenplay for 'Brave' with Irene Mecci, writer of Disney's 'The Lion King'. Director Marc Andrews has worked as a storyboard artist on Cartoon Network's 'Samurai Jack' and 'Star Wars: Clone Wars', but also directed Pixar's short 'One Man Band', which was nominated for an Academy Award in the category 'Best Animated Short Film' in 2006. Andrews also co-wrote the screenplay for the upcoming Disney feature 'John Carter' based on the books by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

HBO meets Pixar: Kevin McKidd played 'Lucius Vorenus' for two seasons in 'Rome' while Kelly MacDonald now stars as 'Ms. Margaret Schroeder' in the second season of Terence Winter's critically acclaimed 'Boardwalk Empire'.

Animation has been carefully placed into the professional hands of many digital artists, including Jude Brownbill (BBC's 'Kerwhizz' and Blue-Zoo Production's 'Those Scurvy Rascals'), Robb Denovan (Peter Jacksons' 'King Kong') and Rich McKain (who did excellent graphics on EA's video game 'Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath'). 'Brave' will be released on June 22, 2012 in the US, European releases have been set for July/August. The theatrical trailer has just now been released today so check it out above. The concept artwork is very high res, so you may want to click to enlarge.

Warner releases Looney Tunes on Blu-ray.

Today Warner released the first volume of their Looney Tunes Platinum collection on Blu-ray! Fans who have enjoyed the 'Golden Collection', which also had all the shorts collected in six volumes of 4 disc sets,released between 2003 and 2008, will finally be able watch Warner's classic cartoons in high def! The first Volume of the new 'Platinum Collection' contains three discs carrying 50 classic shorts, 11 behind the scenes featurettes. The third disc has five hours worth of the extra content and nine extra cartoons. You can choose bteween the standard digibook and an Ultimate Collector's edition featuring all kinds of extra gadgets (see above). In January next year Warner will also release their first volume of the 'Showcase' editions, which are single disc editions, with 25 cartoons each.

The shorts collected on the first Volume are from 1936 - 1966, directed by Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Bob Clampett and Arthur Davis, Robert McKimson and Tex Avery (unfortunately only one short by Avery this time around, the early 'I Love to Singa' from 1936).

Among the many great cartoons are the celebrated Academy Award winning 'For Scent-imental Reasons' from 1949 feauring Pepe Le Pew and 'Speedy Gozales' from 1955. It also has the 1957 Chuck Jones short 'What's Opera, Doc? considered by historians as 'the best cartoon of all time' (according to Jerry Beck's book), the runner up is also featured in this volume: 'Duck Amuck' from 1953, again directed by Jones. Both were inducted into the National Film Registry, the first one in 1992, the second one in 1999.







Opening background by Irv Wyner from the 1955 award winning short 'Speedy Gonzalez' directed by Fritz Freleng (click to enlarge). What a great example of showing character through conflict: on one end the 'Ajax' cheese company (guarded of course, by Sylvester the cat) and on the other end, the Mexican border and the mice! This short was only the second appearance of Speedy. He started out in the 1953 short ''Cat-Tails for Two'. Animation by Gerry Chiniquy, Ted Bonnicksen and Arthur Davis on a script by Warren Foster (he would later work for Hanah-Barbera on 'Yogi the Bear and 'the Flintstones').

Above and below: In 'What's Opera Doc' Elmer Fudd chases Bugs Bunny while they're both singing to classical music. Directed by Chuck Jones this 1957 short plays like Disney's 'Fantasia' on steroids and is loaded with georgeous colorfull backgrounds by Philip DeGuard.










Below: Breaking the 'fourth wall' in Chuck Jones' 'Duck Amuck' from 1957. Daffy fights the scriptwriters and animators of this short, the scenery and in the end himself while the final scene reveals Bugs as the creator. Animation work by Ken Harris, Ben Washam and Lloyd Vaughan.

The extra's contain a pencil test from Chuck Jones' television special 'How the Grinch stole Christmas' from 1966 while the extra nine shorts feature a.o. Daffy Duck as Duck Dodgers in 'Return of the 24 1/2th Century' from the Thanks-for-giving 1980 TV special and 'The Fright before Christmas' from Bugs Bunny's 'Looney's Christmas Tales' TV special from 1979. There are a couple of cartoons that were never released before and a lot of shorts are digitally restored and now have perfect quality, presented in their original format. 

Bruce Timm rocks with new 'Green Lantern animated series'.

'In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil's might beware my power... Green Lantern's light!'

This weekend the Cartoon Network (US) premiered the pilot for their great new show 'Green Lantern: The animated series' which will air in 2012. Directed by the great animator Bruce Timm, who earlier, together with Paul Dini, produced the multiple Emmy winning 'Batman, the Animates series'(1992 to 1995) for FOX and 'Superman, the animated series' (1996 to 2000) for Warner. Known for his great style, he also created the critically acclaimed 'Batman Beyond' for Warner between 1999 and 2001 and 'Justice League' for Cartoon Network between 2001 and 2004. 'Green Lantern' marks the first time Timm is doing a CGI animated cartoon show. Although a bit scared Timm's vision for stylish animation would suffer under the CGI, I was fortunate enough to check it out and can securely attest that the new Green Lantern series will definately live up to Timm's earlier work, both animation and storywise. And oh boy, what a great story it is indeed!

Above: Where fantastic tales of fiction meet the latest real life adventures in science: Cartoon Network's 'The Green Lantern animated series' will be another step forward into CGI animation for TV after their 'Star Wars: The Clone Wars' proved a hit succes.

Bill Finger and Martin Nodell.

'The Green Lantern' first appeared in 'All American Comics' issue 16 from July 1940. Created by Bill Finger (script) and Martin Nodell (art), the first Green Lantern was Alan Scott, an engineer involved in a terrible train crash, from which he was the only survivor, rescued by an otherworldly green light to become the masked avenger. Finger, being Bob Kane's writing partner at that that time, was responsible for the first Batman stories and also Batman's design (although every comic book today still reads 'created by 'Bob Kane' as Kane had legally requested). In 2005 the 'Bill Finger Award for excellence in comic book writing' was created, given each year at Comic-con, it honors writers that never received credit for their work. Among the recipients today are Gardner Fox, creator of 'The Flash' and the 'Justice League of America' and Larry Lieber, who wrote the first stories of 'Thor' and 'Iron Man'. Otto Binder, who introduced aspects to the realm of Superman like 'Krypto the dog','Supergirl' and the 'Legion of Super-Heroes' received the award in 2010 along with Gary Friedrich, who co-created 'Ghost Rider'.

Above: Martin Nodell in his studio in 1987. He passed away in 2006 at the age of 91, while Bill Finger had died in 1974 at the age of 59.

Finger and Nodell's original comic story reads like a tale of old mythology: arriving on earth through a meteor crash in Ancient China, the green light fortold it would flame three times: once to bring death, once to bring life and a third and last time to bring it's power. The burning metal from the meteor is used by the old wiseman Chang to make a lamp that shines green light, however, the villagers are afraid of him and his old scrolls and books, thinking it will bring them doom, so they set fire to his workshop, burning all but the lamp, which then fulfilled it's first prophecy and kills all the attacking villagers. The lamp finds its way into the US and falls into the hands of a mental patient in an asylum. After his health is restored by the green light (fulfilling the second prophecy) he crafts the lamp into a modern lantern, used by railroad workers at the time to give the 'clear' signal (green lanterns for 'go' and red lanterns of course, for 'stop'). It is this lamp Hal Jordan has with him during his train accident when the railroad bridge collapses. He receives the power of the Green light and therefor survives the crash, fulfilling the third and last prophecy.

Above: cover from 'All American Comics' 16, July 1940, which introduced Finger and Nodell's 'The Green lantern'. The magazine was published by Max Gaines' All-American publishers, one of the three companies that forged 'National Periodical Publications' in 1944, which officially adopted the name'DC Comics' in 1977.

Above: After surviving the train crash engineer Allan Scott receives instructions to create a ring that will harness the Green Lantern's power, from page 7 of 'All American Comics' 16. Originally Finger was inspired by the tale of Aladdin and thus had originally named his character 'Alan Ladd'.

Max Gaines' company also published 'All Star Comics' magzine which introduced the first female heroine 'Wonder Woman' in their eigth issue from December 1941. Creator Dr. William Moulton Marston was a psychologist who had advocated the educational use of comic books and was hired by Gaines as a consultant. He also invented an early version of the polygraph or lie detector, which he used to examine German POW's (prisoners of war).
Artist Gil Kane and writer John Broome revived the Green Lantern in 1959 in the 22th issue of DC's 'Showcase' comic series. It introduced test pilot Hal Jordan as the main character, who discoveres a crashed alien craft, carrying Abin Sur, an officer of the Green Lantern Corps, an intergalactic organisation, who is dying and tells him the ring selected him to take his place in the corps.

Above: artwork by Gil Kean (with inks by Joe Giella) features the first appearance of Hal Jordan. In the first story he receives the ring of the Green Lantern from Abin Sur (right).

The Green Lantern animated series will premier in spring 2012 on Cartoon Network as part of their new 'DC Nation' programming block that will also include'Young Justice' and another CGI animated show produced by Glen Murakami called 'Beware the Batman', which will debut in 2013. (check out the artwork below from this new show as first shown at the MIP junior conference in Cannes last month).

Below a few more screenshots. In the new animated series Hal Jordan is confronted with the sinisterous 'Red Lantern Corps' lead by Atrocitus (voiced by Jonathan Adams). The Red lanterns first appereared in the comic books created by Geoff Johns and Ethan van Sciver in 2007 and are first mentioned in the 'Sinestro Corps War' crossover event. Sinestro, a former green lantern and Jordan's arch nemesis, created by Gil Kane and John Broome in 1961 will not be part of the story line of the animates series.

Great Minds...

'Giggle Comics' 57 from September 1948 and the cover for the Donald Duck weekly 41 from 2008. The first cover shows Dan Gordon's 'Superkatt', the other cover was drawn by German Disney artist Ulrich Schröder. Gordon was the lead storyboard artist at Hannah-Barbera and was responsable for the character designs of 'The Flintstones'.

Rockstar GTA V trailer goes live.

As promised, here's the official first trailer for Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto 5, released an hour ago. Click it to watch! It appears the logo sign has been lifted off an old silver certificate,  a US currency used between 1878 and 1964 (below). The design dates back to 1899 and features 'Running Antelope', chief of the hunkpapa Sioux indian tribe in South Dakota, who was the first to sign a peace treaty at Fort Rice in 1868 and was the only American Indian ever to feature on an American currency. From the trailer we can see the game is set in California aka San Andreas (the creators have other names for their places, Hollywood is called 'Vinewood' for instance). The game will have multiple playable characters and will be out in 2012.

By the way, the song you can hear is called 'Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake' from 1968 by the British band 'The Small Faces'. Have Fun!

Uncharted 3: first impression

Having played all their 'Jak & Daxter' games on the PS2, you can say I'm a longtime fan of Santa Monica based game developer Naughty Dog. I just received the long awaited third installment in their 'Uncharted' franchise title 'Drake's Deception' yesterday and immediately started playing. Thought it 'ld be a good thing to break loose from this virtual extravaganza for a moment to share my first impression so far.

First off: the packaging looks really awesome. I got the Special Edition with a 'steelbook' case (above you see the regular version), which actually looks like Nate's roughed up notebook, having this soft suede feel to it, with all his little scribbles, clues, collected newspaper clippings and maps inside. It's great. I haven't downloaded all the bonus stuff yet that comes with the voucher the SE brings along, I just chucked in the disc and went for the first seven chapters last night. (The campaign mode lasts 22 chapters, while UC2 had 26 chapters).










DC Comics will publish a six issue limited series of 'Uncharted' comic books starting November 30. Above the covers for the first issues (first one is a variant done by Adam Hughes). The comics will have by Sergio Sandoval and Pol Gas with scripts by Joshua Williamson and covers by Tony Harris.

For those of you not familiar with the franchise: Uncharted is an action adventure game, combining bare knuckle fighting and shooting scenes with exploring and puzzle solving situations. It features the best of Indiana Jones and James Bond combined, think of it as Tomb Raider, but with fists instead of breasts. The main character, Nathan Drake is a treasure hunter and a descendant (or so he claims) of the famous explorer Sir Francis Drake. His longtime buddy Sully (Victor Sullivan) is an oldtime adventurer and a bit of a hustler himself, he often finds himself caught up in some sort of criminal activity. Also along for the ride in all three games is female journalist and TV reporter Elena Fisher, voiced by actress Emily Rose (she also did the character's motion capture) now known for her role of detective Audrey Parker in the popular SyFy show 'Haven', based Stephen King's novel.

While most games today appear on all game consoles and PC, Uncharted remains one of the few Playstation 3 exclusive games that still exist, a rare treat!

Young Drake.

The first levels have a real genuine feeling to it, set in South-America we see Nate as a kid trying to nick his great-great-grandfather's ring in a maritime museum. That's when he meets Sully for the first time, who is out for Francis Drake's ring himself too. The following chase scene on the roofs and through the appartments of reminds me of the fast paced scenes in 'The Bourne Ultimatum', you know, the part where Jason goes all out trying to survive while on the run in Morroco.

I also like the London settings, where Nate and Sully first catch up with Charlie Cutter, their new compadre, resembling just more than a bit Jason Statham, both in action and likeness. Many thought that Statham had actually joined the cast for a while, but Charlie's really voiced by Graham McTavish. Known for his role in Luc Besson's recent action packed thriller 'Colombiana', Graham already did al lot of voice acting work for other games, including characters from 'Infamous 2', 'COD: Black opps' and 'COD: Modern Warfare 2'. He also voiced the character Zoran Lazarevic in 'Uncharted 2: Among Thieves', so he's no stranger to the franchise.

Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin founded Naughty Dog in 1986 and created the 'Crash Bandicoot' and 'Jak & Daxter' games. In 2001 their company was bought by Sony. After openly criticising Sony for not respecting the individual creative talents, Gavin left Naughty Dog in 2004 and created his own comic book 'Iron and the Maiden' with artists Francis Manapul and Joel Gomez. Published by Aspen Comics in 2007, the Trade paperback was released last year by Top Cow.

25.000 Gigabytes.
A month ago, Christophe Balestra, Co-President of Naughty Dog showed through his twitter account that the total assets of Uncharted 3 are taking up almost an entire 25 Terabyte drive, that's almost 25 thousand Gigabytes of raw data!

When you bought 'Uncharted 2: Among Thieves', the disc almost held 25 Gigabytes while the game had 26 levels. Deception 'only' has 22 levels. A lot of time has been spent to make this third game playable on the latest 3D TV-screens, resulting in a massive amount of data. Uncharted 3 therefor takes up more than 50 Gigabites of space on the disc and had to be really compressed to fit the maximum size of one double layer Blu-ray disc.

Like all games Uncharted 3 has different levels of difficulty, which gives different people the chance to play and also the possibility to evolve your skills, if you didn't have any. Beside 'Hard' and 'Normal' there is always the 'Easy' setting for certain people. I've heard Naughty Dog testers on the net say the game could and actually was completed in 3.3 hours on 'easy'.

Uncharted 3 even has a 'Very easy' setting, though I am really having a hard time trying to comprehend what kind of people, if any, this is targeted at, seeing that I'm playing this game on 'Hard'  and lucky for me, when I've finished it I'll have unlocked the so-called 'crushing' mode. But I'm still at level 7 right now, so I haven't even entered the desert to search for the 'Lost Atlantis of the sands'.

Covers for the first and second game. 'Drake's Fortune' was released in December 2007. Two years later, in October 2009 Naughty Dog came with the sequel 'Among Thieves'. In the first game Nate found Sir Francis Drake's diary and searches for El Dorado in the Amazon while second is set in The Himalayas and centers on Marco Polo's voyages to the East, the legend of his lost ships and the mythical kingdom of Shambhala.

Uncharted Future?

Based on the first game 'Uncharted: Drake's Fortune' a big Hollywood movie is nog being produced, which will definately draw many new and unfamiliar customisers to the franchise. I'm guessing that might be a reason why Naughty Dog/Sony seems to have simplified the gameplay.
As for a new sequel, I've heard the guys at Naughty Dog say that the PS3 wouldn't be able to handle a forth Drake adventure technically, suggesting that the next game will be created for the Playstation 4, which is not so strange, seeing that the PS3 was released in November 2006, six years after the PS2, which came out in 2000, again six years after the release of the original Playstation console in December 1994.

Another game called 'Uncharted: Golden Abyss' will be available soon on Sony's new handheld 'Playstation Vita', both of which will be released December 17 In Japan. In Europe and in the US the release of 'Golden Abyss' will also coincide with the release of Sony's Vita, which will be available here in Februari 2013.

Let's hope the guys at Naughty Dog will someday return to Jak & Daxter once more. I would love to see them in HD sometime, even if it's just a polished collection of the three games in HD. Below: headturn and character design for 'Jak' by Naughty Dog artist Bob Raffei. Check out his site for more great artwork from this amazing series of games!

Suske & Wiske 315 out November 9.

While volume 315 of the succesful Belgian comic book series 'Suske & Wiske' (also known as 'Suzy & Spike' abroad) will be out on November 9th, the next issue has already been made available by publisher Standaard for digital download through the Mac Appstore.

People who like to read their comics 'oldschool' on paper will have to wait till next week to read 'De Bananenzangers' ('The Bananasingers'), as the next issue of the popular series is called. But eager fans who own an Apple Ipad tablet or the Iphone have already been able to get a hold of it, as a digital version was released early to promote the free download of Standaard's new Suske & Wiske app. Through this gadget, readers and fans will be able to check out all titles available and more. With the early digital release fans were also able to check out the new cover for the book (above), which has been redrawn by Luc Morjaeu and edited since the Vandersteen Studio had released the artwork earlier this summer. Below: sketch for the original cover of S & W 315, for the final rendering go here.

Because of high demand, Standaard also published five older titles from the series: 'Amber' (259), 'De Curieuze Neuzen' (296'), 'De Elfsteden Stunt' (298), 'Het Babbelende Bad' (299) and 'De Dartele Draak' (301). (An official translation doesn't exist yet for these titles, so I'm giving you a rough translation here, don't quote me on them! English titles would be 'Amber', 'The Curious Noses', 'The Elfsteden Stunt', 'The Blabbering Bath' and 'The Playfull Dragon'.)

In December Last year the Belgian publisher introduced their first digital comic book for the Ipad with the release of Suske & Wiske 311 'De Stuivende stad' ('The Windy City'). The app, created with Little Miss Robot was downloaded over 100.000 times in the first week and was also released in March this year for mobile devices using Android, the open source Operating system developed by the OHA and Google (version 4.0 nicknamed 'Ice Cream Sandwich' was just released October 19th).

WPG publishers, of which Standaard is part of since September last year, has now announced they will use Adobe's Digital Publishing Suite to create all their digital interactive content from now on. As many as 150 apps are announced, bringing also older titles of their long running comic series as Vandersteen's 'De Rode Ridder' ('The Red Knight).
Below: cover by German artist Claus D. Scholz for the new 'Red Knight' volume 232, titled 'Duivelsmist' ('Devilsmist'), which will also be out on November 9.