Sunday, October 31, 2010

Friday, October 29, 2010

Animation blocks, the world and a Plea for new things: A 90's animation pseudolesson from a hopeless cartoon kid

I was thinking the other day about media based nostalgia; how it'll never be the same from this generation on.

Theres something about putting in an olde tape and audiovisually comparing it to a memory, overlaying time crusted stains and statics and worbles over the mind perfect emotional copy burned into your head. This generations' information is lasers, and will never, ever experience the beautiful time degradation of magnetized media, nor know the proper respect for the easily damaged history they allow into their consciousness.

They just suck info and shit, rarely taking the time to digest whats eaten.

It came to me while digging for this:



This was a bump from Toonami's early days.

Heres a couple more:





Toonami.

I was 15 when it formed from the stagnant waters of cartoon network; It'd been 3+ years since MTV's Liquid Television had stabbed me in the brain with obviously unsupervised creativity not seen anywhere at the time, and probably never again.

But the Liquid Television was a soon abandoned idea that later fed a Toonami[you heard me], which is no surprise since Viacom was the mothership for both MTV and Cartoon Networks, and each respective programming block was a phenomenon cut from basically the same cloth.

Each had their flagships, as well as evolutions, as time went on.

Liquid Television had its Aeon Flux, one of the greatest barrier-pushing american animated shows to date.





Cartoon Network had its Space Ghost Coast to Coast, using animation cells from the olde 60's Space Ghost Hanna-Barbera cartoon to jigsaw together a spoof late-night talk show, which at the time and to this day, was a pretty fucking insane idea.





They obviously had different objectives and audiences(or maybe not), action to comedy.

LT, in time, spawned Oddities.





Along with a new full length series of Aeon Flux, oddities brought about:

The Maxx


and:

The Head


And later still, the amazing under-the-radar gem,

MTV Downtown


Toonami continued to grow like wildfire over the years, snatching up licenses and promoting some industry skewing shows of their own.

Reboot

(this was the first ever completely computer animated show, it blew my fucking mind when i first saw it, its hilarious now but i honestly couldnt grasp how it was done at the time, i just didnt understand)

and

Gundam Wing


Toonami eventually mashed its way into the late-late-nightosphere with Midnight Run, which would ultimately trigger a split into two entities, a core Toonami block and a completely revamped, much more adult oriented block;

The mighty, mighty,

[adult swim]


To me, there was little better than hearing the words "All kids out of the pool" back in the day.

This was a true animated revolution in the states, the first time a network had actually given a studio (Williams Street/Ghost Planet Industries) both financial(albeit limited) backing and complete creative control for the purpose of creation itself. Sure, it was to set a foundation for a massive wave of american animation, contrary to Toonamis mostly Japanese licenses, but it was really the beginning of a brand new subculture in and of itself.

Many of the original shows kept with the cheaper Hanna-Barbera Space Ghost technique, focusing more on amazing banter and still visuals than actual animation.

Sealab 2021



Harvey Birdman


Home Movies


ATHF


Oblongs



Until the animation eventually caught up to the banter.

Metalocalypse


Venture Bros


Superjail


This posts turned out to be way longer than i thought it was going to be, but theres a little history lesson for you on the state of american cartoons right now and some of the horses and roads they rode in on.

I think the moral of the story is that creative people need to be creative and true to themselves regardless of outside forces like trends and business and commercial property gumming up the works; once integrity is neglected and the focus on making a buck is pressed, the work becomes an obvious selling point and resonance of the simple act of creation is phased out and traded in for more plastic, and nobody wants to live on the plastic beach the Gorillaz have been telling us about lately, now do they?

To be honest, im not sure whats on [as] right now because its mostly family guy and king of the hill and live action shorts surviving on the brand name instead of ingenuity. Sure, what goes up must come down, but sometimes, just sometimes, what goes down comes back up. Thats what all the animation blocks ive written about here: Liquid Television, Toonami, Adult Swim, all have in common. Theyre all water based, and have an ebb and flow all there own. They may evaporate and dry up over time, but there no telling when the next storms coming.

I'll leave you with a chunk of bumps, unsung heroes of latelate night and the supreme manifestations of magic hour design, mad tinkery,



and a gateway to eargasm.


-h

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Surviving the Future

"On Thursday, October 21, CBC TV showed 'Surviving the Future', an hour-long documentary on both the major challenges facing us over the next half-century and the amazing technologies and social shifts underway to meet those challenges. Directed by the award-winning documentarian Marc de Guerre, Surviving the Future is a rather intense piece of work, with interviews with a variety of scientists, writers, and other thinkers.



via grinding


ps there may or may not be a torrent for it here.

Future Talkin

"The future isn’t going to feel futuristic

It’s simply going to feel weird and out-of-control-ish, the way it does now, because too many things are changing too quickly. The reason the future feels odd is because of its unpredictability. If the future didn’t feel weirdly unexpected, then something would be wrong.

-Douglas Coupland




Check out the whole post full of lots and lots of future-y things here at grinder

Postcards from Future London





see many more here

Monday, October 25, 2010

Have some sugary blood slides of doom



It's almost Halloween i hear. Thats when human blood is sweetest.

heres how to do that thing.

Banksy Simpsons Intro

it's olde already, but here it is just in case it slid by you

Music Video fun

Uploaded a bunch more videos to the yootoob channel, im on "S" now.

Neat, some good stuff in there.

Enjoi.





















<-----theres a bunch more over on the top left link.

and i mean a BUNCH.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Another World Will Surround Me

i saw this commercial the other day.

i havent seen avatar yet, theres something about keeping something foreign that keeps it infinitely interesting and endlessly beautiful.



had to hunt down the song too, it makes my electrons cum.

Lightpainting with a tablet






via core77 and berglondon

Moon Wiring Club album IMMINENT



A voice beamed into my skull today.

It said:
"A new MWC album is IMMINENT (ish).

Please take time to digest this information clearly by practising the dance routines you've learnt from the recent ITV summer season along with this deftly stimulating promotional clip: Slumberwick Dreams.

Selected dance styles include:

Somnambulist half-baked shuffle
Reverse Outpatients Boogie
The Hypnagogic Hop
The Narcoleptic Pop
Backwards sleepwalk style
Sepia Insanity
Confusional B/W two-step frugg.

We wish you every success with your routines.

ITV judges will be forming out of the furniture to judge you in your own home NOW.

This is Confusing English Electronic Music."

-interrupt transmission-

havent yet slept, brain mushy.

internet hiatus until midweek to do some drawing and things, site on autopilot until then, leave me prizes here: bonesandrobots (at) gmail (dot) com


heres a picture, enjoi your week

Playing with light - Mon ami le robot

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Duas Cores - Rail Lovers



Not sure if i'd be brave enough to name a train graff book 'Rail Lovers' (im funny), but the book looks pretty badass.

Check it out and buy 3 here.

Wired urges Hollywood to make trippier comics flix

like maybe a little Morrison and Ellis?


via wired

The Professor's Daughter



Check out this fucking magical short comic.

It's about a beautiful girl named Lillian, the mummified Pharaoh Imhotep and the adventures that follow such a love.

The writing is proper classic and the watercolors are unusually gorgeous.

Such a random find, like treasure.




Rhinestone Eyes Storyboard Video

Holy shit so i randomly came up on this.

On Melancholy Hill was fine, but the day after i saw it i had a question: How the FUCK was Rhinestone Eyes not the new single?

It's easily the best song on Plastic Beach, hands down, and the videos looking to be as such.


And it looks like its on its way, I couldn't be happierrrr <3

Friday, October 22, 2010

KnuckleSupper.com is live, suckahz



KnuckleSupper.com is officially live.

Mosey over for lots of reasons, see the characters i drew for it, preorder the book, read a chapter, support a charity - and get some free shit while youre at it.

This i command, whelps.

Check it.

The Idol Hours

Monday, October 18, 2010

Snap

Aaaaaah, so good when it hits your lips.

Woke up mid day today and it was black outside. Hard to feel bad about missing out on the daylight when theres none to be had. The great equalizer, weather.

For the last couple weeks things have been heavy; neverending nights of drawing and redrawing and getting things together, all for the opportunity to watch my laptop finally die a slow painful death at the hands of some virus, coupled with the ooolde olde computron finally giving in to the sweet sweet darkness.

Tried everything to revive it, but the only thing left is to suck the data off the drive and reformat. I havent yet, but it lies ahead. So yeah, about 3 days before deadline the compo keels over and i have to finish off the job on misc other machines without the proper programs, and without the convenience of connectivity. It was a fucking pain in the ass, and stressed me right the fuck out.

But as they say, when a door closes, a stairway behind the book shelf opens. In this particular case, two.

Enter a finished job and my good pal Eric, both of which resulted in new computers; a netbooky laptop from Eric that i'm currently using and a minimac from Drew for the Knucklesupper character drawings that ive yet to plug in and tinker with, since i need to come up with a proper monitor for the little beast.

I feel its important to really convey the thrill of this fat fucking upgrade of my given technosphere, i now have 3x the HD space, which is amazing given the fact that i was literally ALWAYS within 1 gig of full on my last electrosandwich. ALWAYS man, i can do so much more now its fucking awesome, not to mention the knucklesupper projects doneskies, i'll write up a proper post with pictures (whaaaaat) later.

Whatever i'm jabbering.

The point is that now i can kick open all brain ports again and devour information at a ridiculous rate. Site evolution is imminent.

I'll make the most of it i'm an extraordinary machine. <3



ps a gerl sitting next to me just muttered "for realsauce dude"

Yes. For realsauce, motherfuckers.

aaaahhhh

Good morning cretins, welcome to bonesandrobots.

Theres going to be a bit of remodeling around here over the next week or two, cutting out the old, grafting in the new.

I got a new computer, one that i can bring places without it shutting off for no reason on me.

The beast shall rise again.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

been like a week

well, almost.

been busy as hell with things, almost done with this KnuckleSupper project, will post drawlings when theyre all done, only one more to go and holy shit, the crews looking nice together.

Laptop is broken, got a virus and now it wont start, hurray. Gotta suck the data off the HD soonish.

Always tired, not nearly enough sleep to go around.

Dump email very full, i'll be posting lots of good stuff once this job is done.

That is all, just checking in <3

Byebye
-h