syntheticgerbil

That's funny, it was actually stipulated that Bugs Bunny would not get more screen time than Mickey Mouse. Not so, it was animated somewhere in Elstree Studios in England, possibly at the studio Richard Williams and crew did all of their commercials, shorts, and Thief and the Cobbler work (in their free time) during the 70s and 80s. Wikipedia says the animation was done there because of Richard Williams' disdain for the Disney studio, but it's cited from a book I don't have and have never read. Other sources say Disney studios was busy with other work. I would guess just going by the documentaries I've seen on Richard Williams and his ongoing dislike towards the Disney way, it's probably a bit more of the former. That's selling it a bit short. Roger Rabbit is of course Disney property and they merchandised the fuck out of it just like they do with anything, but like you said in your first paragraph, it's "in part a Disney movie." There's some wrenches in the movie's history and the animators who worked on it that prevent it from becoming a full on Disney brand even though it had the involvement from the big business new animation czars Katzenberg, Spielberg, and Zemeckis. Besides the live action stuff, which was well done, a lot of people in animation like the movie simply because of the Richard Williams factor, who's a guy who has never given up his integrity in light of failure, which is way more than anyone can say what has become of Zemeckis. While some people think Richard Williams is not that great because his stuff tends to be overly complicated or too grotesque, there's a lot to learn from the guy I think and his animated works besides Roger Rabbit are definitely nothing to scoff at. I would guess the guy was hired because he was really fucking good at being an animator and maybe the producers felt they needed someone with sensibilities that weren't exactly following the regular Californian animation principles. Richard Williams accepted under the impression that when finished, his Cobbler movie would be distributed by Disney and Spielburg, which they completely blew. The way Roger Rabbit movie was produced and presented upon release are very well separated from The Little Mermaid, and not just because it was based on a book, which I don't think makes much of a difference. I'm not saying Roger Rabbit is not a Disney movie, or that it's only okay to like because it's not exactly Disney (it is very difficult to not find something to like that has been in bed with Disney money, since their tendrils stretch very far), but there are valid reasons and animation politics on why Roger Rabbit is held apart or not thought of as standard singing-and-dancing-believe-in-yourself Disney fare and why Roger Rabbit the character has not really been seen too much since his merchandising wave died out by the early 90s.

I had a PC port of Sleepwalker a long time ago! I don't know where it went to, but I loved that game even though it was too hard for me to win. I'm not really planning to buy or play Lucidity though, but good to read opinions otherwise about what LucasArts is up to.

Oh... Hah, well I like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, but oh well...

I love his technique and all, but I really disappointed with this new coverin terms of layout and content. That's okay though since Purcell trumps tons of artists anyways and besides it's still a great print.

Came out of the womb wearing a monocle and holding a martini glass, eh?

I think she looks drunk.

I would say that would be a very nice world, besides maybe sound cartoons coming in a little later without Disney's early competition, and I wouldn't miss them much. They aren't that big in terms of innovation and really wouldn't be sorely missed. At least the guy wouldn't be widely miscredited for creating animation anymore. Oh yeah, also a lot of animators would have kept their jobs during the red scare if old bastard Walt didn't make some time to turn people in as communists in order to crush the competition. That's how to be a shrewd businessman, folks. Let's not forget the animation in Who Framed Roger Rabbit is hardly in the traditional Disney animation style at all, having much more to do with Tex Avery and Warner Bros. ilk. There's also the case of Richard Williams as the animation director, who was never a Disney animator or employee, and whose work has shown very little Disney influence even though he mentored under two sets o two major Warner Bros. and Disney animators (although this was at UPA, when the people he mentored under had moved on from the old Hollywood studios and had much changed their style), having had much more to do with what used to come out of the Canadian animation industry. Disney was nice enough to repay him for his work in Roger Rabbit later in the 90s by stealing all his ideas from Thief and the Cobbler for Aladdin and later buying out his failed, delayed, and butchered movie through Miramax, adding references to Aladdin, and then burying it for good. I've heard rumors the guy can come back and finish the Thief movie his way if he wants to it for free (with Disney making the profits) since all of his team's artwork, storyboards, pencil tests etc. are all in their vault now. So anyways, besides the Zemeckis and live action parts, you had a contracted masterful animation director who was not looking to do things the Disney way, involving original non-Disney characters he created or helped create, so I'd say there is a ton merit in saying it's not much of a Disney film. At least not at all in the way of it being their studio inhouse development like The Jungle book or some complete crock of shit like Emperor's New Groove.

Isn't that when the forums opened?

Oops, that's what I get for thinking like an American. How embarassing...

So you just picked July 4th-12th at random?

TOBLIX JUST TELL US WHAT THIS MEANS!

Yeah, a little of what I was saying was overcompensating for the lack of Disney hate in this thread, but I really do absolutely hate that company. They've done a variety of awful things to other animators and studios since the 1930s/1940s up until this very day and the value of their artistic output and pioneering efforts in the animation industry have been greatly exaggerated (or not if that's how you swing), not to mention they are the largest media company in the entire world, getting there from pure divide and conquer type tactics. If the mouse ever meant anything, he sure as hell means nothing now (not that I can say the same for any Warner Bros. characters either). So the good part to me is the game is being overseen by Warren Spector, which should guarantee you a quality product (and no one hates a quality product), but the bad part is it's riding the Disney wave, of course. Had it not involved the mouse and been an original IP, it would not be getting this kind of publicity from all sorts of different factions, although still at least a moderate amount of press. It just seems like a lot of time and talent being wasted on an ultimately licensed game no matter how you spin it, even though it will probably still be good like the early Capcom and Sierra Disney games. To me, the game design is not in question here, not like Kingdom Hearts which is pretty much a DeviantArt user's wet dream. I mean if anyone thinks I'm just another angry guy spouting hate for hate's sake, let's say instead of the mouse we go more extreme and have Warren Spector make an Epic Captain Crunch game sponsored by Quaker. If that sounds like an okay game, then I should probably be ignored.

PLEASE NO.

WHA? 50 years?! You're at least 60-100 years off (or way more depending on what you count as an "early comic"). Unless you mean when they started being printed in the 24-32 page issues of today, but that doesn't really change that the with the rules of the comic strip were mostly established during the newspaper boom during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Ongoing narrative had certainly already been explored and even certain treasury collections had been published before the 1940s with a couple of Rarebit Fiend books and some sort of "epic" 30 page Krazy Kat comic. Comics didn't exactly start out stupid or spend all their time jacking off about guys in tights, they just became that way. It parallels animation in terms of sophistication rollercoaster graphs (I MADE THAT UP!) in many ways.

Hah, that's odd. Was it in a different city or anything? I get called sometimes by my bank if I buy things online from multiple things in one day or oddly was once called for making like 6 separate $3 transactions at the post office, but they never shut my account down. Glad it got sorted out though. I guess you can feel your funds are secure now if anything?

Haha, I guess as long as it's a good thing... I should probably contribute too instead of just replying: I think I figured out the formula to making myself get new artwork done and it all involves waking up at 5 AM and going to sleep at 7-8 PM. I don't know why but I just seem more involved in what I'm doing early in the morning. It's lonely sitting at a computer in the early morning because no one is online to chat with me since I'm such an attention whore, but I am nearly finished with my animatic that I said I'd finish almost 7 months ago. Then one day maybe that animatic will be a full blown 3 and a half minutes of animation but I'm only planning to get 30-60 seconds done for a website revamp of new stuff that is also very overdue.

It's impossible for anything involving Disney to become special, even with Warren Spector. Ugh, I'm going to barf. I agree with Vimes on his perception of Toonstruck in comparison to this getting all this hype because of sinister Disney crap ("Disney's iconic mouse as you've never seen him?!" Fuck me! Didn't anyone see Runaway Brain?!), although I think Toonstruck wasn't very well designed and tended to be almost as long-winded as The Longest Journey, although not anywhere near as boring. In the end I think the only reason anyone is talking much about this is because of Warren Spector, as otherwise it would only be pandering to the Deviant Art crowd and anyone else that thinks Kingdom Hearts is awesome.

No one at the bank bothered to call you?

(I think he's trolling, but I'm a US citizen who agrees with you completely.)

Ah, well that makes sense. I guess I enjoy leaving cheese on just to have noise in the backgrounds so I just sort of leave Hulu going in a back window while I'm working, but I guess her character got a bit much for me. Maybe they'll tone it down a bit so I can watch it again? And there's nothing more rad than RAD MOBILE: E8c7JLICSC8&hl (I could be wrong, but when this game was featured in the movie Encino Man, I think the filmmakers added the guy continuously reading the title "Rad Mobile" over and over to the game.)

Erp... sorry, haha I was just kidding around in a mean spirited way. You must be entertained in LOUD!

You're putting too many specifics concerning her appearance and exact personality as subject zero into one sentence to make her seem incredibly unique rather than understanding specifically what kind of broad character archetype stock she comes from and why this character is so lazy on the part of the writers. I can bet you no one is thinking a bald, tattooed woman is going to have anything sweet to say, so what's expected is written. To even have the juxtaposition of a sweet-natured yet strong woman who doesn't curse non-stop would be breaking some boundaries, but maybe would be a bad choice for selling a game in the US that should be enticing players to gear up for a lot of shooting. It's like if I were to pick out specifics in the differences between the wives in King of Queens, The George Lopez Show, and Everybody Loves Raymond based on appearances or individual situations. I could pick out things that set them apart but it wouldn't address the fact they all have the same wife.

I actually think April Ryan (and most character in the Longest Journey as well) are all pretty shallow as well. Ms. Ryan particularly being full of one liners and sarcastic comments by a writer who clearly doesn't know what a girl is like and instead relies on a Hollywood perception. Besides all of the obvious long winded and tedious dialogue in the game that doesn't have much to do with the topic, the content of April Ryan's diary is exactly the kind of trash writing I hate seeing in games . I tend to think The Longest Journey got a lot of love that it didn't deserve. I'm kind of glad the hype died down over the years, but it seems Syberia and Benoit Sokal games in turn swooped up all the attention instead, which in my mind is worse. I didn't play Dreamfall. Either way, I'm having a hard time thinking of well-written, strong, tough, believable female characters in video games outside of Maureen from Full Throttle, who you don't even play. They were going to totally fuck her up into some stereotype dyke mess in the sequel that never came out. Thank goodness.

Speaking of obnoxious, smarmy, and ill-written female characters, I really hate the one in your avatar. Not that Warehouse 13 was really good TV or anything before, but it was okay to put on in the background at work until they had that horrible Claudia character come in. The show has just become unwatchable with nearly every character (her mostly) inserting their little one-liners inbetween every action or pause in conversation. Sheesh. Sorry if this is flame bait, I guess it's sort of on the subject of the same problem I have when hack writers make up characters like Subject Zero without even going into her appearance. The thing with the Tank Girl comparison is that she never exactly stood for much in the original comics, and to just do a bad ass sneering chick with a shaved head and a knack for weaponry sort of misses the point. I think originally maybe that's what Jamie Hewlett had in mind, but then he notoriously said he would purposefully keep changing her look and hairstyle as he found people imitating or projecting what they thought she would be and tell/show him. Alan Martin's writing for the series until he was rejected from a particular story after the movie (From his own comic! Details in the newest, third remastered edition...) always tended to be stream of consciousness, nebulous, and lacking any ongoing plot or proper endings really to most shorts. A lot of what made Tank Girl so weird and distinctive I think has to do with the way the comic was structured rather than an angry tough chick constantly spouting out catch phrases and acting angsty. But if anyone has read much of Deadline magazine, the anthology mag where Tank Girl originated, almost all of the strips were like that in one way or another. So has anyone read any of the new Tank Girl series yet? I own a couple of books but haven't had time yet. Alan Martin seems to be the only one who will be able to write her in a way that is convincing and anarchic, but I don't know how he's doing at the moment. Maybe Bioware can import him? What's kind of sad about this is the recent interview with Mac Walters, who I sort of felt was building himself up and talking out of his ass. He didn't seem to display much humbleness at all when juxtaposed against the other two in the interview trio, Chet Faliszek and Rob Gilbert, so it's sort of funny to see the Subject Zero trailer as the new preview. In a way, it's always sort of been a good thing video games aren't played much for the writing in the manner of film, books, comics etc...

You guys, that dickbutt thing is like 4 years old now. Come on... Now I'm reading KC Green comics anyways because I had forgotten all about him.