Cartoon Central

What I suspect is unmentioned in the Times article is the significance of what’s unmentioned in the logo: Comics. The word wasn’t in the 70’s logo either, but it didn’t have to be because back then, all it was really used for was comic books. That was the only business DC was in. Today, the entity we think of as DC is the division of Time-Warner that has the primary control of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, et al, and — oh, yeah — they also publish comic books of them and try to develop new properties in other comic books.

Hey what is up all you 3D junkies. I just landed a Internship at Scripps Institute of Research. I am modeling regions of a rats brain and doing some animations.

During my nap, I had an interesting dream. I was over at my friend’s house watching TV. Normally, he does movie night, where a bunch of people get together and watch weird old movies. (In fact, I was there last night.) In my dream, though, they had a DVD full of short little cartoon skits. The skits seemed to fall along the likes of Family Guy or Robot Chicken, and they were all 1-10 minutes long. Sometimes they’d space out a couple skits, so there would be one skit with the same characters, then a different one, and then it’d switch gears and go back to the first set of characters (think commercial break.)

And finally, the monkey-wrench in the mix: I really like drawing comics. I don’t know if I am any good at it yet, but I am really enjoying experimenting. I am so used to drawing with pencils that it feels like a palatable baby-step to use ink instead of graphite for a while. Using ink has made me much more confident about my lines, and the richness of the black ink is really exciting, especially compared to the gray of the pencil marks. Perhaps the book I make this year (if it is only one) will be a comic book. Who knows?

If we want to see change, we need to end the “politics of personal destruction”. We need to start engaging in debate, not rhetoric. Unless that happens, we’re just going to have more of the same, a government that bickers over who holds the reins of power instead of debating the effects of proposed policies, and a populace that distrusts our politicians and tunes out the nasty rhetoric. Let’s remember, our politicians, whether it’s Bush, either Clinton, or any of the others, are human beings. They’re not cardboard cutouts of political cartoons. Wrong and evil are two different things. Showing why your opponent is wrong may be more difficult than calling them evil, but it will improve our nation to do so.

I have always found it odd and a little frustrating that the largest, most concentrated cohort of Garry Trudeau's core constituency -- that is, we readers of this newspaper on newsprint -- must go elsewhere to read ''Doonesbury.'' And so as a New Yorker who only occasionally buys The Daily News and always forgets that the strip also runs every day in Slate and at nytimes.com, I have had a relationship with ''Doonesbury'' not unlike my relationship with the Metropolitan Museum and ''Nightline'' and the Union Square Cafe and my siblings: they've been around forever, so I take them for granted, and get to them more seldom than I'd like, although when I do I am always reminded, in a kind of self-flagellating D'oh! moment, just how splendid they are.

i love parody, and i think its dangerously important. my recent fave is robot chicken, a stop-motion animation show that is part of the wonderful adult swim cartoon series (which includes cartoons that you must watch: aqua teen hunger force and sealab 2021). a recent episode has the cast of ‘that 70s show’ do ‘that 00s show’: “kitty my ipod is broken, im gonna put my foot right up steve jobs’ ass” “oh hush red, im blogging"; “fez! i just took your picture with my phone!"; “who just text messaged me that im a douchebag?” “buuurn!"; “hi im tv’s topher grace, as you’ve seen tonite, the precious trappings of our material obsessed existence become the sitcom fodder of the future. so hey, please remember, try not to be such a douchebag. thanks for listening”

A magazine recently ran a "Dilbert quotes" contest. They were looking for people to submit quotes from their real-life dilbert-type managers.

So today I was all thinking and I thought about how long I’ve been reading comics, in some shape or form. Archie, Superman when I was a little kid playing piano and hockey moving on to Mad Magazine when I was just starting to get political satire, Europeen cartoons, Simpsons comics, that kinda stuff. Anyway I just realised how much comics mattered when I was all small, and noticed that in two of my comics people complain about there being no kids reading comics anymore.

You know its kinda sad when 3 people from my department have now quit so I am arguably the senior tech in my department and my boss tells me this, followed by this isn’t changing your job title or pay but I will have more to do. At this point I thoought I was part of a really bad Dilbert cartoon. Anywho it is just funny that I am now a senior tech and then new people will look to me for guidance.

Now this is hilarious: Spamusement! Poorly-drawn cartoons inspired by actual spam subject lines!

The sheer lurid thrill of nudity and gigantic puppets wasn’t enough to get us out to Fremont this year. Something about a patchouli scented throng of gentle hippies and aggro bo-hunks didn’t sound appealing on a sleepy Saturday morning, but luckily the fine folks at Flog took some pictures. The Incredibles made a (ahem) fine showing and apparently there was even a naked, painted Mr. Fantastic. I’ll avoid making a joke about Reed Richards and his amazing powers of flexibility. You can thank me later.

The Studio Tools Department is responsible for Pixar’s in-house movie production software, which has been used to make the Academy Award-winning films The Incredibles and Finding Nemo. Studio Tools’ Documentation Team is looking for an experienced technical writer to create world-class end user and departmental documentation. This position requires close collaboration with engineering staff, project managers, and the Documentation Manager to create technical documentation for use by animators, modelers, and other production artists.

So whatever happened to C&H? That was one of my favorite comics.

We went and saw Batman Begins and The Longest Yard at The Cherry something Drive in theatre. It was really some good times. Batman Begins was awesome. After seeing Christian Bale in American Psycho I couldn’t really see him being a convincing Batman. However, he took the whole series to a new level. It reminded me of all those Batman cartoons that I watched when I was younger. Who even remembers Gordon? I do now.

She is now in her room watching Toy Story 2, which I got from eBay. She’s become a freak for Buzz and Woody. I even scored some Wallies, so she now has Buzz and Woody on her wall, too. Oy, that room: Pooh bear, Toy Story, Blues Clues, Spongebob…it’s a hodgepodge.

How do I feel about Paris Hilton? I think South Park, that imaginative commentary on American culture, did the best job ever of defining her last season in their episode, "Stupid Whore.” She is a superb reader of how to hype herself, as is Bill O' Reilly, in our society. While she is hardly educated in a classical sense, she is certainly a brilliant reader of today's cultural mores. She is quite smart on how to manipulate the media for her gain. While O'Reilly can rant about her all he wants, he has to share responsibility for helping her along her way.

Sony and Time Warner’s gaming units have announced long-term licensing deals that move development and distribution of “The Matrix Online” to Sony Online Entertainment and also give it rights to make a multiplayer game with DC Comics super heroes.

One of the things about the Batman comics is that the character isn’t Superman. He’s not the clean ideal of a superhero that Superman is. He’s motivated by demons and he’s a dark character in an even darker world. It’s why I loved Tim Burton’s direction in the first two movies. He remained true to that character and to that world. Joel Schumacher, for all of his other accomplishments, well… he’s not exactly right for Batman. The third and fourth movies were cheesy and flashy, too much like the goofy TV shows that really had nothing to do with the comics. And I liked the TV shows. Christopher Nolan is a much better choice. If you’ve seen Memento, you know why. If you haven’t seen Memento, go see it.

Well, I’ve had a lot of fun making animated gif files and want to ‘take it to the next level!! hoooaahhh!’ so I’m going to watch a few lessons in Macromedia Flash and learn how to do some sweet animations. here is what I’ve made with Ulead gif animator:

That’s the story as I see it unfolding. Steve Jobs finally beats Bill Gates. And with the sale of Apple to Intel, Steve accepts the position of CEO of the Pixar/Disney/Sony Media Company.

If you’ve never seen Aqua Teen, you’re an uncultured swine. Kidding, but really, check it out on Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network at like 11 every night, or just go buy the dvd’s. Its worth it!

Steve Jobs is one of my most admired businessman and visionary (I had actually written an article about him in a Chinese newspaper a few years ago). He started Apple computers, NeXT (which eventually became Apple OS X), and Pixar. My admiration is not so much for his business skills, but more for his ability to "Think Different".

Overall, Madagascar was “alright”. It had some pretty funny parts that made you laugh outloud, but it wasn’t close to being the best animation film I’ve seen. (I think “Finding Nemo” probably tops that list). So, I’d probably give Madagascar only 5 or 6 stars out of 10. Probably 5. Although, I’m sure Eva liked the film a lot more than I did. We’ll have to see what she says about it. Now, the penguins in the film were absolutely hilarious. If they would have made a movie just about the penguins — it would have been a 10 hands down (even though their flippers are up in the photo above)!

“My mom’s a freak about my hands and lips.” Now there’s a sentence I can honestly say I’ve never seen in the comics before, and hope to never see again.

12. When it was actually worth getting up early on a Saturday to watch cartoons.

A few weeks ago, some coworkers pulled me into a discussion concerning the last great Disney animated film. I had to say that Disney’s stranglehold on premier animation ended with The Lion King, where they interwove masterful animation and cinematography together with a great story and some of Elton John’s best work since the seventies to create a truly pleasurable cinematic experience. Since then, I feel they’ve never been able to recapture that magic. Fortunately, Disney acquired Pixar, which has been able to do it for them. But, I feel the true animation genius has shifted to a studio that Pixar turns to for inspiration (and whose movies Disney is now distributing in the US), a studio already well known overseas.

Also, while you’re at it, some funny commercials here: Super bowl 2005 Commercials

A couple of my eighth graders almost died today. These boys haven’t exactly been the picture of good behavior this year anyway, and now that the end is near for them, they are really pushing their limits. The sounds of flatulence during a test, and constant giggling at inappropriate times try my patience and judgement. I have to remind myself how they must be absolutely dying to get out of school, and that Lincoln’s disciplining of Gen. McClellan is far from their thoughts of girls and a summer at the pool. Of course, fart sounds are always funny as well, which makes it all the more difficult. But I also don’t want to allow a few bad apples to spoil the experience of the final days of eighth grade for all my students. The point is that by the end of the year, I will be ready for a break, because no matter how I handle my current crop of misbehaving kids, it’ll wear me out.

This is so incredibly dumbass I barely know what to say. Office environments seem to turn out ready-made Dilbert strips with such consistency that I wonder why Scott Adams still has a job.

Marionette’s Wonderland has a round up of the real meaning behind those silver age slug lines on comics.

These guys at Spamusment take real spam subject lines and make some funny cartoons about them.

Donald Duck's birthday has come around again and I thought you'd all like to be reminded about how much I hate cartoon animals who don't wear pants.

This traffic-simulation software, Streetscenes, is also used to reconstruct street accidents. The software analyzes the data involved to compute the unknown variables, such as vehicle speeds and changes in velocities, and delivers its results as 3D animations which can be shown to juries, lawyers and insurance companies.

This overview contains more details and references, and includes many links to pictures and animations.

These flash animations are BRILLIANT! A must see. You will laugh, and then the message sets in. Perhaps an insidious new advertising method, but these folks have the onions to oppose Corporate Entities and instead support true grass-roots causes. Hurray!

Things are surely heating up down at 9 Chickweed Lane, eh?

Check it out starting here.

This is probably my favorite current comic strip.

So, the most important television program in the last 15 years has finally been bitten by the infectious bug that is Hollywood temptation. The Simpsons are finally going to be making a movie, and I, for one, couldn't be any happier. There's no doubt in my mind that it'll be done right. No Simpsons episode has ever not been good. Yes, some are better than others, but all episodes are entertaining, and, therefore, I can only imagine that the time and effort put into a movie will produce something extremely worthwhile and enjoyable.

On the flipside, I also watched Team America: World Police. Now, I like some stupid shit. I will laugh at the weirdest and sometimes unfunny things, but this movie was plain stupid. I found nothing entertaining about it and the puppets were getting on my damn nerves. And if you are thinking that you might go get stoned, then watch it, cause maybe it will be funnier then.....don't. It doesn't help. There were a few funny lines in it, but I really think the South Park dudes need to stick to South Park.

Nancy Cartwright, better known to a whole generation as the voice of Bart Simpson, did a one-woman show entitled ‘My Life as a Ten Year Old Boy’ in London last week. Plans for a feature length cartoon based on “The Simpsons” were unveiled at the Cannes film festival in mid-May, and Nancy told The BBC that things are moving along:

“The Simpsons” will begin its seventeenth season on the air later this year.

Review: This movie comes from the odd, yet brilliant, minds of the creators of South Park (Parker and Stone) and is quite innovative. The use of all puppets and scale models throughout the movie made it hilarious as well as the jokes. The fight scenes were stupidly amazing, the story was great and the soundtrack is hilarious. It’s also always fun to see a bunch of puppets, portraying actors, get blown up. Although some parts were too stupid to be funny I thought this movie was a hit.

Canadian political cartoonist Aidan is back with a new series of Conservative Edge cartoons.

The guys at Chicken Wings Comics are on a roll! They've produced their 2nd strip about the Washington DC incident, and are working on a third, which will be out later this week probably. They've given me permission to post a copy of the latest strip here.

What's del.icio.us? It's a social bookmarks manager. It lets you post sites to a personal bookmarks collection that you can access anywhere! You can assign tags to all the sites you post,which lets you organise your bookmarks around these tags. For example, right now, I've got 320 bookmarks with the tag "games," and 204 with the tag "comics." You can assign as many tags as you want to a bookmark. So if you find a blog about comics and games, you can assign both tags to that bookmark.

As Scott McCloud explains in Understanding Comics, his definitive work on the art of comic book storytelling, comics belong to a medium all their own. They are not merely pictures with word captions, or written stories with illustrations. Comics are a blending of words and pictures to tell a story. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Few artists demonstrate this interplay better than Frank Miller.

Upload a .jpg or .gif picture of your face, and it will morph the image to show you what you’d look like as a baby, child, elder, ape, various cartoons… many are creepy, but i liked the cartoon it made out of my senior picture.

Today I snuck away from the office and made a visit to the comics store. I had not yet made my purchases from last wek's late shipment. Unfortunately, I was a few days late and missed out on some titles. The books that I did purchase were:

Won an arguement this weekend. Contrary to what people might think, Beavis and Butthead didn’t invent the term.

Bung Hole- The opening in a keg or cask through which it is filled or emptied.

Did you know that Sarah Vowell was the voice of The Incredibles' Violet? (Found that out at NPR.)

Cell Animation :- The term cell drives from the clear celluloid sheets that were used for drawing each frame, which have been replaced today by acetate or plastic. Cells of famous animated cartoons have become sought after, suitable-for-framing collector’s items.

Well, it’s really, really, really cool. It’s the steampunk scifi, magic, relationship between Ed and Al, and the episodic juxtapositions between how the world should work vs. how it does that make this show stand out (Mr. Tobin would be proud of that sentence). I “acquired” the entire series (51 eps.) and watched from ep. 30 until the conclusion yesterday, since 1-26 already aired on Cartoon Network, and I can’t wait until August to watch 27+. It’s just about the most animated fun I’ve ever had.

Taking the boy to see his first movie in a theatre tomorrow - Madagascar. He seems less anxious than his parents. It's a daddy and boy solo trip too. We'll see how it goes.