CodeDread Blog » Cartoons

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Jeff — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 06:40:45 +0000

[SVG comic]

005

Jeff — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 07:38:26 +0000

[SVG comic]

And don’t forget to visit Ouijapad.com frequently for all your paranormal needs.

004

Jeff — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 04:38:37 +0000

[SVG comic]

Great Expectations

Jeff — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 01:40:43 +0000

[clipart]I found The Complete Peanuts 1950-1952 at the library a few days ago and wolfed that thing down. In honour, I thought I’d try my hand again at another comic done in SVG

This time, I used SVG-edit. I’m happy to say that features like Zoom and Path Editing mean that this is now very achievable. Might I dare say “fun”? Incidentally these are features that Fyrd did in his spare time. Ok, well Layers do help here too.

For whatever reason I had some issues on the trunk with some path nodes and control points becoming out of sync with the shape twice. I had to start a new Firefox tab and paste the image in there to keep editing – the modern equivalent of ‘rebooting’?

As with the previous comic, see if you can find the ‘easter eggs’ without viewing the source!

Looney Tunes Volume 4 Restoration

Jeff — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 23:50:43 +0000

It’s that time of year again, time for me to give you a glimpse of the restoration job in the latest Looney Tunes Golden Collection. Volume 4 was just released today and I picked it up at my handy, neighborhood Costco for just forty bones.

On the first disc we have an array of Bugs Bunny classics, mostly from the 1950s this time, and sure to trigger a Saturday morning memory or three. Here’s Bugs Bunny in “Rabbit Hood” pretending he’s the King and knighting the Sheriff of Nottingham (“Arise, Sir Loin of Beef! Arise, Earl of Cloves!”).

And here’s a little-seen scene in “Southern Fried Rabbit”:

On Disc Two, we have a bunch of Frank Tashlin cartoons, here are a couple of my favourites.

“Cracked Ice”, featuring W.C. Squeals:

“The Stupid Cupid”, featuring Daffy Duck and Elmer (as Cupid):

Is it just me or is the restoration of “The Stupid Cupid” too grainy and saturated?

The third disc consists solely of Speedy Gonzales cartoons, and I don’t yet have any of those cartoons from my own collection backed up on my hard drive, so I can’t make comparison screenshots.

Finally, on the fourth disc, we have a bunch of cartoons all related to Cats. “The Night Watchman”, the first Chuck Jones cartoon featuring a little kitten that resembles Sniffles the Mouse:

and here’s the hilarious “Dough Ray Me-Ow”:

Clicking on any of the images above will take you to the Amazon page where you can pick up this great set for your own, er I mean, your kids enjoyment.

Popeye Coming to DVD in 2007

Jeff — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 13:16:18 +0000

Last night in an online chat with the Home Theater Forum, Warners Home Video announced they have finally settled their legal issues with Hearst Entertainment and King Features Syndicate and are planning to release all the Popeye starting in 2007. Here’s the press release. The cartoons will be given the royal treatment, just like the Looney Tunes and will be released chronologically.

This was the second year I’ve managed to attend an online chat like this. The first time, unfortunately Warners was not prepared to answer any questions about animation, but this year they had a separate talk strictly for its Television and Animation releases and I just happened to have learned about it by accident yesterday. These chats are a great way to give rabid fans an opportunity to make special requests and feel connected with the people who make these releases happen, even if you do get the occasional rude question (for example, last night there were about 10 “Everwood” fans lurking to complain about the show being cancelled and DVD sets not being announced – I understand their frustration, but I don’t condone the rude behavior).

I managed to get one question in and that was to ask if the just-announced Popeye release would get the “royal treatment” like the Looney Tunes. The answer: Popeye cartoons will be released chronologically (woohoo!), will be uncut, restored and we can expect some form of special features like the Golden Collections. In essence, yes. As a bonus they will be released staggered from the Looney Tunes release time. Almost too good to be true.

Anyway, as far as I know, Warners is the only studio that does these type of chats. They really seem to understand how important it is to foster good will in online communities like HTF and TVShowsOnDVD.com and that’s rare in huge conglomerations like WB. The chat was from 5PM to 8PM (Pacific Coast time), not exactly working hours for anyone in the US, so again that’s a nice consideration for the fans.

Thanks to people within Warners like George Feltenstein, high quality DVD releases of its theatrical animation are continuing to pour forth and delight fans. WHV is even promising to offer free replacement DVDs for some of the technical flubs of last year (some interlacing and overdubbing issues with Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry DVDs). I’ll be making sure to get in on that replacement program once details are released.

Web-Slung Comic Books

Jeff — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 21:39:17 +0000

I used to collect comic books as a kid throughout grade school and high school. Lately I’ve been getting nostalgic for those old superhero stories (maybe it’s the upcoming Superman movie, I dunno). I even checked out a couple graphic novels from the library to get my comic book fix. However, it struck me that the web is a great medium for getting readers to these stories.

I’m talking about delivering the comic book stories over the web for direct viewing, not the ordering of paper books to be shipped to you. Sure, it takes some adjustment to be reading things on the screen instead of leafing through a physical copy on paper, but I think if enough material was available over the web that readers would flock.

I can think of a few different business models for this:

Free reading with lower-quality images and ad-based support
Let me pay a monthly fee ($10/month?) to let me read any issue (via a web-based reader) from the immense archive of DC or Marvel Comics.
I’d even consider a pay-per-issue option. Let’s say 50 cents per issue and I get to save a local copy on my hard drive to read whenever I want.

Heck, why not go with all three models and see which one makes them the most money? This is about the Long Tail here. This is about giving access for those people who are willing to pay for the stuff they’ve been craving. And give it to them now. And make it easy to get. And make all of it available.

I did a search and came up with this good read. The article mentions how Marvel Comics (Spiderman, The Hulk, etc) are just starting to get into the web-comic area: You can read certain issues (some old, some recent) online for free. They are delivered via the web browser in Adobe Flash, with a not-too-shabby reader that lets you zoom, navigate pages, etc. The only catch is that you have to register your information with them. Unfortunately, DC Comics (Superman, Batman, etc) have done nothing (aside from some sample pages in PDF form).

I think DC Comics is missing an opportunity here. First, I’m sure they aware how important it is to digitize their work in some form to preserve it. Second, their immense catalog spans over 70 years of publishing, starting in the 30s with the introduction of Superman, Batman and spanning to today. I’m just obsessive enough that I’d consider wanting to read all 70-years of Superman or Batman stories (not in one sitting of course!). I think it would be fascinating to observe how the stories changed over time, how characters were refined, etc. And I know I’m not alone. This guy has digitized all the covers of all DC comic books since the beginning. If you’ve ever read superhero comics, just flip through those covers and tell me you don’t want to pick one of them up and actually read the story.

This would not affect the collector’s market in the least (people still collect original film negatives, for instance). The problems here are really all business-related. Primarily the problems of piracy and the problem of upsetting the traditional publisher’s business model (putting printers out of business). Note that I classify “piracy” as a business issue, not a technical one. You can make piracy difficult, but there is no absolute way to prevent piracy of any media. Anyone dedicated enough can buy a scanner and sell scanned comic book images over the internet. The point is that publishers/content producers need to adapt such that it’s not worth a pirate’s time when the material is already available from the source, easy to obtain/download, high quality and cheap enough.

These are problems that the music and video businesses are dealing with as we speak – the difference being that those mediums had already digitized their content for the consumer on optical disks, which made it easier for piracy to thrive via distribution of computer files. Those industries are being forced to adapt quicker.

Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 4

Jeff — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 14:26:29 +0000

Well, it’s right around this time every year that I start to get excited about the upcoming Looney Tunes release, and this year is no exception.

I’ve been a collector of the 1000+ Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons for about three years now, I got into this hobby just before Warner Brothers (WB) finally got their act together and started releasing these treasures on some high quality DVD collections so the bulk of my collection is either taped from Cartoon Network (before they took Looney Tunes off the air) or acquired through various trades arranged over the internet. In a little over two years I was able to collect a copy of every single cartoon in some form [edit: except one] and now I’m in the process of taking these shorts and putting them onto my hard drive for maximum geek effect. One day I’ll set up a media server (maybe using components of MythTV)…

Anyway, even though most of the people who created these 50-year old cartoons are now dead, I will still gladly fork over my money to the Warner Brothers corporation if they continue to release these Golden Collections. Unfortunately they are doing so at a release of only one 60-cartoon volume a year:

Speculation about the contents of Golden Collection Volume 4: I’ve seen enough complaints on the Amazon feedback site for Volume 3 that I believe WB will strike a better balance between the extremely popular shorts and the rarer shorts to satisfy a larger portion of the audience. We’ll probably see shorts like Ali Baba Bunny, Bedevilled Rabbit, Operation Rabbit, Often An Orphan, Knighty Knight Bugs, and hopefully plenty of Foghorn Leghorn, Speedy Gonzales and Yosemite Sam (characters that have been largely neglected thus far).

However, I think we’ll still a healthy dose of Black & White cartoons (and there are quite a few!). These shorts are usually more interesting to animation fans because they show how the animation studio evolved. The older cartoons also contains some of the politically incorrect gags (for instance, involving blackface or World War II), so I think we’ll still have an introduction on the DVDs by Whoopi Goldberg.

LooneyTunes.com has some classic cartoons available right now for free viewing online and rumor has it that at least some of these shorts will be on the next collection to be released near the end of 2006. Watch this TV Shows On DVD page for further details – we should be hearing something “leaked” by the studio in July.

The Longer Tail

Jeff — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 20:54:58 +0000

I’ve written a little bit about the impact of The Long Tail before I even knew what The Long Tail was. If you have some time, read the excellent 1-year old essay here by Chris Anderson. It illuminates the way things are going to work in the new market and the rules that companies must follow:

Make Everything Available
Cut the price in half. Now lower it.
Help Me Find It

I started thinking about this again while watching some Our Gang (Little Rascals) VHS tapes I borrowed from the library. I would gladly pay to have restored, remastered and uncut/uncensored versions of these great films on DVD (especially if they had the same level of care present in the
Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVDs), yet they are simply NOT AVAILABLE. There were some Cabin Fever DVDs that were released years ago that are long out of print. I’m currently on the eBay hunt for Laserdisc versions of these films. Ironically because whoever owns the rights to these films are not releasing them, they are contributing to a thriving piracy/bootleg community (I was very suprised to find snazzy-looking bootleg DVDs of these films on Amazon, of all places!).

My general rule is: Plunk down my hard-earned cash for the stuff that is available and quite simply bootleg the rest… If you lock up national treasures, don’t expect people to take it sitting down. The bottom line is this: I want my kids to experience some of the great things that I did as a kid. I am not going to let the fact that certain films are entangled in ownership or censorship battles or that some marketing executives feel that there isn’t a market for such and such a film stand in the way of enriching my children’s life experience (and yes, I know there is more to a children’s life experience than watching some funny shows – but that was a big part of mine). My kids will soon grow up – and I don’t have the luxury of waiting until you sort out your legal battles or clear things with the politically correct crowd. I need to act now.

I will apply the same rationale to Disney’s Song Of The South (may be released by Disney November 2006) and those great black and white Fleischer Popeye films that are being held for ransom by King Features Syndicate. Release these films and we’ll buy them! In today’s Long Tail world there is profit to be made.

Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 3 Fact Sheet

Jeff — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 20:09:21 +0000

Permit me to geek out for a minute, cartoon-style.

Go buy the Looney Tunes – Golden Collection, Volume Three today. Read on for a quickie review.

I’m going to assume you know the basics about this DVD release and are very familiar with some of the shorts. If not, you might still be curious to look at some of the restoration screen captures I made below…they speak for themselves, really.

The Good News

Amazing restorations. See for yourself:
- Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur
- Daffy Duck & Egghead
- A Gruesome Twosome
- Falling Hare
- An Itch In Time
- Porky Pig’s Feat (B&W)
- Porky’s Romance (B&W)
Restored titles:
- Daffy Duck & Egghead
- Speaking Of The Weather
All shorts are unedited/uncut
The introductory video (with warning/disclaimer about inappropriate content) by Whoopi Goldberg is not overtly apologetic and (thankfully) can be skipped
No DVNR on Falling Hare (as originally believed)
Tweety is pinkish as he should be (not yellow) in Gruesome Twosome
The DVD menus are much better than the last two volumes
An unrestored, but with original titles and dialog (“Cawole Wombard”), A Wild Hare is sitting in the “What’s Up, Doc?” documentary on Disc 2 (I think this must be the same print as seen on the Golden Age of Looney Tunes Volume 5 Laserdisc set)

The Bad News

The SNAFU shorts are not restored
Thad Komorowski is reporting some minor DVNR on Hare Force and Gruesome Twosome
Occasionally I see a couple minor hiccups in the color restoration. Two examples are on Hare Force and Hare Restorer where colours jump about from one frame to the next. These incidents are few and only once in each of the two cartoons that I noticed.
Some people find the color restoration on some shorts too saturated, particularly The Gruesome Twosome. This may be a matter of opinion but on this particular short, I happen to agree.
The commentaries by John Kricfalusi tend to be overly fanboyish of Bob Clampett while disparaging of other directors. While I don’t mind hearing differing viewpoints on the works of Jones and Freleng, John K’s commentaries cross the line between “fan” and “zealot” several times. It’s a shame too, because Kricfalusi’s commentaries usually contain a lot of insight and information.
Only two shorts had their titles restored. About 8 or 9 still show as Blue Ribbon releases.