March 5, 2010 : Peanut Butter Adventure Time!
Adventure Time With Jake and Penn, premieres next month on Cartoon Network. This is the first show on the network that I have been pretty stoked about that hasn’t been Adult Swim or D.C. Comics related in quite some time. The cast also has some familiar names – including John DiMaggio (Bender from Futurama), Dee Bradley Baker (Klaus from American Dad), Tom Kenny (from so many animated shows), and Mark Hamill (you know who he is).
Adventure Time is based on the short created by Pendleton Ward for Frederator Studios’ Random! Cartoons, and it was hilarious. Some Cartoon Network shows are clearly aimed at younger audiences. However, there are the occasional shows that come around and appeal to an older crowd, while still remaining viewable to kids (Power Puff Girls, Courage the Cowardly Dog, and Samurai Jack come to mind).
If the short is any indication, this could be one of them. It’s random, bizarre humor is right up my alley, and I am looking forward to its premiere.
posted by Pi Visuals at 12:43 pm
Tags: Animation1 Comment | Post a comment
February 23, 2010 : FX Renews Archer, My Faith In Network Executives
Filing it under “News That Made My Day”, FX has renewed Archer for a second season. The new season should kick off in 2011.
Archer was created by Adam Reed and is executive produced by him and Matt Thompson. These guys are most known for creating Adult Swim’s Sealab 2021 and Frisky Dingo, and the animation is similar to the latter. The writing for Archer has been much more impressive than the aforementioned AS shows, and the cast is pretty solid.
The renewal was far from a sure thing. The ratings for Archer has dropped significantly since its premiere. However, the airing on 2/25 did see a slight ratings increase (while it was up against the Olympics nonetheless). Some have attributed this uptick to FX airing repeats of the show on Hulu in order to increase the show’s exposure, and this might have given the network a little more confidence to stick with it for another year.
This show definitely has the potential to do well, especially if it can be paired up with another comedy that already has an audience (It’s Always Sunny or The League comes to mind). As a side note, FX will not air a new episode this week of Archer. Instead, they will air a four episode mini-marathon. Hey… if it will attract more viewers, then I’m all for it.
posted by Pi Visuals at 1:25 pm
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February 9, 2010 : Did I Catch A Niner In There?
I finally got around to see Nine, and it was a pretty entertaining movie.
The film was based off of director Shane Acker’s computer animated short, and it’s worth a viewing. The themes are slightly more adult oriented than most animated movies; and while it didn’t pull off Pixar or Dreamworks like numbers, it still turned a profit.
Also, the Super Bowl had it’s fair share of horrendous commercials (you did again, Taco Bell!), but the trailer for The Last Airbender looked pretty sweet.
posted by Pi Visuals at 1:41 pm
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January 29, 2010 : Missing The Boat
I heard about Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender when it first came out, and it definitely looked interesting. It was really successful for the network (both critically and commercially), and it has even lead to an upcoming film trilogy.
The first film is due out this summer, and the poster looks pretty bad ass.
Plus, M. Night Shyamalan is writing and directing, which I am optimistically taking as a good thing – as long as the main character doesn’t turn out to be dead the whole time.
But despite how cool everything looks, I have yet to watch a single episode of the series. There has been no good reason for this besides laziness. So with the movie coming out this summer and looking promising, I want to at least give the series a try.
posted by Pi Visuals at 1:19 pm
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January 19, 2010 : Wordle Weekend
Between being bored this weekend and thinking more about my previous post, which had a visual representation of what is often discussed on this blog, I decided to make a quick short using the images obtained from Wordle.
If you look closely (or pause the video frequently), a lot of funny phrases show up that were randomly present in the original Wordle image.
The link to the video is here. By the way, IE6 and/or IE7 might have issues playing this file – it is recommended to use a different browser.
Also, the primary software used was After Effects.
posted by Pi Visuals at 2:25 am
Tags: Animation2 Comments | Post a comment
January 16, 2010 : What Do I Talk About?
Wordle is a cool site that provides a graphic representation of words based upon their frequency of use. You can type in your own set of words or link to a web page to see which words are used commonly.
Below is the result for this page:
The site is also fun in that a lot of the settings are adjustable – including font, word orientation, and color scheme.
Plus, you get a cool representation of what you talk about most.
posted by Pi Visuals at 2:41 pm
Tags: Random , Wordle1 Comment | Post a comment
January 2, 2010 : Grammar Nerd
The picture below is of an ad on the CTA tracks downtown.
The correct adverb was not included in the original ad. Instead, the ‘ly’ was added by a studious graffiti artist.
I’m usually not a fan of graffiti; but being a grammar nerd, I’d be fine not citing the person that ‘proofread’ the ad.
posted by Pi Visuals at 2:37 pm
Tags: Funny , Graffiti , Nerd , Random2 Comments | Post a comment
December 7, 2009 : Flee Clee!!!
Here’s a cool independent anime short from Japan. Unfortunately, it is in Japanese and doesn’t have any subtitles, but it’s still impressive.
According to one of the comments, the dialogue is:
Please be my steady, Takashi.
Sorry, I’d like to concentrate on baseball club.
You bastard! (She begins to run)
I will make miso-soup for you every morning.
Sorry, I’d like to …
It’s design and animation has a cool FLCL feel to it. Plus, it also uses a song from the series – “Comedian’s Gallop” by Dmitri Kabalevsky.
Personally, I don’t know how anybody could pass on an offer for daily Miso Soups… but that’s just me.
posted by Pi Visuals at 3:48 pm
Tags: Anime , FLCL1 Comment | Post a comment
November 24, 2009 : Uhh… What?
It came out a few years ago, but I finally got around to watching the film Paprika.
The animation and character design was very impressive, which also goes for Paranoia Agent – director Satoshi Kon’s previous work. Agent’s problem, at least in my opinion, was that it moved too slowly. The story was definitely out there, and this could have been a good thing had it moved faster than the Frieza Saga.
Paprika takes this bizarreness and kicks it up about five extra notches. By the end, the weirdness envelopes the movie so much that it makes Akira and Evangelion seem as convoluted as Sesame Street.
All in all, it wasn’t a waste of 90 minutes. Paprika was visually appealing and its premise incredibly unique – just make sure you don’t mind being confused.
posted by Pi Visuals at 1:10 pm
Tags: Anime , Paprika , Satoshi Kon1 Comment | Post a comment
November 18, 2009 : Genius Party
Having just recently heard about this DVD, I think it’s worth a mention.
Genius Party is a series of animated short films from Studio 4°C. It consists of seven shorts, with each one coming from a different big-name animator – the coolest of them all being Shinichiro Watanabe (the awesome director of the awesome Cowboy Bebop… awesome).
A second DVD was released 7 months later, entitled Genius Party Beyond. It has five shorts that were supposed to be released with the original films but unfortunately were not completed in time.
These releases tend to be hit or miss. Mostly because each short is hit or miss. A perfect example is the Animatrix. Some of the chapters were pretty impressive, while some dragged on. However anime fans will probably be pleased with the overall product.
posted by Pi Visuals at 4:52 pm
Tags: Anime , Cowboy Bebop , Watanabe0 Comments | Post a comment