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Terrytoons in CG
November 15, 2007 1:04 pm
A few years back, when MTV wanted to revive the Terrytoons characters, they commissioned an animation test in CG (of course, what else could a revival be done in?). Below is the test featuring Hashimoto, Sidney the Elephant and The Astronut. It’s about as good as one would expect it to be. (via Animation ID) |
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And the alien gets stuffed up Sydney’s butt! Haw haw!! That’s rich, I’ll say.
If you thought that was scary… Someday I’ll post images from the Klasky Csupo pitch.
Interesting, to say the least, but the “Matrix” bit with Hashimoto has been done to death. Speaking of CG Terrytoons, anyone know if the proposed Mighty Mouse movie has been deep-sixed?
That is bloody ugly!!! And a Klasky Csupo pitch… YIKES!!
I got the feeling that CBS Corp/Viacom doesn’t care about the Terrytoons library as much as they love the Star Trek franchise
Make me vomit and eat it for lunch. Real awful test
Bonus point for working in an old-skool elephant-scared-by-mouse gag, at least.
Reminds me of when I used to sweat all night in my sleeping bag at camp – Except, I enjoyed the sleeping bag a little more.
Wow, that was worse than the Pavarotti CG.
….WHAT just happened??
That is ugly. I wonder what Walter Lantz would do with CGI if he were still around. All those wonderful Paul Smith cartoons re-done in 3D.
Wonder why they selected Terrytoons flattest characters to reimagine in CGI? This test makes Paul Terry look like a creative visionary.
Why? WHY?
HOLY MAKREL!!!!! Some things are better left alone.
I was once offered a development deal to help revive Heckle and Jeckle for MTV networks. You can read all about that sorry story in my book, Your Career in Animation: How to Survive and Thrive.
It’s stated to be only an animation test so we can’t expect highly polished imagery or lighting.
The animation itself is not height of what CG can do, but it’s hard to judge it without knowing what the parameters of the job were. The studio may have been asked to “show us what can be done with a budget of X dollars and no more”. What we see may be the realistic answer to that question.
Funnier gags would have helped, though.
Good lord that is horrible! I hate seeing classic animation being “reimagined” in CGI. I don’t see the point in modernizing things that are fine the way they are. I don’t have a problem with an animator using CGI for their own ideas but when they apply it to other people’s ideas to make them “better” I don’t care much for it.
Layout sure has suffered since everything went CGI.
Was Crabby Appleton involved with this?
please please please post the Klasky pitch.
It’s a shiny blobby fetishist’s perfect universe. Reminds me of hell.
Did anyone else think that Hashimoto came off looking like Numbah One from “Codename: Kids Next Door”?
Apparently, “new, new” means “Screw the characterizations and goose up the look.” I always liked Hashimoto, one of the earlier multi-culti toons that didn’t devolve into serious stereotyping like Joe Jitsu from the Dick Tracy toons. This … thing … tried for the look and only the look. To borrow a phrase from a M*A*S*H episode, they’re playing the notes but it isn’t music.
I use a Hashimoto image for a blog icon regularly. I don’t remember Hashimoto being so angry. Wasn’t he a calm character? Also, being asian american I can already tell you that it looks offensive. That maybe could fly in the 60s but not now. There are ways to say ‘asian’ without resorting to the ‘oriental’ symbols that they are using.
it was really crappy
So tired and uninspiring…. ugh.
Hmmmmm… I didn’t hate it.
This does suck! Go to the hell Viacom!
That looked like an animation student’s film reel. And he got a C.
Yow. Shoulda tossed it to the guys at MooseMouse. They coulda done, uh..SOMETHING with this. Or better yet, give it to the guys at Muckpuddy to flash up…they knows their shit. Justifiably D.O.A.
Bad, Bad, Bad. Vincent Van Gopher could’ve done a better job, and he’s practically blind!
Aparently, the people involved had never seen the cartoons these characters came from. HASHIMO is largely out of character as only one example. The reason the later flat-designed characters were chosen is because they were simpler shapes. Taking designs like HECKLE AND JECKLE and MIGHTY MOUSE involves far more time and skill.
This looks more like a school training exercise than a pitch piece. The gimmick of CG lighting and rendering techniques is many times used to disguise a lack of skill, content, and solid animation direction that goes beyond movment for its own sake. It’s mostly the icing without a cake underneath to hold it up.
Money has little to do with this considering the deep pockets that Viacom has. This appears to be another example of using CG for the sake of using it without having a purpose. There is noting really clever about it, and no story. Worst of all, there were people in place who had no idea of what to do with these properties. To top it all off, the people involved got paid to do this!
I didn’t watch the short, but think that all of this 3-D-ing is sometimes-awkward R&D for some pretty serious computer graphics film-making. That Beowulf movie, too.
God knows what they’ll do with it. Certainly CG movies are going to get more facile (I mean more easily-made and graceful) and streamlined. Look for a feature coming sometime in the near future with long-dead actors, and I don’t mean zombies!
It was however, (tongue firmly in cheek) an excellent example of how to take three distinct cartoon personalities and render them as blandly as possible. If you want to turn people off to CG even more…show them this.
The quality just sucks, they must have done it in 2D
why are this youtube film not coming up? second time to happen today on this site…
makin’ me grumpy…
(still love the site tho jerry!)