Sound Wave eMotion Gun

The guys from Daft Punk commissioned Interstella 5555 from animator Leiji Matsumoto, the man behind the legendary Space Battleship Yamato (Star Blazers) and Captain Harlock, cuz like all awesome nerds, they loved his stuff as kids.
I was going to post each individual vid separately, as only a few months ago I could only find them that way.
But I've found it's all there in one glorious click for over a year and 400k views. I re-post it here. It's got everything you like. A willowy blue girl, space ninja and a flying V spaceship. An hour well spent in animationmusiccloudland.
Feel free to full-screen that baby... or go buy it and watch it with me.

On animation.

So I've had an animated short stuck in limbo for a good long while now. It's a bit of crazy to talk about, but I feel I need to cast off the demons.
And that's just it. There shouldn't be demons, yet there are. It's always: "What if it isn't good enough?" or "Maybe I should redo this bit." and it stacks up to never getting done. (I've even tried to revisit it in the last few days and now my Flash has gremlins and won't let me publish for reasons currently unresolved.)
There's also the factor of it being a mirror. It's personal, you know? If it isn't great and well received... and it's a reflection of my psyche like art should be, then wham. Not the funnest punch-in-the-face.
I remember a day when I took a old girlfriend to Dallas to meet with the Peace Corps. She was going to go away and I knew I would probably never see her again, no matter our relationship at the time. I wasn't going to stop her from going just because of me. So she went to the interview and I went looking for a bar... at 10am in the morning. By the time she got out at 1pm, I was drunk, trying to drown AND hide my fear. She didn't go. I lost her anyway. The fear was not unjustified. I just didn't look both ways before crossing that street.
So the blind-side hit causes me to not get this short done. Not deciding is a decision. But the indecision is keeping me from finishing it and moving on to bigger things, because I can't move on until I complete it.
The skills need to be honed. They seemed sharp as a razor last winter when I had myself convinced I would finish the short by the deadcenter deadline. I didn't. Not because I couldn't, but because I couldn't face the finished product and what that could possibly mean. It's all me. Nobody did a lick of it. Maybe that's part of the problem. Maybe I need to find other animators to bounce ideas off of and get some collaboration going.
Meanwhile, I've got 1.2 minutes of a 2.3 minute short in the can. At 30 fps, that's only 4,140 frames to go.
In a paraphrased quote attributed to Chuck Jones, "Everybody has 10,000 bad drawings in them and it's best to get them out as soon as possible."
Since I won't post it if it isn't complete, I can only give this screenshot to offer any proof at all, if it's any proof at all.

Too weird to live.

To rare to die.
The more strange and rare a cartoon, the more I love it. The more I love it, the quicker they seem to be canceled. There are 4 main examples that I will present here: with the help of the internet's uncanny ability to infringe on intellectual property.

First, Sam & Max.

On for 2 short seasons. With such great writing and adult themes, it was doomed. I wanted to post the episode where they go to save their favorite snack, "The Fried McGuffin" but couldn't find it. So in it's place, I give you the "$59.95 wedding package with complementary passes to the Buddy Hacket Experience."
Way too weird to live.


Second, Invader Zim.

The darkest of the dark, and one of the best animated series ever. 2 seasons short, even winning an Emmy couldn't save it. From shooting chickens into the sun, to developing a virus to turn people into baloney, to having a giant, sloshing, hypnotic zit named "Pusstulio," Invader Zim at least attained Cult status. He's even got an entire fan-made collection on Newgrounds. His robot, Gir, was so great a character, he could have had his own spin-off. Alas, it was so good as to be completely, predictably doom doom da doom doom doomed.

Below is the only full episode posted on youtube. It doesn't have Zim in it, but it shows just how dark the series is. What's extra skin-crawlingly awesome is that this episode is typically... not extraordinarily, dark for the show. Probably why it was doomed. Both seasons live on in DVD, which is why you can't find youtube episodes. Guess I'll have to pony up.


Third, The Tick.

The tamest of the list, it was a short three seasons long. With characters like Die Fledermaus, Sewer Urchin and American Maid, villains like Chairhead Chippendale and The Mad Bomber What Bombs at Midnight, and a battle-cry of SPOON!...it was doomed. So doomed, I don't know why a live-action sit-com was green-lit. It was doomed too.

Last, and definitely first: The Venture Brothers.

What more could you ask for? Brock Sampson may be the greatest straight-man ever to slaughter an entire army with a lawnmower. Who could be man enough to train such a great character? Why, only a government-assasin version of Hunter S. Thompson. That's who. Brock F'n Sampson, man. Dibbs on his cigarette butt.

It's still on TV, and on DVD and whole episodes on adultswim.com, so I won't embed a video. So great I can't explain why it's 3rd season starts June 1, and wikipedia reports a fourth in the works. I wouldn't put money on it, but here's hoping it lives, because it's the greatest thing on TV. Go team Venture.

Progress

I registered roninrobot(dot)com this week thinking about an animation studio.
It's unhosted as of this moment, but I've got the URL. I was pretty happy it wasn't taken. Let's see if I do something with it.
Meanwhile, I'm working on a new flash website. It's unsold, so if Saturn Grill doesn't want it, I'll revamp it for either Deep Deuce Grill, or even Roninrobot. I've learned a lot, and functionality is getting better and cooler cuz I know more a lot more actionscript.
It's kinda like teaching myself latin, as many programing languages have very similar syntax. Hopefully, actionscript will let me learn the others easier.
Not much works, but the basics are there and you can see it here if you care:
Saturn Grill Flash

I really like the navigation bar. The script font caused me some problems, but I worked around it cuz it's cool. I'm getting faster too. It only took me 12 hours to get it to this point...from scratch. That's amazing to me.