Pokemon: Now and Then

This week, I’m going to be talking about a television series that has been one of the trademarks of my childhood. I’m sure a lot of people, especially here at college know which show I am talking about here. I could remember when I was 7 years old, that I saw my first Pokemon episode. My eyes were completely glued to the television screen and I was so entranced with the music, Pokemon and adventures that our main protagonist, Ash Ketchum would take part in.

This show is still on the air after almost 20 years, but the format of it is completely different. I’m attaching below two different clips of the show. One was when it was newly aired to the public, and the other, a more recent clip. The differences are quite substantial; the animation, music, the kind of dialogue that was used, to name a few. One key difference that I was able to pick up on immediately was that the animation for certain battles. Back then, the animations were rather simple and now everything is so meticulous. Obviously, I would prefer the first season’s style of production over right now, but it’s a great example of how animation has evolved in a rather short period of time.

I must warn you; Nostalgia Shivers will occur. 

Video 1

Video 2

Let's Track A Bit... Shall We?

So while I was scrolling through some videos on YouTube, I came across this video that I right away knew had After Effects editing put in on it. They had used the tracking effect in order to have each of the cartoon body parts (ears, eyes, hats, etc). It's actually really cool to see this done because, well for starters, I knew all of the cartoons that the band was playing, but Just to see it tracked so well and have some of the other ones animated while being tracked was cool too.

One of the really cool effects that was used was the music notes that came out of the instruments and hands as the players hit certain notes or hit certain keys on the piano or certain areas on the percussion sets. I loved this video and I thought that it was really cool. I would love to be able to do something like this when I get more advanced on After Effects. It would make for a great video in my reel and it would also just be plain fun to do something like this to one of my favorite songs.