A bit of nostalgia for your Thursday afternoon

For as long as I can remember whenever I was feeling under the weather and overall crummy, like I am today, my hands would instinctually grab for my stack of comic books. My collection has only grown over the years but there has only ever been one series guaranteed to put a smile on my face no matter how I'm feeling - Bill Waterson's Calvin & Hobbes.  I know I am not alone in spending late nights and summer days lounging around reading of the mischievously imaginative Calvin and his tiger buddy Hobbes create trouble and adventure for themselves. The lightheartedness always made for a good read, but the values and lessons that Waterson instilled in his short strips almost had a healing property on me. The last thing in the world I wanted to be was sick, stuck in my room, when I was seeing and reading about all the mystery and wonder that lay out there in the world.

Now to relate this to class. As I mentioned I'm feeling kinda sick today so I was looking around my room for my Calvin & Hobbes collections and was coming up empty. I was running out of time before I had to get to class and my ride was leaving so I grabbed another favorite of mine and figured it would have to do. I would be proven wrong while idling browsing the internet in my lab when I came across an individuals tribute to the work of Bill Waterson - a short animated clip of Calvin and Hobbes dancing to music. Here it is:

The animator provided this image file showing what dance moves from the comic he based his animating on, though he did state that the characters themselves were redrawn himself, not ripped from directly from the comic.

What struck home to me beyond seeing a very well done animated version of a beloved childhood figure, but the last frame of the credits is an apology to Bill Waterson for using his copyrighted characters but also contains the animators excuse for working in someone else's universe - "They had to move!" As a lifelong lover of the comic art form I am accustomed to letting my imagination fill in the blanks and create motion when it is only suggested, but I can't deny the merit of the argument. The two of them have spent decades now as static entities; perhaps its okay to let them stretch their legs a little.

Minimalist Comic Art Style

This week I decided to take a slight detour from talking about movies, to discussing another popular visual medium, comic books. One artist that has recently come to my attention in the Marvel sphere is Javier Pulido. Based on what I've been able to find about this artist was he originally worked as an artist for the Incredible Hulk back in the 1990s at Marvel. Later he worked on titles The Batman Chronicles and Robin Year One at DC.

The main thing that I found interesting about this artist was the style he employees for some of his comics. This art style seems minimalist and for me was a little bit of shock to see considering I was mainly used to the highly detailed comics I often have come to expect from Marvel.

Incredible Hulks #635
Tom Grummett

New Avengers

Here are a few examples of what Pulido has done. 

Hawkeye
2012

Black Cat
2010

She Hulk #1
2014

It was mainly Pulido's art in these new She-Hulk stories that I found interesting. Not only is his style sort of minimalist in comparison to some of the more detailed books these days but also this style reminds me of a comic art style from an earlier era. But the thing that drew me the most this comic was a combination of the water color style cover art and the way Pulido makes use of the space in the pages of the book.

She Hulk Regular Issue Cover
Kevin Wada

She Hulk #2

In this particular set of pages as She-Hulk and the woman and yellow move across the hallway the full immense scape of the area shown, as well as other bits of action going on in the background as well.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

As a last minute decision, I've decided to use Scott Pilgrim as my material for this project. I came across this interesting article that goes into depth about the visual effects in the movie and the style behind it to give it that comic book feel. The article mostly focuses on the fighting sequences in the movie and how they incorporated and copied the actions that happened in the actual graphic novel. It's a very interesting article and I found it extremely helpful when researching the topic for my project. The link it below!

Scott Pilgrim and VFX Against the World

Project Ideas

I'm not sure exactly what I want to do for this project, but I do have a few ideas. Two of them include the movies (500) Days of Summer, and the other is Scott Pilgrim vs. The World



The (500) Days of Summer opening right now is very simple, and very nice. I will most likely shoot my own footage for this project, but I still don't know what I want my opening sequence to be. I just love the movie and I know I could have a lot of fun with it.



The opening sequence to these movies are already amazing, which is slightly intimidating when you're a young college student in your first motion graphics class. What I hope to do for Scott Pilgrim is insert parts of the comic book into the opening.

Those are my two ideas and I haven't committed to either one just yet. Let me know what you think!