Christmas with Robin Hood

 

Tomorrow is Christmas. So I thought maybe I should give you all a Christmas Eve gift. Robin Hood and his friends share their short lil' holiday story.

I bought Disney's Robin Hood on DVD a few days ago at Barnes & Noble, it's not as visually interesting than other classic Disney movies in terms of the bonus features, but I still love the actual movie and something about Robin Hood being in the tradition of the holidays fits impeccably in my opinion.

I captured all the pages so you can read it yourself. 

Fin

Anyways, hope you liked it. It was just a little treat especially if you like these characters. 

I'll be posting gifts tomorrow. Merry Christmas Eve. 🎄

1966 Grinch

 

2 days is officially Christmas. It's been busy for the past few days. But now I'm officially off for the holidays. I'll catch up watching some christmas classics. I already have watched a few over the years. 1947 Miracle on 34th Street, Charlie Brown Christmas, White Christmas, Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer, Elf, The Muppets and Mickey's Christmas Carol, Home Alone, and my personal favorite It's A Wonderful Life.

But now I'll focus on one I seemingly liked the more older I get. How The Grinch Stole Christmas (1966). 

I always had a soft spot for these colors, this is what got me into the cartoon in the first place. I grew up with alot of the Dr. Suess books, but not particuarly the Grinch. I guess I liked the Bright and Early Books because they had more variety, so this was possibly my first exposure to The Grinch ever.

I was mesmerized by the absolute creativity of Suess's works. The characters were fun to look at, and had interesting and distinctive designs. They were fun and cartoony when I was very young.

In the original book, the characters were not as colorful as in their following film counterparts. I personally do like the color schemes to the 1957 Grinch the best, but in terms of the aesthetic, characters designs and direction, it's easily the best version of The Grinch ever made.

The Grinch kinda creeped me out as a kid, it was mostly the animation that freaked me out the most. Back then I didn't know too much about animation from the theatrical era, so it was hard for me to get used to it.

This was directed by Chuck Jones, who was responsible working on the most famous and iconic Looney Tunes shorts of all time. His animation staff were masters. Since he's animated, he feels more alive to the situation making him more cynical and grouchy. I love this camera angle shot of Grinch tapping with his index finger.

This is easily one of Chuck Jones's best cartoons he made in the 60s. His artstyle was starting to become more familiar. 

Normally I find Christmas specials that average around 25-50 minutes results being interesting and cute, but for this film in particular it's one of my favorite Christmas films. There's so much focus without it being horribly fast-paced or boring. The song is really good, and the message is at it's finest. I love all of the characters, it's a timeless classic. 

Animation Scenes Frame-By-Frame

 

I've been recently on Sakugabooru and it's been really useful for me. They label such animators who worked on particular scenes in films. It's a great website, feel free to check it out. I set it to animated, if there's any animators you respectfully admire feel free to search their work.

https://www.sakugabooru.com/post?tags=animated

I selected some of my favorites or most likely my favorite animated characters in terms of their movement and fluidity. 

This to me is an incredible frame sequence, it's so smooth. It's only a second of actual animation. I looked into the Hans Perk drafts, this was animated by John Lounsbery. Really underrated animator. He's probably my favorite of the Nine Old Men. What I notice is that one frame looks like the original pencil sketches. I also love the intense colors of the skies.

This is one of my favorite Looney Tunes scenes. From Daffy Duck Hunt (1949). I like Porky's throat slitting gesture. I'm guessing this animation is Charles McKimson. Still fantastic nonetheless. Also like the lip-syncing.

Sir Ector is a phenomenally well animated character in my opinion except for when he head swaggles. Mostly a Milt Kahl staple. It can get repetitive, but I absolutely like when Ector points directly at Wart. It is re-used in other scenes but I liked it more without the sword, since I kinda want to study more on drawing realistically detailed hands. 

Lastly is another incredibly well-animated character, Captain Hook. I really like these scenes in particular. I absolutely adore the original movie most of the time, but something about Hook and Smee in particular gives me a little inspiration. Hook was mostly animated by Frank Thomas and Smee by Ollie Johnston and Cliff Nordberg. I really like those hand movements, like that fist. It's almost sorta live action-like.

Last December I created a post similar to this one. I would recommend you checking that out. They were animated scenes I was heavily inspired while I was still invested in animated short films.

https://sngexplorationblog.blogspot.com/2024/12/my-favorite-classic-animated-scenes.html?m=1

Also to point out, I wouldn't really say that The Wearing of Grin is dull, I kinda enjoy that cartoon nowadays. 

The Materialistic World of Advertising

 

Exactly one year ago today, I discussed about advertising, and I made some of my own created ads myself. Lemme just say, what I said was sorta dated. I still have not made a proper time for me to make an animated film yet but I have showed you some of my animations before done on Digicel and Brush Ninja. 

Advertising nowadays consists of nothing but actual consumption, using the bare minimum of footage they have to promote films on a streaming service, and of course for the worst, A.I. Sure, there might be some moments of creativity and effort like, okay I do kinda like the Emu and Doug commercials from Liberty Mutual Insurance, and honestly I do enjoy those ducks in the Dawn commercials as well. I think it all comes down to the actual product and not the entertainment, which I do understand but man is it getting more bland and sometimes quite annoying.

I'm mixed on advertising because it expects us to BUY BUY BUY!!! And it's the "perfect" way to appeal to viewers of the product. I mean you look online for pizza, you can tell it's extremely appealing and appetizing, it's perfectly stable and clean, expertly flawless until you actually see it in person and looks nothing like it. It's exactly like magazines, they capture the celebrity and personalize different effects to make them prettier. It's been a trick for decades.

Even bigger corporations aren't even trying anymore. Like Coca-Cola and McDonald's for example. They've been timeless for ages. They're advertising campaign has nothing but been remarkable, so why use this artifical nonsense? I don't get it. It's hard not to complain a little. But I really don't get it.

Heck, anything made by real people whether hand-crafted or used digitally is better than those ads because people don't care about them and we shouldn't. It's disrespectful though but nothing to feel concerned about. We still have true artists and teams out there.

There's 2 commercials I enjoyed experiencing. It was...

Intermarché - Unloved

and Disney's Best Christmas Ever.

Both of these have a sense of heartwarming and simple relatable stories. They aren't AI generated, they were made with heart, and yeah I did take that from AI creators but I'm serious this is how you make an advertisement. Sure, they aren't 15-30 seconds long but they don't need to be. They don't go for a random joke, they can relate and feel emotion to the viewer. 

 

A.I is just an excuse to pump out something faster, seemingly to make the commercials feel more lively or immense which is entirely false, it makes it more lazier and cheap which is mainly the problem with most corporations who use these tools. They like to keep their money meaning they don't have the useful talent and artistic ability they have to make the ads work. They only used a prompt, with some slight variations. I remember liking seeing people in commercials, but that sadly changed and now they can't hire even a single guy to narrated what's being said. 

I heard a rumor that someone said that only big companies use A.I, but to be honest, I bet it's smaller ones too. That's why I like indie entertainment nowadays. I appreciate more of the unlimited approaches, and they seem to have more inspiration.

I always wanted to make a small commercial using my inspirations.

I made storyboards for my Meow Mix ad last year since I see those all the time when my mom and I are shopping. I used concepts like the good angel and bad devil trope used in cartoons and some appropriate funny humor. 

A year later, I finally made concepts of advertising something. My favorite advertisements aren't exactly promoting a product except for that one M&Ms christmas ad, I love that commercial, but once I saw Snow Bear, and other modern animated films, they were used for advertising organizations. Maybe I should do that myself. My dream job would support people through educating and advocating. It would be like therapy but share some virtues and give them an opportunity to learn about the good things in life.

This is what I've been creating so far. I want it to be winter-themed. It's a season filled with the most challenges. Shorter days, winter storms, and frigid temperatures, but that's what I kinda like about it. I used what I like in films. I use these realistic facial expressions. The first image on the top left shows the bunny shivering, feeling melancholy. He discovers himself the most pleasent land filled with natural living things but has to face against wolves. I researched into animals who don't hibernate and rabbits and wolves don't belong on the list, then again I don't know too much about zoology but it reminds me of what I like about Bambi, it uses creative realism through knowledge and environments.

If you want to see last year's post feel free to click the link!

https://sngexplorationblog.blogspot.com/2024/12/artmania-advertising.html?m=1

Tex Avery - Les Dessins

 

I got this book after graduation and while I was flipping through the pages, it felt like I was living in an alternate place.

These drawings look so polished like I own them or something.

My favorite era of the Tex Avery cartoons in particular were from the early 1940s, very well-drawn but also behind it had some of the best gags, slapstick and energy.

Tex Avery's cartoons mainly focused on what was believed to be in a cartoon rather than going for realism. So he came up with these ideas that wouldn't work well in live action. I personally like realism a bit more than believabilty because it can give us a deeper perspective of one's character and motive but I do say, I am mixed. I also do like this style of humor as well.

Tex is a very influential animation director. I respect his work and I used his cartoons for inspiration sometimes, even with the likes of Preston Blair who worked on such shorts like Screwball Squirrel and Red Hot Riding Hood. 

One time, I enjoyed the Red scenes the best because of the movement and the songs were catchy and upbeat to listen to.

I have talked about his cartoons in the past before, but one cartoon that stood out above the rest was Slap Happy Lion (1947) most prominently the opening scene of the lion roaring and the scene starts to shake.

The mouse has some of the most underrated movements I seen in a Tex Avery short. He's super cute too. He definitely has a different distinctive look than the lion does and I like that.

I'm a very curious person and I like to look into concept art from these cartoons. Even behind the scenes, I can allow a few chuckles. This was taken from a model sheet. Lil' Tinker (1948) 

It dates back on June 5th 1946. It would be interesting to see the skunk play Bing Crosby since he didn't do so in the final version.

This is probably the first time I was aware of the red pencils being used in animation drawings, I guess they were used for in-betweens, so the characters wouldn't move every frame. 

Just like with other golden age animators and directors, they experimented new styles. Whatever was popular for the era was used in these animated shorts. Sometimes it didn't always work, but I do kinda like the UPA styled cartoons from the 50s. The most recognizable short is Symphony In Slang. It's mostly filled with interpretations. It's not outstanding or anything but it's definitely something unique. 

Lastly, I want to talk about layout background art. I always loved how the Tex Avery cartoons looked sometimes blending in realistic environments into more cartoony characters.

This is a great find. It's translated in french, but you could understand more of the pictures since the words aren't that important. I consider buying it if your interested in Tex Avery's work and love drawings like I do, pretty expensive though.