The Best Surrealism In Cartoons/ Artmania Halloween

 

Now that we're closer to Halloween, I want to talk about what I've been working on lately and the inspirations behind it.

These are surreal cartoons I actually do tend to be invested by. Usually I'm not into abstract filmmaking, but if it's fast, and done well, it's hella fun. I tend to be inspired by more creative and amusing concepts in animated films. I don't watch cartoons that has done a premise over hundreds of times, or is just too short.

I was planning a Christmas special last December, I'm not too keen on the project nowadays because it feels a little too basic. I didn't feel like I conveyed what the true spirit of Christmas was so I spat out a bunch of childish ideas like having factory workers and focusing way too much on Truffles, a tree that is a cliche of a comic relief. I definitely will think of more concepts and character development soon.

I'm not really a Halloween celebrant anymore, I do tend to enjoy more important holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. I guess I'm just too iffy on the aspects of a modern Halloween night like trick or treating and wearing costumes. 

I like Halloween for the vibe, the pumpkins, the color scheme, I love looking at decorations to feel inspired.

I made some storyboards, this is a music sequence.

This is while Szac and Dredd are trick or treating, Dredd starts to fantasize the sinister atmosphere of the night, his pumpkin bag suddenly comes alive and bonks Dredd in the head, a ghost appears as he tells Dredd that ghosts are real and get into your soul sometimes to make you feel utterly shaky, as Dredd changes colors and patterns while moving dysfunctionally. He then turns into a snail, and while he continues, the camera zooms into his shell as it turns into an egg, in fact multiple eggs start to dance until one completely explodes, and goo is everywhere causing Dredd to almost pass out, 

Szac finally arrives and says, "Mac! What's gotten into you? We just left the house!" Then in a sudden attempt to using the staging principle in animation, the light then turns to complete flame, and burns Dredd causing him to push Szac into a gravestone with my signature. Dredd stops feeling the pain and walks slowly in the wrong direction, Szac steadily sprints until a hand with sharp red claws grabs Szac's costume and a baseball bat appears to swing and beat Szac, he then rides a minecart, with devilish imps flying around him, Szac attempts to get out of the cart and falls into a bed curled up alongside Dredd, Szac is shocked as he wakes up Dredd, Dredd explains that he has had a nightmare but is talking in fast gibberish like tiny cartoon characters do. Then a floating pig, cow and chicken arrive to haunt Dredd and Szac as they talk about the wrongness of eating too much animals, the pig then transforms into a musician as he sings a love song on the mandolin. He then tries to catch the both of them in a surrealistic chase and their fantasy is over.

Here's some of the characters I mentioned. Including one of the floating animal heads.

I sorta like a bit of creepy and unusual stuff from time to time, it's a good way to challenge yourself and get through more darker themes and mature scenarios. I see myself enjoying films with dialogue and tension nowadays. I'm actually interested in watching films like It's A Wonderful Life and 12 Angry Men, I seen a few minutes of those films and am highly interested in checking them out fully.

They're the "best" films of all time for a reason. Almost anyone can relate to more human feelings and entertaining scenarios. 

Even when I was younger, I kinda like a good chilling moment in something I have watched. 

Heck, what made me feel inspired to make that drawing of the pig in the first place was a random moment in Malcolm In The Middle's season 7 episode Cattle Court, I remember this particular scene vividly where Reese has a nightmare where he is sentence to trial. It's a truly underrated scene from otherwise a sitcom I grew up with.

Like I was saying earlier, Halloween is in a few days, and I'm trying to experience as much stuff as I can with the holiday. There will be more concepts and ideas of what an artmania halloween film could look like.  

Black And White In Entertainment Can Be Useful

 

Do you ever question why back then films were made and produced in black and white?

It's not a real thing, it's an art thing. 

The world has obviously been full of color since the beginning. 

But for films and pictures, it was expensive to make them in color, so black and white was always considered the best option at the time.

The films back in the 30s were appealing and really neat. It had personality.

Look at this picture. This fits perfectly. It's definitely sometime in the 20s, where everything on screen wasn't in color, but still, this is really solid for the era. 

I could assume someone back then was so sick of seeing photos with these colors, but nowadays we think they're rich and clean. 

We grew up with this stuff, so why recolor them?

Things took a dark turn in the late 60s till about the early 90s, where television rised and shows that aired at time were immediately colorized. 

Classic Movies and especially Classic Shorts would be re-colorized to be more vibrant and man it didn't age well.

Ew.

We're these at all safe for television? I would assume yes, but I would also say no for a practical reason. I'm worried when people think this is what the short film looked like. 

I would say it ruins it. They relatively copied it to make it more unpleasant.

Fleischer is probably the only animation studio that should never have any color to the cartoons whatsoever. 

Nowadays people know about this. Look at this fantastic transparent image. 

The good news is, these types of re-issues died out in the late 90s, and DVDs would usually remastered the old black and white shorts instead of the lousy colorized ones.

Now like I'm saying, not everything in black and white can be perfect, in fact, I would boldly assume everyone wanted to experience and stick to watching colorized stuff when the Silly Symphonies aired.

So did TV Shows, but that didn't get the budget it deserved. 

Stuff like I Love Lucy, and mostly Andy Griffith were always kinda "eh" to me. 

In all honesty, I kinda miss when films were made with extremely limited colors.

Give us creativity! I know money is important but so does passion! 

The Impact Of 30s Music

 I've decided to listen to more songs from the 1930s. I was actually surprised. 

Just like I said with the 1940s, music that decade was unbeatable and was my favorite out of all the music eras.

The 1930s is probably my 2nd favorite music decade in existence. Before, I didn't dislike it but I wasn't fond to knowing it all that much, but after listening to over 50 songs, I was listening to some underrated and classic gems.

I think the first time I ever truly liked this decade of music was with the Betty Boop cartoons. When I was little I was anti-old, vintage, so I didn't like to hear grainy audio.

But now, I LOVE IT!

What made the 30s music so fascinating and captivating, was that it was the start of actual good music. Big Bands, Swing, and high spirited energy all arrived and aged gloriously.

We didn't need overall filler and obnoxiousness like ragtime and quartets, we needed true sound and power!

Here's an example of a good song from this time period.

I love the intro to this one! It really fits in with a movie too. It has alot of creative lyrics. Dudley Mecum sure is a really overlooked and fun singer. 

It also picks up the pace a little which is what I like about it. 

Just feels like when the 30s hit, entertainment was at it's golden age. It's cool that we have internet nowadays to research and explore artists from the past. It's certainly a life changing experience.

It was also a golden age for black entertainers as well. I like alot of them, Duke Ellington for instance, I love his smile, Louis Armstrong is iconic, Billie Holiday is awesome and Cab Calloway is an absolute genius. 

When it comes to the songs I enjoyed the best so far from the 30s library, it's always the rare, unpopular ones. 

Like I said, I love Forty-Second Street.

I have a love for The Boswell Sisters.

I would boldly assume the 30s were more famous in pop culture, I mean I definitely agree. There were so much struggles, but also passion.

I love the old fashioned music the best because it tends to not be too loud nor boring either. You may not love it yourself, but I wouldn't recall you hating it. This era and especially the 40s was really interesting, it sets off for being the most influential eras of music to date.

Even though the musicians are not with us today, I still highly respect them, and they deserve to be experienced at least once to get the love and recognition. 

My First Planned Artmania Short

 You might probably remember who this might be. If you checked out my concept Bud Light commercials, you might know this cat. 

I named him Whiskey. 

So the last time I posted on my blog, I was talking about a segment in Mickey's Follies (1929). I have alot to say about this, because it's probably the first Disney film to ever have realistic acting to their animation. 

More or so this picture.

I watched this a few days ago and I was astounded by how pleasant the frames looked, more or so Mickey's song is kinda out of character, but it's hilarious. The cartoon to me isn't that fantastic, as is it has a unammusing rooster fight, and a basic singing pig scene, but man this part where Mickey sings is what made this cartoon good. 

In fact, it saved myself by making and planning on a short film I want to make that includes some inspiration with Mickey singing in that cartoon. 

You may notice I doodled in Astro-Cat drawings and those unnecessarily are not needed in the actual cartoon. 

I made additional sketches on what I'll look like.

It's definitely out of order, and certainly isn't the final product obviously.

Notice there is some supporting characters than only Whiskey. 

Chloe the Cat, Whiskey's love girl.

And Tronic. The bad guy who is trying to kidnap Chloe. He's also a less insipid version of Pete in the Disney shorts.

I have alot of passion with classic cartoons.

With it's zany animation

Gorgeous backgrounds

Hep dancing

And romance!

Okay maybe not all of it.

But that's what's in this cartoon. I named it "It's A Cat's Thing". 

I would like to talk about inspirations on what the cartoon will lead to because I'm full of inspiration. I watch alot of stuff and mostly it's the classics.

When Whiskey flaps his arms it's inspired by Fleischer cartoon, Hold It (1938), it's by far my favorite Fleischer cartoon I ever seen. It's full of energy and musical spirit.

Not only is my character Tronic inspired by the likes of Pete, but also the hotel manager in Porky Pig's Feat. It's a hilarious cartoon. 

I made Tronic purposely follow Whiskey's rules to make Tronic trip onto a mud hill and it was clearly inspired by the hotel manager falling the stairs. 

I also have a passion for the alley cat concept in cartoons. Top Cat is a huge example of that. 

It's not only going to be about a male cat and female cat falling in love!

While I loved the scene in Mickey's Follies where Mickey was singing and his facial expressions were widely bizarre even in the late 20s, Whiskey's singing and facial expressions was also inspired by another singer back in the roaring 20s.

Al Jolson, he was massive in the 20s, his songs were influential and admired by millions of people, and I can see why. I haven't listened to all of his songs, but he's a really good entertainer. If it wasn't for him, songs would've been alot different.

Here is my character doing the pose.

While on that, my artmania cartoons will definitely have some smart writing and classic acting. I already made it clear that I want my cartoons to be inspired by a collection of classic comedies like The Three Stooges, Abbott And Costello, Laurel And Hardy, Looney Tunes and The Muppets.

However this would've taken another route if I haven't touched a certain actor.

Bing Crosby has to be my favorite classic hollywood actors of all time. I can relate to this guy's personality and films more than any other actor I have ever watched.

In his first short film, I Surrender Dear (1931), the scene where he is talking to a girl he is interested in, the bad guy shows up and causes trouble. You can tell it's influenced by my drawings of Whiskey, Chloe and Tronic.

Wait for it...

BAM! He holds onto the stick and it's no funny business. Seriously I love this stuff. He was a underrated and legendary actor. Even in his over-dramatic or dull movies he was still good in them.

Whenever he fights/argues with someone, it's legitimately the funniest and most amusing arguments in film history.

Bing's films, and laid-back charm inspired alot of my character's facial expressions and cartoon stories that I started to like romantic and musical films even more.

The cartoon is clearly a damsel in distress climax as well. But I actually made it more smart and entertaining. 

Usually Damsel In Distress in classic cartoons are centered around a popular female character and a strong looking villain, Minnie Mouse, Pete, Olive Oyl, Bluto, etc.

I found cartoons like that to be good, but a little too redundant.

I certainly don't like when the girl is screeching "HEEEEELP". It's been done a million times and I never was a fan of it. Like can you say something else than just "Help"? 

I didn't want Chloe to be annoying and dumb-founded like how Minnie and Olive Oyl are. When she gets caught, she has a tough heart. She knows that it's not the end of the world since Whiskey and the other cats love her. 

That's all I have for the cartoon so far. Once last thing is that when Tronic gets defeated, the cat's are all going to cheer like with Book Revue's ending.

Whew, this was the most difficult post I done so far. I'm feel proud for completing this off, since Artmania is such a big task for my drawing career. 

I certainly want to make the world a better place with my drawings and characters.