My favorite mysterious palindrome, Neilalien, recently posted about the return of Aquaman to comics. I hadn't realized before that some comic fans thought Aquaman was kind of lame, or that there was "an ocean problem"--because all action in the series needs to take place in the water--that hampered plot development.
I thought this was an useful issue to explore, since I've always been attracted to ocean settings in comics and animation. As I considered further, however, I realized my interest in watery worlds has mainly been pictorial--how does one imagine an underwater world visually?--rather than narrative. In fact, one of my favorite underwater film scenes--the live action/animated sequence in Bedknobs and Broomsticks--acts as an interlude in the plot.
One of the artistic challenges of using an underwater setting, in whole or in part, lies in creating a consistently imagined world. The results can be truly spectacular--as with Star Wars I's Gungan city, or the lush scenes featured in the video game Ecco The Dolphin, or in the comics panel I've reproduced here, from Image's Fathom. Part of the joyousness of the "Under the Sea" musical number in Disney's The Little Mermaid was in seeing the theme brought to life visually using one recognizable sea creature after another. There was a whole world in that one song.
As far as plot development goes, it seems to me that there are as many opportunities as there are restrictions. When it comes to bad guys, you just have to take a look at the daily paper: oil spills, overfishing, nuclear waste, scary new species. Yes, I have to admit, I'm looking forward to a new Aquaman.

The other day my sister--she of getting-me-into-the-Star-Wars-II-premiere fame--shared a cautionary tale with me regarding the popular animated cartoon character, SpongeBob Squarepants.
It seems my sister was down in Mexico on a cruise recently and was attempting to entertain herself--as one does on these trips--by lounging around on deck and drinking as much as possible. Unfortunately, my sister's efforts at intoxication were interrupted by a loud noise coming from the other end of the deck. Off she went to investigate.
Arriving at other end of the deck, she discovered the noise was actually singing, and that it was coming from a drunken man sitting at the bar loudly singing the SpongeBob Squarepants theme song. In the seat next to him was a giant stuffed animal--or sponge, as it were--about the size you would find at a carnival--in the image of SpongeBob Squarepants. To his side there was also a stand-up poster of SpongeBob Squarepants.
Curiosity satisfied, my sister returned to her lounge chair, hoping that another margarita might dull the sound of the man's singing. As time passed, however, she noticed the singing had become louder, and that a line appeared to be growing around the bar. She returned to the scene and discovered a bevy of small children had surrounded the man, and were joining him in a repeated rendition of the SpongeBob Squarepants theme. In addition, a line of mothers and children patiently waited for an audience with the drunk.
My sister approached one of the mothers questioningly, eager to find out what compelled them to hand over their small children to an obvious lush. Smiling proudly, the mother flourished a signed cocktail napkin, explaining that the drunken man was in fact the voice actor for Patrick Star, the starfish character on SpongeBob Squarepants.
Once back home, my sister impressed her colleagues with her tale of an encounter with the celebrity voice actor. In the process of telling her story, my sister confessed she was actually not too familiar with the cartoon show. Perhaps that's why she received a news clipping in her work mailbox a few days later, giving some details about Bill Fagerbakke, the voice behind the starfish, whom my sister remembered from his role on the TV sitcom, "Coach." Then she realized: the drunken man at the bar was not Bill Fagerbakke.
The lesson of this story is: although it may seem that we all have enough to worry about with the recession, dirty bombs, the existence of Donald Rumsfeld, and the rising price of prescription psychotropics--we can now add one more worry to the list. There are Animated Character Impersonators on the loose--drinking too much, singing too loudly, and abusing the trust of your children.
Now if you'll excuse me I have to get to Toys'R'Us to sign Scooby Doo bean-bag animals. My fans are waiting.

My friend Joe--bless his comics-lovin' heart--took me to see Spiderman the other day. I loved the opening titles and the way the lines of the cobwebs morphed into a 3D wireframe image of Green Goblin. Sitting through the previews reminded me that the summer movie season is here, with its bonanza of special effects. Not so long ago I read Isaac Kerlow's excellent primer The Art of 3-D Computer Animation and Imaging, which provides a comprehensive introduction to the process of creating 3D animation and special effects. So now I will feel a bit more literate about what goes into making some of these blockbusters, as well as many of the games I play.
If you already have some knowledge of digital imaging terminology--say, from using Photoshop or QuickTime--you will find this book to be an interesting overview of a wide range of 3D technologies, production methods, and modeling techniques. For someone with no prior knowledge of digital imaging processes, this book might be a bit difficult, but worthwhile nonetheless. There is also a companion web site, which includes excerpts from the book and a variety of resources and links.

The other night, my Cute Little Red-Haired Girlfriend and I watched the DVD of Yellow Submarine in all it's glorious eye-popping color and joyful tunefulness. I loved seeing it again after so many years, although I had a strange, anachronistic sensation throughout that I was watching MTV.
The chief Blue Meanie is so deliciously fey! He really is one of the great animated gay villains--up there with Scar from The Lion King. I adore his mad, high-pitched giggle and the way he pets "Glovey" like he's a prize French Poodle. And that pencil mustache is so John Waters! If I were a man I would definitely wear a pencil mustache. It's so chic and yet so trashy at the same time.
The extras on the DVD were not extensive, though they were informative. I was surprised by the sketchiness of the storyboards considering the lushness of the backgrounds and the complicated design of the creatures, but thinking on it further, I can see that the motion of the scenes is fairly simple. There was also an interesting discussion on the DVD regarding Yellow Submarine as a voyage, a variation on the Odyssey theme. The two go hand in hand, I guess: linear theme, simple motion.
I also enjoyed the interviews, where various artists discussed the difficulties of bringing the distinctive look of Yellow Submarine to film. One person mentioned that the Blue Meanies were originally supposed to purple, but that difficulties in using quantities of purple on screen either by themselves or in combination with other strong colors influenced the decision to use blue instead. Another pointed out that the main character designs were created as flat illustrations, and that getting them to animate naturally once the designs were complete was at times challenging.

As both an animation lover and a 100% pure, genuine pocha, I feel I am in an ideal position to weigh in on the recent Speedy Gonzalez controversy. At least among my pocho friends and family, Speedy has always been accepted as one of us. I love Speedy because he breaks the stereotype of Mexican-Americans as slow-moving, which I feel helps take the pressure off of the rest of us to move any faster. Also, who can forget the inspirational speech Speedy gave when he won the Oscar for Speedy Gonzalez? Holding the golden statuette aloft, he declaimed, "This is for every nameless, faceless, mouse of color who came before me."

While browsing in a bookstore recently, I ran across the title Digital Beauties, a doorstop of a book published by Taschen. It's a beautiful and exhaustive book, showcasing the considerable quantity of work that's been done creating 3D female personalities. However lovely the images, what struck me more than anything was the book's sheer size. It made me marvel to think how much the desire to represent the female form has driven this nascent artistic technology.

I rented the Phantom Menace on DVD the other night, mostly because I was intrigued by all the extra features offered on the DVD and thought, what the hell, I might as well watch the movie again. After all, it wouldn't hurt to freshen up a bit on the story before the next installment comes out. I also hoped, deep in my heart, that I might find the movie better the second time around. Although I still think the movie is weak, I did find it infinitely more palatable to watch as a repeat--this time with my viewing expectations considerably lowered.
Now that I have offered my disclaimers, I am pleased to report that I can recommend the Phantom Menace DVD on the strength of its extra features alone, which are contained on a second stand-alone disc. The pleasures of the film are magnified by these accompanying extras, especially the several production documentaries focusing on the technical aspects of making the film. I also enjoyed the deleted scenes on the second disc, and game lovers will be interested in the short piece on turning the Phantom Menace into a video game for the Playstation 2.
The biggest weakness of the movie is, in my opinion, its storyline and consequent lack of dramatic momentum. On second viewing, because I was already familiar with the story and its problems, I wasn't waiting for it to deliver a dramatic punch. Instead I was able to relax and enjoy the film as a sequence of incredibly rich and detailed tableaus with a Star Wars theme. The extras disc only reinforced this view, by offering a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at costume and design for the film, and by taking the best film segments--the fight scene with Darth Maul, for instance, and the Pod Racer scene--and showing the various elements--fight choreography, scale models, blue screen technology--that contributed to their success.
With the Pod Racer segment in particular, we get to see the scene develop from comics-like storyboards to an "animatic," a computer-generated animation sequence that may include live action and illustration, and which serves the purpose of allowing the director and others to preview the action of the scene before actually filming. Interestingly, the animatics look very much like computer games. By using the DVD angle button, one can switch back and forth among storyboards, animatics, and finished film scenes.
In sum, if you're wavering on whether the extras makes the Phantom Menace DVD worth the rental, my answer is a resounding "yes."
On a related note, I see that the Game Cube's Star Wars: Rogue Leader game is getting excellent reviews, while a new game title called Star Wars: Obi Wan is going to be released for X-Box soon.

This morning my girlfriend spotted the headline "The Sims Take on Al Qaeda" on the front page of the "L.A. Times" and happily called it to my attention. The article discusses a computer simulation game, called "GI Agent Editor" that is being used by the Navy to generate potential terrorist scenarios and simulate potential counter-responses.
The game combines aspects of military strategy simulations, such as the terrain modeling and organizational behaviors found in "Civilization" and "Age of Empires," along with the more chaotic artificial character intelligence used in "the Sims," which is used to model terrorists' unconventional tactics and individual personality traits.
The harnassing of consumer game technology for the current war brings to my mind the widespread use of animation--specifically Disney-produced animation--for educational purposes in World War II. It had been discovered that people retain more information when they view information in animated form than when they read it on paper, so the military at the time adopted the use of animated films to train the troops in various tasks. I suppose one could see the animation in "GI Agent Editor" as an extension of that prior effort.

I saw Disney's "Dinosaur" on DVD with my girlfriend not long ago and was surprised by how much I liked it. The initial scene of the dinosaur baby inside the mother really blew my away--and left me favorably disposed towards everything that came thereafter.
I still had a moment or two of unease at the beginning when I first saw the live-action landscape/animated character combination. I wasn't sure if I was going to be revisiting my early memories of "Thunderbirds Are Go!" or if the promised integration of live-action footage and computer animation would be fully realized in the film.
Thankfully, "Dinosaur" lived up to its promise. The new visual techniques were impressive, and I look forward to seeing them used more in the future. On top of that, the characterizations of both lead and supporting Dinos were very deft, with great voiceover work by Joan Plowright and Della Reese--and I say that as someone who would only assent to watch "Touched By An Angel" under the greatest duress--like a wartime situation, for instance. Can you imagine that--a wartime situation where ordinary citizens are forced to watch CBS primetime in the service of their country? But I am digressing.
Anyway I liked "Dinosaur" enough that I would definitely watch it again. Both my girlfriend and I liked it even more than "Jurassic Park III," which we had seen only a few days earlier. It was interesting to compare the realism of the audio-animatronic and animated dinosaurs in Jurassic with those in "Dinosaur." Each took a different approach towards skin texture and color and yet the depictions were equally convincing.
Returning to my earlier mention of "Thunderbirds Are Go!"--I thought I would mention here that as an adolescent and young adult I did not know of anyone who remembered this television series and was pressed to conclude that I had dreamed up the whole thing. I comment on this here in case there is anyone else out there who suffers from recovered memories of evil futuristic space puppets or who suspects their parents slipped acid into their chocoloate milk. No, my dears, that was just the wonderful world of Sid and Marty Krofft.

I saw the claymation film Chicken Run on DVD recently, another excellent piece of work from Aardman Studios. It had the usual hallmarks of Aardman titles, including expressive voiceovers; how-did-they-ever-do-that scenes such as the dance party sequence; and a complex yet daft invention in the chicken-pie-making-machine.
I watched the DVD "extras," which included several behind-the-scenes movies. They were somewhat repetitve in content, which is a shame since there aren't that many resources available on how to make a claymation film. Actually, not all the models in "Chicken Run" were clay--some of the chicken bodies were molded out of plastic. I suspected this was the case from the ultra-smooth look of some of the characters. Several people have reported to me that they thought "Chicken Run" was boring, and I wonder if the uniformity of design had anything to do with their reactions.
There is a tension, I think, between the nature of animation art and the expertise of some of its most advanced practitioners. In his book "Understanding Comics," Scott McCloud makes the case that the most important action in a strip takes place between the panels--in the reader's imagination, as it were. Although animation is a different form of sequential art than comics--a filmic one, and thus less focused on gaps or the "space between panels" (or cels in this instance), there is, I think, a self-defeating aspect in the drive for smooth or lifelike appearance and action in animated films.
An example that comes to my mind is the Disney movie "Pochohantas." The early water sequences in that film are absolutely incredible in their realism--but once I'd gasped at the technique I found myself wondering whether it served any purpose. Disney refers to animation art as "the imitation of life," and Disney has been rightly praised over the years for their high-quality rotoscoped renderings and their genereous cel counts, but is imitation all that animation boils down to? To me, it is the pursuit of fantastic impulses--showing what can't be shown in live action film--that makes animation interesting.

I watched Toy Story 2 last night on DVD. I hadn't seen it before, but I agreed with what the critics had said about it--that it was as good as the first one.
I really enjoyed the characterization of the toy collector--played by the always-good-to-see Wayne Knight--as an underground hipster type, such as are frequently found in certain parts of L.A. They had all the accoutrements down: from the classic 1950s car to the retro modern furniture in his home. That was a giggle, particularly since I'll bet it was intended as something of a self-parody on the part of the animators.
I also loved the scene where the toy repairman comes in with all his paraphernalia to clean the cowboy doll. I was fascinated by all the tools and the obsessive detail of it all.
My girlfriend and I were embarrassed to find ourselves tearing up during the Sarah McLachlan song, about the pain experienced by a toy when it is discarded by its owner. I have to give big points to this movie for its effective use of music, since so many movies seem to have songs pinned on to them without regard to how they contribute to story development.
The massive Barbie doll pool party was on screen for only a moment or two but my mind boggled with the many Sapphic possibilities. An idea for a sequel, perhaps?
I also enjoyed the "outtakes" that were included as part of the DVD bonus material. It was a fun goof on the concept of bloopers, which I usually find somewhat boring.

I had the pleasure of introducing my girlfriend Kazi to the Wallace and Gromit films produced by Aardman Animations. She fell in love with the characters just as I did when I first saw the shorts.
What I continue to notice each time I watch these three films is how unhurried they are, especially when compared to American animation. If there can be a temporal equivalent to dry wit--dry pacing, perhaps?--then these films have that. There is never any reaching for jokes--they simply roll past assuredly. It is in part that unique pacing that creates the world of Wallace and Gromit, just as much as the precise clay modeling and deft characterization.
I spent some time on the Aardman site and found a cool little device called the Animatic-o-tron, an animated storyboard for the film "A Close Shave." You can also watch several of their other films online, including one of my favorites, "Creature Comforts."

I tried, gentle readers, to watch The Miracle Maker last night on television. I was hoping to bring you a scintillating report on this claymation Passion drama, however, my aesthetic sensibilities forced me to abandon the project midway through, long before the Gumby-like Jesus was crucified. I watched the program long enough to marvel at what looked like real human hair stuck to the clay scalps of His followers, but the incoherent storyline (perhaps due to the original source material) proved an attention killer. If you would like to see serious material presented through claymation, I will direct you instead to The Periwig Maker on AtomFilms.

Yesterday, I unexpectedly received a half day off from my employer--whom I shall hereafter refer to only as "TheMan.com." I decided to take advantage of the time off by going to see the "Superflat" exhibit at the newly opened MOCA Gallery at the Pacific Design Center. The exhibit documented the influence of Japanese manga comics on Japanese art and design, focusing particularly on its two-dimensional qualities.
The Gallery was rather small, only two rooms split between two stories, with the larger not quite big enough to hold a mid-size airplane (more on that later). The exhibit showed a wide variety of art and design objects, including fashion, photography, models, animation cels, video, drawings, commercial objects, and a number of installations. Unfortunately, there were only a smattering of examples in each medium, which made it difficult to draw conclusions regarding the show's theme. This was especially true due to the lack of curatorial context for most of the items--aside from a brief statement, there was little to help the viewer make sense of the collection.
Nonetheless, the exhibit was worth attending as a kind of teaser for further exploration into Japanese art and culture. There were several striking installations, including an airplane composed of 15,000 sequential photographs and cellophane tape and a startling wall-sized digital print of Karen Carpenter, hung sideways. My top find was the animator Koji Morimoto, represented by a series of concept sketches and animated cells. The pornographic influence of manga was also well represented in a number of rather haunting illustrations.

I just finished reading a back issue (#3) of the Xena: Warrior Princess comic book series issued by Dark Horse. I like the series very much and was sad to hear it was recently discontinued with issue #14. This particular issue was set in hell--always a crowd pleaser. One thing I've been wondering about the series in general is whether or not the pencil artists traced photo stills from the TV series in order to produce some of their artwork. The practice of tracing human figures from film is widespread in animation, but I haven't heard of it being done with comic books. What made me wonder about this was seeing the precision with which the various Xena comic artists were able to capture the facial expressions of the televisual Xena and Gabrielle--yet in the artwork overall, there was an absence of photorealistic drawing technique.