Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Twice Upon a Time

Every time I visit Cartoon Brew I wish I could spend hours and hours tracking down great animation. I particularly love stop motion, or any process that mimics the same quirky movement of stop motion, but rarely give myself the time to explore what’s out there.

Twice Upon a Time, a movie that I saw and loved as a kid, suddenly popped into mind the other day. Sadly, it looks as though it has been cleaned up and sanitized since and the version I saw is no longer available. I haven't seen it since I was 13 so I wont swear that the story holds up but a fresh look at these stills makes me believe it’s as great looking as I remember. The animation was done in stop-motion process called Lumage –- a series of cut outs placed on a light table -– creating a fantasticaly textured and, well, luminescent movie.

A while back I posted a few animated shorts I love and got some great recommendations from ya’ll. Any others?

8 comments:

Tony Shasteen said...

Here's some good looking stop motion animation. I'm not sure if anyone mentioned this one in the other post. I'd look but I too am lazy today and brought back a cold from San Diego. Good seeing you there by the way.

Madame Tutli Putli:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_p6mXt0YkY

official site here:
http://www.nfb.ca/webextension/madame-tutli-putli/

Anonymous said...

Because doing Things At Work Other Than Work(tm) is an area where I'm a Viking, I've racked up a few links sitting around YouToobin':

The first is McKay's Sinking of the Lusitania. I can only imagine how much of a pain this could have been to do at the time, but the motion of the waves is hypnotic. (I had to break the link, but just cut and paste):
video.google.com/
videoplay?docid=390140046814994843


The second is probably an obvious choice, Betty Boop's Snow White, and thankfully the LoC decided to preserve it. I can still remember the first time seeing this in late elementary / early middle school and introducing both jazz and surreal art to my friends at the time:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0_UcG8IfOA

The last couple are band videos I stumbled across after hearing about them in a couple of places:

First, from Justice D.A.N.C.E.:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo_QVq2lGMs

Second, The Knife Like a Pen:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqNSd-x1yEs

Irene Gallo said...

Thanks guys – I’m looking forward to checking these out tonight.

Tony - Nice to see you at Comic Con.

Hey Arlo – YouTubing (along with Myspace, ConceptArt, and a number of other sites) are “research” and “inspiration”. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

edit: geez -forgot to post the link. That's what happens when you rush rush rush:

My friend just sent me this one -pretty sweet
http://www.yanim.net/ilotm/ilotm.htm

ps (got to spend some time at the San Diego Zoo :) )

Old School Illustrator said...

have you seen this one Irene...
http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=3658
The director Marc Lougee had sent a myspace friend request to me and that's how I came across it. The words "Ray Harryhausen presents" grabbed my attention.

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, Irene, those above me don't see how my "research" and "inspiration" fit in to the whole heating and air conditioning wholesale business plan. I fear what will happen when I explain the concept of having a job to pay the bills to them.

And I'm a dumbhead -- It's McCay, but that's okay. People's proper names are there for me to mangle.

Ward Jenkins said...

I just recently posted about the film on my blog:

Twice Upon a Time: The Movie that Time Forgot (Part 1)

Part 2 will feature an interview with Harley Jessup, the art director of the film (who's now at Pixar, by the way).

The "original" version of the film, the PG version, apparently was not the "true" version. The cuss words and such were added at the last minute and were never supposed to be part of the film. If you get a hold of the newest Animation Blast, you'll read more about this. It's very interesting.