Blog 7: Puss in Boots

Over the weekend I saw Puss in Boots with my girlfriend. Seeing as I haven't seen anything else this week it seems like the only real topic I can talk about. In order to stray away from movie appreciation I will delve into what I think the Shrek franchise truly is: a mixture of people we know voicing characters we are already familiar with in fantasy situations with modern day references and problems.

It's a great formula. The most important key to the Shrek series success has been it's accessibility to multiple crowds. Say you know nothing about fairy tales but love the Hollywood elite. Chances are you watched Shrek to hear Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers or Antonio Banderas then. Say you don't know anything about Hollywood but are familiar with a range of Fairy tales. You watched them because you already knew about some of the characters such as the gingerbread man, pinocchio and the three blind mice. Say you are big on popular culture. The godzilla reference in shrek 3 and some of the other references probably brought you back.  Then there is the plot. Hidden beneath the fairy tale esque quest you find that most of what they are doing is pretty mundane, every day life things. Shrek faced the problems of raising kids, finding love, and that feeling of dissatisfaction with life.

Puss in boots shares a lot of these themes, but thankfully strays from the every day lifeism that the later shreks became and instead focused on the adventure that brought such attention to the original Shrek.
Puss in Boots does all the things that make a cartoon watchable and likable. A cast of characters, with the lead role being one with a sad backstory and a real personal change throughout the movie. A villian who we grow to know as a person rather than a cardboard cutout of evil.

So why wasn't it as successful as shrek? Under many other circumstances a movie like this would have been a contender for an award. The answer? or Answers as they may be? It lies in three areas. Upon a little digging I found out that Puss in Boots is currently the highest grossing Halloween release movie at 34 mil, topping SAW III's 33 mil. But there was it's problem. Imagine how much more attention it would have received if it had come out on a normal movie weekend. It is not a Halloween movie, so a lot of people who would have seen it instead went to a Halloween movie. Second is it's lack of anyone big. Zach Galafinakis and Antonio Banderas are the two most recognizable names. Not exactly Eddie Muurphy and Mike Myers. Third, and probably the real reason, is exhaustion. The Shrek franchise is not held in such high esteem as it used too because of the horrendous flick that was Shrek 4. If Puss in Boots came out on the heels of Shrek 3 it would have been much more successful.

Animation Blog number 6... I think

I was talking about the difference between western and eastern cartoons with my middle schoolers the other day at work and realized I had a few of my facts wrong, so now that I have another means of making my distinctions I'll go ahead and do that here.

After watching Popeye and Betty boop, and the dwarves in snow white, I began to notice a trend in Western cartoons. Walt Disney once said that all cartoons are characatures, and that is just what Western cartoons mostly are. Over exaggerated people who can be easily determined even by just a sillouhette of their forms. Cartoons give us characters that are wildly different, and for the most part the story is about them. Western stories are more about (or were I should say, as the line between east and west has quickly gone away since the 90's) the character than the world. Our mode of story is very character driven, not story driven. There is no sense of destiny, we are in control, we have an ego.

Eastern comics are different. Their characters used to vary as wildly as ours did, but now many anime's and mangas have capitalized on a common style and their differences come in eyes, hair and simple changes in body type that are for the most part realistic. You don't see the forearms of popeye or the odd shortness of dexter. Their differences make them easily relatable, if sometimes samey. But besides character design the difference also lies in story. Anime gives you a definite sense of pacing and place. Where you are as important as who you are. Destiny, the story, takes a front seat to what the character thinks.

There are of course, more differences, but I wanted to take this time to point out the key difference I have seen (With a little help from Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics" and "Making Comics")

Blog post #5: Why won't they stop moving?

After watching betty boob and popeye last class I could not help but think to myself "Wow, if they don't stop moving for no reason I'm going to shoot myself." At the risk of sounding non politically correct I would just like to say it looked like every character was Michael J Fox. Since then I've been trying to figure out why they kept moving, and I have a few hypothesis on the issue.
1. Going to he beat: That is betty boops excuse and I suppose it fits. At some points it was really distracting and I couldn't really focus because betty couldn't seem to realize that she wasn't constantly in an earthquake. It was especially noticeable in the weird frankenstein esque creature episode.
Popeye was a little better, as they didn't have any beat to go to, but Pop eye could never seem to sit still.
2: Hard to animate stillness: I don't really know, Maybe it's really hard to animate someone sitting still. I've never tried. Superman had some still standing people though.
That's about all I have this week, I just couldn't find a real reasons besides "The beat" why characters seemed to constantly move.