Animationosity: Olympic Pie Eating

Wow I win the award for worst blogger ever. How hard is it to update a blog?

Very, I suppose, when you're obsessing over the Olympics.

But! Now that the Olympics are over and I've returned to a near-vegetative state before classes start back up, I can make up for my lost blog posts with one massive collection of animation thoughts.

I can't believe I haven't posted about this already, but one of my favorite examples of animation is Duck Amuck, featuring Daffy Duck

I'm a sucker for the breaking of the fourth wall, and this animation completely obliterates the fourth wall. It's a real testament to the animator's talents, because it makes you feel like you're actually interacting with the subject, rather than watch shenanigans fold out on screen. I loved that about Looney Tunes in general; it felt like you were hiding behind the camera the whole time, and that every now and then the characters would look at you and talk to you and include you in their antics. That's really hard to find these days, because people would rather sit back and be entertained rather than feel like they're a part of something.

One of my other favorite parts is that while Daffy is obviously the main subject, the animators don't skimp on having him interact with the environment. A lot of cartoons lately just have the background as a space holder; the subjects could be on a blank space (like Daffy occasionally is in this cartoon) and nothing would change, because they hardly interact with the background.

Not to mention the animation itself is classic and perfect.

Looney Tunes really knew how to create a good cartoon, man. They had it in the bag.

That's not to say that cartoons nowadays are failing; there are a lot out there that are absolutely fantastic, they've just had to morph with the times into a different kind of entertainment. A kind of entertainment where the characters won't interact with you as much (discounting Dora the explorer), and where animation is often times sacrificed for the sake of budget or character focus.

It's not a bad thing, it's just different. Unless if it's Problem Solverz. That was bad.

Let's counter that with some good examples of modern cartoon

Flapjack is, in my opinion, one of the best cartoons in the last decade. Its dark comedy and disturbing designs made it a standout amongst the other cartoons that were running on Cartoon Network, much like Courage the Cowardly Dog was back in the day. It makes you wonder what sort of audience it was really meant for; I've seen the entire series and I still don't know if it was meant for kids, teenagers, or that stage of tweenism where you try to find a cartoon that's weird enough to describe your awkward state of being.

The same kind of goes for Adventure Time, although they've managed to decrease the amount of dark comedy in favor of quirky humor; not wacky, but quirky. There's a difference.

Did anyone else watch the Olympics? And if so, did anyone else nerd out like me and start mentally referencing the athlete's bodies for future animation/drawing endeavors?

I didn't realize I would be watching the athletes so closely, but it was interesting to see the way the body worked, and how I could apply that to projects in the future.

My favorite events this year were gymnastics, diving, and handball, because I loved watching the movements and extreme actions taken by each individual. To me they showed some of the most interesting forms of the body; gymnastics showed not only the strength of the human body but the gracefulness that can be achieved at that level of strength, and diving showed the nimbleness and contortion of the body (I mean Jesus how else can you do 3 somersaults and 2 full-body twists in only 2 seconds of fall time), and handball... well, that's kind of a stretch because I mostly watched it for the sake of watching a bunch of people brutally bowl each other over (like hockey!), but it did show an extreme amount of interaction with multiple persons. Most sports you try to keep away from the other opponents, but when I was watching the men's handball tourney at the gym, I kept noticing players dive into a crowd just for the chance to make a shot, which you don't see a lot of in most other sports (other than rugby or something).

If you were a total prude and didn't watch any of the Olympics, I implore you to at least go through some clips, because it's fascinating to watch the physics and mechanics of the human body.