Directed by Canadian-American filmmaker Ted Eshbaugh, this "Wizard of Oz" cartoon from 1933 predated the classic Hollywood movie by six years. From Wikipedia:
The story is credited to "Col. Frank Baum." Frank Joslyn Baum, a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army and eldest son of writer L. Frank Baum, was involved in the film's production, and may have had an involvement in the film's script, which is loosely inspired by the elder Baum's 1900 novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It runs approximately eight and a half minutes and is nearly wordless, working mainly with arrangements of classical music created by Carl W. Stalling.[3]
The film was originally made in Technicolor, but because it was made without proper licensing from the Technicolor Corporation (which limited use of its 3-strip process to Disney), it never received a theatrical release.
(via r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest
I mostly credit cartoons for my appreciation of classical music. In this video pianist Lord Vinheteiro plays through a survey of cartoon music from 1928 to the current era. No, it isn't comprehensive, but it's still a wonderful medley!
Read the rest
Michael Epler, AKA Pilot Red Sun, (patreon) warps his digital smeartool paintings with glitchy audio and crude pseudo-3D datamoshed effects that highlight the claustrophobia and deepen the nightmare. The latest, embedded above, is titled "Not So Fast" and is about a traffic stop that ends badly for the well-luded driver.
Below is "Ultimate Fuel". If you like this (or hate it in an interested way) check out the YouTube channel.
Read the rest
One can't help but think of Percy Shelley's "Ozymandias" while watching this animation of various web browsers as they rise to dominance and then collapse to obscurity.
Image: r/dataisbeautiful Read the rest
One of the greatest cartoon series of recent years, Adventure Time ran for ten seasons on Cartoon Network. Created by Pendleton Ward, the original short above was produced for Frederator Studios' Random! Cartoons show and aired on the Nicktoons network on January 11, 2007. Finn was named Pen.
More at the Adventure Time Wiki.
Read the rest
Agent King is an adult animated series about Elvis Presley as a government spy. Priscilla Presley and rock singer John Eddie created the show for Sony and Netflix with Archer's Mike Arnold as writer and showrunner. John Varvatos is designing Elvis's animated outfits. From Spin:
Agent King... imagines Elvis Presley trading his white jumpsuit for a jet pack as he’s inducted into a secret government spy program to help battle dark forces that threaten the country he loves — all while holding down his day job as the most famous rock ‘n’ roll star on the planet...
“From the time Elvis was a young boy he always dreamed of being the superhero fighting crime and saving the world!” said Priscilla Presley, who was married to Elvis from 1967-73.
Read the rest
"Fireworks," a classic by PES. Happy Independence Day!
Read the rest
Cartoonist and animator Bill Plympton's wonderfully weird "Your Face" animated short features vocals by Maureen McElheron, slowed down by one-third for maximum slurriness. Nominated for a 1988 Academy Award, "Your Face" inspired the below 2018 couch gag on The Simpsons with Homer's vocals by Dan Castellaneta.
(r/ObscureMedia) Read the rest
Applied mathematics/computer science student Etienne Jacob makes mesmerizing black-and-white animated GIFs using
Processing, "a flexible software sketchbook and a language for learning how to code within the context of the visual arts." You can see much more of Jacob's stunning work on his
Necessary Disorder site and read Jacob's tutorials here on
his blog.
Far fucking out.
(via Colossal)
Read the rest
Edgar Allan Poe scholar Scott Peeples explains the black magic of Poe's work nearly 170 years after he died. From TED-Ed:
The prisoner strapped under a descending pendulum blade. A raven who refuses to leave the narrator’s chamber. A beating heart buried under the floorboards. Poe’s macabre and innovative stories of gothic horror have left a timeless mark on literature. But just what is it that makes Edgar Allan Poe one of the greatest American authors? Scott Peeples investigates.
Read the rest
MTV is reviving two of the greatest shows to ever appear on the channel: Daria and Aeon Flux. The latter will be a live action reboot. Daria, a spin-off from Beavis and Butt-head, was a brilliant black comedy cartoon about a misanthropic teen. Aeon Flux was a fantastically strange animated science fiction series created by Peter Chung that aired as part of the seminal Liquid Television animation showcase produced by the pioneering Colossal Pictures for MTV. From Rolling Stone:
For its reboot of Daria, MTV Studios announced that the show would tentatively be titled Daria and Jodie to reflect its new focus not just on the original eponymous heroine, but also her friend Jodie Landon. Per a description of the show, "These two smart young women take on the world, with their signature satirical voice while deconstructing popular culture, social classes, gender and race."
It's unclear if Daria and Jodie will be a full reimagining of the original series set at Lawndale High, or if it will catch up with Daria and Jodie in college or young adult life. Daria and Jodie will be helmed by Grace Edwards, who has written for Inside Amy Schumer, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and more.
Meanwhile, Jeff Davis (Teen Wolf, Criminal Minds) and Gale Anne Hurd (The Walking Dead, Fear the Working Dead) will oversee the live-action revival of Aeon Flux. The show will follow the titular assassin as she "teams up with a group of biohacking rebels in the not too distant dystopian future to battle a brutally repressive regime and save humanity."
Read the rest
Cyriak Harris is writing a novel titled "Horse Destroys the Universe." Cyriak has been creating strange animated GIFs and videos for more than a decade so he made a promo animation for his book-in-progress. Guess what? It's incredibly weird and amazing. From the novel description:
Life was simple for Buttercup the horse. Chewing grass in a field, gazing dreamily at passing clouds or standing at a hedge to watch the world go by. Perhaps a light nap followed by a gentle canter and more grazing, and then off to the stable for a programme of psychological tests designed to expand the boundaries of horse consciousness.
For Betty and Tim, life was also simple. Or at least as simple as life could be when you are scientists conducting neurological experiments on a horse. That is until the day they discovered their horse was conducting an experiment of its own.
Life became rather more complicated after that for Tim, Betty and Buttercup, and the ensuing struggle for control over one horse's destiny results in an intellectual arms race that takes all three of them to the edge of reality and beyond. It is a struggle that threatens to shake the foundations of civilisation and unravel the fabric of time and space. Can anyone stop this horse from destroying the universe?
Pledge on Unbound to support the completion of "Horse Destroys the Universe"
(Thanks, Paul Di Filippo!) Read the rest
In the 1960s, book designers gave many science and psychology paperbacks glorious avant-garde and op art covers. Henning M. Lederer just released his second collection of animations of these fine book jackets! Below is the first, from 2015.
Read the rest
The Magic of Oz, most likely from the early 1960s, is sometimes referred to as "the worst cartoon ever." I think that is hyperbolic but I appreciate the sentiment.
Animation historian Jerry Beck had this to say about it: "The film is a real mystery... and real awful."
(via /r/ObscureMedia)
Read the rest
In the 1970s, legendary Disney animator Art Babbitt, creator of Goofy, worked at Hanna-Barbera directing the studio's commercial division. His anti-drug PSA above, circa 1970, is a masterpiece of psychedelic cartooning.
Read the rest
Ascii Cinema is a purely text-based way to record and view, well, text. Whether it's terminal sessions or gorgeous ASCII animations such as those created by MapSCII, this means you get crisp, copy/pastable 1:1 representations of the input and output in a form as easily embedded as a YouTube video.
Simple recording
Record right where you work - in a terminal. To start just run asciinema rec, to finish hit Ctrl-D or type exit.
Copy & paste
Any time you see a command you'd like to try in your own terminal just pause the player and copy-paste the content you want. It's just a text after all!
Embedding
Easily embed an asciicast player in your blog post, project documentation page or in your conference talk slides.
Here are a few pretty examples: Read the rest
