Star Wars: The Animated Movie (Teaser Trailer)

STAR WARS: The Animated Movie (Teaser Trailer)


As hotly anticipated as The Last Jedi, if The Last Jedi were radioactive waste, here is a teaser trailer for a video I’m currently working on, STAR WARS: The Animated Movie.

661 Sesame Alley (Off Sesame Street)

Meet your friends from Sesame Alley!

Jim Henson–that’s where it all started for me. Even the classic Disney animators thought he was a genius. My first drawings are of Sesame Street and Muppet characters, my first toy was the Fisher Price Sesame Street Clubhouse. Jim Henson could breathe life into any inanimate object: toasters, fruit, street lights, news desks. His designs weren’t just tasteful and appealing, they often seemed to hold an almost philosophical weight: the stern, vertical Bert versus the horizontal, carefree Ernie; the contemplative, melancholic Kermit and the world-wise Uncle Travelling Matt. He dedicated himself to creativity, quality, and never produced shoddy work. This video is my tribute to him. So salute, Jim Henson.

I almost called this video “Sesame Seedy Street” until I thought better of it. As it says though, Sesame Alley is just off Sesame Street–it leads to Spore Place, via Muesli Square. Come visit when you're in the neighborhood.

Behind the scenes of the making of: “Humaniwubba”

I have strange dreams sometimes. Dreams are always strange–they’re dreams–but mine can be strange in a strange way. I had a dream in which I was Sherlock Holmes once. I was at a crime scene, everyone was looking at me for an insight, an explanation, and I had no idea what to do. I just stood there, hoping nobody would notice I had no idea what to do.

Other reoccurring dreams: I’m back in school again, exams are coming up, I haven’t attended any classes in years, I start to panic. Or my teeth are dropping out. Or I’m flying, but I can’t land without dying.

And then people say: “Live your dreams.” No thanks.

One time I had a dream in which someone asked me to kick a ball, and right before I kicked it, I noticed it had a little face: it wasn’t a ball. That dream somehow blended together with an old video game I remembered, and the result is this video, Humaniwubba.

It’s a nonsense word, “Humaniwubba”. I was known for those when I was very young–“Humaniwubba” is from when I was 11–but later on too. Nonsensical words always perfectly express what I want to say. A couple of those nonsense words later turned out to actually mean something: I used to say “Zambezi” for example, because I liked the sound of it; years later I discovered it’s a river in Africa.

I don’t know why I went around as a kid uttering the names of African rivers.

As you can see, we’re off to a good start. Love this blog.

That’s the skyline of the quaint little town where Humaniwubba and his friends reside. His friends are called Goom and Sandor. I didn’t know this either, but my files say it, so it must be so. Goom is the little blue fellow: I did his voice myself, and it took such a toll on my vocal cords that I was hoarse for a few days. (I accidentally wrote “horse” first: “It took such a toll on my vocal cords that I was a horse for a few days.”) I was so hoarse, I needed a hearse. A hearse pulled by horses. I did all the voices for this one actually–Humaniwubba and Sandor too. I do that sometimes, but never credit myself, out of modesty, or shame. I did the narration for Silex the Barbarian, and the Skull King’s voice; and Zernak is me too; and those two Converters. I’m Dutch, so if there’s an accent, now you know why. The great thing about doing voice work myself is that I don’t have to endlessly explain to myself what I want.

Backdrop for the scene where Goom hands the ball to Humaniwubba. The camera pans down. I restricted myself to only using the 15-color palette of the old 8-bit ZX Spectrum home computer, as you do. I didn’t have one of those, but I was aware of its existence through ads and stuff, and its limited colors always intrigued me. Every screenshot had a unique look. Imposing such restrictions upon yourself forces you to access different parts of your brain, to be creative; you become an artist without habits. I really had to think about the color arrangement when I made this video–strategize almost.

The video’s general look was stolen from inspired by an old PC video game called The Neverhood. Not many people have played it, but my brother was a fan. He used to say, “Come on, look, this is great,” but I felt I was too old for video games then and wasn’t interested. It was a point-and-click adventure made entirely with clay, very creatively done, very inventive. I suppose the word “Humaniwubba” made me think of Hubba Bubba chewing gum, which in turn  made me think of clay, which made me think of claymation, and then The Neverhood. See, this is why I opened this blog post talking about dreams.

Why are there Beatles in this video? There’s a bit where Goom appears to refer to the film The Wild One (1953), more specifically the scene where the character Chino (Lee Marvin) says: “That’s better Johnny. You know I miss you. Ever since the club split up, I miss you. We all missed ya… Ya miss him? Yeah! The Beetles missed ya! All the Beetles missed ya!” It’s supposedly where The Beatles got their name from (though I doubt that). Anyway, this clip is shown in the Beatles Anthology documentary, which aired on TV in 1996, the same year The Neverhood came out. I could easily make things even weirder than that, but I don’t want to completely alienate my modest Tumblr audience just yet.

That’s the original pencil drawing of the scene above. Forgot to add that, so here it is.

Might as well add the original skyline drawing too then. The style, with its hatched shadings and rubbery buildings, actually reminds me of those old Krazy Kat newspaper comics a bit. Krazy Kat seemed to live in a cold, alien world, filled with abstract objects and a random daytime/nighttime cycle. The comics had a dark, dreamlike atmosphere, a surrealistic quality that presented itself as the most ordinary thing in the world. I’m sure there’s a trace of those comics in this video.

You can see the Humaniwubba video on my channel, Tales from Weirdland (plug, plug):

Behind the scenes of the making of: "Converters (Not Transformers)"

More junk treasures that inhabit my attic (see Notes from my attic #1-4). Mogwai, Christmas 1984. Gator, M.A.S.K., summer 1986. I remember everything. Silent witnesses of joyful, relatively carefree times.

Transformers hog up most of the space in my attic it seems. My first Transformer was Tracks. This was in 1984. Tracks came in two colors: red, and blue. Initially I wanted the red one; it seemed cool, funky. And very red. But my brother picked the blue variant, so, having been drilled to do what others do and think what others think, I did the same. Of course, the red Tracks is extremely rare and worth roughly $1,000 now.

I liked Tracks though. He looked nifty. But I quickly discovered he wasn’t one of the main players in the cartoon. It was a cameo here, a bit part there, and sometimes you’d think it was him in the background but oh wait, it’s just Sideswipe with Tracks’ colors because the cartoon studios have outsourced the animation to some small Asian country in an effort to cut costs. Oh well.

Anyway–soon after, I started making my own Transformers comics:

“Fire de laser.” I remember sitting in front of the TV, pausing the VCR and trying to get those models right. I was quite pleased with the fruits of my labor actually, especially Soundwave’s dynamic attack pose. Of course, I never finished the comic. I didn’t have a story to tell, I just wanted to learn how to draw explosions and how to suggest glossy, metal surfaces and glass windows. That always was my main interest in cartoons like He-Man, Transformers, et cetera anyway–I was always absorbing styles, learning tricks, trying to hone my skills.

Many years later, and here are the Transformers I did for my YouTube channel, Tales from Weirdland. That was a fun video to do really. I hadn’t drawn any Transformers since, well, since that comic probably. The character on the right is Crack. He’s rusty, dusty, his colors are faded. He coughs. The left one is called Knockoff, and the idea is that he looks like a bootleg Transformer. I owned a few of those: they were dull, cheap, their color schemes were off, and they transformed into a clock or something equally lame. I’ve always been fascinated with the jumbled world of art forgery: knockoffs, bootlegs, fakes. Glimpses into an alternate universe.

The one thing that always struck me about those old Transformers cartoons, were the mountainous backgrounds: they were hand-painted, and quite atmospheric. They looked pretty good actually; even as a kid I attempted to mimic that style, as you can tell from the comic. The image above is from the Converters video–I just had to include mountains, or else it wouldn’t feel like a 1980s Transformers cartoon to me.

This is Crack’s transformation process. I based it on Bluestreak or Smokescreen, or one of those busty Transformers anyway, but still it was very tricky to get this right. Obviously you have to cheat a little. The car is an old Chevy. Initially, I tried to have him clap his hands one time right before his wheels hit the ground, cool breakdancer style, but it looked not so much cool breakdancer style as “Look, this animator obviously doesn’t know what he’s doing”.

This is how Knockoff transforms. It’s more of an optical illusion really, but that’s OK–ever seen Megatron change into a gun in the cartoon?

For the video I didn’t want to just use the existing Autobot and Decepticon symbols, so I designed my own. They are warped, yet still recognizable.

Original pencil drawing of Optimus Prime clone Principus Alpha. I draw everything with pencil on paper, then scan the result and tweak it a little in Photoshop. Transformers aren’t rigidly mechanical, they are kind of robust, organic: they consist of curvy lines and plump spaces.

It’s glimpsed in the first scene of the video: the power plant that the “Disrupticons” are heading for. This was a simple, compact drawing, as it had to register quite quickly.

The video’s end title is also done in the style of Transformers: I could easily have left it and spend those few hours on a new video, but I always want to do something extra, add some special element where nobody expects it. There are a zillion Transformers parodies on YouTube, but they’re all kind of jokey jokey and lazy. What I like in parodies, is earnestness, veracity. The best Transformers parodies are those 1980s bootleg toys.

Lastly, one thing that always intrigued me as a kid was that many of the characters in the cartoons looked nothing like their toy counterparts. At the toy store, they formed a ghoulish parade of mutilated freaks and misfits, merchandise from another reality:

I toyed (hehe) with the idea of having one of my Converters look like one of those complex monstrosities, but couldn’t find a way to make it work. And anyway, Transformers just don’t transform in a believable way. You have to cheat, or you end up with complicated, lumbering, ungraceful creatures, like the Transformers in the Michael Bay films.

Here is the video:

Notes from my attic #1

I’m cleaning up my attic.

But listen.

In the early 1980s, the Reagan Administration eased the rules on advertising toy lines via cartoons. He-Man: Masters of the Universe, Transformers, G.I. Joe, Care Bears, and so forth, were the result.

Psychologists and other weirdos protested that these “program-length commercials” would pollute television and abuse and degenerate our innocent souls. Naturally, this didn’t happen; our souls were already so black and cold that we couldn’t possibly sink any further. We ended up with truckloads of toys, gullible little consumers that we were.

I have to say, I only really watched those cartoons because my brother did. Personally, I preferred Road Runner, The Muppets, Popeye. I also used to deliberately, against my will, watch cartoons that nobody else wanted to watch, because I felt sorry for those cartoons. I was a very sensitive kid.

The nook of my attic. Recognize Boba Fett’s ship? I’ll get to Star Wars at a later point, if I can find a way to reach the nook without breaking my neck.

That is all that if left of a B.A. Baracus figure. Right, the A-Team. My brother was a fan, so I was a fan. The team visited Holland in 1984–but only three of them. One, Hannibal, lucked out somehow and stayed home; he probably drew the longest straw or something. It gave me a strange feeling, I remember. It wasn’t right. I couldn’t be excited about it. Twenty years earlier, the exact same thing had happened when The Beatles visited Holland. Only three of them came over. I bet that if the Apocalypse happened, only three Horsemen would appear here.

A big, bloodthirsty crowd came to welcome the A-Team at the airport. It seemed like a huge event, the second coming of Christ (there you go, two biblical references in one post). Murdock yelled like a brain-damaged jungle creature, Face smiled and waved, and B.A. spouted confused gibberish at the unsuspecting kids. He seemed angry all the time. I hope he got himself sorted out eventually.

Let’s take a look at some of the sketchbooks I’ve found.

This late 20th Century marker drawing (circa 1978) depicts the artist being readied for his bath. A piece of soap can be seen on the left, the filled bath is on the far right. The violent, uncontrolled peeing and escaping turd, as well as the sneaky sideways look, are very typical of this period in the artist’s career, as he dedicated several other drawings to this particular subject matter:

Here is a self portrait from a later period, side by side with the actual model:

As you can see, I had a nice little Prince Valiant look going on. I had long hair to cover my floppy ears. I hail from a tiny rural village where the only people with long hair were women. Since I had an angelic face and feminine features, I was often mistaken for a girl actually–one of my big childhood traumas. I remember sitting on a sand hill, lost in thought, when a ball hit me. I looked, and this old man said to his granddaughter: “Ask that other girl if you can have your ball back.” You don’t forget things like that.

Donald Duck with a baby carriage. And why not.

I was a big Popeye fan. I dressed up as Popeye once for Carnival, a Dutch spring festival centered around “role-reversal and suspension of social norms”, as Wikipedia has it. Basically it’s just people getting drunk. I was Popeye, my brother was Zorro–photographic evidence exists of this, but common sense prevents me from scanning it. Anyway, I loved Popeye. Page after page, it’s Popeye fighting Bluto, Popeye in some perilous predicament, Popeye and Olive, Popeye just floating in the air and being hideously deformed, Popeye peeing violently, and so forth. I had Popeye figurines, bendables, Corgi cars, comics. I made my mother buy spinach all the time, up to the point where she said, “Wouldn’t you rather have french fries?”

I also owned a luxurious book that celebrated Popeye’s 50th birthday. I still remember the exact caption under one of the animation model sheets: “To aid the animation process, the characters were significantly simplified compared to their original comic book counterparts.”

That’s a comic from when I was 11 or thereabouts. Still drawing Popeye. And as you can see, I was happily butchering the English language, something that I still do, right here in this blog.

Until next time.

Trailer for my YouTube channel, "Tales from Weirdland".

Behind the scenes of the making of: "Silex the Barbarian"

Since I’ve started doing animation, for some reason, I’ve taken a liking to old pulp comics and 1980s fantasy films on old, distorted VHS tapes. Cheap imitations of Tarzan and Conan, kings and queens of the jungle, fur bikinis, dark castles, green skulls, growling dinosaurs, giant spiders, rock tribes, desolate landscapes where the sun never rises. That’s what this video is about. I mixed it a bit with He-Man (it even features a nasty PSA at the end), and a Dutch comic called Storm, and branded it the “swords & steroids” genre. War, gore, glory and more.

I found it hard to came up with a name for my “Conan” figure at first. I liked “Rorak” OK, as it echoed the pulp genre, and I used that name for the work version, but then, as is often the case with me, a seemingly random childhood memory sprang up, like one of those Icelandic geysers. I suddenly had to think of an old ice cream brand from when I was a kid–it had a prehistoric theme and was called “Silex”, and in the ads this Silex, a powerful caveman, always performed some mean feat, wowing the kids with his might and inventive solutions to their problems.

(That’s not my own scan. I nicked it from a blog called “Mangerie”, a source of culinary information hitherto unknown to me.)

“Silex IJs”. Silex was later joined by a green humanoid dinosaur friend called “Hippopola”, who was equally strong and amiable. A kind of sugar-coated Gilgamesh and Enkidu, right. Yes, folks, inspiration can come from the deepest, weirdest depths sometimes. Inspiration is a lanternfish. My other main memory of Silex is a vending machine in the shape of him, which stood near the entrance of the sorriest amusement park my kid eyes had ever witnessed. It was a few years after the ice cream brand had been cancelled, and the machine just stood there, with a big, damaged smile, signifying nothing but the passage of time. What a way to end. I was a melancholic kid who noticed such things. Anyway, with my video I’ve properly restored this sacred name again. Silex, by the way, is also a form of groundstone, and in Latin, it “originally referred to any hard rock, although now it often refers specifically to flint” (Wikipedia). Hard rock: this is why you hear a big distorted guitar chord at the beginning of the video.

The main characters are Captain Eagle Man and Sola again (see the Captain Eagle Man video here: https://youtu.be/D508zthzZzc). I regard the characters that feature in my videos as actors, who can pop up in various roles and guises–they act, and can never die. My YouTube channel is like a Jacobean acting troupe, it’s Lord Chamberlain’s Men for the Internet Age. I’m their patron and director, and a part-time actor. Sola makes another appearance in Star Quest (https://youtu.be/aDNjVO0zYH0), and she’s also the troupe’s face, its mascot, if you will (but also if you won’t). In the very first animated video I attempted, she was an alien ballet dancer who teamed up with Enak the astronaut–Enak, the “first Eskimo in space”.

Not much of a ballet dancer there, is she? It’s still theatre though. Originally, for this video, Sola was going to have a cropped cut, but I changed my mind; her look kept reminding me of this girl in high school that I loathed, and once you make that association, it’s over, you have to think of something else. This pose was a nod to a Red Sonja comic cover, though I changed it so it suited my video. I like the fact that Sola takes centre stage here–she’s not a sidekick. To her, Silex is the sidekick.

This is from the “Cave of Hands” sequence. It’s under the Imperial Palace, which is never seen, but that could change in the future. My main intention for this video was not really to tell a story about Silex and Sola, but to tell of a story, of several stories, as this gave me the chance to do a sort of “showreel” of their past adventures. I’ve never really liked linear narratives much anyway, with a neat wrap-up or a punchline: I like “fractured” narratives, loose images like shards, draped in a themed atmosphere. The viewer is a visitor, a tourist, in a foreign country. You catch glimpses and get a feel of it.

For the aforementioned “showreel” sequence, I wanted to feature a range of different environments and foes, and obviously a hot steaming jungle had to be one of them. Various trope creatures were considered (ape, dinosaur, bird) before I settled on a snake, and then I decided I didn’t just want an ordinary snake, but a kind of Noh theatre snake: a nightmare snake. It lets out a demon scream.

The living colossus of Molokar was inspired by old Ray Harryhausen stop-motion creatures. Maybe we, in this computer age, aren’t wowed by those latex terrors as much as audiences were then, in the 1940s and 1950s, but they are still impressive, inventive and expertly crafted. As for this scene, it all goes back to David versus Goliath of course: the small, resourceful hero against the all-powerful giant. Silex has lost his sword here, so it’s up to Sola to battle the angry bronze titan. In my mind, the colossus makes peace with our heroes after this fight, and it all turns out to be a misunderstanding. Here is the original concept drawing:

Whenever I start a scene, I prefer to build up the background first, just compile it on the computer, adding bits here and there, moving the perspective. Once I’m satisfied,  I print the background plan, and draw the characters on an overlay sheet on top of it. Trade secrets, you know.

Obviously this is a nod to the ending of Conan the Barbarian, the Schwarzenegger film. “King Conan”. Very, very difficult to draw, it took me hours to get the pose and the mood right. But I desperately wanted this shot in the video. It’s strange: some of the relatively ordinary poses in this video were lifted from comics, but the more difficult ones, like this one or the shot at Cherisha the Valkyrian’s court, were painstakingly constructed from scratch with no source material. Mediocrity presents itself as outright weird in my universe.

A “costume test” for one of the final scenes. The outfit on the left looks a little like Marilyn Monroe’s 1954 wedding dress, which was probably on my mind when I designed this, as I’ve always liked it. It’s very classy, and stylish. That design didn’t make it though. When I took on the drawing on the right, I was thinking: Do I really want this? Do I want to be raunchy? But I thought it was funny, and it’s very true to the original pulp genre. The pose of course is Hamlet (but just the pose). By the way, the outfit that Sola wears throughout this video was inspired by Raquel Welch’s fur cloth in One Million Years B.C. I’ve never seen that film, but I liked the idea that her clothing is seemingly constructed from one skin. (I’m vehemently anti-fur, but this is all fiction and genre tropes.)

The poster art is by Tom Chantrell; you’ve probably seen the poster he designed for Star Wars (back when Star Wars was regarded as pulpy sci-fi fantasy and not a cinematic King James Bible).

For Ras Magulla’s throne room, I originally had planned something like this:

A royally megalomanic stair design: after you’ve climbed these steps, you truly feel you’ve reached heaven and are at the court of a deity. But it was murder to set up, and genocide to convey convincingly. Whatever I tried, it didn’t look right. Usually this is a sign: it means the drawing is resisting you. You’re wasting your time, your muse has something else in mind. So: discard the drawing and try, try again.

That’s it for Silex the Barbarian, for now. Until next time.