Animation
Not to be outdone by human actors, the characters from various Nickelodeon cartoons have donned their favorite superhero costumes and are ready for their turn on the big screen. Joss Whedon didn’t plan for the likes of Iron Zim, Captain Bluffington, and the Bulk.
Moviefone commission cartoonist Dennis Culver to create these Avengers/Nicktoons mashups. If Spongebob is Thor, does that mean that Squidward is Loki? Because I could definitely see him in the horned helm.
See the rest of the super team, including Rock-eye and Gerald Fury, at Moviefone.
Nicktoon Avengers: Nickelodeon Characters As The Marvel Superhero Team [Moviefone via Design You Trust]
See on io9.com
Disney XD has released a new trailer for its newest animated series, TRON: Uprising. Featuring character design work by Robert Valley, storyboards by Eric Canete, and music by Daft Punk collaborator Joseph Trapanese, the new cartoon would seem to live up to the stunning visual and aural standard set by TRON: Legacy. You can see and hear for yourself in the video below.
TRON: Uprising features story work by Legacy screenwriters Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, and is set between that sequel and the original TRON. In this cartoon, Tron trains a successor, a young program called Beck, to take his place in defending the The Grid from Clu 2, the villainous program who betrayed The Grid’s human creator, Kevin Flynn.
I think it is fair to say this material looks amazing, and is far beyond what many of us expected when word first came of a weekly TRON animated series. While both live-action films are superlative in their own rights, both have definitely left something to be desired with respect to the story of The Grid itself. There’s a lot of potential in creator Steven Lisberger’s computer world there that remains untapped, and Disney would seem to agree, having staffed up TRON: Uprising with some auspicious talents indeed. The series features not just the work of Lost and Once Upon a Time writers Horowitz and Kitsis, brilliant iillustrators like Canete and Valley (who channel some of the much missed ferocity of Æon Flux), and music by the immensely talented Trapanese (seriously, his work with Daft Punk on the Legacy score is excellent), but also an impressive voice cast including Elijah Wood, Lance Henrikson, Paul Reubens and the original Tron himself, Bruce Boxleitner.
TRON: Uprising debuts June 7 on the Disney XD network.
CLICK THRU TO WATCH VIDEO on www.comicsalliance.com
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The shorts in this weekend’s DC Nation on Cartoon Network are all about the education: When Aquaman is out of town, who better to deal with the dangers of the aquatic Black Manta than a hero who swims with the fishes (literally)? And just what kind of sports does Superman like?
Alongside another installment of the Aardman Animation vox populi series DC’s World’s Funnest — Although, judging from this clip, isn’t this a re-run of the first episode? — this Saturday will see a second episode of the ridiculously fun Animal Man shorts, this time seeing him face-off against Aquaman’s arch-nemesis in a showdown to reveal who the true hero of the beach really is:
As well as these two shorts, there’ll also be full length episodes of Green Lantern: The Animated Series (including the origin of a new Red Lantern) and Young Justice, with the latter seeing the one thing standing between the Earth and an alien invasion being Beast Boy. Yeah, we’re probably all going to be in trouble come Sunday…
DC Nation airs at 10am every Saturday on Cartoon Network.
CLICK THRU TO WATCH VIDEOS on www.comicsalliance.com
Our friend Matt at www.dumpsterwear.com created and awesome animated cartoon for Florida Supercon: South Florida’s Largest Comicswe Anime, Animation and Video Game Convention!
CLICK THRU TO WATCH THE VIDEO on www.youtube.com
With one day left to go Kickstarter funding for a pilot episode of a Grimm Fairy Tales: The Animated Series has surpassed its $175K goal. So far 1,010 backers have pledged $180,397 to fund the initial episode of Grimm Fairy Tales cartoon, which will be directed by Jon Schnepp (Venture Bros., Metalocalypse) and produced by Titmouse Animation (Adult Swim). Since the funding goal was set at $175K for this project, it does appear that this project will indeed be funded.
Kickstarter, which has now raised upwards of $220 million to fund a myriad of different projects in a vast variety of fields, would appear to be the ideal mechanism to fund something like a Grimm Fairy Tales: The Animated Series, which will be based on Zenescope’s comic book series that has reached 75 issues and takes a more “adult” look at classic fairytale fantasies, especially when compared with the focus of most cartoons produced in the U.S., which are typically created for viewers under 12.
According to The New York Times, about 44% of proposed Kickstarter projects do receive funding. The online funding mechanism has proved to be a viable method of acquiring the capital for projects that are too far “outside the box” to appeal to conventional publishers and producers. In addition to becoming a potential major source of graphic novels (see “$1.25 Million for Graphic Novels”), Kickstarter has also funded a number of tabletop gaming initiatives (see “‘Ogre Designer’s Edition Sets’ Kickstarter Records”) and movie projects.
See on www.icv2.com
A year after the once mighty kids entertainment powerhouse 4Kids filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy (see “4Kids Files Chapter 11”), and just a month after settling a lawsuit over its rights to the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime property, 4Kids has sold its YGO rights to Kidsco, an affiliate of the Saban Capital Group (that rose to success in the world of children’s programming on the backs of the Power Rangers) for 10 million dollars.
Thus ended a remarkable run for 4Kids and Yu-Gi-Oh!, which remains a popular Saturday morning cartoon series and one of the top collectible card games (which is distributed here by Konami Digital Entertainment and will likely remain unaffected by the sale of the rights to the YGO anime) in both the mass and hobby channels (see “Top Collectible Games—Q4 2011”).
Meanwhile 4Kids, having shed its most potent license, has signed a deal that will give it international rights to the 52-episode Beastkeeper cartoon series produced in Italy by Mondo TV, Starbright, and Ponpoko Productions. Mondo TV began as a distributor of anime and manga in Italy, and the Beastkeeper series reflects a heavy anime influence, both stylistically (check out the hairdos on the series’ tween protagonists) and thematically (the young boy at the center of the series possesses an ancient artifact that gives him the power to control and merge with Beasts, legendary creatures who are hidden in every part of the world).
See on www.icv2.com
Those clever boys at Robot Chicken are about to strike fanboy gold. The Adult Swim stop-motion comedy hit is partnering with DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation for Robot Chicken DC Comics Special. Airing this fall, the episode puts a hilariously irreverent spin on the world’s most popular superheroes. The Robot team worked closely with longtime collaborator Geoff Johns, DC’s chief creative officer, to create an outrageous parody of the comic book genre.
Series co-creator Seth Green will provide the voices for Batman, Robin and Aquaman. He’ll be joined in the cast by Paul “Pee-wee Herman” Reubens as The Riddler, Neil Patrick Harris as Two-Face, Alfred Molina as Lex Luthor, Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern, Megan Fox as Lois Lane and Breckin Meyer as Superman.
“Having been raised on DC Comics and the Super Friends vs. Legion of Doom, it’s exciting to tell a whole Robot Chicken story within this awesome universe,” Green says. Adds co-creator Matthew Senreich (who is also in the cast), “We’ve been working with Geoff Johns for over 15 years, so playing together on this special only made it more fun to work in the worlds we all love so dearly.”
See on www.tvguide.com
Unsure of what has already made its way onto the web, Kevin Feige doesn’t seem confident in what he can or can’t say about a Marvel-Disney animated collaboration, but he’s at least copped to it that such an idea exists.
He’s also given a couple of clues, however obliquely, as to what the project might entail.
Feige was speaking to Slashfilm, ostensibly about The Avengers. Late in their interview, chat comes around to the possibility of something animated from Marvel, an idea that Slashfilm recently reflected from a story I ran a few weeks back.
Here’s what Feige had to say:
Yeah, no I’m not going to be the one to say what it is, but as you might imagine when we have thousands of characters and properties and now are owned by Disney, who has the greatest animation studio on earth, there are going to be discussions… There are certainly discussions.
Two particularly interesting pieces to that, I think.
“I’m not going to be the one to say what it is” – so it’s something defined and specific, in some sense.
“Thousands of characters and properties” – so it’s likely to be an adaptation, of some sort.
“Discussions” is, of course, producer speak for anything that hasn’t been officially announced or doesn’t have a green light. It’s impossible to tell what stage the project is at, but I think we’ve just confirmed that the project exists in some meaningful sense.
As to why the project would be carried out with Disney and not Pixar (as if it would make any difference, but you know the fanboy mindset), Feige said:
Well I haven’t said no to Pixar, but Pixar is clearly doing their own thing.
Animated films take such a long time that, if the studio press ahead, I think we’ll be hearing more about this one relatively soon – and then waiting around for years to get our first look at it.
See on www.bleedingcool.com
In this amazing clip from last night’s South Park, schoolteacher Mr. Garrison tries to explain the complex history behind the world of Westeros. You can watch the full episode, “Cartman Finds Love,” on South Park’s official website. CLICK THRU TO WATCH on kotaku.com
Clearly, the world domination plans of Malachai and Ethan Nicolle are proceeding apace, with the news that their webcomic Axe Cop is to be adapted into a television series anchoring Fox’s upcoming late night Saturday night animation block starting next year.
According to Nick Weidenfeld, the former Adult Swim executive who’s in charge of Fox’s new Animation Domination HD block, the popular webcomic — also available in print from Dark Horse — has been something the network has been looking at since it started thinking about new series for a potential late-night slot. “It’s rare that you find something that feels both so new in its tone and content but also so fully formed,” he told the Hollywood Reporter, adding “To me it was very clear that ‘Axe Cop’ has potential to be a larger franchise.”
The result of a collaboration between professional cartoonist Ethan and his then-five-year-old brother Malachai, Axe Cop first appeared in 2009 (The website was launched the next year, after initial installments were posted to Facebook) and quickly won over readers with its mix of ridiculousness, kid logic and ideas that were too awesome to ignore. Picked up by Dark Horse in 2010, the strip has gone on to crossover with webcomic Dr. McNinja, inspire fan movies as well as win multiple awards and be named as one of the Top Ten Graphic Novels for Teens in the 2012 Young Adult Library Services Association Awards.
The network is currently looking for a writer to adapt the series into six 15-minute episodes, which Weidenfeld is referring to as a pilot for a longer series. Fox hopes to launch the Saturday night Animation Domination block in the first quarter of 2013.
See on www.comicsalliance.com