Roger Rabbit 2 CGI Test

The rumors have been going around recently that Roger Rabbit 2, the sequel one of my favorite movies of all time, is getting closer to actually moving ahead. At this point, the original is 22 years old- and Robert Zemeckis is threatening to use his awful-looking mo-cap technology to render the humans. Personally, I don't care how realistic it looks- it takes away from a lot of the charm of the original, which was about 1940's ink-and-paint interacting in the real flesh-and-blood world. It captured my 7-year-old imagination like no other film I have ever seen, and I don't think digital characters could ever have the same effect.

That being said, this here is a CGI test done in 1998, which just leaked on Cartoon Brew. 

It actually doesn't look as bad as I would have thought. Very fluid and rubbery, especially for 1998. Still, for my money, if you're gonna do it, do it right.

Again, not bad, but it doesn't really hold up on still frames. Give the work to those veterans of hand-drawn!

Now THAT'S How You Sell A Comic Book

The idea of a comic book cover is that it has to be eye-catching, dynamic, something that draws you in and makes you want to read what's inside, right? Well, in that case, this may be the greatest comic book cover I've ever seen:

How could you possibly resist?

I thought this was an old EC comic at first, but on closer inspection it appears to be from Comic Media. They were probably trying to ride some of William Gaines' wave, but apparently didn't last long.

"Ghostly Tales of Spine-Chilling Horror!" I couldn't have come up with a better tagline if I tried.

I love the old comic titles, by the way. They really lay it on thick in terms of telling you what you're getting. "Horrific", "Weird Terror." EC had "Weird Science", "Weird Fantasy", and "Weird Science Fantasy." Marvel had things like "Tales of Suspense" and "Tales To Astonish", among others. What are some other good ones from the old days? 

Definitely Dinosaurs- A Toy That Time Forgot

Keeping with the theme from yesterday of funny nostalgia...

Definitely Dinosaurs were a line of dinosaur action figures from the 80s, and my brothers and I, being kids, boys, and living in the 80s, had some of them. They were just ordinary dinosaur figures...

Nothing special, but pretty cool, right? One of the funny things about them is that they each came with a little caveman figure. Was this the work of some creationist nut trying to push his wacky theories on us impressionable kids? Probably not, I like to think it was more of a Flintstones-inspired thing. Dinosaurs are fun, cavemen are fun, put 'em together and sir, you've got yourself a fun little toy!

To me and my brothers, though, the funny part was this guy:

Who designed this thing, and whose idea was it to make a caveman with a shaved head and a mustache? Why would a caveman have a look like this? Guess it was an 80's thing.

I love this guy.