Cartoon violence

September 23, 2005 4:59 PM

Amusing, stylized violent cgicartoon of a series of assassins trying to take on the lone biker of the apocalypse. Embedded windows media video.
posted by jonson (22 comments total)

Quicktime, not windows media...?
posted by glider at 5:05 PM on September 23, 2005

D'oh! Of course it is. Sorry...
posted by jonson at 5:09 PM on September 23, 2005

Good stuff, except for the song. This must take just a ton of time and effort to put something like this together. I suspect some pretty damned expensive software too.
posted by j.p. Hung at 5:39 PM on September 23, 2005

That was pretty cool. It was impressive for one guy, I thought. But I don't no anything about how they make that stuff.
posted by teece at 6:01 PM on September 23, 2005

It reminds me of the Anime "Voices of a Distant Star." It was made by one guy over a period of around 5 months, and is about one-half hour long. I got to meet him, and he said that even with current tech, he had pretty much no personal life during the development.
posted by mystyk at 6:05 PM on September 23, 2005

Oh, it [VOADS] was made with cgi, but a plugin was used that messes with the object edges and coloring to make it look like traditional animation. It's spectacular, if you ever get a chance.
posted by mystyk at 6:07 PM on September 23, 2005

I laughed, I cried; it became a part of me.
posted by longsleeves at 7:27 PM on September 23, 2005

Bah, the motorcycle was obviously being trailered at the beginning. Without a throttle rocker, you can't just let go without the whole thing pitching forward.

B+
posted by Eideteker at 7:55 PM on September 23, 2005

It was good, cool and I liked it quite a bit. It would have been better bigger like so many things in life. And though jonmc will revoke my cool card, I like the song.
posted by fenriq at 8:34 PM on September 23, 2005

Oh and, Eldeteker, duh, he had a foot operated throttle lock.
posted by fenriq at 8:36 PM on September 23, 2005

What's with all the destuchy stuff recently?
posted by delmoi at 9:18 PM on September 23, 2005

Heh, Mambo No. 5.

By the way, Did you know that Lou Bega is actualy German!?
posted by delmoi at 9:22 PM on September 23, 2005

Having seen most of it (still waiting on the download) I'm unimpressed. It's more like a skill demo then a coherent peice of art, it's not impressive technicaly -- neither the rendering or the motion is very good -- In fact the motion is like that of a video game character.
posted by delmoi at 9:38 PM on September 23, 2005

Also the sound is terrible.
posted by delmoi at 9:39 PM on September 23, 2005

Lou Bega is tough. I had no clue.
posted by I Foody at 10:17 PM on September 23, 2005

It's pretty clearly a demo reel... I could see the author going down the list of things to include:

1. Character movement... check.
2. Hair... check.
3. Particle explosions... check.
4. Lip-synching... check.
5. Detailed texturing... check.

I also kept trying to figure out what CGI app it was done in. My guess is 3DSMax, but it's really getting hard to tell these days.

It's all done way better than anything I could ever do, and it's got a nice little storyline. A very nice demo reel.
posted by jiawen at 11:26 PM on September 23, 2005

4. Lip-synching... check.

Then why was the lip syncing at the beginning so horrid? The guy's lips were at least a word behind the music.
posted by rhapsodie at 10:02 AM on September 24, 2005

I meant he was trying to get all those things in the video, not that he was doing them perfectly.

That said, it's really very hard to get lip-synching right. Getting the frame-rate to match up with (in this case) the song is extremely difficult.

I think he did as well with the lip-synching as he did with any other aspect of the animation, which is to say: Very well, but not perfect.
posted by jiawen at 1:30 PM on September 24, 2005

I don't get it. Why is this cool when the content is so meaningless and dumb? It's cool because the technique is impressive, is that it?

No wonder I don't like jazz.
posted by Decani at 2:40 PM on September 24, 2005

Decani, I agree; I found it a bit cool, but not particularly of any value. I think it appealed to the part of me that likes the different ways Wile E Coyote would end up getting injured by his ACME products. I found all the differing types of cartoony violence and their related cartoony physics compelling.
posted by jonson at 5:21 PM on September 24, 2005

There are loads of these kind of movies knocking around. Heres a few more. Recycle bin, Pump Action and Workin Progress. While most of them are impressive technical achievements, they are generally undermined by a lack of narrative structure. Once you get past the CGI they're pretty pointless.
Lots of Robots, the work of Andy Murdoch and his wife, is an outstanding exception and is by some margin the best example of home made CGI.
posted by piscatorius at 2:44 AM on September 25, 2005

I'm pretty sure this is a reaction to Crazy Frog.
posted by crunchland at 1:33 PM on September 25, 2005