Listen up I got a brand new invention

June 29, 2016 9:19 PM

3D rendition of a Calvin & Hobbes comic strip
posted by cashman (14 comments total)

Cool, this is just like the Peanuts movie that came out a while ago.
posted by My Dad at 10:13 PM on June 29, 2016

It's somehow profoundly upsetting to me that the speech bubbles are flat sheets and not actual bubbles.
posted by nicebookrack at 11:00 PM on June 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

It really bugs me that Sketchfab only seems to perform antialiasing after you release the mouse button, but not while you hold it down to rotate. Come on, I have a GTX 970, I think it can handle it. The strip looks like shit without it.

Also, the name Big Bang was coined as a pejorative by the advocate for the competing steady-state theory, so of course it sounds stupid. It's not really fair to say that that's the name that the scientists responsible came up with. It just stuck. It's like that scene in Silicon Valley where Richard mockingly tosses out the idea of making a bland box and all the marketing people respond positively.
posted by Rhomboid at 11:15 PM on June 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Back when 3D on portable devices was all the rage (the two weeks before most people noticed the 3D on the 3DS was best turned off) I thought the best use would be for artists doing something like this.
posted by lmfsilva at 11:59 PM on June 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Obviously, it's a labor of love, no question. But I'm just not sure what it adds to someone else's work beyond neat technological trickery. Would be interested to see this with an original comic strip that lives in that world, perhaps.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 12:04 AM on June 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

Obviously, it's a labor of love, no question. But I'm just not sure what it adds to someone else's work beyond neat technological trickery.

Coincidentally, I earlier noted someone had tweeted:

#NowPlaying John Coltrane "A Love Supreme (J.PERIOD Remix)"

with another tweeter replying:

Really? You improved the greatest song ever made? Really?

posted by Celsius1414 at 12:16 AM on June 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I'd really like to see this applied to a comic that was actually about different dimensions or time or was just really trippy in some way. The 3D stuff is cool, but it seems strange to apply it to such a relatively straightforward conversation. Little Nemo or one of Jack Kirby's more cosmic pages could be great for something like this. (Has anybody done a 3D gizmo like this for an Escher image yet? If not, somebody please do that.)
posted by Ursula Hitler at 1:04 AM on June 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

Clever, and has potential... but they got Hobbes' body wrong; he looks like a bratwurst with a head. And Calvin's head just becomes a ball as you change perspective - no nose straight-on.

So I agree with the dragon lungful; I don't think it has really added anything to the original. Something written with this presentation in mind could be very cool.
posted by Artful Codger at 4:56 AM on June 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm just disappointed rotating it 180 degrees doesn't reveal a real boy and tiger, Take On Me style.
posted by Roommate at 5:59 AM on June 30, 2016 [10 favorites]

I think remixing something older isn't improving it, not unless there is significant hubris involved. Sometimes it's useful to rework a masters work to see the hidden effort that goes into looking effortless.. I know that from personal experience that painting pages from Otomo's Akira has shown me the work that goes behind the framing and body positions. But this isn't remixing and I'd argue neither is this 3d strip. It's more of a dissection.

Remix almost always involves a mood or emotional shift from the original such as Calvin and Muad'dib. Maybe it's taking a sad song like Posner's Ibiza and cutting it with an upbeat danceable section. Celebrating the sadness. Flying in the face of it. I don't find this objectionable at all, it's kinda what I did as a kid when I would take the words from one song and sing them to the melody of another.
posted by Leelas at 6:39 AM on June 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

Christ. I think this is a cool demo of his talent. I am glad he didn't do this on a space one, or a time travel one or a rip in the fabric of reality one. Instead, he picked one of the iconic outdoor scenes. The scene itself has only ever existed in our minds. We know the bubbles. We know the conversation. We have all had the conversation either with someone or in our own head... And yet here is Calvin in an old and familiar space, going through a cathartic exploration into the new world. And, he's given new depth - not just in his exploration of physics, but by an artist who reimagined these panels with ... new... depth...
posted by Nanukthedog at 6:57 AM on June 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

I really wish he had picked a comic where the original artist would have been more likely to approve. Or had bothered to ask in the first place.
posted by Ampersand692 at 9:45 AM on June 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

I wonder why the words are gray, instead of black. I assume that wasn't a matter of choice. If it was, making the dialogue just a bit harder to read (and less like Watterson's lettering) was a strange way to go.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:54 PM on June 30, 2016

He should do Abstraction by Shintaro Kago next.
posted by ymgve at 8:52 PM on June 30, 2016 [1 favorite]