Kawaii Kitteny used a piece of software called "Crazy Talk" (unfortunately only out on Windows) to imitate the Clutch Cargo "SynchroVox" technique on a video featuring her Asian ball joint dolls. This is eerie and spooky, altogether ookie, and just totally awesome. Don't watch if you have nightmares about Chucky, though. You have been warned.
OK, MTV has finally gone back to its roots, albeit on the Web instead of on your cable box. I suppose this may have been the reason why MTV Networks' parent company Viacom went on its seek-and-destroy mission on YouTube: they were getting ready to launch mtvmusic.com.
Now that MTV has done this, maybe the next step is to allow people to watch their original animated TV shows online too. When MTV was still making animation, they made some pretty forward-thinking series. Liquid Television, Aeon Flux, MTV's Downtown, MTV Oddities: The Maxx, Daria and even the show that spawned Daria, Beavis & Butthead was light-years ahead of anything outside of the festival circuit. Even their flameouts, like The Brothers Grunt and Spy Groove, had some unique elements and were certainly more imaginative than major network attempts at animation for adults.
Please, MTV. Now that you have mtvmusic.com up and running, please consider mtvanimation.com too. You'll have an audience, I guarantee it.
If you are of a "certain age" you remember the beginnings of MTV. Lots of kewl videos. Some of them made with animation techniques. Not much else.
One of the more memorable videos of that period was "Take On Me" by one-hit-wonders A-Ha. Lousy freaking song. Babe-o-licious male lead singer. Lots of electronics. Anyway: the video used rotoscoping to render part of the performance as if it was a sketchy manga. People didn't entirely know what they were looking at: they assumed it was a Western-style comic book. But this was perhaps the first exposure a lot of people had to manga aesthetics.
Anyway, this comes to mind because someone did a hilarious parody version of the video. Here, take a look at it:
Speed Racer aka Mach Go Go Go! immediately comes to mind, as does the kind of layouts you see in manga. The fact that the rotoscoping was done in black and white kind of adds to the manga feel of the whole thing. I really do think this was the first time that someone did anything manga tinged in music video. I'm prolly full of beans here but I thought it was first.
Don't mind me...just a middle aged animation nerd getting nostalgic.
Here, here's another flashback, from Richard X Heyman. Sayonara.
