17 November 2023

Video of the day -- monster island


The latest from The Lone Animator pays tribute to some classic -- and rather goofy -- monsters.

8 Comments:

Blogger Pliny-the-in-Between said...

What a great lineup of D movie monsters. Roger Corman would be proud. I remember when I was very, very little and saw the trailer for 'The Monster from the Haunted Sea' at a drive-in. There was just a flash of the monster and it scared the .... out of me and gave me nightmares. Years later I saw the movie and realized how bad the costume actually was. I was ticked. Hard to know which of these movies is actually the worst - though it's hard to beat the 'Tabanga'. Particularly how it lumbered after people running and always seemed to be right behind them - must have levitated while no one was looking.

In any case, the production values of this short are far superior to the source.

17 November, 2023 10:17  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Most of those movies were pretty pathetic in hindsight, just churned out to make a quick buck. They always have that problem of how a relatively slow monster could catch people running away from it. I guess that's why in the 80s women being chased by something always fell down.

The Lone Animator always puts a lot of work and precision into his art, and it shows.

18 November, 2023 05:25  
Blogger NickM said...

Infidel,
How quickly could even Usain Bolt move in one of those monster suits?

Might I get techie? The Lone Animator is very clever with depth of field, layering and parallax scrolling with backgrounds and doing things like it's a hi-tech cardboard cut-out toy theatre of yore (except with an AMD Radeon RTX and not paper cut outs*). In that sense it was educational for me. I've been playing around with such graphic techniques for a bit now.

I have been watching this video a lot...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp1MR2WAAXY

...and not because it's a great song from Taylor Swift (though it is) but look at the perspective effects with the trees for the "in and out" bits and then the sideways parallax scrolling from about 2:22 with the wolves and the trees.

Utterly brilliant. Yeah, from the biggest music star ever that's very good. But similar stuff from the "Lone Animator" is awesome. That's like making Jurassic Park on an Amiga 500 from 1991!

I'm seriously fucking impressed. When someone who relies on the kindness of strangers can get that close to the techincal quality of a (very graphically complicated) Taylor Swift video... Well...Fuck-a-Doodle-Do!.

There is a message here about how we can start a revolution from our laptops but right now I'm just gonna watch some more D-list monsters rendered with A-list technique!


*Yes, I'm buying a kick-ass computer for Christmas (well, actually got some big-end of November invoices coming to fruition). Just for myself. Bah! Humbug! Well, for work and also to play Starfield. Mainly for the later but that's not what I'm telling HMRC.

I like getting myself a Christmas present because it kinda counters having to be thankful for the shite you just know they bought you because they knew they had to get something.

18 November, 2023 16:40  
Blogger SickoRicko said...

Whatta lotta fun!

18 November, 2023 17:16  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

NickM: He does take a lot of trouble with his work. He's pretty much unique these days, as far as I know. The emphasis is on the stop-motion, but a lot of other little details are well done too. I hadn't noticed before how effective the depth perspective is.

Ricko: I thought so!

19 November, 2023 03:36  
Blogger Tim said...

Tabanga! "And to Hell it can go.": Ed Naha, "Horrors From Screen to Scream", an early, vital reference.

19 November, 2023 06:25  
Blogger Infidel753 said...

Oddly enough, I remember hearing about that reaction. I think it was quoted in The Golden Turkey Awards.

19 November, 2023 09:03  
Blogger Tim said...

I believe you are correct.

19 November, 2023 13:54  

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