Motion Comics, by Felix Serrano – Robot Dialog #15
First off – Happy 2011! We’re living in the future now with laser rays flying cars and cyborg monkeys. 2011 is that number that which was the lowest possible for the “not so distant future”. Here we are, air is still breathable, water drinkable, but I still don’t have my computer interface wetware implants in the back of my skull. Can’t win ‘em all. Anyway, a few days ago I cracked open my Inception bluray. Following my geek instincts I go for the special features first. I went straight for comic prolog, which was “in Full Animation and Motion”
I’ve always been a little weird about the whole motion comics thing, and honestly, I really haven’t looked for any unless it was put in my face or had a name attached to it (see Robot Dialog #7). So I start it up and the first thought that hits me is – for such a high budget blu-ray and film why is the art not as good as it can be? Then I was annoyed that the word balloons came in and out with barley enough time for you to finish reading what was in them. The music was great; it was all ripped from the film’s original soundtrack. I eventually got sucked into it enough to finish the 10-15 minute story, but it shouldn’t have felt like a chore. So that got me to thinking, are most of the Motion comics/Illustrated films this bad, or have I just hit a bad apple?
Thinking back, the first, and still the most awesome of the motion comics weren’t even referred to as motion comics. They were considered illustrated radio due to their lack of animation and radio like dialog. The Marvel Superheroes (aired in 1966) was the first motion comic in my opinion. It took art from actual comics, had limited animation and motion and was basically the template for the motion comic. Skipping ahead, the next one that sticks out in my head was The Maxx series for MTV’s oddities. To me this was ground breaking (and still is). It incorporated panel design in the animation to keep us in the state of mind of the source material. The panels served as a storytelling element as well, showing us anger, isolation and suspense.
Today, all of the art seems to be thrown in the back seat for these “motion comics”. Warner Bros. has faith in the medium and loves dumping money into it (which I’m all for as an artist…If I was being called for the jobs!). I hear the Watchmen motion comic is good, but I’m a firm believer that the best way to experience Watchmen is to sit and read it until your head starts to hurt, then put it down and pick it up an hour later and read some more. Iron Man: Extremis is kinda cool, the production level is high, but, again, I think for the bucks shelled out I’d rather get the book.
So where does this leave the Motion Comic in my eyes? It’s pure download, for mobile media. Keep these promotional vehicles going on smart phones, tablets and mobile media players. Make them affordable and throw in original content to push the medium a little. And if you’re a motion picture studio putting together a dvd/blu-ray, get people who know what they are doing to produce these things. The people who purchase these Ultimate super final director cut versions of the film usually know what they are looking at, and they are buying said versions for the extra content, so please, no shit lollypops.
If you want to look further into the world of motion comics here is a great resource blog by Craig Smith.
And here is awesomeness…
Thank you.
-F
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January 5th, 2011 at 10:29 am
Where is a great resource blog by Craig Smith?
There’s no link
January 5th, 2011 at 10:53 am
Motion comics do nothing for me. They’re boring. More like Clutch Cargo than the 60s Marvel cartoons — at least the latter cribbed some great art. But all three, really, are unwatchable. Not even a novelty. You wanna put comics on tablets and smartphones, sell ‘em date and day with the bookstore release. And offer the whole line. At a reasonable price: the publisher is getting almost twice as much (percentage-wise) from the sale of an e-comic than from the sale of a pamphlet.
January 5th, 2011 at 11:53 am
That’s funny. I guess those old 60′s cartoons really were like motion comics.
And the animation in those old He-Man cartoons from the 80′s was so bad they were almost on that level!
January 5th, 2011 at 12:18 pm
It would be cool if they could make motion comics interactive on a iPad or something.
January 5th, 2011 at 12:55 pm
Mike W. – Sorry about that, here is the link – http://craigjamessmith.wordpress.com
Mike G, – I’m 85% with you, I think they are pretty boring and tend to take away from the imaginative part of reading a comic. However; I think somethings could be done with it if done properly, and I don’t think the medium has been pushed that far yet. That’s my 15%.
Jilly – Agreed, and it’s being done with some children’s books.
January 5th, 2011 at 1:35 pm
In my over inflated opinion.. a motion comic is akin to just saying “We can’t afford to animate this… but we don’t think the comic is good enough on it’s own.”
January 5th, 2011 at 2:44 pm
The Marvel cartoons from 1966 were a big disappointment for me when I first saw them, and to this day, I’ve never warmed up to them. Even as a 12-year-old, I recognized that they were a cheap substitution for real animation — such as the Warner Brothers (Bugs Bunny, et al) and MGM cartoons (Tom & Jerry, et al) from the 1940s and 1950s (which aired as re-runs concurrently with the Marvel cartoons on 1960s TV).
I often wondered as a young lad how a company that could make such great comic books could make such bad cartoons, bad TV shows, and later, bad movies. It wasn’t until the first “X-Men” film was made in 2000 that Marvel finally (and forever?) truly turned the corner with popular culture video productions.
Some may argue about the merits of the Bill Bixby “Hulk” TV show circa 1978, but I would argue just as enthusiastically that while the writing and acting was decent, the special effects of ol’ Green Skin’s feats were still pretty cheesy — even by the standards of the day. After all, when it comes to super-hero TV/film productions, if the super powers and super feats aren’t believable, the entire production suffers.
And on the subject of early Marvel-related TV shows, let’s not forget (scratch that, let’s PLEASE forget) the absolutely horrible live-action “The Amazing Spider-Man” TV show from the late 1970s. The web-shooting was laughably bad and looked like it was done by a high school special effects team, but the wall-climbing was even worse. For those who haven’t seen the show, imagine a stuntman in a cheap Spider-Man costume dangling from a rope harness with his hands and feet against a wall, and then as the rope was slowly raised, he flails his arms and feet (unconvincingly) to simulate Spidey’s wall-crawling. Oh, the humanity for Marvel fans from that era.
January 5th, 2011 at 3:01 pm
I know I’m not the only one with affection for the Marvel Super Heroes show (especially the Sub-Mariner) because Adult Swim wrote a 20-episode love letter to the show, called “Minoriteam.”
January 5th, 2011 at 6:22 pm
McCarthy ,
I LOVE those Marvel Super Heroes shows. Do you remember when we dubbed new voices and story lines over some of them in the studio?
January 5th, 2011 at 11:46 pm
I do indeed. Much of it was not unlike “Minoriteam.”
January 6th, 2011 at 5:42 am
The Motion Comic that I’m most interested in is “Buffy: Season 8.” I’ve read mixed reviews. Mostly that the storyline and art are fine, but the voice acting is not so good. They couldn’t get most of the original actors and the replacements they found just don’t get the cadences of the dialog right.