Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Tag: 2D animation

June 23, 2020

Looney Tunes gets a reboot (Part 3): How an iconic cartoon forged a wacky and lovable side of the furry fandom — By Rocky Coyote

by Dogpatch Press Staff

Meet “Toon Furs” in Part 3: Charlie Tinn, Zen Fetcher, and Toothpick the Woodpecker. This story features the side of fandom where you can watch NEW cartoons with classic animal characters, and even turn into one! HBO Max has 80 eleven-minute episodes of fresh-but-faithful animation from WarnerMedia. Furries discuss their influence in this 3-part story by Rocky Coyote. (Rocky previously covered fandom in America’s biggest city on his tag here.)

Charlie Tinn is a monochromatic mustachioed mutt, self-proclaimed hat enthusiast and classic cartoon lover. He discusses how the toon side of the furry fandom drew him into it.

I grew up watching them a lot as a kid, they were on basic satellite TV during certain hours of the day usually in the middle of the day or late at night. The theme song was always memorable, you can always tell what kind of cartoon is about to play even if most of the ones I watched were Tweety and Sylvester. Anytime it was a heavy emphasis on Bugs and Daffy it was a delight.

I enjoyed the unique ways of slapstick and visual humor like with Wile E. Coyote and his signs along with the word trickery that Bugs would do to Daffy, just so Elmer would shoot him in the face. Duck Amuck is a really good episode, I loved how they broke the fourth wall and they did a lot of elements like that.

I wasn’t really fully interested in the fandom until I discovered there was a toon side to it. Definitely made me interact with more people and got more friends from it and all while getting to enjoy just the wacky and zaniness that is Looney Tunes.

Honestly so far it’s a perfect successor from what I can see from the two episodes. I was able to watch the Porky and Daffy cement short, and Bugs running away from Elmer Fudd. They seem like great honorary successors; they got the right slapstick comedy, and the pacing and timing of the gags are all great from what I’ve seen.

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June 22, 2020

Looney Tunes gets a reboot (Part 2): How an iconic cartoon forged a wacky and lovable side of the furry fandom — By Rocky Coyote

by Dogpatch Press Staff

Meet “Toon Furs” in Part 2: Billy the Collie, Clawy the Cat, Chaos Coyote, and Dunhall the Dingo. This story features the side of fandom where you can watch NEW cartoons with classic animal characters, and even turn into one! HBO Max has 80 eleven-minute episodes of fresh-but-faithful animation from WarnerMedia. Furries discuss their influence in this 3-part story by Rocky Coyote. (Rocky previously covered fandom in America’s biggest city on his tag here.)

Billy the Collie is an artist who grew up watching Looney Tunes with his younger brothers. He talks about the flexibility the toon world gives him when depicting his characters in various scenarios.

I do have strong nostagic feelings towards Looney Tunes, and as a result the show has played a significant part in developing my toon persona and toon art as a whole.

Looney Tunes is definitely the king when it comes to executing that classic ‘toon gag.’ The show wasn’t entertaining because it had silly slapstick, it was entertaining because it set-up a comical scene with wit and personality that concluded with silly and creative slapstick. That’s what I enjoyed about the show, and is a big reason why I do enjoy cartoon stuff to this day.

Considering my fursona is a toon border collie, I’d say that it’s had a pretty big influence on me! The creativity that toon-stuff lends me in playing around with the toon physics, effects and logic is highly entertaining as an artist. The toon concepts pioneered by shows like Looney Tunes has also been a fantastic way for me to connect with other furries in the community, as the majority of furries are familiar with a lot of these ideas and concepts so it’s been fun engaging with them on this innocent but silly level.

Despite very clearly being computer-drawn, I do appreciate that the reboot keeps the original character designs rather than going down the current animation trend of using a “Cal-Art” inspired art-style. I do worry that the show will overly-focus on slapstick and cheap throwaway jokes, rather that the wit and personality which made the silly slapstick far more entertaining. But, I think the show is worthy of a chance to prove itself.

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June 19, 2020

Looney Tunes gets a reboot (Part 1): How an iconic cartoon forged a wacky and lovable side of the furry fandom — By Rocky Coyote

by Dogpatch Press Staff

Meet “Toon Furs” in Part 1: Duino Duck, RomeTwin, and James the Duck. This story features the side of fandom where you can watch NEW cartoons with classic animal characters, and even turn into one! HBO Max has 80 eleven-minute episodes of fresh-but-faithful animation from WarnerMedia. Furries discuss their influence in this 3-part story by Rocky Coyote. (Rocky previously covered fandom in America’s biggest city on his tag here.)

Looney Tunes gets a reboot: How an iconic cartoon forged a wacky and lovable side of the furry fandom.

Bugs Bunny and the rest of the Looney Tunes gang found a new home on May 27 as WarnerMedia launches its newest streaming service HBO Max.

Looney Tunes Cartoons is the latest show to marquee the iconic characters that have entertained viewers around the globe for over 80 years. Unlike recent reboots such as The Looney Tunes Show (2011) and Wabbit (2016), HBO’s series will closely resemble the format and art style of the original shorts crafted by the likes of Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng and Robert McKimson.

Naturally, the show’s wacky yet lovable characters have had an influence on the furry fandom, but this goes beyond the cartoon’s anthropomorphic nature. Shows like Looney Tunes paved the way for a subculture within the subculture, where furries create their own characters in the ‘toon mold.’ This includes big eyes and exaggerated body proportions, personalities that range from goofy to outright insane, and a penchant for slapstick comedy aided by an endless supply of mallets, dynamite and anvils.

To get a better idea of Looney Tunes’ impact on the furry fandom, Dogpatch Press reached out to a number of self-identified toon furs and let them describe how the series influenced their love of cartoons and helped them find a place within the fandom.

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May 8, 2017

Nova Seed movie review- a rare find of sci fi animation.

by Patch O'Furr

Gonzo, trippy, visionary sci-fi is a rich mine for cult movies. A new gem has come to light.

Nova Seed is a great hand-drawn cartoon. You can’t tell from the high quality, but it was animated to feature length (63 minutes) by just one guy in 4 years. (There were a few helpers for stuff like music).  I’m writing for furry fans, and furries love art that’s not mainstream but is full of guts and talent. That’s how this movie works inside limits to exceed expectations.  If your animation gold standard is a blockbuster like Zootopia, gold is common compared to a gem like this.

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September 11, 2015

The Art of Regular Show – Book Review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.


The Art of Regular Show, by Shannon O’Leary. Foreword by J. G. Quintel. Introduction by Paula Spence.
London, Titan Books, September 2015, hardcover $29.95 (160 pages).Regular show Cover

Lavish coffee-table animation art books are usually the prerogative of theatrical features from major animation studios like Disney, DreamWorks Animation, and Pixar; not a TV cartoon series from a studio like Cartoon Network. Yet if any TV cartoon series has earned that accolade, Regular Show has. The prime-time (7:30 p.m.; new episodes on Thursdays, reruns the rest of the Monday-Saturday week) half-hour program of two 11-minute episodes began on September 6, 2010, and is still going strong with 195 episodes (nine seasons) scheduled so far, and a made-for-TV feature, Regular Show: The Movie, due on November 25, 2015. Episode #58, “Eggscellent” by Regular Show creator J. G. Quintel, won a 2013 Emmy Award in the Outstanding Short-format Animated Program category; and various other episodes have been nominated for Annie, Emmy, Teen Choice, and other American and British TV awards. There have been a Regular Show monthly comic book since May 2013; and video games, action figures, plush dolls, bobbleheads, T-shirts, and more. Read the rest of this entry »

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August 26, 2015

Anthropomorphic Animated Features, 2015-2016 – by Fred Patten

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

ZootopiaFox

Yarst! This has gotten really complicated, so bear with us.  These release dates are mostly useless.

Yes, the official American release date of Minions was July 10, 2015, but it was released in Indonesia on June 17 and in Australia (in English) on June 18, and in the United Kingdom on June 26.

Boonie Bears: A Mystical Winter (Xiong Chumo Zhi Xueling Xiongfeng) was released throughout China on January 30, 2015, but most Americans won’t see it until it is released by Warner Bros., dubbed in English, on January 17, 2016. Frog Kingdom – (“Princess Froglegs goes undercover to compete in her father’s Froglympics in order to avoid being married off to a male suitor,” from IMDB) – is a new movie as far as the U.S. is concerned, produced by Grindstone Entertainment in Santa Monica, California and distributed by Lionsgate Entertainment, also in Santa Monica, and released on June 30, 2015; but it was released first in China on December 28, 2013. A Mouse Tale premiered on February 10 as an American direct-to-DVD release; but its theatrical premiere was not until April 7 in Kuwait.   (Interestingly, A Mouse Tale was first distributed on DVD in the U.S. by Lionsgate Entertainment, but it was co-produced by Red Post Animation Studio in Lima, Peru and Vista Sur Films in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was announced by Vista Sur as Rodencia y el Diente de la Princesa http://www.vistasurfilms.com.ar/) Japanese animated features are notoriously unofficially subtitled and available in America on video or DVD within a month or two of their Japanese theatrical release.

All that a release date usually means is that the movie has been released; e.g., is real and should be findable somewhere.

Titles, especially of non-English-language features, are also mostly useless. One theatrical feature about “the animals that DIDN’T make it onto the Ark” was produced in CGI animation by Ulysses Filmproduktion GmbH in Hamburg, and originally released theatrically in thirteen countries between April 9 and August 21, 2015. In the U.S., its release was July 17. In Germany its title is Ooops! Die Arche ist Weg …, in the U.K. it’s Two By Two; in America it was announced with trailers as both Ooops! Noah is Gone … and Two By Two before settling on All Creatures Big & Small. You shouldn’t need translations of its Dutch title (Beestenboot) or Spanish title (¡Upsss! ¿Dónde Está Noé…?). The Japanese feature listed as The Boy and the Beast is actually titled in Japanese Bakemono no Ko, which is literally The Beast’s Child or Son of the Beast (or Monster); who knows what it’ll be titled if it gets an American release? The Spring 2016 Russian feature Volkii i Ovtsi has been announced as coming to the U.S. as Sheep and Wolves. In case you don’t know any Russian, that’s a reversal of the Russian title. Read the rest of this entry »

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July 15, 2015

French animation and the César Awards, by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.  This article is a companion to Fred’s series on French anthropomorphic animal movies.

cesarawards__140228172355The César Awards, presented by the Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma (Academy of Arts and Techniques of Cinema) since 1976, were frankly designed to be French cinema’s answer to the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science’s Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars. The trophy of “l’Académie” was designed by the sculptor César Baldaccini (1921-1998) and is named after him.

The Césars are presented at a posh televised “Nuit de César” dinner and ceremony each February, by l’Académie but endorsed by the French Ministry of Culture; currently held at the 19th-century Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. Technically all films distributed in France during the previous calendar year, not just those produced in France, are eligible for nomination, but the winners are usually French-made. See the Wikipedia article for the details on how the nominees are selected and on who votes for the Awards.

The first César Awards were presented in 1976 in 13 categories. There are 22 categories today. The César for “Mellieur Film d’Animation” (Best Animated Film) is a newcomer, only created in 2011. Significantly for furry fandom, all of the winners except for the first have been anthropomorphic films.

  • 2011 (36th Césars), for 2010 films – L’Illusionniste; Sylvain Chomet
  • 2012 (37th Césars), for 2011 films – Le Chat du Rabbin; Joann Sfar and Antoine Delesvaux
  • 2013 (38th Césars), for 2012 films – Ernest & Célestine; Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar and Benjamin Renner
  • 2014 (39th Césars), for 2013 films – Loulou, l’Incroyable Secret; Éric Omond
  • 2015 (40th Césars), for 2014 films — Miniscule, Hélène Giraud and Thomas Szabo

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December 2, 2014

Dawgtown and The Saga of Rex: updates for standard-bearing indie animation.

by Patch O'Furr

The five-decade tradition of Saturday morning cartoons is gone.  On Flayrah furry news, Ringtailedfox shares a thoughtful story about  the demise of “animation on over-the-air television”. It marks a cultural shift. Times are changing communication business, media and fan culture.

The specialized art of hand-drawn animation seems gone in Hollywood.  But not to artists.  Some world-class artists are boldly working to produce 2D animated feature films outside the system.  They don’t bear standards, in the sense of status quo… they’re carrying the flag of pioneering indie spirit.

Two such indie productions have new updates.  They’re of high interest to furry fans.  Directors of both did interviews for Dogpatch Press.

Dawgtown update

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August 11, 2014

Update on DAWGTOWN, 2D animated feature film in production

by Patch O'Furr

DAWGTOWN is a rare breed in indie movies: a hand-drawn, 2D animated project – with as much promising talent as ambition backing it.

Director Justin Murphy gave me an interview about it’s use of anthropomorphic animals, and voices by George Foreman. (Part one, part two.)

Since then, DAWGTOWN has shared a new website, and spirited character designs for Athena (love interest of movie protagonist Max, a pit bull forced to fight for freedom in the cruel dog-fighting underground.)

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June 12, 2014

DAWGTOWN interview part 2: Director talks about casting George Foreman

by Patch O'Furr

Interview series:  Artists, animation directors, DJ’s and event organizers, superfans, and more…

Continued from Part 1, here’s more from Justin Murphy, director and producer of Dawgtown. It’s an ambitious 2D animated, indie feature film in pre-production that just announced casting George Foreman as voice actor. Here’s part 2 of his thoughts about movie making and more.

DAWGTOWN’S CASTING:
Casting choices so far indicate confident directing. IMDB shows:
Mauler (voice) – Jason Beghe – “Trademark: Deep, gravelly voice”.
George Foreman is “Vicious Vic”- a dog with a warm personality behind the name. Foreman’s bio promises depth for such a character. He grew up from childhood poverty and constant trouble with the law, making a monumental rise to heavyweight boxing champion of the world and olympic gold medal winner. His retirement led to preaching for 10 years (not a bad credit for a voice actor). An unlikely boxing comeback re-captured a World Heavyweight Champion title at age 45, bringing a real underdog to the acting part.

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