Popeye

[Rodney]

Sony Picutures/Imageworks is pressing toward the release of an updated Popeye.

Initially I was quite skeptical but if anyone can pull off a decent Popeye feature it's bound to be Genndy Tartakovsky.

 

 

The 'animation test' begins after a short intro.

 

I have never been a huge fan of Popeye although at times I almost became one when a story hinted at his potential. But I watched him a lot when I was a kid.

 

As a kid of four or five years old I use to have a recurring nightmare where I was down in a deep well being chased by a shark and it wasn't until (by happenstance in my late teens) I saw an episode of Popeye where that scene played out with Popeye as the one confined to the well and fighting off the shark. Obviously my little mind must have empathized with Popeye's situation. I hadn't been traumatized but that dream had been so vivid. It was very strange to discover the origin of that experience.

 

Another thought that occurred to my young mind was that some animated scenes seemed to be better/smoother than others and while I didn't have the language to explain that at the time I felt it surely had to do with different people involved with those parts of the story.

 

If the Warner Bros cartoons were on I probably watched those instead but If I only had the choice between Popeye and Woody Woodpecker... Popeye won every time... because that crazy bird seriously gave me a headache.

 

In later years I found myself wishing they would have played the Popeye TV series closer to the comic strip as that had an endless cast of characters I found (and still find) fascinating. The comic strip stories more than anything else is where I think they have serious franchise potential.

[jakerupert]

Awesome!

Thanks for the link.

[detbear]

I saw this a few days ago.

 

I really like the shaders and lighting look. The Popeye character looks a little "young" in one of the shots. I

guess I always remember him having a kind of "Old Man" look to him in the classic Popeye.

 

The director keeps saying this is a test only. But much of what is happening in this clip needs to be re-done for clarity purposes.

 

I know it's Popeye and that Popeye has a bunch of fast, slap-stick action. But the pace in this at times is too fast and hard for

the audience to read what's going on. Even for a Popeye style action.

[John Bigboote]

I agree the pacing is way too quick, altho that seems the style now a days... it's too bad you spend so much time laying-out a scene, lighting, animating etc--- and then some trendy hipster editor cuts it down to 20 frames in a sequence of other 20 frame cuts. If Genndy really wants to salute the Fleischer brothers, he would do some ground-breaking innovative never before tried stuff... like they did.

[Rodney]

I dunno... the pacing there had to be fairly quick. It is a one minute 15 second animation test after all (15 seconds of which was the insert in the middle with the antics of the Jeep).

 

Aside: The part with the Jeep almost seems to be a separate test within the test to me. Perhaps that part Genndy animated all by himself or it was farmed out as another specific test? Something is 'different' there but I can't quite put my finger on it. The whole sequence does play to contrasts in fast versus slow pacing considerably.)

 

Genndy surely had some very specific things he wanted to test in that remaining minute with Popeye and Olive Oil (dialogue for instance... always something that will eat up a lot of time in animation).

 

The slow paced stuff is tested at the very beginning (approx 15 seconds worth of set up the entire sequence... Olive Oil... being bored... wishing something of interest would happen)...

This leaves 45 seconds left to tell a story full of pose to pose (in Genndy's style) with multiple acts of repeated gags to test how the physical humor will play out as well as how the faster paced stuff (again in Genndy signature pose to pose... almost stop motion... quirky style will read. And don't forget we need to see lots of highly exaggerated squash and stretch (which takes a lot of time the more exaggerated and punctuated the squash or the stretch)... and don't forget to keep those characters recognizable throughout the whole thing.

 

That'd leave us with approx 15 seconds (450 frames) to play with slowing down the pace.

At a guess I'd say those frames did exactly that in the moments when Genndy's stylistic holds are on display.

 

The good news is that a 90 minute feature has considerably more room to play with pacing.

 

f Genndy really wants to salute the Fleischer brothers, he would do some ground-breaking innovative never before tried stuff... like they did.

 

Only time will tell but we could assume that very thing to be Genndy's goal here.

I'm sure they learned much from the test that informed their way forward in the making of the feature film no doubt a big part of the test was to put the actual workflow through it's paces..

I'm mostly just glad it looks like the feature won't be full of characters we can't recognize.

 

Disclaimer: I am only peripherally familiar with Genndy's work and have not yet seen 'Hotel Transylvania'.

Most of what I know of him is from others describing his particular approach to animation that focuses on melding hitherto fore unseen 'hand drawn' elements into CG animation.