What did happen this week however is I finished my entry for this months loopdeloop. The theme was spooky this time. Normally when it comes to doing these loops I end up going through 3 or 4 ideas before settling on a single idea, but not this month. As soon as the announcement was made I knew exactly what it was I was going to make. You can find the results right here, I call it Party on Bald Mountain. As you probably guessed this is because it is a parody of my favourite sequence from Fantasia, Night on Bald Mountain with the musical piece of the same name written by Modest Mussorgsky in 1867.
This was my first time doing a blatant parody in... well... years really. In some ways I think I may have stuck to close to the original animation, in the intro at least, but I guess the intro is what really establishes it as a parody in the first place, since it deviates quite a bit after the opening sequence.
You can check out some caparison shots below.
Tho heres one expression you never saw on Chernobogs face in the original piece ha ha.
Obviously I couldn't stop there, the real spooky stuff in the original animation were the demons dancing themselves. You can find some of my caricatures for my piece below.
Also this week I went back and completely redrew a scene from "I Am Gerkinman". After writing my big retrospective I felt compelled to go back and do just one scene as it might have been done if I was working on the film today. Naturally it came out looking nothing like most of my current animation. Ah well, I had fun colouring in this way, maybe I will use this rendering style for something... someday.
And speaking of retrospectives, lets keep going with mine. This week im doing both Gerkinman Episode 02: The New Girl and Episode 03: The N64th Dimension. 2003, what a year aye?
As far as I can tell, The New Girl is about Gerkinman hitting a button, which releases a robot. Once the robot is defeated the girl is released. Gerkinman thinks it was his defeating the robot that achieved this, but actually, Louis the Penguin just plugged the machine holder her into a power socket. And thats it...
Here we see Gerkinman, gone is the character model from "I Am Gerkinman" and instead we find this bizarre monstrosity in its place. The backgrounds remain just as horrendous as the previous cartoon. I cant remember why I changed the character model for this particular cartoon...
After Gerkinman presses the button we are introduced to a robot, traced from some game assets in one of the RPG maker series. I believe originally this design belonged to a Golem. Golems are just robots made of stone anyways right?
We then also get to see a redesigned Spactafunk, who tween's around like nobodies business. Hell, his psychic powers have become so powerful that his eyes no longer sit on his face but morph around freely as tho physics have no say in the matter.
We then get an amazing Dragon Ball Z style fight sequence where Gerkinman charges at the robot.
And then something happens, I think the robot his Gerkinman and this was supposed to release the energy in his face. Its visually confusing as hell, I have watched this so many times now trying to understand exactly what I was trying to convey here, but really, I can only guess... Either way, the robot is defeated and explodes.
Regardless of all of this, the new girl is now free. I believe she too was traced from some RPG maker assets.
Despite how bad this shot is, you can still tell that Gerkinman is chuffed as all hell about his victory.
And then we close on a shot of a burnt up Louis, the real hero of the episode.
You can find the actual cartoon right here if you dare.
The N64th Dimension follows up directly afterwards. Gerkinman is about to start talking to the new girl, later named K3rr1, before having a new villain appear on the scene. Chronomew is his name, and he is an evil pokemon that is hell bent on having Gerkinman sucked into an Ocarina of Time game cartridge for the N64, but before you can say Holy Lame Videogame Reference Batman, its all over.
The Dragon Ball Z references continue as Gerkinman and Spactafunk both feel a strong "power level" coming from the distance. It also marks the return of the Gerkinman character model from "I Am Gerkinman". I have no idea why, just run with it.
As you can see Spactafunks model has also reverted to the same one from "I Am Gerkinman". Something else you may notice and was relatively new to the series, were close ups. And lots of them.
Then here comes Chronomew. Now I don't remember the exact details of his origin. Mew in Pokemon Red/Blue was impossible to catch without a game shark, and Chronomew was supposed to be a robotic clone of mew and... oh god, nobody came here for a history lesson on Pokemon. Anyways, hes a bad guy.
Gerkinman and Spactafunk get all close and snuggly because closeups mean you dont have to go to the effort of showing the whole body. Gerkinman is whispering in this shot and im still sort of surprised that it still carries accross.
K3rr1 then reveals that she too is a baddie and works for Chronomew, with the plans of sucking Gerkinman into the fabled Ocarina of Time cartridge. Now back in the day OoT was still super popular parody material on sites like newgrounds, and its a game I referred back to on a number of occasions.
Gerkinman is pretty happy about the whole idea, after all, it is his favorite game. (However, in retrospect I believe Majoras Mask is far superior).
And then he gets sucked into the game. You can see some light frame by frame work trying to recreate the look from star trek.
And then fittingly, Spactafunk and Louis decide that they feel like going to get pizza. The End.
And really, thats how all movies should end, with the heroes eating pizza. If you want to see this cartoon and you check it out right here.
And thats it for this week, tune in next week to read about how that Nimbin reboot is going. Remember that? No... oh... never mind.
Ooh, ooh, ooh, I remember the Nimbin Reboot! I also Remember Chronomew, I remember when I first saw this years ago I thought he was a cool villain, and tried to put together everything into a single cannon like, Gerkinman was knocked out and slept through the alien invasion, then he grew up and his hometown was rebuilt but then destroyed again by the robots working for Chronomew so Gerkinman decided to move to Nimbin to live a new life of peace, but he know one day the machines would return! Also I remember spending hours googling Chronomew because I had heard it was a Pokemon Stadium secret.
ReplyDeleteI had actually totally forgotten about Chronomew until I went back and looked at these cartoons today. I dont really think there is any cannon between the original Gerkinman series and the Nimbin series that followed it. I think Spactafunk appeared in the Nimbin webcomic once, but that was about.
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