Inbetweener
Posted:
Dec 15, 2011, 2:31 PM
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Blinky Bill: Fresh or Rotten? (e.g Hit or Miss)
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Hey, What do all of you guys think of Blinky Bill, an Australian cartoon from 1992, Here are a few episodes i found:
Blinky Bill and the Hypnotist
(we will start off with this one because i've right now got a really bad nasty cold infection)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGTprwmrGVU
Blinky Bill's Fire Brigade.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1hr1tBD6O0&feature=related]
Blinky Bill Down on the Farm
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1hr1tBD6O0&feature=related]
Blinky Bill and the Heart of the Tree
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soT66GEZRK0&feature=related]
So, What Does Anyone here think of it, i await in hearing your opinions, i will have something to say when im feeling all better and healthy.
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Everything the Light Touches Is Our Kingdom.
ROAR!, Confound it, Kiddies, Don't miss my Cartoon Show! - King Leonardo.
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Inbetweener
Posted:
Dec 18, 2011, 2:55 PM
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Re: Blinky Bill: Fresh or Rotten? (e.g Hit or Miss)
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Okay, Now that I'm showing signs of relief, now i will have something to say, it will be about the episode where Blinky Bill is told by Mr Wombat about a thousand year old tree and it's history.
it's called The Heart of The Tree, Now here's the review.
okay, let's start off.
Story (Warning: a Little Bit of Spoilers Ahead)
If you haven't seem this episode watch it here, but do let me know if the link is not working:
Okay, Blinky Bill is awoken by a laughing bird and goes downstairs and finds that his mother has baked a cake, Blinky thinks it's a big birthday cake for him, but Mother tells Blinky that it's not for him, so Blinky Bill heads off to Nutsy's (get it, Nutsy  ) with an apple of course, and then also finds out that Nutsy also has a present for something, Blinky (again thinking about himself) thinks it's for his Birthday when Nutsy tells him the truth that his birthday had already passed and all of that stuff is for the old gum tree.
an upset Blinky Bill walks out of Nutsy's house and near the area where the ol' gum tree is sitting, Blinky Bill calls it a stupid tree but then a voice calls him saying it's not just any old tree, it's been around for generations and centuries, the voice then turns out to be Mr Wombat ("Wombo") who then keeps blinky around the tree with him to tell a story about the tree which explains the cruel fat dingo queen (including her spoiled brats of pups) , the heart of the tree, how the queen successfully had the tree cut away, how the instruments were made from the remains of the tree, that one of the instruments was a magical golden flute and how it restored the tree to it's original state and that from now on koalas now hanged and lived on trees instead of on the grounds.
after Mr Wombat finishes his story about the gum tree, Blinky finally realizes that the gum tree is a thousand years old and that it it's birthday and for a present to Blinky to give, Mr Wombat then gives Blinky the golden flute which he plays as the story ends.
Animation/Execution: Well, Unlike the Season 2 excursion episodes (which have animation completly done by Colorland Animation Productions in Hong Kong.), this one was defiently done in Austrailia for sure, and from 7:25 to 10:24 the animation is done by EXACTLY the exact same australian animation artist who worked on Hanna Barbera cartoons sent down under (pun intended) such as Berenstain Bears (no means an actual hanna baberba production, but a southern star co production and owned by random house and the berenstains), The Smurfs, Huckelberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, Auggie Doggie and Yogi Bear, not only were the overall earmarks extremely familliar, but so was exact movement which exactly contained extermely clunky nose bobs and overall jerky movement, I Would like to know who's the REAL name of the animator with those exact earmarks, just asking.
And I would also like to proudly metion that these earmarks or related earmarks are pretty much staples and quite common in Australian animation, which in Regular TV animation, can be spotted quite easily.
Yes, (though with the execptions of even smaller tv animation proudction houses like TV Spots/ Creston, Jack Kinney Proudctions, Format Films, Paul Fennel's Cartoon Films which was later acquried by Larry Harmon to make HIS animated shows for extremely shoestring budget, and the Late Paramount Cartoon Studio which came from remanits of both the original Fleischer and later Famous managements, although because they are mainly low budget commercial studios that work for cheap for the formers and because they were still active and continued to produce cartoons for theater markets and still had to employ their old animators for the latter), Television Animation, in no darn way you can lump it into comparing 1970s 10 year old hippie student retraced Porky Pig cartoons for a dumb elementary school animation art project that some TV moron who was in charge of airing and showing things on TV, passed off those student projects as "Korean Proccessed Colorized Versions" and was able to fool the gullible Waner - Seven Arts people into airing that fake children made garbage on TV, was always in the beginning outscored overseas to conturies with extremely penny cheap labour and the so called abillity to get things made super faster and, again, cheaper and actually i will keep in mind that i think this whole Animation to Asia is just clearly a matter of choice and taste and that this whole faster and cheaper labour overseas and that doing animation in specfic homeland (*cough* North America * cough*, not to mention In-Studio as well) is too expensive is clearly all just a mindset to me.
I Think that sending animation overseas (especially Asia) is extremely much MORE expensive, more time consuming (retakes, duh) and really high staking and therefore extremely risky and also dangerous bussiness for nothing worth, than having animation being done in a room with with an extremely small local in-house crew consisiting of talented artists and people, all locally and in your homeland.
Buuuut (taking cues from Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes creator) IF you would like and approve something done what you think is right, you have to do it all by yourself in one low tech one man operation all in one measly room.
WOW, Guess i went way too off-topic, didn't i, well now lets get back ON topic and i think i've said all of the animation, there's nothing very special otherwise.
Sound: First of all the theme tune score: it was done by Guy Gross (overall name kinda sounds like Guy Moon from The Fairly OddParents and was Guy Gross related to the producer, Yoram Gross? ) and while the golden flute piece was sort of accoustic and extraordinary and Sleezy Dingo's jazzy solo, there's certainly nothing special about anything else, just your typical catchy 1980s-90s cartoon theme tunes that Guy Gross didn't do a bad job of.
Voice Acting: Belive it or not, All the voices were done by ONLY TWO people, that is to say, Robyn Moore and Keith Scott (must certainly be exactly the same guy who did The Moose That Roared, hearing how Splotch sounds exactly like Bullwinkle)
Overall Presentation: It wasn't bad, i haven't seen this cartoon series very much, but i would like to hear your opinions (ESPECIALLY those who actually watched this show a lot from Australia  ).
Again, sorry for the text walls again guys, on one of the parts were i'm speaking about the animation, i know it's a sore in the old eyes for you guys, you would not all mind if i repost this same review as a comment to the actual episode itself, would you?
i will review the others much later, but right now i need a royal lion catnap from this thread, thank you.
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Everything the Light Touches Is Our Kingdom.
ROAR!, Confound it, Kiddies, Don't miss my Cartoon Show! - King Leonardo.
(This post was edited by Lion55 on Dec 18, 2011, 2:56 PM)
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Inbetweener
Posted:
Dec 18, 2011, 5:18 PM
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Re: Blinky Bill: Fresh or Rotten? (e.g Hit or Miss)
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Wow, Thanks for the wonderful info, eminovitz, Guy Gross the son of Yoram and Sandra Gross.
Amazing!
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Everything the Light Touches Is Our Kingdom.
ROAR!, Confound it, Kiddies, Don't miss my Cartoon Show! - King Leonardo.
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Supervising Animator / Moderator
Posted:
Dec 27, 2011, 7:45 AM
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Re: Blinky Bill: Fresh or Rotten? (e.g Hit or Miss)
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Back in the 1970s I worked for a small animation studio, here in the UK, that made low-budget commercials. Some time around 1977 a voice artist, born in Australia, suggested to the boss, Fred Thompson, that he should make a series based on a popular book from her childhood - The Adventures of Blinky Bill, and she brought in her copy. The Blinky Bill stories were written and illustrated in the 1930s by New Zealand-born artist Dorothy Wall.
A "Blinky Bill" illustration by Dorothy Wall
Fred got Hugh Silvey (an advertising agency cartoonist who, with his partner Wally Jex, created many of the animation-based campaigns in the UK during the 60s & 70s) to re-design the characters, in a bold, simple, flat style, and we prepared initial artwork for the pitch. Fred had applied for the TV rights to the stories, but alas! - we learned that the rights were not available as an animated movie deal was being discussed.
15 years later the Yoram Gross movie "Blinky Bill" appeared (1992) and was followed by the TV series.
Of course, if we had done a pilot it would have been a very simple affair, with voice-over narration and limited animation, and if it had gone to series Fred would have passed it over to a studio big enough to handle it, anyway - but I always think, when I see anything about Blinky Bill, "he should have been ours!"
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Back by popular demand -
"La-la-La-la.. I can't hear you!"
(This post was edited by peterhale on Dec 27, 2011, 8:16 AM)
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Inbetweener
Posted:
Dec 27, 2011, 10:54 AM
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Re: Blinky Bill: Fresh or Rotten? (e.g Hit or Miss)
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Wow, jolly good story, Mr. Hale and thanks for showing the Dorothy Wall illustration.
Okay, since i still have the virus flu that's been going around, here another review of mine, this time the one where Blinky Bill hypnotizes the citizens of greenpatch and creates havoc and mayhem.
Blinky Bill the Hypnotist.
Story *Warning A Bit Of Spoilers Ahead, be sure to copy and paste the url of this episode to watch if you've haven't seen it, the same will go for the others* : Blinky Bill wanders off as per usual near Miss Magpie's house when Magpie gets the bottles of milk and then sneezes and says Good Morning to Blinky and then Blinky notices that Miss Magpie is really sick and tells her to stay in bed and tells the others about the "Bad News" , but Blinky of course, knowing that Miss Magpie is sick then goes out screaming "NO SCHOOL TODAY" and as he passes by several characters and they start to carry the cold that was from Miss Magpie.
Blinky then tells the others about the fact that there's no school today and then they tell them that they have to stay in to take care of their parents as they are all sick too, Blinky, disappointed and bored, runs off home and finds that his Mother is sick too and goes up to his room and reads a book about hypontism and mayhem insures, later since everyone is all messed up, trouble later comes with the Goannas as they rob everything in sight, only later does Mr Wombat and everyone realize that they were all hypnotized and that Blinky Bill is behind all of this, so they tell him to fix it by playing on the Goannas that makes them leave, in the end everything is back to normal and later Mr Wombat gives Blinky Bill a taste of his own medicine.
Animation: Unlike the First Season (including the Gum Tree episode i covered) which were completely done in Australia, the Animation work here was done completely by Colorland Animation Productions in Hong Kong (which was founded in 1991 and i presume originally did subcontract work for Disney Japan seeing how their work here resembles them a little bit) , As you've might've noticed (and that's most of what i can say), the animation was certainly of lesser quality and it was typical made for TV 12 FPS junk, really stiff, wobbly, connect the dots, mechanical, floaty, extremely fake (come on, the smooth scenes on ones are defiantly inbetweened and looks all wrong, yuck) and really cheap, not worth getting detailed about defiantly for sure.
Voices: Again, the usual, Keith Scott is extremely talented all around, but the voices of the yellow gold Goanna (the short one) and the daddy mouse are extremely whinny and the nasal sounds of their voices are extremely fake, it's like some normal person who can't voice act (or can't even do anything at all) used some rubber nose pincher and then talked all tinny, castrated, whinny and really fake.
and also it must be really painful to pinch your nose and acheive that kind of sounds (and since pinching your nose for no reason to voice act can damage your nose, it should not be done and heard at all)
or maybe Keith Scott had a cold when he was doing the voices, who knows?
again, the usual for Robyn Moore, and from here on out i think i will stop picking about the voices.
Theme Tunes/Sound: Again, by Guy Gross, still nothing special but still great catchy theme tunes, i think i will stop talking about the sound from now on, but one last thing, Guy Gross composed brand new themes for this season too, if you've seen all of Season 1 and therefore notice it too.
Overall Execution: With all this, this is clearly the Second Season Excursion episodes, which also had a long story arc (similar to the one on Sonic where Sonic the Hedgehog chased Robotnik through time for the Chaos Emeralds) where Blinky Bill get lost on a School Excursion and has to find his way back home.
let me know if you want more reviews in the future but right now, i'm too tired for anything else in this thread.
P.S : Still, Mr Hale, i still liked your post, anyhow .
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Everything the Light Touches Is Our Kingdom.
ROAR!, Confound it, Kiddies, Don't miss my Cartoon Show! - King Leonardo.
(This post was edited by Lion55 on Dec 27, 2011, 10:55 AM)
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