Let’s keep the hip hop/Mouse House mash-ups going a little longer, shall we? Here’s a lovely little t-shirt for the ladies featuring some suggestive slang that doubles as a declaration of Disney love.
Planning a trip to Disneyland?
Getting away to Walt Disney World?
This tee will either offend everyone in your ‘Small World’ boat or draw similarly sick minds into your social circle.
To order one off Amazon (all sizes and colors available!), click here.
Related: Hip Hop Lyrics + Disney GIFs…
It’s like my mother always told me
Rana rana rana rana rana rana rana rana rana rana
and codeine and goddamit, you little motherfucker
If you aint got nothin’ nice to say then don’t say nothin’
My Dad’s Gone Crazy by Eminem (2002)
I love hip hop. I adore Disney. Pairing them up seemed every bit as obvious as, say, blending peanut butter and jelly or mixing Sprite with cough syrup. The only question was: How?
I did NOT want to re-make Disney characters in the style of rap luminaries. (Remember that hideous line of hip hop/Looney Tunes clothes that came out back in the early 1990s? That’s EXACTLY what I was hoping to avoid.) I also didn’t want to spend hours and hours editing together Disney footage with my favorite rap songs, only to have YouTube yank them down within the week. (Plus, I’m lazy.)
Then I saw the above GIF on Tumblr, and the accompanying Eminem verse IMMEDIATELY popped into my head. That was it! In less than an hour, I’d cobbled together ten different Disney/hip hop pairings — at least eight of ‘em borderline brilliant. Of course, that’s just my opinion. Click through and see if you agree.
Wanna see a lot more art from HTTYD2? Click here!
X-2 teaser poster (2003)
X-Men: Days of Future Past magazine cover (2014)
(Someone at Fox really likes Anna Paquin’s bum!)
(For free Valentines Day cards and GIFs, visit our Tumblr.)
Here’s a delightful drawing of Mickey Mouse by ‘Disney duck artist,’ Carl Barks. I love this pic. It’s such a wonderful pose. You can almost feel the gravity pulling Mickey’s body forward as he makes his way through his Fred Astaire-like soft-shoe. So very classy! (Via.)
Ulises Farinas’ excellent x-ray of the Thing is exactly the sort of thing that an 11-year-old me would’ve pored over for days. Of course, now that I’m an adult, I can only give it an hour. Maybe two. Three, tops.
To see the entire Thing (get it?), and learn a bit about Farinas, click through.
Jamie Leto has put together a GREAT photo set combining character stills from classic Disney cartoons with pics of their live-action references. One thing for up-and-coming animators to note: While the filming of actors was occasionally used for rotoscoping, more often than not it was only used as inspiration. Pay close attention as you peruse the pics. As nice as the actor’s or actresses’ performance is, the animated poses are ALWAYS better.
Shown above are just two pics from Leto’s set. Click here to see the rest.
Still sitting on an unused Amazon gift card from the holidays? I’m about to help you spend it — and then some.
Listed below are a handful of upcoming omnibus collecting some of the most bizarre superhero stories ever to come out of mainstream comic book companies. If you’re the type of comic book reader who prefers far-out flights of fancy to po-faced fight scenes, I think you will LOVE these books!
Now that Frozen has been certified a financial, critical and popular success, it’s time to take a look at the next Disney animated feature to feature a princess in the lead — Ron Clements and Jon Musker’s Moana. (Pronounced as either Mo-AH-na or Mwa-na depending on who you talk to.) While tentatively scheduled for a Nov. 2016 release, surprisingly little has leaked about the South Seas tale. That said, what little has leaked is good. REALLY GOOD.
Click through to read everything out there thus far.
According to Latino Review, the answer is YES.
“Pixar has been given their own Star Wars movie.”
And…that’s it. The sum total of what anyone outside of Disney seems to know. Will this rumor prove true, or be quickly debunked? Your guess is as worthless as mine.
Art by Phil Postma
For the sweet story behind this Snoopy snowman, click here.
Steven Spielberg is once again acting as the unofficial adviser to the How to Train Your Dragon franchise. An email posted yesterday on Icelaniceel.tumblr reports:
Steven Spielberg was [at DreamWorks] last Wednesday to give notes on How to Train Your Dragon 2. He liked the first Dragons a lot, and one of his kids is really crazy about the original. Steven’s been involved with the new movie for a while, he’s seen it three times.
Everybody thinks we’ve got a terrific film, but the third act needs to be a little bigger, have a bigger climax and a larger celebration at the end. We’re supposed to get a meeting about Steven’s notes tomorrow or the next day…
Fans of the original HTTYD may remember that Spielberg was an early, outspoken supporter of the film. He was also responsible for one of the most touching moments in the movie. In the DVD commentary, HTTYD‘s co-director Dean DeBlois recalled:
Back in 1978, The Super Dictionary was a fun way to teach kids new words using context and repetition. Nowadays, it’s a treasure trove of oddly-captioned weirdness. I can only hope I age as gracefully.
For more entries, visit My 70s, The Super Dictionary or buy your own.
French photographer Remi Noël, fascinated by American culture and the state of Texas, traveled from Houston to Dallas taking black and white photos of his “traveling companion,” a small Batman action figure. While the concept may sound like a one-note gimmick, the resulting photos range from the haunting to the hilarious, perfectly capturing the surreal sensation of traveling alone in a faraway land.
Click through for more. Continue reading
Our Friend, Martin, Robert Brousseau and Vincenzo Trippetti’s 1999 time-travel tribute to Martin Luther King Jr., is as awkward as it is engaging. The dialogue is cringe-worthy. The jokes are even worse. The animation looks like Captain Planet, and the voice acting sounds like it’s comprised entirely of first takes. Yet despite its many, many flaws, the movie manages to be an oddly effective bit of After School Special-style ‘edutainment.’
No, seriously. Continue reading
DreamWorks animator William Salazar posted a pencil test he did for the studio’s long-delayed/probably cancelled film, Me and My Shadow.
Watching this brief bit of loose-limbed lunacy makes me pine for what could’ve been. Adding to my list of laments, Me and My Shadow was to be a Paperman-esque blend of CG and hand-drawn animation — heavy on the hand-drawn!
Me and My Shadow was intended as the feature film directing debut of How to Train Your Dragon 2‘s head of story, Alessandro Carloni. The film was initially scheduled to be released in 2013, then 2014, and has since been removed from DW’s official 2014-2016 release schedule. Bummer, huh?
For three GIFs clipped from this pencil test, click through.
Via: dorkly.com
In a recent press conference, Miley Cyrus announced that she has hired Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi to help design the visuals for her upcoming Bangerz tour.
“Our whole tour is literally based on animals,” [Cyrus] told reporters, adding that the majority of the creatures are actually “imaginative animals” designed by Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi.
“His art is driving a lot of the tour,” Cyrus explained.
Animator Alan Becker is recreating the world of Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away in Minecraft. So far, he’s completed the bathhouse and the ghost town, but he’s not stopping ‘til he’s done. Here’s his description of the work in progress:
This is a tour of my Spirited Away world in Minecraft. It is only 80% finished, but before I post videos about working on it, I need to show what I’ve done so far!
This video goes from the entrance to the next world to the field that they cross to get to the ghost town. I reveal some Easter eggs and daylight sensors in the buildings.
Via: Geek Tyrant
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Via The TAG Blog, quoting huge chunks from The Jewish Daily Forward:
… There hasn’t been much recent news from [Ralph] Bakshi, … but with “Last Days of Coney Island” he’s making a return to filmmaking, and to subjects that have marked his career since the beginning: crime, corruption, and the grime-ridden streets of New York. …
The decline of Coney Island was a local tragedy, but it wasn’t just the beach that was in trouble. As Bakshi tells it, the fate of the neighborhood was a metaphor for everything happening in America, including the assassinations of Kennedy and King. “Coney Island was a place where poor people could go and not feel poor,” he said. “You wouldn’t run into any Rolls Royces, and you didn’t feel that there was anything that you could not afford to do. But it ended up trashed, and I felt that America was headed the same way. Continue reading
(Or: A collection of Disney GIFs that would make Sir-Mix-A-Lot proud.)
Some might call this sexist.
They’d probably be right.
Others would deem it unnecessary.
They, too, would get a shrug and a nod.
Then there are those animation aficionados who would deem it pervy and pathetic to put together a post made up entirely of cartoon keisters. To those pop culture prudes I say thee — NAY! The animators responsible for each and every one of these moneymaker moments knew EXACTLY what they were doing. They were basking in the bum and getting cheeky with the butt-cheeks. These GIFs are a tribute to their ass-tounding work. If that’s not your cup o’ tea, so be it. There’s the door. Don’t let it hit you on the- well, you know…
Here at Skunk Central, this is BIG NEWS.
Back in October, David Kawena let us use a few of his romance cover re-imaginings of the Disney dudes for a satiric post we did. Boy did we get lucky. Cuz in the months since, homie has BLOWN UP. He’s not only created a number of new pin-up princes (including a skivvy-clad version of Frozen‘s Kristoff), he’s been featured in the German language version of Cosmopolitan magazine! How cool is that?
To read the pic-heavy piece, click here.
Me, via Animation Scoop:
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 was one of the most visually impressive animated features of 2013. Boasting an unabashedly UN-realistic look and more colors than a quadruple rainbow, Cloudy 2 was a wonderful reminder of just how gorgeous non-photo-realistic cartoons can be. With the digital download of the film going on sale today, it seemed like the perfect time to catch up with Cloudy 2‘s Art Director, Dave Bleich, one of the key brains behind this brilliant spectacle.
To read my interview with Bleich, click here.
The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia begin on Feb. 7, and with them come three new cartoon mascots: Zaya the doe hare, Bely Mishka the polar bear and Snow Leopard the…well, snow leopard. (Creative!)
The three merchandise-ready mascots were designed and chosen by Russia’s citizens as part of an open-entry contest that netted nearly 24,000 entries. Of course, Russia being Russia, even this seemingly simplistic act of demi-democracy was not without its scandals.
Congratulations to Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee and the rest of the cast and crew of Frozen for winning the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature. Y’all deserved it!
To see Buck and Lee’s acceptance speech, click through.
Minimal, yet memorable. Well done, Marvel. Via.
The Simpsons has been around so long that it’s kinda hard to get too excited by it anymore. That said, when the show does wow, it’s an all-caps WOW.
This strange and surreal homage to Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli is one such WOW. While I’ve no doubt that it is entirely unnecessary to the plot of whatever episode it airs in, that only makes me adore it all the more. Such tangents and tributes are a gift, and the most memorable gifts are rarely the stuff of logic, but of love.
Click through for GIFs.
(Or: Some interesting ways to get some variety into those boring panels where some dumb writer has a bunch of lame characters sitting around talking for page after page!)
Awesome, ain’t it? Even when Wally Wood is doling out solid comics craft advice, he’s still the same sarcastic and subversion sonuvabitch we fell in love with in MAD Magazine.
In a similarly sarcastic and subversive gesture, Powers artist Michael Avon Oeming recently re-drew this chart as an “homage” to Wood. Oeming, as you may remember, is the long-term collaborator of comics scribe (and master at staging scenes where characters are “sitting around talking for page after page”) Brian Micheal Bendis. Coincidence?
Related: Wally Wood’s ‘Comic Strip Character Christmas Party’
Quell Your New Year’s Neurosis With These Two FREE Comics!
The new year often brings with it some serious soul-searching. Like the mid-year and end-of-the-year soul-searching, this beginning-of-the-year soul-searching is usually pretty depressing. Some folks will tell you to simply ‘snap out of it.’ Take a walk. Pop a pill. Buy a puppy. Not me. Over the years, I’ve found that the best way to stop feeling sorry for myself is to momentarily engage with something far more miserable — like, say, a maudlin movie or a particularly bleak book.
Don’t get me wrong. Human interaction works…sometimes. But other times it’ll leave you feeling far worse than before. That’s why I recommend art. Even at its most grim and gritty, well done art has the power to be life-altering. Inspiring, even.
This morning I had just such an experience with Gerardo Preciado and Daniel Bayliss’ two FREE, unofficial, online comics, Batman: The Deal and Superman: God’s End. Both of these comics are undoubtedly downers, yet both of them also planted the seeds of hope within me.
Here’s the first image from Pixar’s next short, Party Central. The look on the characters’ faces pretty much mirrors my own reaction upon seeing this. I mean, seriously, Pixar — ANOTHER freaking franchise pic?
Here’s D23′s description of the spin-off to the sequel to Monsters, Inc.:
Mike and Sulley are back at Monsters University for a fun-filled weekend with their Oozma Kappa fraternity brothers. The gang is throwing their first party, but no one—
No one cares. Party Central is being directed by Kelsey Mann (story supervisor on Monsters University). It was initially scheduled to be released with Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur, but with Dinosaur being pushed back to 2015, the powers that be decided to open it in front of Muppets Most Wanted on March 21, 2014.
Hey, all those leftover Monsters U toys won’t sell themselves!
Do you remember when every preschool and pediatric ward used to decorate their walls with off-model murals of Disney characters? Some forward thinking cryogenics lab ought to hire deviantArtist Unrellius to paint his Futurama character collage on the wall of their waiting room.
After all, the first generation raised on The Simpsons is now in the midst of middle age. With death and decay only a few decades away, isn’t it time that science and the medical community started marketing themselves to the millions of adults soon to be watching cartoons from their deathbeds?
Until then, you can avoid further eyestrain and optometrist visits by checking out Unrellius’ super-sized image here.
DreamWorks Animation has partnered with Fuhu Inc. to create a new tablet, the DreamTab. It’s aim? To teach kids how to be their own animators.
The DreamTab will come equipped with Be an Artist, a program that “teaches kids how to create…animated characters in one-on-one video sessions with DreamWorks animators.”
Oh, and How To Train Your Dragon fans will be especially excited to know that the FIRST game that’s going to be released for the DreamTab is HTTYD themed…
(drooooooooooooooooooooools…)
For the full story, CLICK HERE.
Disney animator Nik Ranieri has been killing it for YEARS. Way, way back in 1988, Ranieri was one of Roger Rabbit’s main animators. Since then, he’s been the Supervising Animator on such memorable characters as Beauty and the Beast‘s Lumiere, Hercules‘ Hades and The Princess and the Frog‘s Charlotte La Bouff.
Yes, THAT Charlotte La Bouff.
What a wacky, wonderful, woefully underrated character Charlotte was! If Princess had been a live-action movie and a human had played the part of La Bouff even HALF as hilarious as Ranieri animated it, said actress would’ve won an Oscar, a Golden Globe and her own Thursday night sitcom.
Racial diversity is once again on the rise in TV animation, with Black, Asian and Latino characters playing a major part of such recently launched series as Cartoon Network’s Steven Universe, Nickelodeon’s Sanjay and Craig and Disney’s Sofia the First. Is this merely a fleeting trend, or the it’s-about-time actualization of The King of Cartoons‘ ‘I Have A Dream’ speech?
Your guess is as good as mine.
The gentle innocence of The Lion King‘s love story is destroyed forever in this disturbingly frank conversation between Nala and Simba about real-life lion mating habits.
That said, this is EXACTLY the sort of video Disney ought to be airing at their Animal Kingdom park. What was the word KRS-ONE used to use for stuff like this? Oh, yeah. “Edutainment.”
Related: Officially licensed Disney lingerie: Now on sale!
With Studio Ghibli set to release an anime adaptation of Joan G. Robinson’s When Marnie Was There, I thought it would be fun to revisit Miyazaki’s first mention of the book — his list of his fifty favorite children’s books.
This list is interesting to animation obsessives as it contains a handful of titles already adapted by Ghibli and Miyazaki (The Borrowers, Heidi, A Wizard of Earthsea), as well as a title that would best be described as ‘loosely adapted’ by Miyazaki (Sherlock Holmes). One wonders if it may also provide the answer to every Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli fan’s favorite question: What’s next?
Studio Ghibli’s next film will be Omoide no Marnie, an adaptation of Joan G. Robinson’s children’s novel, When Marnie Was There.
The novel tells the story of Anna, a lonely, brooding, adopted girl who travels to the coast to stay with a kindly older couple. While there, Anna meets Marnie, a mysterious girl who lives in ‘The Marsh House,’ a large, aging mansion by the sea. The two girls gradually become friends, a first for Anna. Then, one day, Marnie vanishes. A new family, the Lindsays, move into The Marsh House. Having learned so much from Marnie about friendship, Anna befriends the Lindsays — and learns some strange truths about Marnie, who was not all she seemed…
It’s official. (And true!) For the full story, click here.
Ernie Busmiller’s Nancy. Via.
