The Fly ('58)

SO creepy.



Saw this as a child, and was utterly unprepared for this scene. >>shudder<<

Shaft

Must... resist urge... to quote... theme song!

The Prisoner

Singing In The Rain

There are two other heads I did for Singing in the Rain, but I can't find them right now. This is the eternally looping one, but the other two end with gags. I'll try to dig them up and post them at some point.

Mimic

When this one went up, people argued about what movie it might be referencing. Some folks guessed 'Mimic,' but others were sure it was 'the Thing.' Admittedly, it is not the most direct reference, but more of a riff on the idea of insects camouflaged as humans. Anyway, I always meant to do a 'Thing' head, (or a bunch of them) just so I had that base covered, but I STILL haven't gotten around to it.

One day, 'the Thing...' One day.

Patton

Modern Times

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Jaws

Man, that scene is STILL scary!

Hitch

Truffle Shuffle!

Do it. DO it!

007

the Graduate

If I were to redo this today, it would be Harry's leg, with Hoffman looking on. That's all I'm saying.

the Shining

Sure, it's a two-position lip-sync, but it ALMOST works, doesn't it?



Doesn't it? Almost? COME ON!

Mission Impossible 2

A long time after this I animated a head for MI:3, where I believe I made up for this fairly poor caricature of Mr. Cruise by doing a fairly serviceable one.

A long time after this. This one, not so much.

Blair Witch

Forget About it, Harry.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Ah yes.
Here's a popular one:



With Harry and I, anyway.

This caused a collective groan from horny geekdom, as the much-beloved scene became forever tainted by Harry's teats.

Harry was not entirely satisfied with my version however, causing him to re-time the animation into this:



Not a BIG difference perhaps, but one that really underlines how far off I was when I animated this masthead. After all, at this point in time I did practically zero research. And you'd think this particular scene would be seared into my mind strongly enough that I could do it justice, but no. It is way WAY off.

Off all the mastheads that I would like to take another shot at, THIS one might be the one that I actually DO bother to redo. One day. Perhaps. If for no other reason than it gives me an excuse to not only buy the Fast Times DVD, but also to claim it as a business expense.

Twin Peaks

...wrapped in plastic.

PEZ

Err...



Yeah, it's a tribute to a candy.

Battlefield Earth

So, Battlefield Earth was pretty crappy, huh?
I guess that's not the most controversial stance to hold, all things considered.



As tribute to its badness, I bestowed upon the film the 'Barbarino Seal of Derision.' So dubbed after the star of the movie, Mr. John Travolta. I was thinking this could be a regular thing: awarding particularly painful films with this seal. But ultimately, I only used it two other times (which will eventually be posted).

But the thing is, I usually like movies. FAR more often than not. I like movies that other people hate. I think I just so much enjoy the very act of having a story told to me, that it has to be truly terrible for me to not enjoy it on some level.

And beyond that, the masthead animations take time and effort, and it's hard to get up a head of steam to animate one for a movie that I love, let alone bothering to do it for one that I don't. Especially when there are plenty of great films waiting in the wings, which I could be animating something for instead.

And finally... There's more than enough negativity in the AICN talkbacks. I really don't need to add to it with snotty slams against films that people worked hard on. I'll stick to animating positive and enriching subject matter... like disembowelments, and beheadings.

Trip to the Moon

It's not the animation that's choppy - it's an homage!



Yeah! In fact... Anytime my animation is choppy it's homage. Sure!

Psycho

Seeing as Father's Day is just around the corner, it's only sensible to post the Mother's Day head:

HIATUS DONE!

HEY THERE,

Been a while. Back now. Regular updates will now resume.

Here's something slightly different:



Beyond the heads, I designed (based on descriptions from the man himself) character avatars for the AICN spies. Unfortunately, a lot of these spies had slowed or stopped entirely their contributions by the time I became involved so a great many of these characters have never been used on the site (except as 'cafe press' merch)

Anyway, they're a motley crew, but I always liked them.

UPDATE:
Wow, that image is a lot lower resolution than I had thought. I'll try to fix this when I next get the chance.

Magnolia

Godfather II

Let's Don't Talk About It.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog

YEEEEEEEEEE-HA!

Enter the Last Dragon(s)

So here's a question that I don't have any answer to. Is this animation based on Enter the Dragon... or the Last Dragon?



Theory: Enter the Dragon. Evidence: the bloody wounds.
Theory: the Last Dragon. Evidence: crazy slow-mo.

Verdict? Animator's memory was confused, and he didn't do the proper research.

But hey, now it's an homage to TWO worthy flicks that taste great together.

E.T.

Birth o' Kubla-Khan

This one's not a Masthead animation, but rather a birth announcement thingy that Harry wanted made for his sister and newborn nephew:

Apocalypse Now

To anyone checking in, sorry about missing a couple of Fridays. My 'reminders' weren't reminding me for some reason. I have that fixed now, and hopefully won't be skipping any more weekly updates.

Without further ado:



Oh sure, it's cheap and lazy, but you can't tell me it isn't cheap and lazy.

American Beauty

One of the most well-remembered mastheads has got to be this one:



This is one of a small and select group of mastheads known as the boner-busters. (yes, only by me - I like to group things.) If you sit down to have some private time with the most heavily-rewound portions of your video collection, and suddenly have an animated Harry Knowles superimpose itself over Mena Suvari, then I know my efforts have not been wasted.

It has been pointed out to me, by the way, that this masthead is ridiculously inaccurate: in the film, this fantasy appears to Kevin Spacey on the ceiling above him, and so the rose petal should be drifting gently TOWARDS the viewer. If you also noticed this, then you should feel free to 'pin a rose on your nose' at your earliest convenience.

Raiders of the Lost Ark

So this one I am both proud and ashamed of in equal measure. (Now I know how my parents must feel.)

Though you shake your head and say, "Surely it cannot be?!" still I assure you that this head was intended to be a send up of Raiders of the Lost Ark.



The odd swinging-back-and-forth head at the open is meant to be Harry watching a spectre move. Instead, it just looks like the laziest of junk. I apologize profusely. Then the spectre itself is just a wisp of smoke, and then, suddenly, an oddly elaborate face-melt animation. What the?

Did I not have reference material? Of course I did.
Did I not reference it? ...I'm thinking, notsomuch.

How could such an iconic and easily-recognizable scene be botched so badly? Search me! Say what you want, but at least I own my suckiness.

On the other hand, I defy you to say the melt is not cool. HA! You've been defied. Not so nice, is it? You may counter by saying, "Cool, perhaps, but also not particularly true to the source material"

And if you do?

Then I say, "Well-played."

Chicken Run

I'm a bit late this week - Good Friday threw me.

Here's my slightly-more-dimensional than usual (which is to say: it has shadows) tribute to Aardman Animation in general, and Chicken Run in particular.



Harry has since re-skinned this animation so that it's an Easter egg being laid (lain?) giving him a yearly holiday masthead to throw up on the site. Yearly, at least, until I get around to animating one based on 'the Passion of the Christ.'

I get giddy at the thought of the talkbacker outrage that will result from such a thing. GIDDY, I tell you!

Men In Black

Look how cute!



There's a lil' Harry inside! With tentacles, even!

the Faculty

For those who don't know, Harry Knowles (renaissance man) played a role in 'the Faculty.' His character has a boo-boo, and as a result is nursed by Salma Hayek.



I had intended this masthead to basically cover all of the scenes in which he appeared, but it has since been brought to my attention that I forgot the iconic slow-mo-walking-with-water-cooler-bottle-on-shoulder shot.

How is it that I didn't remember such a scene?

Clearly: I'm ignorant.

Gladiator

Cast Away

This is one of those ones that people never really seemed to figure out. I can't say I really blame them.



It doesn't really have much to do directly with the movie. Harry's hair grows, he gets thinner and more haggard. But because his hair is growing, it's not all that clear that he is actually getting thinner.

Yeah, it's just meh.

Flintstones

Apparently, I was under the impression that Fred was an amputee.

Hitchcock Presents... Vertigo!

Hellboy

Though I love the film, this animation is purely based on the comic book.



I was super-honored to discover at one point in the past that it not only ran on AICN, but also actually graced the front page of the official site. Not anymore, but... once.

T2

I definitely feel this one could've been a lot more involved. Probably I should revisit this at some point.

Moriarty

Please remember before reading this post:
At no point did I promise the contents of this blog would be pretty.

Eventually, I was asked to provide avatars for some of the other spies that made up the motley cast of Ain't-It-Cool. Primary among them, the evil genius, Moriarty.

At the time, Harry sent me a paragraph-long write-up on what he wanted included in these character designs. I'd include these descriptions, but they are literally 4 computers ago, each computer dying violently, and so the records are lost (at least on MY end, to the ages).

Regardless, my first shot at Mori ended like this:



Not so hot, and (luckily) not satisfactory to Harry (I'm not sure if it was run past Moriarty at this point, but I'm sure if it was, he was equally unimpressed).

I was given a bit of design clarification and came to this:



So at this point, the design was approved, but the animation was junk. The only reason I can even claim to guess at what I was trying for is by looking at the revised version:



'Oh! I see. He was supposed to be tugging on his goatee. Huh. I never would've guessed. I see it now.'

I can only look back at myself and shake my head. At least that last version works well enough. I'm not entirely sure it ever ran as a corner animation, but I'm pretty sure Mori used it at the bottom of his articles for a little while.

Any resemblance to Vincent Von Ghoul is purely coincidental.

Oscar Harry

I did two versions of this head.

The first:



had no fatty expansion at the end. This was still pretty early on in my relationship with Ain't-It-Cool and with Harry in particular, and I didn't know how far I could go with things. I had no interest in offending the guy, that's for sure, and I already felt like his head on the skinny body was gag enough.

I sent it off to Harry, and he disagreed. He immediately emailed me back with the suggestion that he suddenly explode into corpulence at the end, and so:



Which is definitely an improvement.

But more importantly, it made clear that Mr. Knowles had no issues with his cartoon avatar being fat, nor with that fatness being the punchline in some of the heads. Obviously, this reframed the ground rules on what I could or could not do with these animations, and gave me more freedom than I had been giving myself.

Freedom that I have since happily abused.

6th Day

Hey! Remember "the Sixth Day?"

No, me neither.
It was about cloning. I believe. And so:



I have not actually seen the film.

This animation is kinda neat though. It's simple, but it's cute. I like how it speeds up as more and more replication happens. (I'll admit, I'm easily amused).

Matrix

In my archives, I have two versions of the Matrix head. The difference between them is all in the timing.

The first version is timed very evenly. Each action has its slot in which to occur, and the next one comes after:



The second version has more thought put into the timing (and is just about twice as long).



There's more time spent held, but there's also more variation. It just feels nicer, and what's more, it kinda feels "cooler." The former is more pressurized, as though it's racing through a list of things to do, but the latter takes its time, unhurried.

Not a big difference between the two, really, but enough.