Oh, My AICNheads!

Wizard of Oz - Scarecrow

2012-01-25T11:10:00.002-05:00

Motel Hell

2012-01-25T11:09:00.003-05:00

Sullivan's Travels

2012-01-25T11:09:00.000-05:00

Airplane!

2011-06-09T13:21:00.005-04:00

Frosty

2011-06-09T13:21:00.002-04:00

From Dusk Til Dawn

2011-06-09T13:20:00.000-04:00

Catch-22

2011-05-08T19:26:00.000-04:00

BNAT2

2011-05-08T19:24:00.000-04:00

Bullwinkle

2011-04-29T20:23:00.001-04:00

Bullwinkle: Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!
Rocky: Oh, Bullwinkle... That trick never works.
Bullwinkle: This time for SURE!

The Abyss

2011-04-29T20:22:00.000-04:00

This one, I just plain feel ashamed about. Oy.

10 Commandments

2011-04-15T22:45:00.001-04:00

Thing With Two Heads

2011-04-15T22:38:00.000-04:00

Grinch

2011-04-15T22:35:00.001-04:00

The Fly ('58)

2008-09-28T16:13:00.000-04:00

SO creepy.

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

Shaft

2008-09-28T16:12:00.000-04:00

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

The Prisoner

2008-09-28T16:07:00.001-04:00

Singing In The Rain

2008-09-01T20:13:00.000-04:00

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

2008-09-01T20:09:00.006-04:00

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

2008-09-01T20:09:00.002-04:00

Modern Times

2008-08-18T19:22:00.002-04:00

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Jaws

2008-08-18T19:21:00.002-04:00

Man, that scene is STILL scary!

Hitch

2008-08-18T19:21:00.001-04:00

Truffle Shuffle!

2008-08-18T19:19:00.001-04:00

Do it. DO it!

007

2008-07-25T19:12:00.001-04:00

the Graduate

2008-07-25T19:11:00.000-04:00

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

2008-07-18T20:31:00.001-04:00

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

Doesn't it? Almost? COME ON!

Mission Impossible 2

2008-07-18T20:29:00.002-04:00

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

2008-07-15T04:52:00.003-04:00

Forget About it, Harry.

2008-07-15T04:52:00.002-04:00

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

2008-07-04T20:08:00.002-04:00

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

2008-06-27T06:40:00.001-04:00

...wrapped in plastic.

PEZ

2008-06-27T06:34:00.001-04:00

Err...

Yeah, it's a tribute to a candy.

Battlefield Earth

2008-06-20T06:11:00.002-04:00

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

2008-06-20T06:06:00.002-04:00

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

2008-06-13T06:42:00.001-04:00

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

HIATUS DONE!

2008-06-13T05:13:00.008-04:00

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

2008-05-05T06:42:00.001-04:00

Godfather II

2008-04-25T06:50:00.002-04:00

Let's Don't Talk About It.

2008-04-25T06:48:00.002-04:00

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog

2008-04-21T20:28:00.001-04:00

YEEEEEEEEEE-HA!

Enter the Last Dragon(s)

2008-04-21T20:17:00.003-04:00

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.

2008-04-14T06:48:00.000-04:00

Birth o' Kubla-Khan

2008-04-14T06:46:00.001-04:00

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

2008-04-14T06:41:00.003-04:00

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

2008-03-28T20:10:00.002-04:00

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

2008-03-28T20:00:00.002-04:00

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

2008-03-24T12:13:00.002-04:00

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

2008-03-14T07:17:00.001-04:00

Look how cute!

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

the Faculty

2008-03-14T07:04:00.003-04:00

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

2008-03-07T07:07:00.001-05:00

Cast Away

2008-03-07T07:02:00.002-05:00

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

2008-02-28T20:06:00.001-05:00

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

Hitchcock Presents... Vertigo!

2008-02-28T20:04:00.000-05:00

Hellboy

2008-02-22T20:20:00.002-05:00

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

2008-02-22T20:19:00.002-05:00

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

Moriarty

2008-02-19T13:14:00.002-05:00

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

2008-02-19T13:00:00.002-05:00

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

2008-02-08T07:18:00.000-05:00

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

2008-02-08T07:05:00.000-05:00

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.

T-Rex

2008-02-01T13:16:00.000-05:00

This one really doesn't relate to any specific movie. I just wanted to have a dinosaur chomp Harry.

I like how his bits go everywhere. tee-hee.

By this point, I probably shouldn't be, but I am once again shocked by my own laziness. How hard would it have been to animate a typing loop for Harry? A half-an-hour of work at the very top. As it is, he's just dead - a mannequin waiting for his own demise.

Ah well. Still like this one alot.

Somewhere, buried in my studio, I have a little cardstock flipbook that I made of this animation. I should really dig it out sometime soon...

Spiderman

2008-02-01T13:07:00.000-05:00

I'm not a big fan of this one, personally.

I don't think that the idea was bad, but it comes off as pretty cheap. Bad timing. A weird freeze-up for the tingly bit. All that and sausage fingers, too.

Sorry, Spidey. You deserve better.

Ebert & Knowles

2008-01-24T20:01:00.000-05:00

This animation was to commemorate Harry guest-hosting on Siskel & Ebert & the Movies after the death of co-host Gene Siskel.

Ever the thrifty soul, I took the opportunity to re-use the chewing loop that I had originally animated for the Veruca Salt Harry Head.

A hit-or-miss caricaturist at best, I was pretty proud of what I still think is a passable likeness of Mr. Ebert. Biting the head off was not meant as any sort of slam on Mr. Ebert, by the way. Just something for Harry to give the trademark thumbs-up to.

This was before I started framing these animations to block anything that went beyond the proper edge. As a result, you can see that Ebert is kind of a stumpy bust, and when Harry's hand comes up, you can clearly see it pass behind where the rest of Ebert's body should be. Of course nobody ever notices that sort of thing other than myself, but nonetheless, I've since made sure that it doesn't happen anymore.

Much like the Phantasm head, I have a hard time believing I was so restrained with the blood. Maybe I imagine myself to be more of a gorehound than I have ever justified. I will have to fix that at some point, I suppose.

Wolverine

2008-01-24T19:58:00.000-05:00

Snikt! Snikt!

SO geeky.
haha.

Slimer

2008-01-18T07:12:00.000-05:00

Man, I frigging love Ghostbusters.

So here, in all its glory, is a great example of the dangers of working in Flash.

Don't get me wrong, I like this Harry Head. It makes me smile whenever I come across it again, and that's always a good sign. BUT, if I were to animate it today, I would take a VERY different tack.

Speaking only of the content itself, if I were to do this today: it would start with SlimerHarry wolfing down food from the room service cart - then he'd notice the viewer - then he'd fly towards us - THEN the splat.

But the content isn't my main issue with this Head. The main thing is the way I cheated the animation using Flash.

Now 'cheating' shouldn't be heard as an entirely pejorative term in this context. Cheating goes on all the time in animation (both digital AND traditional). But there is good cheating (wherein, you exploit the medium and the tools to achieve something more easily that otherwise would've taken longer, if it was possible at all) and bad cheating (wherein you are just lazy, or don't know any better, and take a shortcut despite the fact that it lowers the quality of the end result).

Because the thing is: this animation is basically three very slightly altered drawings:
1. Slimer with mouth closed and arms out.
b. Slimer with mouth open and arms raised a bit.
c. Slimer, unchanged with arms a bit higher.

(plus the slime-splat at the end.)

That's it. Those drawings are motion-tweened towards the viewer, and there's an illusion that more is going on than actually is. It's basically key-frames without inbetweens. It's lazy. (and on top of that, the timing is really strange, with a sudden un-motivated acceleration at the end, rather than a more natural gradual speeding-up.)

Now at the time, I didn't know I could nest symbols inside symbols. If I had known that, then I could have at least tweened the arms up, and done something more with the mouth. That would still be very limited animation, but at least it would've been something.

Really, at the very least, Slimer should have some squash-and-stretch as he moves. The timing should favor the turns that his movement takes, and he should speed-up as he gets closer to us.

But I suppose that's the risk of looking back at work one did many years earlier: You see it through your current filter with your current level of experience and ability, and think about how you would approach it differently, today.

In the end, I DO like this one, and all the navel-gazing is just wasting time I could be spending doing something productive. Like animating a new Head.

Darths

2008-01-18T06:59:00.000-05:00

When the head-count started to get in the double-digits, a bunch of folks wondered aloud to me why I hadn't done a Star Wars Harry Head. And even now I hesitate to answer, just as I hesitated then, but... Ultimately, I'm just not that big of a Star Wars fan.

I had the toys as a kid, I saw Empire and Jedi in the theater, but I was only 3 when New Hope first arrived on the scene, so even if I'd lived in a place that HAD a movie theater, I doubt I'd've seen it. Basically: I missed the zeitgeist.

Anyhow, here's the animation I made to answer popular demand.

I know, I know... I really should do more Star Wars heads. It's probably time. AND, it would be a good excuse to finally pick up the movies, and re-watch them.

Yes, yes, you heard me correctly, I do not own ANY of the Star Wars movies in ANY format. If it helps renew your confidence in my geekiness, I have no less than four versions of Blade Runner. (Which reminds me, I never did animate that Blade Runner head... damn.)

Veruca Salt

2008-01-11T20:14:00.000-05:00

So this one was done entirely under the direction of Big Red. Because somehow, and I'm not proud of this, but somehow I managed to live most of my life without ever seeing Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Not only that, but I had never read the book. AND FURTHERMORE, I wasn't even acquainted with the general storyline.

Of course, I've seen it now, and read the majority of Roald Dahl's books, (Uncle Oswald, anyone?) but at the time I was flying blind.

So, not bad, all things considered. It's a bit strange that the shift to blue has a blue extreme in the middle before settling on something a bit more faded. I wonder why that happened?

And apparently, I really liked that goofy chewing loop, because I went on to cannibalize it for use in at least one other animation.

Dr. Zaius

2008-01-11T20:11:00.000-05:00

So, I wanted to do a Dr. Zaius Harry, but apparently I wasn't able to dig up any reference material. Seriously, what the hell? LAZY ANIMATOR!

And even worse, it plays as though the "Big Reveal" of Harry as a monkey is some sort of punchline. What the heck was I thinking?

Hollow Man

2008-01-06T11:00:00.000-05:00

This one took a while.

Still seems like a pretty neat animation to me. It may actually hold up a bit better than the movie it was based on.

At the time, I had no idea how to use MASKs in Flash, so each peel-away frame was animated by actually erasing the surface of the outer head. In the end, it probably doesn't make much of a difference, though the masks might have saved me some file-size if the final destination had been a .SWF rather than an animated .GIF.

(What's the consensus on .GIF pronunciation, anyway? I always said "JIF," when I was working in complete isolation (which begs the question, Who did I say it to?) but now that I know other people who work with them, I find most people seem to say it with a hard "G." Just wonderin')

Cyclops

2008-01-06T10:53:00.000-05:00

This one's super-simple.

So the head-turn has no in-betweens. It just pops from facing to 3/4s. And that's fine. It's abrupt, but it does what it needs to.

I couldn't do this today. I just couldn't. Today, I would spend an extra hour (or a few) so that there was more to the turn: inbetweens or at least a smear-between, maybe an antic, I don't know. But more. For sure, this wouldn't be enough. But it works. There's really no need for anything more.

I have no idea what that says about me. Maybe I just like complication for its own sake.

Phantasm

2007-12-21T07:25:00.000-05:00

I still get a kick out of this one.

I have no idea why there is so little blood. If I were to do this today, the blood would blast out in a crazy spray, emptying gallons from Harry's head before slowing to a trickle.

I guess it was still early in the game, and I didn't know how far I was able to push things, either for the readers or for Harry himself. I probably should've known better.

Dracula

2007-12-21T07:16:00.000-05:00

Ugh, this one pains me to look at.

In the annals of cheap-ass limited cop-out animation, my bat's flapping wings will go down as most cheesy.

Mummy

2007-12-21T06:58:00.000-05:00

So this one introduces the weird disembodied hands. What can I tell you? It meant I didn't need to worry about animating arms.

I've never really been satisfied with the spin animation. Taking the lazy way out, I just repurposed the Harry rotation that I did for reference, and added motion lines. If I was animating this today, I would animate the spin fresh. There are always things I wish I had done differently looking back, but that stands out as an especially poorly chosen shortcut.

Terminator

2007-12-18T05:18:00.000-05:00

The early heads were all somewhat non-specific. Today, they tend to parody particular scenes, but at the time, it was enough that Harry's endoskeleton be revealed.

Oh, My AICNheads!

2007-12-17T19:36:00.000-05:00

Hello there!

In the year 2000, or maybe even earlier, I started contributing small animated .GIFs to the website Ain't-It-Cool-News.

At the time, I'd been teaching myself Flash, (Flash 4, no less) animating with the mouse as a drawing tool, (no easy feat) and creating animated shorts for my own short-lived website. I was a fan of AICN, reading it daily, and in the upper left-hand corner of the site there had always been a static logo, a loveable cartoon version of the site's only very slightly less cartoony host, Harry Knowles.

Just as I was finishing a short, Harry replaced the static .GIF with an animated one. A puking possessed-Regan version of his cartoon-self. It was great to see animation in the corner, and it was a cute parody, but I really thought it could be improved on. It was good, but the site deserved something better. And I was just enough of an egotist to think I was the guy to provide it.

Which brings us to the first animation I contributed to the site:

Harry liked it. The Talkbackers liked it. I liked doing it. And so I was compelled to do more. And with the exception of a three-year Lost Weekend that I don't fully recall, I've been doing them ever since.

These little cartoons each play for a few weeks and then, (having served their purpose) they are tossed away, never to be seen again, replaced by younger and sexier animations. It's the natural way of things.

But, never one to shy away from the unnatural, I've decided to use this blog to resurrect these wadded-up cartoons from the dark depths of the internet wastebin. Give 'em a new lease on life! Shamelessly re-purpose obsolete animation to fill a blog, rather than create fresh material! I am, after all, so VERY lazy.

I'll be doing my very best to update regularly, so be sure to check back often.