Going in a new direction

I've been thinking about doing something a little different every once in awhile. Inspired by recaps by Agony Booth and videos by Linkara, I want to critique and riffing about webcomics. Only thing I'll do differently is not only go in depth in terms of bad webcomics, but good ones as well. I have my eyes set on critiquing at least four I've encountered on deviantart. I know some of you who are no doubt reading this are rolling their eyes at me, but trust me when I say there are some good webcomics out there on that site. Though it takes some bit of digging and searching to come across some good ones, okay to meh ones, and some disappointing to bad.

But rest assured, I won't be focusing solely on webcomics on deviantart. I'll also look at others I've encountered through my searches on the search engine and recommendations from others. For the general format, I'll keep mostly a secret, but I'll tell you folks this--I'm going to try to be as fair and objective as I can, even with some of the bad webcomics. Provide as much advice as I can since as a Sequential art student, I want to look at ways the writer can improve on his or her story. When it comes down to it, there should be a balance of positive and negative criticism. But don't expect me to tone down any sarcasm I may inject and I'll mostly be harmless about it.

Anyway, onto the webcomics I plan to review. Depending upon my oncoming schedule for the school year, I might squeeze out two or three if lucky. Just a fair warning.

So the webcomics:
-Blackblood Alliance - yes, I know I did a critique of it in my pervious post. But I'm going to do it again to make sure my first critique was relavent. And because only one issue has been completed, I'm going to do that instead until the artist-writer herself finishes the second issue.
-Isle - I first heard about through a deviantart journal entry, which was openly harsh about it, and decided to skim through it and read the first page. And my verdict so far: good lord. Now admittedly, it was written by a 14 year old, so you can't expect anything go to come out of it.
-Off-White - a good webcomic I happen to enjoy more than BBA because of a plot based in Norse mythology, interesting characters, and unique artwork that is realistic while has some animated elements to it.
-The Meek - another good webcomic I've found interesting and enjoyable. Though is relatively new, it holds great promise in the near future as far as story goes.

So those are the webcomics I plan to review in the future, possibly sometime at the end of the year ro next year at the most. If I'm lucky, I might do a video review, but only if. Take care readers, Rayne out.

Personal Beef -- Old vs New

Once again another installment of Out the Box Commentaries. This time focusing on Nostalgia Critic segment Old vs New. Admittedly, this is not my favorite segment of his, mostly because my opinion differs from his own, but hey, he isn't telling us what is good or what is bad, but rather giving his own opinion and explaining why he feels that way about a particular movie.

I am okay with the previous segments chronicling Batman (1989) vs the Dark Knight and Lord of the Rings (1970s) vs Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. The Lord of the Rings one is probably my favorite one and not because he picked Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, but it is the one I most agree on with a few small differences in my opinion. The Batman one was alright, even though I have yet to see the original Batman and make a fair judgment of which is the better of the two or equal.

However, one personal beef in particular lies with Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) vs Charlie and the Factory (2005). While I will agree with some of his comments about the recent one, I personally believe both are those type of films where the jury is divided. You have one group that will adore the original (the Critic), one that is neutral and accepting of both (me), and the other that think the recent is good to fantastic (ThatFellowintheCoat). But really, I believe the core problem with this Old vs New segment lies in that fact that I feel there was a greater bias towards the original without looking at it objectively. For example, I said before I agree with criticism about Charlie in the recent incarnation, but to be fair it's not a hundred percent of the actor's fault with the portrayal of the character. It's just the way the character was written in the script and a majority of the time, the blame can lie in the direction of the director, the screenwriter, and/or the actor in general. It's tough to say for sure.

Another beef is the songs. Let's be fair on this--there are some people out there who actually hate the songs in the original as there are some who hate the songs in the recent adaptation. It lies more with personal preference in what one would find charming and acceptable. For instance, the Willy Wonka song in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I actually don't mind the song itself, but I can understand how it can become annoying fast. But then again, I've heard far more annoying songs in the past and felt (and still feeling) that song is the least of it. In my opinion, it's along the similar vain as It's A Small World Afterall. Good for the first few times, tiresome so after.

While I cannot make a fair assessment on Willy Wonka as a character as I have yet to read the book, I can tell you that both actors playing him I feel bring their own spin on the character, whether sucessfully or not. Some people feel Johnny Depp's rendition was the best, others feel Gene Wilder's portrayal was the best. I consider these both extremes that can be interpretted in different ways, though it mostly depends on the person and their feelings about them again.

Lastly, one of my beefs is the mention that both deviate from their source material. While that is true, the recent one felt a little more closer to the book despite Tim Burton's additions. And before you ask, I did a quick Wikipedia search to find out as well as skim the book to find out. Whereas the original almost greatly deviated from the book. In fact, it's been said on multiple sources that the book's author Roald Dahl hated the way they changed his original script (which he wrote, but later a ghostwriter came in and made all the changes). So much so that he refused to even see the film. His wife would later claim if he was still alive, he would have greatly appreciated the recent incarnation. We may never know, but its interesting trivia.

Bottom line, we shouldn't take the Old vs New at face value as the segment is just the opinion of one person. Personally, the segment is good for voicing one person's opinion. But with that opinion comes a personal bias, which can be good or bad depending upon how well its managed. Same thing applies to Old vs. New. Whether you agree with said opinion or not, that's your business. After all, we can't agree on everything. We are not mindless followers, we have our own personal tastes and thoughts and shouldn't follow suit with anyone, even if they're popular.

Blackblood Alliance - Consider It Dead

Before I began, no this isn't another bash Blackblood Alliance post. While I do agree with the majority of the criticism about the webcomic itself, it's not why I'm here.

First of all, if you haven't heard from deviantart, a quick google search, or even the infamous post by Encyclopedia Dramatica, Blackblood Alliance is basically a popular webcomic by Kay Fedwa and E. Siegel. The plot from what I can surmise is about an ongoing war between the sabertooth tigers and the wolves of Inaria. The wolves are losing the war and call aid to their former elite guard known as Blackbloods to aid them. Some of you may be wondering what's the reason for the war between the sabertooths and wolves? And importantly what's in it for these Blackbloods for helping the wolves of Inaria? I honestly don't know, but I assumed that would have been later explained in future issues. But in all honesty at this point, that's a giant if.

Before I explain any further, I'm going to start with something complete different. First, I will give both creators of Blackblood Alliance some amount of credit for making a decent opener and present a scenario that leaves us as readers guessing what's going to happen next based on what they have learned in the beginning. Second, for giving us good artwork, unique designs for the characters, and even most of the panel layouts. However, that's where my praise ends and my criticism begins. First off, most of the characters other than Swiftkill and Bloodspill are flat, one-to-two dimensional characters who have nothing distinct about them personality wise. Some of the dialogue for the characters is formal and slitted. And the pacing itself, while okay in some pages, comes off as too quick. Particularly with pages six and seven, it's still too quick for my liking. Why not have an extra page in-between the pages actually revealing the two sisters Swiftkill and Bloodspill and show them tackling the scouts? This way it won't seem too abrupt rather than having the "Meanwhile" caption, which really screams laziness.

While all three points are personal nitpicks of mine, one particularly beats them all out. I was hoping that many of the issues would be resolved in future pages, so far I've been disappointed. It's been since the beginning of July when page eleven of issue two came out. Where the hell is the next page? It's almost the end of November and we haven't had a page in almost five months? If you haven't guessed it, one of the biggest problems with the Blackblood Alliance is inconsistent and bordering-on painfully long updates. Multiple times Kay says (on her deviantart page) that she'll update the comic regularly and yet she hasn't. Repeatedly, this is due to some major events in her life and I'm sorry for being insensitive for saying this, it has become quite possibly a lame excuse. I have teachers, sequential art teachers mind you, that not only have their teaching jobs but also juggle their families, jobs from major publishers like Oni Press, Dark Horse, and Marvel, and even their own side projects. Grant it with their side projects and their job at the comic book publishers (whether it is writing, penciling, inking, coloring, or all four, perhaps more) there might be delays, but generally all of them try to get their work done as quickly and effectively as possible. I understand this is a hobby for her, but for god's sake, her readers are counting on her to advance the story and so far, she's not doing a very good job. At this point until she has fully get her life on track (supposedly), she might as put the comic on an indefinite hiatus and work a way into having regular updates again.

And this hiatus wouldn't be so bad, if it wasn't for this one thing that lead me to speculate she's not taking the comic seriously anymore. On the official website for the webcomic, the most recent updates in August mind you were about having more figures of her characters Swiftkill and Bloodspill for sale as well as an near completed online game. So let me if I got this straight--Kay's selling off the figures of her two characters as well as helping to develop an online game for her Blackblood Alliance universe while issue two of the comic itself has barely been completed. UGH, logic fails me here! J.K. Rowling and Jeff Smith were thankfully not anywhere near this level of stupidity (sorry for being harsh, but it's the truth). At least they waited awhile to see if their books were sell well before even considering grant the okay for licensing merchandise relating to their respected characters and universe. What Kay here is doing to promoting merchandising for a comic that only a small a small following of people know and not even focusing on the advancing the plot and wait out for at least a few more issues. Yes, one can agree about tie-in materials such as for majority of the Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, and such comics and even the movies, but here's the thing--most of these particular tie-ins came from sources that were already well established and therefore a lot of people know them. With Blackblood Alliance, only a small following on deviantart know about the comic. And yes, I don't think it was meant to be an all around commercial success, but hey, at least webcomics like The Meek and The Phoenix Requiem, both creators were smart enough to keep things simple if only to see if their comics would be well received and then make the choice of whether or not to publish their comics in print form and/or have merchandise for sale.

My general advice to Kay if she really wants Blackblood Alliance to be a success and taken seriously: stop focusing on merchandise and creating games and start working on advancing the plot and developing her characters, and get your life on track to focus more time on updating regularly. If she can't do that, then I'm sorry to say this comic is a dead project and is not worth your time. Instead focus your attention on good webcomics that at least try to update as frequently as possible and have distinct characters and are further along plot wise. My recommendations: Wurr and Off-White.

The Three Failures of Doogal

Welcome to another installment of Out the Box.

Hey, remember the movie Doogal? No? I thought you didn’t. The movie is perhaps one of the most forgettable ones that don’t leave much of an impression. For those who don’t remember or don’t know about it, let me explain: the movie Doogal was an animated feature based on the popular French television show called The Magical Roundabout. In fact over in United Kingdom and French, the film was simply known as the show’s namesake. The premise of the film’s plot, according to Wikipedia, “concerns a dog named Dougal (Doogal in North America) who has to save his best friend, Florence, as well as the whole world, from being frozen by an evil spring named ZeeBad.” Sounds like a good if not decent movie, eh? I admit when I first heard about, my interest was piqued and I had at one point considered seeing the film. But I didn’t and rightfully so when I occasionally look back on it.

The film was originally released in the U.K. and French in 2005. In Great Britain, it was particularly favored as it gained positive reviews and earned a decent amount of money. According to Wiki, the movie was praised for its charm and superb animation. So with a film that successful, naturally they want to release it to other countries. You would think it would achieve equal success, right? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Why is that you may ask? Three simple reasons in which I will care to explain in no particular order based on my research. While I haven’t seen the movie itself, just small clips a few years ago, once you finished reading you will understand why the movie was a failure in the states.

First Failure: Americanizing some of voices.

Sigh. Was it even necessary to change most of the voice actors? I mean, really necessary? I can understand if it was and English dialogue translation for a foreign film like with most of the Studio Ghibli films and even Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but the voice actors of The Magical Roundabout were English speakers. Sure they were primarily British and therefore the dialogue itself may have included terms we as Americans would not understand (i.e. jumpers as opposed to sweaters), but still they spoke English. The main reason I believe they did that was just to including an all-star celebrity cast that most American people already recognize. While I generally don’t have a problem with that, here it was just stupid. When you look at films like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and a majority of the Pixar films, while the cast will have some known celebrities playing said roles, there are some good castings of either relative unknowns or actors we haven’t seen in quite sometime. Even so, they have still done well as a result. Heck, even District 9 has done well considering most of the actors in the films are not that well known. Of course, the thing with all-star casting is that it has to work to make it believable, instead of a marketing ploy to entice the audience to see the movie. If the story is appealing and decent, it in theory could work. However, with Doogal, it did not. The film still became a box office bomb despite the all-star cast. Look, Butch, you’re not John Lasseter or Pete Doctor, so unless the film itself has characters speaking the native language of the film’s origin country, consider other alternatives or just leave the casting of the original as it is.

Second Failure: Use of things not in the original film, notably toilet humor and pop culture references.

Back when the first two Shrek films were released, the creators had the brilliant idea of including various pop culture references, which made the films all the more funny as we can often relate to the sources. However, at the same time, it can be a rather stupid idea, especially if the pop culture reference is out of place or makes no sense. Also if you are simply throwing pop culture references all over the place just because it’s trendy or for no reason whatsoever, it’s not going to be funny or creative at all. It just becomes tired, horrible, and uninteresting, like most of Rob Liefield’s artwork and the Star Wars text crawl and transition wipes. Unfortunately, this was the case with Doogal. In the future, filmmakers, please don’t toss in random pop culture references and expect it to be funny and creative. Jokes and references don’t work like that. You have to have a valid reason for doing so and if you can’t think of one, just don’t bother.

Lastly, another point along the same lines—the toilet humor, particularly the presence of flatulence jokes. Was there in ANY way necessary to have that when the original film DIDN’T at all? Sure one can argue about this film as a children’s movie and therefore it’s okay in that regard. I’m sorry, that is NO excuse. There are plenty of children’s movies and television shows out there that don’t rely on toilet humor to push the jokes, for example the Emperor’s New Groove, the earlier seasons of Spongebob, Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, and Animaniacs. Those rely on smart humor that is both funny and subtle all at the same time without it being over the top. With from what I’ve read about those kinds of gross jokes in Doogal, it wasn’t funny or amusing. It was just an unsatisfying and cheap attempt to get a laugh. And oh, how cheap it was. For future reference, when thinking of ways to inject humor into a movie, do it in a clever way where both children and adults can enjoy. And if you in some strange way want to include a gross gag, even though the original film doesn’t have any, leave it alone.

Third Failure: People not familiar with the source material.

I was going to put down changing the title, but as experience shows us (and I’m looking at you Golden Compass and Sorcerer’s Stone), this isn’t a major problem as long as the content is the same. Admittedly, I put this low on my list, but it is a factor in one way or another. In the United States, we never saw The Magic Roundabout because it’s exclusively available in France as well as the U.K. unless you happen to come across someone who is a fan of the show and has shown it to you. At least with some things like Harry Potter, His Dark Materials Trilogy, and a large majority of the Japanese mangas, you can say that publishers were smart enough to release the first novel, book, volume, or whatever so that they’ll know if the general public will like it enough to follow the series and therefore become profitable as a result. Why not do the same thing with The Magic Roundabout? The networks can release a fair number of episodes about a year or so in advance. That way people will become familiar with it and will be excited to see the film. Of course, even if they aren’t familiar with the source, perhaps sometime during or after the film’s release, the company or network can simply air the show that movie was based on because the film generated such an interest within the audience. Either way, you get the same result and more people will likely watch the film more.

There you folks have it—the Three Failures of Doogal. We can all learn something about the American release. And it can be summed up in the old adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The Magical Roundabout was fine the way it was and didn’t require any bastardization of any sort to make it successful to a larger audience. My advice—if you are really curious about the film, I suggest you find a copy of the original UK/French film and avoid the cluster crap of an American release.

Response to NC Old vs New - Willy Wonka

Just watched another good segment by the Nostalgia Critic. On this week’s edition of Old vs. New, he discusses the weaknesses of the 1970s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and the 2005 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Pointed out some very good points about each I never thought of, but then again I’ve only seen Willy Wonka a few times, mostly in just bits, and Charlie for about the same. Anyway, instantly before I even watched the video, I knew he would pick Willy Wonka. How could he (and many others) not? It’s particularly a classic. It’s hard to dethrone a classic. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have any thoughts about the points he presented.

First up, let’s begin with Willy Wonka himself. While I do like Johnny Depp, his performance in my opinion was good. I don’t think it was that bad. I mean he give the character a creepy, grim vibe which is reflective in the mannerisms of the character. Especially when you consider that he hasn’t had a lot of contact with outside world, so he’s going to appear aloof, awkward, and very weird. But maybe too creepy in which actually removes you from liking the character. This is where I think Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka succeeds—he had both an enigmatic mystery about him that’s both charming and unsettling, but at the same time, is pretty likable.

Next is another main character—Charlie. Yeah, the Tim Burton version is downplayed quite a bit. Making him this perfect innocent, unselfish figure can be not only annoying at times, but also bland like he pointed. I think that’s the point of the new film was trying to address to distinguish himself from the other “horrid, naughty” children featured in the movie. But still, I’m of the opinion that this aspect can work out effectively for the narrative when there’s a likeable character in mind. Regardless, in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I think it fails here because being this perfect innocent “Mary Sue/Gary Stu”-like character doesn’t make it believable in the eyes of the viewer. What sorts of personality traits are distinct in him that none of the other characters have? What are his personal flaws and how are they present? And can he combat those flaws? This is where as the Critic pointed out where Charlie in Willy Wonka succeeds the most. He is believable and therefore can relate and sympathize with him better. Though to be fair, it wasn’t entirely Freddie Highmore’s fault. It was just the way the character was written for the movie. As such, Charlie in the newest incarnation didn’t leave much of an impression.

The songs are unique in their own way in context with the story. However, I do believe in the newest film the “Willy Wonka” song while good in its only way, does become annoy after the twelfth or fiftieth time. I admit I enjoyed the song at first, but it’s becomes too much after awhile to the point once it’s over, you are breathing a sigh of relief. I think the song itself was a take on “It’s a Small World After All,” which in its own way is good and is (or was) fun at first, but it’s very much annoying and you don’t want to listen to it again. Of course, the same can be also said for some popular songs on the radio, but those are played over and over to where you’re sick of them. Though the principle still reminds as is with both songs.

In the end, both movies have their own strengths and weaknesses in my opinion. Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is strong in that it does follow the book little more closely with the original source material down to the songs. However, at the same time, it is eclipsed by its own faults, such as Charlie as the driving force of the story and shouldn’t play second fiddle to Wonka. Both are important characters and should be treated as such. Willy Wonka withstood the test of time as its still regarded as a classic, even though the book’s author hated the movie. But in the end, it comes down to which is better and more fondly remembered. Even though Willy Wonka has its share of faults too, it’s the most thought of by everyone.

Personally, I enjoy both, but that’s just me and not everyone else has the same taste. Tune in next time for Out the Box Commentary. Rayne signing out.

Welcome to my blog!

Any of you visiting this blog probably who know me, whether on Livejournal or Twitter as roxannablack, or DeviantArt as akio-rayne. If you are a new visitor, let me give you the lowdown. My name is Melanee, but you can also call me "Rayne" as my Internet persona. And welcome to my commentary blog, Out the Box.

Here in this blog I'll mostly be commenting on anything I feel best to give my thoughts on. Though I'll mostly be focusing on all things entertainment, occasionally I'll try my hand on politics and noteworthy news. I'll even make a response to some internet personalities' reviews and rants. This is still a new blog, but I hope you enjoy it when I post some new material in the weeks to come.

Until then, think out of the box.