Kirby 64: Cartooning with computers

Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards is a twelve-year-old video game in which you play as Kirby, an absurdly cute and graphic character that jumps around a lot.  It crossed my mind because the story scenes in it are charming and entertaining.  Even though the animation is flawed, it really gets to the point.  It is CG made on clunky, outdated software that still feels fresh and cartoony today.

In the clip below, King Dedede, the sour-faced penguinesque character, gets possessed by a gooey black spirit who wants him to fight Kirby.

In the next clip, the evil spirit loses the fight, and Dedede returns to his snooty self.  Waddle Dee, the little red guy, invites him on their quest.

In the last clip I selected, everyone happily skips stones while they wait for the portal to the next world to open.  Kirby's enthusiasm frightens them.

From my experience, taking the simplest possible approach to necessary, everyday bits of animation -- walks, entrances, exits -- frees an animator to act and brings the animation closer to cartooning at the same time.  Cartooning is mostly humor and instinct.  You never question the physics of Lucy kicking Charlie Brown in the butt in a Peanuts strip.  It just feels right.

Obviously, there are times and even whole films for complexity, but it doesn't suit characters like Kirby and company.  Therefore, Kirby 64's story scenes use a lot of cartoony shortcuts.  That's not a bad thing, because the economy and appeal of the animation is quite exceptional for a video game.

Notice how the attitude in this scene comes first and the walk is an afterthought.  Dedede is focused on the crystal, so a soft landing that doesn't interrupt his waddle or his hungry stare is quite appropriate.

Here's another cartoony animation principle that Kirby 64 honors:  "Just get the character out of there!"

And that principle's brother: "Just get the character in there!"  The sooner and more abstractly a character enters, the more time you have to establish his attitude, as possessed Dedede demonstrates.  (Also note the spooky underlighting that one of the artists applied to Dedede and nothing else in the scene.  Nice touch!)

Alas, the flaw I mentioned is a crusher -- the lack of proper squash and stretch in some scenes.  When Adeleine, the kid in the beret, anticipates for a take, her model compresses in one direction.  I still wanted to post this scene for its entertainment value, and to show the eye-bugging that happens on Dedede and Waddle Dee.  The less perfect the model, the more easily you can break it!

All technical (and cheat-related) analysis aside, the acting is terrific, despite the characters' limited expressions.  Moments like Dedede pushing back Kirby's face and turning to inspect the crystal more closely establish character types in a heartbeat.

Even the game's best-animated scenes are not the best animation I've seen, but they are all charming and direct, and they feel very spontaneous when you consider the typically painstaking CG process.  I always loved HAL Laboratory's games for being some of the most whimsical to grace Nintendo's systems, and now my appreciation goes a bit deeper.

Spotlight on Will Finn's blog (yeah, yeah)

I've heard Will Finn talk now and then about the homogenization of style in the animation industry, and last night he explored it more deeply. But his outlook is hopeful. "The notion of the Influence Map," says he, "may hold the keys, both to the problem and the solution..."

I've been looking plenty to animation's past and not enough to the present -- that is, to the artists AROUND me. I see so many of my dA and Blogger buddies regularly at school, while others are a measly few clicks away on the Internet. I explore with rabid enthusiasm. Then I leave the sites and go back to working from the professional talent I was already inspired by. Not for lack of respect, mind, but for being too easily distracted by the hype surrounding "the greats."

There are so many young, individualistic greats I see every day that I have yet to acknowledge in my own work, but they would be healthy influences indeed. Let me start by saying, thanks for bringing your art to the world and working to make animation and comics that much more inspiring.

P.S. If I don't successfully shoot out a cutesy cartoon by the end of the day, Happy Valentine's Day to all. May we all be with someone we love, sooner rather than later.

The Return of Random Dump

Sometimes, with a red Col-Erase grinding into the paper, I feel like a monkey chiseling in the forms.

Cute girl + rasta hat = rasta hats made cute.

A cow or a giraffe? You decide! I am loath to color this creature and ruin the ambiguity therein.

This one looks very '80s. I tweaked the background and the abnormal length of her left arm after I posted it. For shame!

Don't Worry, Be Happy

I had just started a rant column called "Mouthing Off," but quickly shot it down and evaporated the first entry in the series. Maybe I'll revive it someday in the midst of blind misery. I hope not. It was gonna be about all the odds 'n' ends of art that drive me nuts in the worst way possible.

Perhaps I'm assuming too much by thinking that people, especially those that it would help me to know better, embrace that kind of edginess. But most people, whether they know it or not, tend to prefer sincerely-implemented warm fuzzies to anything else. That's why films like Up succeed at the box office, and why even crotchety creatures such as myself read blogs like Will Finn's (on yonder sidebar).

I keep forgetting that mass-media artists are a lot constantly under pressure and that they're capable of producing greater or more personal work under the proper circumstances. Even if animation, live-action movies, music, video games, and all those things that inspire me are in need of greater innovation at large, there's a way where there's a will. There are stylistic highs and budgetary lows that can be explored in all manner of formats, and retail-bound stuff comprises an increasingly piddling fragment of those formats.

I've long entertained the idea of the cineplex as the final frontier of "reaching an audience," but a theater is only as full as the number of people in it. You gather enough people in a room to watch a Droopy cartoon on DVD, and you'll get a lot of noise and merriment.

Call this post a prayer for attitude adjustment on my part. I'll get back to you soon with factory-fresh cartoons.

For now, enjoy the piece of whimsy above -- in which the drawings date back to December '08 and the gags date back to second grade. Ah, to be young and eating boogers.