Paul Gilligan’s Pooch Cafe is the next comic to be brought to life through animation. This animation studio this time is Powerhouse Animation out of Austin, TX.
Pooch Cafe is is the last of many comic features on YouTube. Previous announcements include Richard Thompson’s Cul de Sac, Scott Hilburn’s Argyle Sweater, Mark Tatulli Lio, Jim Borgman and Jerry Scott’s Zits, Scott Adam’s Dilbert and The New Yorker cartoons.
Whoa…not the voices I expected (are they ever?), but I like it alot. It seems to work a lot better with Pooch than Zits, mebbe because its cartoon dogs.
Love it.
Those voices were totally reversed in my head.
Paul has a drawing style that translates into animation very nicely. I can forsee these attracting the attention of television execs.
Pretty cool. I wish they were longer though.
This is great. And out of Austin!
Very cool.
I thought these worked pretty well. I especially liked the misdirection of the last one.
My favorite is the first one and I think it’s the elegance of the timing on it without the dialogue. Voices are such a tricky thing for a character that always has its own voice in your imagination. I found the voices on the dogs to just not match enough to my imagination, making them distracting for me.
Still very great funny stuff though!
Pooch Cafe, Cul de Sac, Zits, Argyle Sweater and Lio are super wonderful fantastic comics but animating strips just doesn’t work for me. It’s not the voices (I thought the Cul de Sac ones were spot on) it’s the whole spoon-feeding a joke to the viewer rather than letting them do some of the work. IMHO comic strips should be read, not heard.
I feel bad saying this. Am I alone?
Piers, since you asked….no, you’re not alone.
“IMHO comic strips should be read, not heard.”
I feel the same way. I am a big fan of all the strips listed above. They are all excellent comic strips but the animation doesn’t do anything for me.
The folks at Powerhouse Animation are great, very dedicated to the craft. I couldn’t afford them at the time a few years back, so I bought my own software/hardware. I like having my own tools now.
These are great. The best of the Ring Tales series I’ve seen so far IMO.
I agree that the style of Pooch Café lends itself well to animation.
I agree with Scott and Piers. I love all the strips that have been animated. I just feel like it takes something away from the timing and the craft when they are interpreted by someone else. Specially Argyle Sweater. It’s such a well-written strip in it’s own form but the animation just feels force fed.
These are fabulous. They work. Why? For one, these are not simply comic strips that are animated, not at all. By definition those sort of things would NOT work. We’ve seen such.
These are _cartoons_ as in animations as in a Terrytoon or Merry Melody, etc or even a Charlie Brown cartoons (!). They happen to be cartoons based on the Pooch Cafe strip.
The studio did a great job of marrying action to the story concepts, while managing to maintain what makes Pooch the great strip it is to begin with (characterizations). The ‘Catnip sequence is perfect example.
These serve to bolster the attraction of the comic strip IMO.
I for one want to see more such cartoons based on print/web strips. Bravo!
Of course everybody WANTS full animation, but nobody wants to PAY for it. I wouldn’t count on seeing an extended series of these any time soon.
>>> Of course everybody WANTS full animation, but nobody wants to PAY for it.
Great point! That’s one reason why these little dohickies are not the “be-all-and-end-all” future of newspaper comic strips. There’s something to be said about the subtleties of a static cartoon image and how it engages the audience by massaging their imagination while tickling their funny bone.
“>>> Of course everybody WANTS full animation, but nobody wants to PAY for it.
Great point! Thatâ??s one reason why these little dohickies are not the â??be-all-and-end-allâ? future of newspaper comic strips. Thereâ??s something to be said about the subtleties of a static cartoon image and how it engages the audience by massaging their imagination while tickling their funny bone.”
Well, yeah, but nobody wants to pay for those, either.
Thank god we’ve got the Internet where art just HAPPENS!!!