It was bound to happen some day. It’s popular to impersonate a celebrity or fictional character on Twitter, and Death is no exception. Somebody has set up an @TheFakeDeath account and is posting stuff on her behalf! They have no intent of stopping, either. Check out some of this imposter’s tweets below, if Javascript is enabled…

Follow @TheFakeDeath to keep up with these shenanigans. She’ll be posting all through today, then keeping a rough schedule of maybe 1 tweet a day on weekdays.

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ALSO, I did some fan art for the Mighty Monocle which you can find at MightyMonocle.com, appropriately enough(good choice, sir). I’m rather proud of my picture(here’s a direct link), so you should definitely check it out there. The comic it’s based on is funny, too, so check that out while you’re there ogling at my linework. The comic just started, so it really won’t take long to dive through the archives. In fact, just doggy-paddle through the archives, as diving might break your neck.
The Mighty Monocle is about an American superhero that wasn’t good enough for New York- in fact he was hazardous to New York, so they sent him over to England. Can he build a better reputation for himself over there? Ehhh, don’t count on it if your life depended on it. And if your life depended on it, let’s hope his canine sidekick gets to you first.

I watched Megamind tonight, which was a pretty good movie. There aren’t enough movies that focus on a supervillain and THEIR struggles.

First off, the animation and expression on the Megamind character was the best I’ve seen in CG. When I first saw the previews for it, the subtleties of the facial expressions on him and his movements really caught my eye. I didn’t know who created the film, but there’s a company that I’ve noticed has a very good knack for expressive characters: Dreamworks. Somehow, I just recognized their style. I first noticed this in their 2D film, The Road To El Dorado. I simply LOVED the expressions on the main characters’ faces in that movie. Megamind’s expressions are very reminiscent of the ones in The Road To El Dorado. The other characters seem standard for a 3D movie, which makes me suspect they had a separate team specifically for Megamind. He has SO much energy! But on top of that, his sad expressions felt so real. All his movements felt real.

So, the plot. In Megamind, his and Metro Man’s origins are very similar to Superman’s origins. Sent to Earth on space ships from doomed planets, except theirs seemed to be getting pulled into a wormhole. They’re also from separate planets, hence the different appearances. Metro Man landed right in the living room of a rich couple, while Megamind landed in the court yard of “Metro City Prison For The Criminally Gifted”. Why he stayed in prison from that point on, I have no idea. We’ll suspend our disbelief for a while on that.

Hal, the camera man, has some funny shirts. The first one he’s shown wearing is “404 REQUEST NOT FOUND”. When he was later wearing a “GAME OVER” shirt, it was an appropriate shirt. We later see “GAME OVER” on his TV screen at another very appropriate time. Nice subtleties. He also has a “BITE ME” shirt in another scene, with teeth below the words.

I’m not a big Will Ferrell fan, but he fit well into this movie. My issue with Will is that his voice isn’t very strong. It doesn’t sound like he means what he’s saying. With Megamind, that not-so-strong voice actually makes the villain feel down-to-earth and more real. He’s trying to be evil, but deep down, he’s just seeking acceptance.

What also gives this a refreshing spin is that the villain actually defeats the hero! I wasn’t sure if it would be too much of a spoiler, but it does happen early enough in the movie, and the real focus of the plot is what happens afterward. Megamind doesn’t know what to do next. He has Metrocity in his control, but then what? He and Metro Man had a great hero-villain relationship, and he misses that. He has all these cool gadgets and a stockpile of schemes, but nobody to challenge him. I need to build something like that flying motorcycle-like thing in my comic, by the way.

The most to-the-point review of this movie would be this: “…WITH STYLE!”

This game has amazing graphics. I aspire to have a comic set as rich and detailed as the setting of this game, but that would take years for one person. This game is being made by an independent game company that consists of 9 employees, and the work so far is the result of 9 months. Absolutely astounding.

Hilarious movie. I especially liked the ruffians. That scene seemed cheesy, but the fact of the matter is, it made me laugh.

I don’t know if 3D movies are getting better or if I’m just getting used to them. I think it’s the former, because really, what I like most about the look of 2D films seems to be slowly showing up in 3D films. I’ve been preferring 2D because it’s more expressive & the characters stand out much better. The color palettes have just been more optimized. And the movement, you just can’t beat the movement in 2D animation.

Or can you?

I mentioned this about Megamind, but I’m noticing better movement & aesthetics in Tangled, too. Of course this would happen, since practice makes perfect, but it’s noticeable and I think it has finally caught up with the aesthetics of 2D animation. I also noticed the overall look of Roadside Romeo, a movie from India that never got dubbed into American English. The color palette was the main thing with that. It just worked, in the same way a 2D film’s color palette works, just with more texture.

It’s all about the aesthetics. In 2D films, you can really tweak the environment to give focus to the characters or whatever you want the viewer’s eye drawn to. 3D films tried too hard to look “real”, which can make the characters blend in with the background & just throw the focus all over the place. Realistic color palettes just don’t create good movies. There’s a lot of power in a limited color palette & strategic lighting. These shortcomings were likely a side-effect of slower computers that couldn’t allow for as much environmental fine-tuning(“oh wow, that background element is more vivid than we expected!”), but I’m quite sure a large part of it was finding what works for CGI & how to do it. The movement of the characters? Yeah, mostly computer ability, but it also takes a LOT of practice to create the most natural movements possible. You simply can’t find anybody with more than maybe 30 years of 3D animation experience, and even then, any knowledge of it over maybe 10 years would be obsolete(“What’s with all this ‘mesh’ nonsense? I’ve done amazing things with primitive shapes and fractals. I’m the MASTER of phong shading!” …80% of you won’t know what I just said).

Tangled had backgrounds that looked like the painted backgrounds in traditionally-animated films, except you could move the camera freely around them. The characters had perfect movement throughout the entire movie(in Megamind, everybody except Megamind himself still had stiff movement). And the expressions were as expressive as a hand-drawn animated character.

I’m very optimistic about 3D animation now. It’s actually finally looking GOOD!

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Oh, and the script-writing and the music were pretty good too. I wouldn’t say it was a 10/10, and no songs really stood out as much as anything out of The Lion King, but I’d rate it as “worth seeing”.

That’s right, they seamlessly changed the Wanted posters for the foreign dubs, just like they did with all the signs & labels in Toy Story 3(much more to translate there). In CGI, this is a fairly simple process(of course, it’s still a fair amount of extra planning & work), so I’m glad that Disney does this. The Spanish version is above, and the French version is shown below. Yes, the changing nose was a running gag.

The only other words I recall showing in the film was the sign for the Snuggly Duckling & the map in the credits, but neither of those were changed for the Spanish or French versions. They translated the name when spoken, though.

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At the end, there’s a drawing of Earthworm Jim with a beard!

“The Weird Al / My Little Pony mashup that the world has been waiting for” –Weird Al’s tweet on Tuesday.

It’s great that he embraces fan-made videos using his music, and this one is particularly great. I love the timing in this video! Well-done.

Oh, and the new My Little Pony series(the one seen in the above video) is actually watchable. I’ve watched maybe 7 episodes on YouTube already, and it’s definitely still aimed at little girls, but it still appeals to all demographics and the quality is there. I have no doubt that this series has a higher percentage of male fans than the previous incarnations. My favorite episodes have been Swarm Of The Century(“You’ve got a real problem, alright, and a BANJO is the ONLY ANSWER!”), Sonic Rainboom(Dude, a pony breaks the sound barrier!), and Bridle Gossip(good moral about judging a book by its cover).

On Wednesday morning, I decided to see what the old series looked like, and when I heard a clue in a game being, “…the opposite of front” and the ponies had to THINK about it…. ugh. The Friendship Is Magic ponies could answer that without pause and follow up with where southeast is. AND they’d make the answer INTERESTING! I’ve heard several times how much better the new series is, but I had no idea HOW much better it is. The character designs are toonier and great. The old designs look like aliens! Sure, they’re more pony-like, but they really weren’t close enough. The noses simply look deformed in the old cartoons.

Also, I found this fun little fan-made remix of a scene from the episode “Call Of The Cutie“:

And finally, it had to be done, here’s a double Rainbow Dash:

If you’d like to watch the series starting with the first episode, you can start here, but be warned that while it’s a good episode(it’s a two-parter, actually), all of the other episodes are much better. It’s basically setting everything up and introducing everybody. I was surprised at how quickly it went, but for pure entertainment, try the 3 episodes I linked to earlier in this post.
There are 2 people posting all of the episodes on YouTube. What I like about the person whose videos I’m linking to is that they have links to all of the episodes in the description of each video, so it’s easy to navigate. PLUS, at the end of the episode, a link to the next episode pops up as an annotation. Very convenient.

UPDATE:
THEY USED YAKETY SAX IN THE THIRD EPISODE DURING A CHASE SCENE! LOL! This makes the show instantly 20% cooler!

If you’re not following @TheFakeDeath on Twitter, you should. It’s a goofy take on Death’s character, free from any canon constraints. She’s also been following various other fake accounts and retweeting them occasionally(@God_Damn_Batman is awesome). There are way too many My Little Pony accounts on her follow list. Rainbow Dash, you talk too much!
Yesterday, Death did some bold things. Foolish for most people, really. She… picked a fight with Chuck Norris! Here’s the transcript from Twitter:

Apr 26, 11:30am
Chuck Norris, I’m calling you out. Yeah, you heard me.

Apr 26, 12:05pm
“Chuck Norris”? What kind of name is that, anyway? Chuck= Charlie Brown’s nickname. Norris= that custodian’s cat in Harry Potter. Meh.

Apr 26, 12:30pm
Chuck Norris, I “meh” in your general direction.

Apr 26, 1:30pm
Mr. Norris! Chucky! I challenge you to a duct tape dual. Meet me at The Islands.

Apr 26, 3:00pm
Who slammed the revolving door? Oh, it’s you, Chuck Norris. Why the popped collar?

Apr 26, 4:00pm
JUST GOT INTO A FIGHT WITH CHUCK NORRIS AND LOST. Chuck and I won the fight against the cast of Lost, then we took all their money.

Apr 26, 5:00pm
Playing shuffleboard with Chuck Norris, shooting the breeze. Wait, no, that sound was Chuck roundhouse kicking the breeze.

@TheFakeDeath

There are some great My Little Pony fan-made things, and then there are great My Little Pony fan-made things that are 20% cooler because they incorporated my favorite cartoons from the 1990’s.

I saw at least 3 people comment “Narf!”. Really, this parody is perfect. “Their Twilight campaign”? Twilight Sparkle is perfect for Brain, and Pinkie Pie… lol! It had to be done.

But what I really wanted to share was… (click here for Pinkazoid!)

I’ve been tempted to create an animated version of the Pinkazoid song by KTurtle but time is an issue. Thankfully somebody else beat me to it and did it pretty close to how mine would have turned out. The only differences would have been the audio(of course)(…I’m not sure how my laptop mic would have done anyway), the guy at the computer(I would have used Kturtle’s screenshot, but I prefer how he did it), and some flying titles(yeah, I wish this guy had added some). I’m happy with BronyMike’s video.

A comic I had been following stopped updating in 2008. My policy is to stay subscribed to an rss feed just in case it starts updating again. This week, that website started updating again… but a hemorrhoid information site had bought that domain. And included PICTURES.
GAHHHHH!!!