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Showing posts with label claymation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label claymation. Show all posts

Friday, September 18, 2020

Will Vinton Sends A Pig To Castle Frankenswine

After the assault from the past few days of Kidding Around, I felt like you all would appreciate something... better. Will Vinton's Claymation Comedy of Horrors is a claymation Halloween special that aired in the early 90's. I didn't see this on Halloween though. My first exposure to it came from a random re-airing of it in the middle of the summer. On a local CBS affiliate no less! Back in those days I'd regularly look through the TV Guide for something cool and usually tape it.

I was always nuts for Halloween, so I had started a Halloween special tape that summer. Most sitcoms would rerun holiday episodes regardless of the time of year. This doubled for shows that had went to syndication. TV Guide was pretty dependable for a brief synopsis of what episode was coming on, so I was able to curate a tape full of specials pretty easily. 

From summer break to the actual season, I somehow made a full 8 hr VHS of Halloween specials that year. The tape is still in my Mom's possession, but I have no clue if it's even watchable. It was on regular rotation in my bedroom throughout the years. Last time I watched it the auto tracking couldn't keep up and it kept making weird squiggly noises. If you lived through the VHS days, you know the ones I'm talking about.

On it is this little show that I saw listed on a random summer evening on CBS. It's pretty fun. Basically a pig and his snail employee find a treasure map which leads to Frankenswine's (pigs, get it?) Castle on Halloween night. They encounter all sorts of monsters in a pretty great looking production. It's pretty obscure, I don't think it has much of a fan following like other Halloween specials. That's ok, not everything has to be a cult classic. I suppose anyway.

Monday, February 17, 2020

Sonic Claymation


Monday's are an odd day for me. Working at night usually means I'm free all Monday before going to work (aside from a nap). Usually I spend a lot of time uploading toy pics to Instagram if not running odd errands. Or both. Those Instagram days are usually have YouTube or Tubi running in the background while I arrange toys on my TV tray. One of my favorite things to watch is compilations of old commercials. Probably not a surprise to any of you, but I absolutely love it.

The above commercial is for the original Sonic The Hedgehog game. As you can see, the Japanese commercial featured a cool claymation Sonic dancing around while being cheered on by a crowd. The craftsmanship is pretty dang cool and hard not to like. I've always liked the Noid from Domino's, partially due to the clay animation used to bring him to life. It's not a lost art, but it's certainly not as common in today's world of CGI.