Sorry for the time off. Aaaaaand we’re back! With something simple, yet iconic, today. Ron Rudat’s presentation art for the 1984 Recondo figure, drawn in 1983. Ron designed the first seven or so years of figures, the sketches that turned into the sculpt input drawings, and for the first few years, he did the internal presentation work as well. This is a color photocopy, not the original.
Filed under G.I. Joe Behind the Scenes, Toys and Toy Art
Sorry for no blog posts these last 6 weeks — busy with school and store, and, best of all, writing the book! Lots of good progress on chapters 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and chapter x, which I don’t know how to fit in yet.
I’ll get back to blog posting soon, probably this week.
Filed under Book Behind the Scenes
I know you toy types want the toy dope. But I’m an animation type first, so I’m always pleased to show you something cartoon-related. Like this background key from 1987’s G.I. Joe: The Movie. Background keys are not used in the final animation. They can be without color, or fully painted, and are an overview of what a location — interior or exterior — looks like. Generally they come before the storyboarding stage, so that storyboard artists know what a location looks like before planning (and drawing) scenes and shots in and around that location. Keys are used as a reference, too, for background artists and background painters, who will fully realize in line and in color the specific backgrounds needed in every angle called for by the storyboards.
This one’s by Robert Schaefer. His credit in G.I. Joe: The Movie is “Background Art Direction.” The whole background unit on that production is one BG Supervisor, another three on BG Art Direction, one BG Designer, nine BG painters, and one BG Coordinator. Some of these folks were in the States at Marvel Productions, others were in Japan at Toei. (A few uncredited ones may have been elsewhere in Japan or Korea, subcontracted, which I would never be able to track down.) Schaefer has worked on BGs for Hanna-Barbera, Ruby-Spears, Universal, and Disney Television Animation. And, probably of most interest to readers of this blog, Marvel Productions, where he also drew and painted on G.I. Joe, Transformers, and Jem.
Here’s how this key was used — for Pythona’s infiltration of the Cobra Terror Drome — note most of all the first shot.
An additional key or two may have been painted to describe these places. And it’s worth noting that the Terror Drome, both inside and out, had already been visualized in Season 2. I don’t have information on why any of that was revised or redone for The Movie, but presumably because here Cobra HQ is bigger and more labyrinthine. But imagine a show like The Simpsons, where a key for the Simpsons’ living room reflects a “standing set” and isn’t often redone.
Filed under Animation, G.I. Joe Behind the Scenes
That Sonya Blade post got a lot of nice feedback, so let’s dip our bloody, broken toes back in the Midway pool and take a look at another test shot.
Again, I don’t know anything about MK (although I did see the first film when it was released), so feel free to educate me in the comments about fatalities and the live-action TV show and oh-there-was-probably-a-sanitized-kids-cartoon-on-USA-Network and such.
Kano here has the same body as 1993 Dice, part of Ninja Force. Everything is the same neck down. But Kano gets a new head. Here’s a link to him fully painted.
Note in this test shot that Kano’s arm still has the Cobra logo. But since Dice’s arms have purple paint, this led me to that one G.I. Joe figure that was recolored from 1993 Dice — 1993 Red Ninja(s). The Red Ninja arms have the same dark blue as my Kano test shot, so I think that someone at the factory in China pulled the arms off a production Red Ninja and attached it to the otherwise white body and maroon head of test shot Kano.
My test shot Kano has the same “Real Ninja Action/Spring Action FLYING DRAGON” arm thingee movement as Dice and Red Ninja.
I think Dice/Red Ninja/Kano had the biggest knee pads of any G.I. Joe toy ever. That would be quite a Fatality, suffocating an opponent pinned under Kano’s knee.
Filed under G.I. Joe Behind the Scenes, Toys and Toy Art
Jim Sorenson and Bill Forster did a great job putting together two books of G.I. Joe animation model sheets – must-own for Joe art fans. (A parent was browsing in the “Action” section of my comic book store, pulled from the shelf volume 1 of G.I. Joe Field Manual, and sort of thought it was a coloring book. I would have spoken up, but it was clear from their casual browsing that they weren’t that interested, and I didn’t want to come across as an aggressive sales person.) Animation model sheets started out in black and white, and that’s mostly how they were seen by many of the artists who worked on the shows.
Or in this case, commercials, since animated Battle Force 2000 only appeared in G.I. Joe advertising. And I should say that artists tended to see photocopies of them in very-actual black and white. Rarer is seeing the original art, here, pencil on paper, dark grey on off-white. Russ Heath, who’s gotten some attention here at A Real American Book, drew today’s post: Three views of the “Vindicator” hovercraft. 
This is before Hasbro settled on the name “Battle Force 2000,” when the line was still “Future Force.” (I’ve seen some Hasbro paperwork with “Future Force” on it.) What makes these interesting is that they are early versions with different and fewer details than their Battle Force 2000 counterparts. I’m not sure why, and it’s hard to tell from the ad since that only has four seconds of animation. To my eyes, these models are clearly drawn from photos of toys (or toy mock-ups) or drawn from objects Heath had in front of him. So maybe that’s it, maybe they’re referenced from mock-ups. Not sure how that would have helped the animators, as they’d still need the final model sheets.
Perhaps of note, or not, is that these three drawings weren’t done on the same day. The top one is dated 9-9-86, the middle one is four days earlier, and the lower one ten days after. That may not mean anything, as Heath had stacks of drawings to do for any Joe commercial or episode, and was working for multiple productions at any one time. The other “Future Force” vehicle drawings I have are dated between August 5 and September 19. That’s a big range for what was all going to appear together in one ad, but maybe it was a package deal — several ads and all their materials (script, boards, designs, sound) going overseas at the same time. This is all conjecture.
But going back to “early versions with different and fewer details than their Battle Force 2000 counterparts,” you might be hoping for a side-by-side. So here’s an excerpt from Sorenson and Forster’s book on the left (pg 125), with the comparable pencil drawing on the right.
So today we have our usual kind of mystery — discrepancies in design — with some dates and guesses. Makes you wonder.
Filed under Animation, G.I. Joe Behind the Scenes, Toys and Toy Art
Some characters I have simply no attachment to. That goes for the entirety of the 1994 Mortal Kombat line, and for several reasons: 1) I wasn’t a fan of fighting games. 2) Even if I was, I gravitated towards the drawn style of a Street Fighter II over the photo-realism of Mortal Kombat or Pit Fighter. 3) These aren’t great representations of the characters since they involve so many re-used G.I. Joe parts. 4) Oh, they’re not even in the G.I. Joe line. Continue reading
Filed under G.I. Joe Behind the Scenes, Toys and Toy Art
Hey, all. Sorry for the delay. End of school and store events. But, hey, G.I. Joe!
Continue reading
Filed under G.I. Joe Behind the Scenes, Toys and Toy Art
Besides teaching animation and writing this book on G.I. Joe, I also own a comic book store. G.I. Joe isn’t a big seller, to my dismay. I enjoy giving away comics on Free Comic Book Day, and to neighbor-kids from my home on Halloween. It was just a matter of time before these two things came together, plus I wanted an excuse to order an unreasonable quantity of the special anniversary. Say, ten times our normal order. (And not for the variant covers, as those are a bogus business model.) Continue reading
Filed under Hub Comics
Last weekend was the official 2014 G.I. Joe Convention, an annual event organized by Fun Publications. FunPub runs the official G.I. Joe fan club, and running a convention (two, actually) for nitpicky toy fiends is a thankless job. Despite the fact that I’m writing this book and I’m a G.I. Joe crazy person, this was only my second JoeCon, though I kept reminding people I’ve attended like 16 BotCons (the Transformers convention, including the first one, where I was the youngest pre-registrant, because I was a Transformers crazy person.) For those of you familiar with either convention, I’m writing today’s post with a little more general of an audience in mind (hi, Dad), so there might be some obvious facts in here. For those of you turned off by 3500 words, there’s a picture for every paragraph — almost all are enlargeable — and I’ve divided this post into three sections we’ll call “Friday,” “Saturday,” and “Sunday.” Also, “Introduction.” Continue reading
Filed under Convention Reviews, General Musings
I wanted two things out of this anniversary: One, a big fight with lots of characters. More like issue #50 than #100 and #150 — a large-scale choreography of people and vehicles over geography. And issue #200 checked that box. Two, I wanted guest artists and back-up stories. I didn’t get this, but I’m still a happy reader.
Filed under Comics Reviews
A Real American Book! 