What Video Games Do Behind Your Back

Why this is right up my alley.

Thundercats

I loved this show when I was a kid, heck I loved watching reruns when I was in high school. When an adult saw me watching it and asked me if I thought maybe I was a little old to be watching Thundercats I explained in a concise and eloquent manner how the show still had a lasting appeal for the teenage and early twenties crowd that stems from it's unique style, nostalgia factor, and slight counter culture edge that comes with the territory of being a budding young adult who says "Yeah, I like this cartoon."

Well okay, I actually just said "Uh, no." in a mildly sarcastic tone.

I know for some people it's appeal has faded with age. I heard someone say that they had re-watched some if it and their assessment was "Dude, it did not age well."

In this age where television media is more polished and refined than ever I feel that many people turn to older shows with modern day expectations and an unnecessarily cynical view point but for me it's the rough edges that contribute part of the charm. The ridiculous plots and goofy dialogue delight me almost as much as the animation, characters, and music. Lion-O's Shatneresque dialogue employed in intense situations tickles me every time and who wouldn't want to live near a civilization of robot teddy bears with a thriving agricultural industry?

For me this is one of those shows that can take me back to my childhood and while I may enjoy riffing on it I don't truly look upon it with a critical eye. I think sometimes you just have to enjoy things for what they are.

The Thundercats series review video below is by James Rolf of Angry Video Game Nerd fame so there is some crude language.

Professor Soap - Spirit Quest Journey

This is a great video for when I'm feeling stressed.
It's actually very calming listening to the pleasant tune and watching the march of the quirky and friendly looking monsters. A new monster appears each time a new instrument is added to the playful groove.

Spirit Quest Journey by Professor Soap.

Music and Animation by Ryan Mauskopf
www.ryanmauskopf.com

Super Mario RPG 'Rawest Forest' Japanese Rap Version

So . . .

A remix of a tune from Super Mario RPG.
Add Japanese rap.
Throw in a neat pixel animation video . . .

. . . and this is what you get:

Awesome!

From the video description:

To all NES Lovers! We are 'plugnet'.

We love computer game especially 'NES(Famicom)' and we also love to rap.
1 month ago we didn't have our crew name, but we dicided the name, 'plugnet'. The members are Yukkey(me), Forest(green man), and Mayumusi(blue man).
Anyway, we'll be happy if you enjoy this song.

Track by Moonbug(Novoiski & Nylonizm)
Lyric & Rap by plugnet
Mix & Movie by Merpaline(Yukkey and Mayumusi)

Giant Muffin Brawlers - pixel art animation

Behold the Giant Muffin Brawlers!

From the video description:

"This was made for a college assignment in about 50 hours. We had to make a ~40 seconds video with the subject of our choice, using adobe After Effects. I made mine in pixel art because, heh its what I do...

After effects and pixel art dont really mix so well though, had quite a bit of problems with that. Like it doesnt seem to take indexed color images well for one, so I had to go through every animation frame and convert them individually every time I wanted to change a detail.
Also note that, made in after effect, this is not "pure" pixel art by any means: After effects does motion blurring and a lot of other things that I didnt have to do manually, and there's also a mix in resolutions there.

But I really like the result! It looks pretty darn neat I think!

Also, the main character of the video is a friend of mine, Michael Émond. He was originally going to work on the video with me, but we later decided to work on our own videos separately instead."

Spooky Pixel Castle

Trepidation Castle



Another one of my personal creations.

Pipes - Pixel Animation by Me! :)

100x100 pixels . . .



and a tiny 50x50 version.

The Cat Piano

Here's an animated short film that's certainly worth your time.

The Cat Piano from PRA on Vimeo.

I saw this posted yesterday on io9 and I absolutely loved it. Not only are the artwork and animation quality top notch but the poem that makes up the narrative is really good and the performance of the narrator is spot on. I tried listening to it again without watching the animation and I realized how satisfying the poem itself really is.

Also you can check out the film's official website.

Flying Pizza Kitty

It's Flying Pizza Kitty! From flyingpizzakitty.com, the best site about a flying cat on the internet by Ben. I'm not sure what else to say. I found a site full of 8-bit style art and animated gifs all about this little orange low res kitty. Some of the pop culture references in it are pretty funny.

Here we find Flying Pizza Kitty battling David Lo-Pan from Big Trouble in Little China:

Kind of cute actually.

Awesome Pixel Animation Video

Wooooow!

Rad pixel Art by Niina Koivusalo and Ville Konttinen. Sweet chip music and vocals by Leeni.

Be sure to check out Leeni's website too:
http://leeni.us/

Paul Robertson

Well considering all the attention I give to pixel art and especially my enthusiasm for strange and unique pixel art it occurred to me that it's a little strange that I haven't mentioned a towering giant in the world of strange and unique pixel art and animations; Paul Robertson. You see Paul Robertson is a highly talented artist and animator with a truly idiosyncratic style and eccentric tastes to say the least. His work tends to range from the absurd to utterly obscene.

I guess the main reason I haven't posted about is because most of what I have been posting have been recent discoveries for me (or recent creations). I first discovered Paul's work when I saw Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006 sometime in 2006. I downloaded it from this site because someone somewhere on the internet had made such a big deal over how cool it was. I don't remember who but I certainly did remember the video. It was highly entertaining but also violent and grotesque as well with exploding zombies being dismembered by the hundreds in a black and white display of pixelated gore. Clearly meant to resemble and pay homage to video games the movie is full of humor and strange little details. Some of the more grotesque moments even made me feel a little uncomfortable (like should I be enjoying this?) and come to think of it now I doubt I'd seen anything quite like it before.

Scene from Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006

I don't specifically remember when but quite some time passed before I knowingly ran into any more of Paul Robertson's work. When it did finally pop up again it was usually introduced on a blog or a forum as "something done by that guy who did the Pirate Baby Cabana Fight Thing". Eventually I went on to discover his other animations, illustrations, animated gifs, and even professional commercials that he worked on and most of it is outstanding work and, well, completely bizarre.

Paul Robertson's The Magic Touch

I could probably sit here and catalog Robertson's work for half the night from his insane pixel massacres such as the aforementioned Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006 or his violent and outrageous masterpiece Kings of Power 4 Billion % (available for download here) to the more cool and quirky stuff like Do The Whirlwind and The Magic Touch (posted above) and more but I think I'll leave it to you to discover more if you're interested and you haven't already. Besides, I didn't set out to make a compendium of Paul Robertson's work with this post, I just wanted to highlight one of my favorite pixel artists and spotlight a little corner of his crazy world. :P

Paul Robertson's Live Journal
Paul Robertson's Deviant Art Profile
(these may contain offensive content)

Pixel art college webpage = awesome!

I just saw a post about this on Kotaku labeled The Bestest College Webpage Ever and I think I may have to agree with them.

Just go to the college's website here and you'll shortly be presented with a little retro styled video game-like land of animated people on a fanciful and colorful 8-bit college campus.

YAY! :D

You can scroll around the landscape just by moving your mouse cursor near the edge of the screen to reveal more and you'll see little guys doing things like rock climbing and playing sports and uh, hiding in a box . . .

Here are some full resolution detail shots:






And here is one of the little people
blown up to double resolution: