Rotoscopers Roundup 9

It's been way too long since I posted one of these, and I don't have nearly as many articles to share as I normally do. I was so busy with my job and my internship last year, that I probably didn't even get half as much written for the Rotoscopers as I usually do.

Since I didn't have as many articles as normal, I elected not to do first half/second half of the year posts like I have been doing, and just do one update for 2019. And I actually meant to share this at the end of last year, but I guess I was so busy I forgot. I just found it in my drafts and figured I'd better get it up.

So anyway, these are all the articles I did last year for the Rotoscopers! I am closing in on the end of my internship though, so hopefully I'll have more to share next time.



Adventure Time: The Complete Series - DVD Announcement

Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse - Blu-ray Announcement

Interview with Howard Jones, VFX Supervisor on Early Man
(Includes a link to the interview as a bonus episode of my podcast!)

Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse - Blu-ray Review

Captain Marvel - Blu-ray Review

Infinity Train - Trailer Release

Cinderella - Signature Edition - Blu-ray Review

Avengers: Endgame - Blu-ray Announcement

Infinity Train - Premiere Date Announcement

Avengers: Endgame - Blu-ray Review

Interview with Leslie Iwerks, director of The Imagineering Story
(Includes a link to the interview as a bonus episode of my podcast!)

Frozember - 'Let it Go' 10 Different Ways
In honor of the release of Frozen 2, the Rotowriters contributed to a series of articles celebrating Frozen. This was my contribution.

Watch This! (April 2019)

This year has just been flying by, and I keep forgetting to make one of these posts. I'm glad I decided to just cut these back to whenever I feel like making one, because between work, and everything else I've had going on, I have not had time. And then the past month I have been putting it off because I said I wanted to make a new graphic for every post. I haven't had time for that either. But tonight at work, it was slow, so I decided to just go ahead and make the post, and then maybe I'll be more incentivized to sit down and make a logo when I get home.

For those curious, it took me six days between writing this post and making the logo. 😆

So to begin with, I updated a previous post with a new video, so if you are a fan of Studio C's Lobster Bisque series, then check that out, the new video is at the bottom. And if you've never seen Studio C's Lobster Bisque Series, then check out the post and watch all the videos! 😆

The Lobster Bisque Post

Next we have a video from Poppy, which is just about everything I love about her. A smidge of weirdness, a dash of fake innocence, and whole lot of biting sarcasm presented as sincerity. 😆



This video from Walk off the Earth is so good, but rather bittersweet, considering it was one of the last videos they shot with Beard Guy before he passed away at the end of last year.



Another amazing video from World Order! Side note, is this their first song in English? I feel like their songs have all been almost exclusively in Japanese up until this point, save for a word or phrase here and there. Either way, I loved this video.



One of my favorite "Genres" of Peter Hollens video is when he does Disney songs, and his villain songs are always great. This one of Be Prepared from The Lion King is no exception.



One of my other favorite Hollens genres is Middle Earth music. This one is amazing.



Postmodern Jukebox recently did a jazz version of the theme song for Pinky and the Brain, featuring the real Pinky and the Brain, Rob Paulsen & Maurice LaMarche!



In February, Mike Tompkins covered one of my favorite Panic! At the Disco songs!



Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was one of my favorite movies from last year, and a bit of what made it so great was the music. Kurt Hugo Schneider arranged an amazing version of Sunflower to promote the home video release of the film, which I have to say, is one of the best examples of a brand integration video I've ever seen! I wish more studios would take this approach to marketing their films!



And then we got another Kulning video from Jonna Jinton. I don't care how many of these videos she makes, they blow me away every time.



This next video from Pomplamoose was one of my favorites, and it was only made as a ridiculous April Fools post. 😆



One of my favorite things is when a Muppet character shows up on a late night show, especially when it's a Sesame Street character. Oscar the Grouch appeared on The Late Show with Steven Colbert to promote his new book. And it worked. I bough a copy. 😆



We'll end on a high note, with my favorite music video so far, this amazing cover from Pentatonix.

The Internet is Awesome 25 - Year End Extravaganza!

It's my last post of the year! And as such, I decided to make it almost twice as long! No special reason, except that I still have a ton of videos saved that I need to use in posts. :p

Let's start off this final post with another Hollens Disney song. They are just magical together. :)



Leave it to Kurt Hugo Schneider and Kina Grannis to come up with something like this. I already loved this song, but this unique spin on it is just so good.



This next video is an utterly amazing rendition of Danny Elfman's Spiderman theme done spectacularly by Lindsey Stirling and Lang Lang. It is so incredible. It makes me nostalgic for the days when we actually had memorable themes and scores in movies.



I have a bit of a confession. I have never really liked the song Danny Boy. I've always thought it was way too schmaltzy, and even years ago when my favorite artists like Charlotte Church or Celtic Woman covered it, I just wasn't that impressed. I don't think it's a bad song, I just never cared for it. I actually cared so little for it that when Peter Hollens announced he was starting an email newsletter and giving away an exclusive track to anyone who subscribed, I was so disappointed and actually did not subscribe when I found out that it was Danny Boy. Then he released a video. I couldn't believe it. For the first time in my life, I LOVED a version of Danny Boy. How foolish I had been. I immediately went and signed up for his newsletter to get the track. :p



Pentatonix's Scott Hoying and Mitch Grasi, who have been best friends since they were little kids, have had their own YouTube channel for years now, Superfruit, on which they normally post vlogs and challenge videos, but lately they've been putting out some great stuff, including this cover of a Katy Perry song. Hopefully they keep this up! As entertaining as they can be when they aren't busy as part of Pentatonix, they are at their best when they are singing.



Recently there was a Disney movie called The Queen of Katwe released in theaters. It is about a girl from Africa who becomes a chess champion. It sounded really unique, and I wanted to go see it, but I pretty much never have time to go to the theater. However, Disney released a song from the movie on their Vevo channel, and it is amazing. I was tempted to buy the soundtrack based on this song alone. I didn't, because I like to see movies before I start buying their merchandise, but still, how great is this song!? Now I need to see this movie!



A couple months ago I discovered a British show called Yonderland. It is about a 30-something mother of two that gets sucked into a portal in her pantry to a magical land where she has to fight monsters and save the world. And also it's full of songs and puppets. It's like they made it for me. :p This song was one of the best parts of the show.



Pogo has been one of my absolute favorite electronic remix artists for years, and this video is everything I love about him.



I heart Tessa Violet.



I love it when my favorite things collide into one giant mashup of awesome! Twenty One Pilots, Kurt Hugo Schneider, and VoicePlay!



This song is literally everywhere, but thankfully everyone seems to put a new spin on it, and the Piano Guys are no exception. :)



Technically Pentatonix did this song for their new Christmas album, but I've never thought of this song as a Christmas song, so it didn't go in my Christmas post. Either way, they killed it. :)



Everything that Bad Lip Reading does is incredibly stupid. But for some reason I can't help but love it anyway. This song was one of my favorite things they have done in ages. It's so dumb, but so catchy. Also, I almost died laughing at "That log had a child!"



We'll end this with another amazing video from Lindsey Stirling. And she's themed it around Alice in Wonderland. This video is everything! :D

Life Update: ISU Year 1 done!

I decided to do a brief life update since I haven't done one in awhile. I haven't done much of anything on this blog in awhile. My computer actually is having problems at the moment, and I generally don't like using my iPad to blog. But since that's all I've got at the moment it will have to do. I bought a keyboard for it, so writing on it is not that bad anymore. I'm waiting for some stuff to fix my computer to be shipped to me. Hopefully that will take care of it. If not, I'll have to take it somewhere to be fixed.

In case you didn't know, I am now done with my first year at Iowa State. I am loving it so far. I got pretty good grades all around. One not-so-good grade, but also one very good one, so it kind of evens itself out. I took (a few) pictures and I plan to share them as soon as my computer is working properly again. Next semester I'll be taking a few more journalism classes, as well as introductory Spanish, and Photography. I'm hoping the photography class will start teaching me more about all the hundreds of settings on my camera that I have no idea what they do.

I also quit my job at the Ames Hy-Vee. I was getting barely any hours all semester. A couple of weeks I only got three hours. For the whole week. Which is not enough for anything. So I decided to cut my losses before going home for the summer and look elsewhere next semester. Right now I'm looking into getting a job at the campus bookstore. I've always loved the idea of working in a bookstore or library, so I hope it works out!

Tomorrow I turn into a saggy pile of wrinkles and begin using a walker, drinking prune juice, and going to bed at 7:30. I mean, it's my birthday. I turn 28. Get off my lawn kids.

In related, happier news, my uncle is taking me to a Lindsey Stirling concert for my birthday on Saturday! I can't wait! It will be my first ever "Real" concert, not just a classical performance at the local high school, or at college. I will be bringing my good camera and praying it makes it through security. I want good pictures!

Well, that's about it for now. I'm still working at the Harlan Hy-Vee. I'm getting way more hours than I was in Ames. Later this summer my cousins and I are tentatively planning a trip to somewhere. We're still ironing out the details, but there will be pictures. I've been going to a bunch of movies, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Godzilla, X-Men: Days of Future Past, but I haven't written any reviews. Maybe I'll do that later on. There's still a few coming up. I'll be seeing Maleficent tomorrow with my cousins for my birthday. It looks amazing. I love new twists on old stories.

Okay, that's enough rambling. Look for another True Facts post tomorrow!

I'm A Reporter!

Tuesday afternoon I have an intro to journalism class. This past week, one of the heads of the Iowa State Daily, our school newspaper, came to speak to the class, basically to recruit new writers. He explained that while the classes we're taking are important, they won't mean hardly anything compared to real work experience, and for those of us who want to be journalists in the future, it is in our own best interests to start getting some of that experience now.

I had known that there was a school newspaper, but I didn't know anything about it, and I didn't know anything about how to join. I had thought about looking into it later, after I'd been in journalism longer than just one week, but when he came into class looking for people to join, I decided not to wait. I applied the next day, and I had an interview this afternoon. There wasn't really even any question on will I or won't I get the job. He basically said that if we want the experience, they will find a place for us. Training starts on Monday and I am so excited! This is almost like a dream come true, but it's sort of like a dream I never knew I wanted.

As I've said before I have never really thought about being anything other than an artist. Until last semester I had never even thought about being a journalist myself, which is odd, because some of my favorite fictional characters have been journalists ever since I was a kid. My two favorite Superheros are journalists in their day-to-day lives, Superman, is a newspaper reporter as Clark Kent, and Spider-Man is a newspaper photographer as Peter Parker. When I was into the Left Behind series, my favorite character was Buck Williams, another newspaper reporter. When I was obsessed with Smallville, my favorite character was Chloe Sullivan, school newspaper, then later Daily Planet reporter. I always thought that being a reporter would be a fun job, but I also thought of it as something that other people did, not something I could ever do. Sort of like how I knew that cities like Chicago and New York were real, but not places I could ever visit. I was weird like that.

So anyway, I am now a reporter at the Iowa State Daily, and eventually this will lead to being a photographer as well. He told me that he'll have me talk to the photography department, and that being both a journalist and a photographer would be great, because I can shoot for all my own stories. I will keep you updated on how everything goes. This could be the first step toward something huge!

Amazing...

I grew up watching 3 Super-Hero shows. Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man. So far I have yet to see a big screen version of either Superman or Batman that I absolutely love. I *Like* parts of all of them. But mostly they have been major disappointments. Especially Superman. Superman has always been my favorite superhero. Can someone PLEASE do him justice on the big screen?!

Ahem... I'm getting off on a rabbit trail... This post is not supposed to be an a rant about past disappointments in Superman movies, it's supposed to be about Spider-Man.

Spider-Man, has already had three awesome movies. I was disappointed that they decided to end the last film series and start over with a whole new story, but as I began seeing what the new movie could be, I warmed up to the idea and by the time I got to see it I was really excited for it.


My cousin and I went to see "The Amazing Spider-Man" last night, and we both loved it. I thought it was even better than the previous 3 Spider-Man films.

I'm sure a lot of "Hard-Core" geeks hated this, but I really liked that they changed the back story to make his father part of the reason he became Spider-Man. I found this to be a really interesting twist on the story. I also loved the fact that his parents just disappeared, instead of just dying somehow. I am really excited to see where this will lead in future sequels.

The characters were all different from the other movies. Of course they were the same in all the important ways, but they were all different enough so that they were not carbon copies of their predecessors.

Peter was mostly the same, they can't stray too far from his basic character, but he was still different in subtle ways. My cousin noted that in the other films it seemed that he was kind of a show-off, but he seemed a lot more down-to-earth in this movie. I think this is one reason I found this version of the character to be more likable. He just seemed like more of a "Normal" guy.

One of the biggest differences in characters was in the ages of Peter's aunt and uncle. They were quite a bit younger than they have ever been. I would guess them to be around 50. I liked this take on them. It makes more sense to have them be that age than to have them be in their 70's or however old they have been in the past.

Mary Jane was completely absent from the movie, which I didn't mind. In the original comics, Gwen Stacy was Peter's first love, and I liked that they went back to that for this film. I've never been very familiar with the character of Gwen, since she was not included in the animated series that I grew up watching. In that one it was Mary Jane only, from beginning to end.  I've read up on the character and I'm interested to see how this version of the story unfolds. The only downside to having Gwen be in the movies is how they will deal with the character when it comes time to introduce Mary Jane. I'm afraid they may end up giving her the same fate as her comic book counterpart. The reason they didn't include her in the animated series is because they did not want to feature a character in a kid's show that they would eventually have to kill off. In the comics she is murdered by the Green Goblin. Of course this would be a really great twist plot-wise, but I always hate it when they kill off a character you've grown to love.

I was really glad that they chose to do the Lizard as the main villain in the movie. He was probably one of my favorite Spider-Man villains when I was a kid. I'd been hoping they would use him in the other series, and it seemed like they were planning to since Doctor Connors was a character in the other movies. But since they never did use him, I'm glad they started out this new film series with him as Spider-Man's first super-villain.

One minor thing I really liked was this interpretation of Flash Thompson. He doesn't play a very big role in the film, but I really liked how they fleshed out his character compared to other versions of the story. He's always been a bully to Peter, but by the end of this movie, they have pretty much become friends. I always enjoy stories where a "Bad Guy" becomes a good guy. Even though Flash isn't necessarily a bad guy, he definitely would be classified as an antagonist. The fact that he grows as a character like he does, even though it's just a small part, was really great. I hope he plays a bigger role in the sequel.

This movie was a very different version of the story than the three that came before. I still love the first three movies, but I liked this one even better. If you haven't yet seen the movie, I highly recommend it for any super-hero fan. You won't be disappointed.