With Nina Matsumoto! This week Ian and Dave are joined by Simpsons/Futurama artist Nina Matsumoto to discuss Facebook birthdays; turning thirty; Ian’s work with Nina; movies with too much CGI; blue skin transplants; drawing on computers; an island of cats; annoying YouTube tutorials; Pac-Man ghosts; favourite manga; favourite video games; and poison gas museums. Also, Dave puts himself in an uncomfortable position; Nina’s guide to getting a job at Bongo Comics; and her questions about Thimble Theater.
Thanks for listening.
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The website I was thinking of was digg, which starts with a backwards b.
Oh and as to why the Colossal Titan has no skin — do you realize how many Smurfs it would take to cover that thing?
Is the answer all of them? Please say it’s all of them.
Nina was doubleplus great.
Few comments!
1) I think Nina was totally right about Pacific Rim (and by extension, Dave wrong), in that the kaiju and the mechs have ‘weight’. Often CGI floats along and looks and ‘feels’ like it doesn’t really interact with the scene or behave according to physics, but in PR everything felt like it actually had crunch.
2) Modern monster design is pretty awful for the most part. One exception was ‘Attack the Block’, a gloriously cheese UK monster flick from a few years ago that apparently nobody has seen. I thought the monsters were amaaaaazing. Low key but brilliant.
3) About having a place to work: the discussion reminded me a lot of Michael Pollan’s book “A Place of My Own” from back in the mid-90s. He recounts his experiences and thought processes behind building a writer’s shack on his property. Definite callbacks to Walden.
Still pales in comparison to Deck Talk though.
Yeah! Bring back Deck Talk!
Also bring back Nina, she was great.
Maybe Nina could start a deck of her own
Hey, just wanted to add to the Pacific Rim thing. I recently watched a “making of” featurette on a Blu-Ray copy, and I was surprised by how many practical effects they used! For some realistic-looking shots I passed off as CG, it turns out they used small-scale/full-scale models, or camera/lighting tricks to do transitions on-set (like when Mako slips into her flashback). As for the CG’d monster shots, Del Toro was extremely particular about getting a feeling of weight to them and nitpicked the animators to make sure that was achieved.
Dave was maybe thinking of Carry On Screaming for another Frankenstein movie. It has two sort of Frankenstein looking monsters in it ( Oddbod and Oddbod Jr)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jPn4g-eR48 here’s the trailer for Carry On Screaming.
I think Attack The Block was on a loop at David’s house for a few weeks.
She loved the movie so much that, until recently, “Phyllis” had Pest as her middle name on Facebook.