Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Trapp's Rap - Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comic


Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comic is a 2008 American animated short film series of motion comics for television based on the graphic novel Watchmen. The series is written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, creator and illustrator of the original graphic novel published by DC Comics. The series consists of twelve abridged 25-30 minute segments based on the chapters of the book. Both male and female characters are voiced by actor Tom Stechschulte and is directed by Jake Strider Hughes.


I first began watching this series as it was first being publicized on ITunes. I watched up until the 5th episode and discovered that the entire Motion comic would be released on DVD within a month of the of the series being completed. When I found that out, I decided to wait and just purchase the DVD.

It's quite interesting, it's takes each and every frame of the graphic novel, and through the vast usefulness of technology, and makes each character move around. The time and effort it took to create something like this was without a doubt nothing to be looked down upon. Every aspect detail of each frame was made to be animated. you can see Water droplets fall from the roof, eyeballs look around, steam coming from coffee pots, blood spilling and flowing on the sidewalk, etc etc. Not only that, but I believe music was composed specifically for this. It's definatly worthy of being dubbed one of the most innovative animated achievements in cartoon history.

That being said, I do have a few gripes. Having one person do all of the voices makes for a very interestingly awkward movie watching experience. Especially when it's a male doing the voices of all the females characters. Don't get me wrong, I don't think the actor doing all of these voices is bad by any means, in fact he's quite talented. But their have only been a handful of actors who have been able to do the voices of multiple characters and do it incredibly well, most notably Jim Carrey and Mel Blanc. (Looney Tunes.)

Another gripe of mine is it tends to drag. Each episode (chapter) has moments where the excitment is very lacking and dull. however, I think what the appeal to this series is the motion comic aspect, so I don't get terribly annoyed with the slow moving action going on.

The motion comic is a lot of fun and worth purchasing as well. Any Watchmen fan will enjoy this animated achievement. You can buy the complete DVD of all 12 episodes or you can go onto ITunes and purchase individual episodes. But if you are curious but don't want to purchase it before you see what it will be like, try watching the video on youtube, Click here --> Chapter 2 excerpt

I'm also quite excited to see the latest Watchmen DVD cartoon created by some of the best Japanese animators, Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter. Ill be getting it via Netflix here very soon! You'll definatly be hearing from me about this one

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