Tuesday 5 March 2013

What's all the hoo-ha about?

I suppose it was Monty Python's Flying Circus that started it all. Animated silliness, frequently set to music. Heads being chopped off, blown up, or replaced by unlikely substitutes. Big feet coming down from above and crushing very distinguished looking people. Yes, that's you I'm talking about, Terry Gilliam.



That show was first produced in 1969, and continued to be manufactured, sometimes by lumberjacks, until 1974.



On the demise of the show, people around the world tried to manufacture substitutes. Some pleasing efforts resulted, but it was never quite enough. A quick look at Lifetime Gross box-office takings in the USA suggest that people still like animated silliness, in all its various forms.



Computer animation brought things closer to home. Cheap, or free, computer animation programs have unleashed the hitherto shackled creativity latent in numerous persons. Just to give you an idea, here is a list of free, yes free (though maybe with built-in limitations), animation software available on the internet.

So what, you ask. Well, all that was a lead-in to me saying, there's a new channel on YouTube. It's called HuHa and is self-described as follows:

Brightly-Coloured Animated Flipflappery for Adults.

The tastiest comedy toons on YouTube - featuring animal assassins, crime-fighting butchers, appalling advice and shocking greetings cards to send your frenemies.

Head chef Mr Weebl (the guy who brought you singing narwhals and that badger song. You know the one. It goes "badgers, badgers, badgers, badgers". It's about badgers) will be serving up a technicolour soup of delicious adult animation for your delectation.
Yes, appalling, isn't it. It gets worse. Here's their promotional video.


Sorry about the annoying whine at the end. That's what passes for humour these days, and, under the present government, there's nothing I can do about it.

Over the last few years, we have featured interviews with selected representatives of the Australian home computer animation cadre. These would include Levi George (Livin' With Steve), Brett Snelgrove (New Eden) and Chris George (Fried Rice).

Now we have news in from England that New Eden, by Brett Snelgrove and Freek van Haagen, has been elevated up the batting order. They were invited to contribute to HuHa and will be venturing there forthwith. Here's the evidence.



And to think it was all caused by Terry Gilliam in an unguarded moment...

1 comment:

Ed Love said...

Try 'what about dick?' by Eric Idle. Not animation, but great fun IMHO!