If ever a thread needed an [IMG] tag...

March 27, 2013 1:34 PM

Calvin & Hobbes GIFs
posted by zarq (44 comments total)

If ever a thread needed a [IMG] tag...

Not to mention a [copyrightpiracy] tag...
posted by y2karl at 1:47 PM on March 27, 2013

Beautiful.
posted by sendai sleep master at 1:47 PM on March 27, 2013

zarq, you are the best.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:49 PM on March 27, 2013

Not to mention a [copyrightpiracy] tag...

Transformative work, not for profit. Pretty clearly fair use. Not to mention that Calvin and Hobbes ended over 17 years ago. It's ethically and morally OK to use C&H, even if it's legally under thumb forever.
posted by explosion at 1:50 PM on March 27, 2013 [9 favorites]

If Bill Watterson were dead he'd be rolling in his grave.
posted by doctor_negative at 1:51 PM on March 27, 2013 [6 favorites]

Not to mention that Calvin and Hobbes ended over 17 years ago.

!!

.
posted by zarq at 1:52 PM on March 27, 2013 [15 favorites]

I've never wanted to go back and change my AIM buddy icon so badly.
posted by papayaninja at 1:53 PM on March 27, 2013 [1 favorite]

Not to mention a [copyrightpiracy] tag...

Haha. Been down that road. Not worth it. Just sit back and enjoy it until the C&D, is my advice.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:53 PM on March 27, 2013

Not to mention that Calvin and Hobbes ended over 17 years ago.

Where has my life gone.
posted by Brainy at 1:55 PM on March 27, 2013 [6 favorites]

No. No, no no no no.

No.
posted by aramaic at 1:56 PM on March 27, 2013 [3 favorites]

At least he doesn't seem to be peeing on anything.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 1:56 PM on March 27, 2013 [8 favorites]

If Bill Watterson were dead he'd be rolling in his grave.

[img src = 'billwattersonrollinginhisgrave.gif']
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:56 PM on March 27, 2013

Also, these are slightly uncanny valley for me. Calvin battering with the chair especially.
posted by Brainy at 1:57 PM on March 27, 2013 [2 favorites]

Yikes. Seeing these characters move around feels ... wrong.
posted by tepidmonkey at 1:58 PM on March 27, 2013 [14 favorites]

The incredible ANIMATED MONA LISA smiles and waves IN REAL TIME! You have to SEE IT to believe it!
posted by Nomyte at 1:58 PM on March 27, 2013 [14 favorites]

They're mostly awkward, seems to me. There's a big skill gap between Watterson's drawing and this guy's animation. I'm thoroughly okay with people sampling culture and playing around with it, but these aren't doing it for me.
posted by echo target at 2:00 PM on March 27, 2013 [4 favorites]

Gah I don't know why people have to mess with art and my childhood memories but I suppose I don't have to look.
posted by KokuRyu at 2:00 PM on March 27, 2013

fully animated panels would have been over the line, the GIFs are okay... I agree with the uncanny valley comment above though.
posted by variella at 2:01 PM on March 27, 2013

The one of Calvin's mom's face drifting from right to left across an unmoving head.

Yeah, that is not how faces work at all.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 2:04 PM on March 27, 2013

(not facist)
posted by ODiV at 2:10 PM on March 27, 2013 [1 favorite]

Related: A full animation of a classic Calvin and Hobbes strip. Probably won't be up for long.
posted by lazaruslong at 2:14 PM on March 27, 2013 [2 favorites]

Okay, there's a few that work well: sled on the edge. Dancing. Itches. Welcome home. Spaceman Spiff. Dinner.

Whenever the guy tries to do custom animation, he ends up with features floating across faces, bent arms rotating for no reason, and stuff like this. When he backs off and just lets the original art do its thing, it actually translates to GIF pretty well. Watterson did lots of multi-panel sequences that are basically the key frames for a traditional animation already, and those make for nice GIFs.
posted by echo target at 2:14 PM on March 27, 2013

It still astounds me how adept Watterson is with line art (and he was quite good with color, too). In the same tier as Windsor McCay, George Herriman and Walt Kelley, all of whom incidentally reached their creative peaks 20-30 years apart from each other. But I think Watterson was the last of the comic-strip art geniuses... the medium is obsolete.

I hear Watterson is living a contented life as a painter. I wish him well, and can't express how much joy his art brought to me. Even those GIFs are enough to make me giggle here at this coffee shop.
posted by Jubal Kessler at 2:15 PM on March 27, 2013 [2 favorites]

There's something about this that just doesn't work. Watterson's lines are already alive, you don't need to make them move. This is like bad taxidermy.
posted by oulipian at 2:19 PM on March 27, 2013 [19 favorites]

This makes me nostalgic for both the comic strips and the internet of my childhood. Nifty
posted by es_de_bah at 2:20 PM on March 27, 2013

The newspaper comic strip is obsolete, yes.
posted by Melismata at 2:27 PM on March 27, 2013 [1 favorite]

I never remember reading through my treasured Calvin & Hobbes books and saying to myself "these are great an all, but I sure wish they'd move or something."
posted by craven_morhead at 2:28 PM on March 27, 2013 [1 favorite]

You know how they're taking dead movie stars and animating them to make them look like they are selling coca-cola and it's really disgusting and disturbing? I'm just glad these are so amateurish that I can pass over them without feeling like something has been ripped out of my childhood.
posted by benito.strauss at 2:30 PM on March 27, 2013 [2 favorites]

Related: A full animation of a classic Calvin and Hobbes strip.

I am confused by the deployment of 'classic' here, as it seems to specify a smaller category within the larger set of Calvin and Hobbes strips.
posted by shakespeherian at 2:30 PM on March 27, 2013 [2 favorites]

Well, that's straight-up wrong.

No, the newspaper and the newspaper strip are both dying. It's sad, but true. My daughter reads the comics page every day and loves them, but honestly if you want something that's breaking new ground, it's not in your local newspaper. I probably have the only 12 year-old in existence who cracks jokes she got from Peanuts strips. But the medium is moribund.
posted by GuyZero at 2:34 PM on March 27, 2013 [2 favorites]

I think these are awful, plain awful. Thanks for posting, regardless
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 2:37 PM on March 27, 2013 [3 favorites]

I prefer posting animated Ayn Rand gifs, when I'm trying to come off as smart and deep.
posted by surplus at 2:41 PM on March 27, 2013

shakespeherian: "Related: A full animation of a classic Calvin and Hobbes strip.

I am confused by the deployment of 'classic' here, as it seems to specify a smaller category within the larger set of Calvin and Hobbes strips."

You are incredibly right. Retracted!
posted by lazaruslong at 2:58 PM on March 27, 2013

Worth it for the dancing gif, which is everything I imagined them dancing to be.
posted by immlass at 3:58 PM on March 27, 2013

These make me so happy.
posted by naturesgreatestmiracle at 4:29 PM on March 27, 2013 [1 favorite]

I think it's interesting how, in my mind's eye, these were already animated. Watterson was that good. As echo target mentions, some of the strips were essentially key-frames for animation already, so my mind just filled in the blank. A few of the more subtle ones are cool, regardless.
posted by disillusioned at 4:46 PM on March 27, 2013 [2 favorites]

Most of the ones I looked at were too fast. It was jarring. So I stopped.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:58 PM on March 27, 2013 [1 favorite]

It makes me so yearn for more Calvin and Hobbes. Watterson doesn't owe people anything but I hope he knows how much his work is loved, appreciated and yearned.
posted by jadepearl at 5:09 PM on March 27, 2013

This is like colorizing old B&W movies. No thanks.
posted by jeff-o-matic at 6:32 PM on March 27, 2013

Gee, thank you for reminding me that when this was still in the paper, my children were younger than Calvin in those pictures. And now they are adults in their mid to late 20's and I am wondering where my youth went...

(Actually, a big piece of it lives in Calvin's world. Wheee!)
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 6:56 PM on March 27, 2013 [1 favorite]

Thank you to everyone who was better able to express my aversion to this whole business, especially taxidermy guy.
posted by legospaceman at 7:32 PM on March 27, 2013 [1 favorite]

It really says something about the quality of Waterson's art that none of these is an improvement on the original.
posted by bokane at 2:30 AM on March 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

The one of Calvin's mom's face drifting from right to left across an unmoving head. Man. That... I was going to say it was bad, but on further consideration, I'm kind of impressed by just how weird it made me feel.

I believe the term you are looking for is ZALGO
posted by FatherDagon at 9:14 AM on March 28, 2013

I've heard rumors of Peanuts being adapted into some animated Christmas special. Yeah, good luck with that.

In all seriousness though, I'm sure a lot of us read C&H thinking it would be make for a great cartoon. The first collection I ever saw was "Something Under the Bed Is Drooling," and the cover art always struck me as looking like an animation still.

That said, I can understand why Watterson was against the idea... having a voice for Hobbs would've been weird, and it was very different visually than Peanuts.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 3:11 PM on March 28, 2013