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So after getting a bunch of wisdom teeth pulled out, my doctor instructed me to take it easy for a few days so I could recover from the blood loss. During this time I decided to flip through my dvd collection looking for something to watch while I lay in bed in stoic agony.
After a while of searching I come across a dvd of a show I hadn't seen in a while, MTV's "The Maxx". The series based off of the Sam Keith graphic novels, about seemingly unrelated people (and creatures) with dark interconnected pasts, who are all intrinsically tied to a homeless "superhero" known as "The Maxx" ,
it's a bizarre series that deals with themes of murder, mental illness, pedophilia, among other unpleasant things. It's an easy story to follow, but an almost impossible one to explain, with levels of depth and meaning that can be appreciated upon second viewings.
The detailed artwork in the series is amazing, the unique character designs, and funky backgrounds, give the series it's salient look, frankly it's the closest thing to a "living" comic book I've ever seen.
The casting is perfect, each of the voice actors adds a certain flair to the characters they portray.
There is a scene I remember seeing when I was younger, it takes place on a cliff, and the main character is talking to "The Maxx", while he clips her toenails, before she ends up getting frustrated and starts biting them herself. To this day that scene stands out in my mind, for two reasons.
The first is because it was so weird to see the actual image itself, it proved to me that animation is a medium without compromise, I knew from that moment on that I could tell a story in animation exactly the way I wanted to, and the only thing it would cost me is time.
The second reason is I found that scene profound, it took me a while to understand why, now I feel it's because it was a human moment in the mist of all this craziness, and it was shocking to feel a connection towards cartoon characters. It was a cathartic moment in my life when I realized that cartoons didn't just need to be humorous, but could be serious as well.
Telling stories is a connate part of being human, arguably it's the defining thing that makes us unique as a species, cavemen painted the things and stories that mattered to them on walls. That's why I'm continue to animate my vanity project, spending 8-12 hours of my free time doing so, because the story is important to me, and animation allows me to tell it free from the bondage of the impossible.
Thanks,
- Celx
P.S. I'm curious as to why others decided to pick up animation as a story telling medium...
P.P.S. The second act in "A Twisted Transparency" is almost done!
Spynaka
Two left feet?
Celx-Requin
Yeah I was looking at that too, it's a panel from the comic, in the cartoon it's not like that, ha ha!
Oh Sam Keith, you and your crazy drawings...