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Lipstick into Space!
Sep. 28th, 2005 07:04 pmI see that one can now buy some DVDs of Clutch Cargo. This was the peculiarly "animated" TV series that featured red, red live-action lips superimposed over cartoon faces. I don't care much for Clutch, but I'm tempted to buy Volume 1, because it contains an episode of Space Angel among its extras. Now there was a science fiction show.
[Here are some cels from both shows.]
Probably I should save my money, sit tight, and hope for a Space Angel DVD. These guys seem to be peddling a VCD (or DVD-R?) version with a couple of episodes. I wonder if it's legit. Their summary of the show is pretty good:
But SPACE ANGEL is a lot more entertaining than CLUTCH, and part of the reason is the great sense of design graphic illustrator Alex Toth brought to the very low budget syndicated effort.
Sadly underappreciated both in his day and now, Toth's lanky heroes and shapely heroines reminds of both Wally Wood, Al Williamson and Frank Frazetta (though the latter was probably far more influenced by Toth than the other way around), as well as all the great work done on the E.C. space/sf comics of the 1950's. In terms of overall realism in cartoons, SPACE ANGEL's minimalist style actually produced an entirely different aesthetic experience. Instead of crude animation loops, SPACE ANGEL just forgoes them altogether and holds on static, non-moving images for most of its duration per show.
It's a lot more inspired than the limited animation makes it sound. For example, the care Toth puts into choosing his angles is what makes it so much fun. They're like storyboards from a lost episode of some great but vintage space opera epic, carefully rendered for maximum graphic impact. So while they don't move very much from pose to pose, the poses themselves are often striking. It's a strange hybrid of animation meets comic strips laced with light sf.
One thought, though: Shouldn't Clutch and his pals respond REALLY well to video compression? They scarcely move to begin with! I'm surpised they didn't cram all 52 episodes onto a single DVD...
[Here are some cels from both shows.]
Probably I should save my money, sit tight, and hope for a Space Angel DVD. These guys seem to be peddling a VCD (or DVD-R?) version with a couple of episodes. I wonder if it's legit. Their summary of the show is pretty good:
But SPACE ANGEL is a lot more entertaining than CLUTCH, and part of the reason is the great sense of design graphic illustrator Alex Toth brought to the very low budget syndicated effort.
Sadly underappreciated both in his day and now, Toth's lanky heroes and shapely heroines reminds of both Wally Wood, Al Williamson and Frank Frazetta (though the latter was probably far more influenced by Toth than the other way around), as well as all the great work done on the E.C. space/sf comics of the 1950's. In terms of overall realism in cartoons, SPACE ANGEL's minimalist style actually produced an entirely different aesthetic experience. Instead of crude animation loops, SPACE ANGEL just forgoes them altogether and holds on static, non-moving images for most of its duration per show.
It's a lot more inspired than the limited animation makes it sound. For example, the care Toth puts into choosing his angles is what makes it so much fun. They're like storyboards from a lost episode of some great but vintage space opera epic, carefully rendered for maximum graphic impact. So while they don't move very much from pose to pose, the poses themselves are often striking. It's a strange hybrid of animation meets comic strips laced with light sf.
One thought, though: Shouldn't Clutch and his pals respond REALLY well to video compression? They scarcely move to begin with! I'm surpised they didn't cram all 52 episodes onto a single DVD...
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