[Author's Note: For more information or to browse earlier episodes, visit www.directorama.net.]
Click to enlarge:
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Peet Gelderblom directs, edits and develops commercials, TV programs and broadcast design in Amsterdam. He founded 24LiesASecond, for which he wrote and edited several essays, and is the twisted cartoonist behind Directorama (the website as well as the book).
[Author's Note: Some portions of this article appeared in a different form on Patchwork Earth. Special thanks to the Transformers Wiki for images. This article was begun for the May 8th anniversary and edited to coincide with the film's release.]
I was working on the next comics column, inspired by some of the welcome suggestions and comments to my last entry, when a special date snuck up on me. So do pardon my self-indulgence.
When I began this essay, it was Friday, May 8th, 2009, and Transformers celebrated 25 years of near-continuous presence in various media, from animated cartoons to live action films to, quite obviously, action figures for children and obsessed collectors. It was, actually, the comic book that was released first, with the intent to stir up interest in the new toyline. And with a sequel to Michael Bay's spastic blockbuster film coming in a couple of weeks and the newest speciously-reasoned philosophy book recently released (surely the sign that you've hit the zeitgeist, right?), it's a time of reflection for armchair pop culture theorists; what has led the property to endure—even, arguably, to flourish of late—when so many have fallen by the wayside? While critical reception to the film largely confirms the popular view that the property's long-running fiction is little more than a facile toy commercial, is there anything buried there to hold onto?
Noted webcartoonist and longtime Transformers fan David Willis (Shortpacked!, Joyce and Walky!), in noting the anniversary date, proposed, "...perhaps being a marketing gimmick is part of Transformers' longevity. It's free to reinvent itself whenever it feels like it so as to keep itself viable...Star Trek had to sludge through forty years, at the end subsisting on nothing more than fumes, before it was allowed to reinvent itself top-to-bottom for a fresher audience." And indeed, Transformers' numerous iterations over the years found it trendsetting as often as it drew on nostalgia (the Emmy award-winning cartoon Beast Wars, for instance, was one of the earlier uses of fully-CG animation for a wide audience, debuting only about six months after Toy Story). Continue Reading »
[Author's Note: For more information or to browse earlier episodes, visit www.directorama.net.]
Click to enlarge:
__________________________________________
Peet Gelderblom directs, edits and develops commercials, TV programs and broadcast design in Amsterdam. He founded 24LiesASecond, for which he wrote and edited several essays, and is the twisted cartoonist behind Directorama (the website as well as the book).
[Author's Note: For more information or to browse earlier episodes, visit www.directorama.net.]
Click to enlarge:
__________________________________________
Peet Gelderblom directs, edits and develops commercials, TV programs and broadcast design in Amsterdam. He founded 24LiesASecond, for which he wrote and edited several essays, and is the twisted cartoonist behind Directorama (the website as well as the book).
[Author's Note: For more information or to browse earlier episodes, visit www.directorama.net.]
Click to enlarge:
__________________________________________
Peet Gelderblom directs, edits and develops commercials, TV programs and broadcast design in Amsterdam. He founded 24LiesASecond, for which he wrote and edited several essays, and is the twisted cartoonist behind Directorama (the website as well as the book).
With regards to my absence from this website, I can only offer my heartfelt apologies and a list of excuses, only some of which would be of interest to the readership which had been so supportive of this column in the past: impending nuptials and subsequent change of residence, a possible comic project of my own since put on brief hiatus (artists wanted—apply below!), the effects of the economic climate on my day job, and repeated consultations on my upcoming oral surgery (really, don't ask). It's been something of a "restructuring period" around the homestead of late and I can't yet imagine how the next few months will affect my planned return to regular column-writing. My lovely wife-to-be is a teacher with a particular eye to comics in the classroom, and our discussions have meant this site has rarely been far from my mind. I believe it was the great Albert Swearengen who said that announcing your plans is a good way to hear God laugh. That said, with an event of some notice occurring this week amongst the "comics to film" crowd, I'd be remiss in not peeking out from my self-imposed gopher hole and taking a glance at the landscape.
Quick notes of thanks that I'd planned to make before I vanished from God's green Internet last: To Journalista's Dirk Deppey and to Savage Critic Abhay Khosala, who both had kind words for this column, as well as to Top Shelf's Leigh Walton (also very kind), and to each of the readers who made the comments threads such an enjoyable follow-up to these over-labored writings. Though to those who were troubled by my tendency to meander, this might not be the best entry to rejoin my scattered thought processes...
And of course thank you to Keith Uhlich for his never-ending fount of patience and goodwill. One of these days I promise to get around to earning it, I swear. Continue Reading »
[Author's Note: Directorama will be taking a short break. It will return soon. For more information or to browse earlier episodes, visit www.directorama.net.]
__________________________________________
Peet Gelderblom directs, edits and develops commercials, TV programs and broadcast design in Amsterdam. He founded 24LiesASecond, for which he wrote and edited several essays, and is the twisted cartoonist behind Directorama (the website as well as the book).
[Author's Note: For more information or to browse earlier episodes, visit www.directorama.net.]
Click to enlarge:
__________________________________________
Peet Gelderblom directs, edits and develops commercials, TV programs and broadcast design in Amsterdam. He founded 24LiesASecond, for which he wrote and edited several essays, and is the twisted cartoonist behind Directorama (the website as well as the book).
[Author's Note: For more information or to browse earlier episodes, visit www.directorama.net.]
Click to enlarge:
__________________________________________
Peet Gelderblom directs, edits and develops commercials, TV programs and broadcast design in Amsterdam. He founded 24LiesASecond, for which he wrote and edited several essays, and is the twisted cartoonist behind Directorama (the website as well as the book).
[Author's Note: For more information or to browse earlier episodes, visit www.directorama.net.]
Click to enlarge:
__________________________________________
Peet Gelderblom directs, edits and develops commercials, TV programs and broadcast design in Amsterdam. He founded 24LiesASecond, for which he wrote and edited several essays, and is the twisted cartoonist behind Directorama (the website as well as the book).
[Author's Note: For more information or to browse earlier episodes, visit www.directorama.net.]
Click to enlarge:
__________________________________________
Peet Gelderblom directs, edits and develops commercials, TV programs and broadcast design in Amsterdam. He founded 24LiesASecond, for which he wrote and edited several essays, and is the twisted cartoonist behind Directorama (the website as well as the book).
[Author's Note: For more information or to browse earlier episodes, visit www.directorama.net.]
Click to enlarge:
__________________________________________
Peet Gelderblom directs, edits and develops commercials, TV programs and broadcast design in Amsterdam. He founded 24LiesASecond, for which he wrote and edited several essays, and is the twisted cartoonist behind Directorama (the website as well as the book).
[Author's Note: For more information or to browse earlier episodes, visit www.directorama.net.]
Click to enlarge:
__________________________________________
Peet Gelderblom directs, edits and develops commercials, TV programs and broadcast design in Amsterdam. He founded 24LiesASecond, for which he wrote and edited several essays, and is the twisted cartoonist behind Directorama (the website as well as the book).
[Author's Note: For more information or to browse earlier episodes, visit www.directorama.net.]
Click to enlarge:
__________________________________________
Peet Gelderblom directs, edits and develops commercials, TV programs and broadcast design in Amsterdam. He founded 24LiesASecond, for which he wrote and edited several essays, and is the twisted cartoonist behind Directorama (the website as well as the book).
[Author's Note: For more information or to browse earlier episodes, visit www.directorama.net.]
Click to enlarge:
__________________________________________
Peet Gelderblom directs, edits and develops commercials, TV programs and broadcast design in Amsterdam. He founded 24LiesASecond, for which he wrote and edited several essays, and is the twisted cartoonist behind Directorama (the website as well as the book).
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