Transcreation

This is quite an interesting concept that I've been working on for quite a while but I didn't think there was a perfect term to discribe it.

This article from the Wall Street Journal brings up a great point in character designing. Cartoon CharactersGet Big MakeoverFor Overseas Fans Read this before you read the rest of my article please. (Note; If this article get deleted by Wall Street without my knowing, I really can't fix it for you, so hopefully it'll last a long while.)


Now some of these "Transcreations" we've known about for a while (I have anyway), Sesame Street has been using different characters in thier forien shows for many years, Brazilian SS having more sexual untertones (as paroded by Simpsons) and an African version introducing an HIV positive character (I don't know if he's a puppet or a real kid though.) Minnie's Hello Kitty make over is something I'm surprised Disney hasn't done already, being ones of little creativity. In an anime store in my mall, the Mickey and Minnie stuff they sell is the Two Toned versions of them. Not saying that they don't make the 1950s Mickey in japan but you can't hardly find any Mickey and Minnie stuff at the Disney store on the opposite side of the mall, let alone the 1930s versions. And well all know asians love to rape little girls (sarcasim), so the PPG makeover is not surprising, but one thing that confused me was that didn't they show the original PPG in japan? Otherwise they wouldn't have gotten the idea to make an anime version at all.
I'd say the Indians seem to fuck up our characters the most. With Ballywood being able to produce movies faster then the porn industry, there is a lack of quality control in thier market. One of the reasons the US edits forien cartoons is because their subject matter is to far fetched and doesn't make since if not either stated in an exposistion or remade with a theme americans are familiar with. The Ring is a good excample of the US remaking an Asian movie. Must've been that american's wouldn't understand that being scared to death is a logical and scarier method of dieing, so they rewrote the scene so the girl looks more digital then an acaul person coming out of the screen, and then having it so the guys face has been melted off. The Indians must rewrite origin stories or change the characters so that it matches the relgious and social trends of teh culture and not seem to bizzare (Why would a spider bite cause Peter Parker to turn into a spider, all animales are sacred in hinduism right?)Well reglardless of what the US does here's some Indian mackoffs.


India needs quality control.

Just in time for Halloween

Here's a great Mickey Mouse transcreation. Not Indian but still really messed up.

This is not something that's new to our own culture. If there is anybody guilty of distroying cartoons from a different country, it's the US. Back in the 90s (and to this day) anime's are torn apart limb from limb and all traces of it's origin's were stripped away. I remember watching Sailor Moon and being currious as to why they called those white triangle things (riceballs) Dohnuts. Those arn't dohnuts, and is this cartoon supposed to be in Japan or the US? All the words are in english and the characters clearly look american, but they talk about Tokyo and other sorts of weird japaness culture traits added in there.
Pokemon was a huge butcher by having all the japaness pokemon names stripped and given english versions. This was an improovement because there are some really awkward pokemon that would tack forever to pronouce right for a little 6 year old. I still don't know how to say Lugia right, but some names they should've kept (Like Stunky was Skunkapu, that sounds cuter). The anime was butchered as well, having the japaness characters stripped from the backgrounds, the japaness theme songs rewriten, and japaness culture showdowed and unexplained. There were a couple of episodes deleted because of cencorship issues (One with James having double D size boobs, and a Trigger happy warden), but episodes that were about japaness holidays like Kid's Day and Women's Day were at risk of being deleted because they were not US holidays. IMO they should be US holiday's, we have secritary's day, why not Kid's day?
Sonic the Hedghog might be the most fucked up and saddest story out there (that I can express here). A japaness character, baised off of Mikey Mouse, comes to the US and given two separate and completely different cartoons that don't relate to the games original storyline. The Game's storyline had been edited to fit an american audiance as well, making Sonic from another planet and forgetting details like where he was born and making up that his powers come from his shoes. Well we know how messed up the fandom has gotten because of this, I don't think I need t go into it.

Next time I write a blog I'll go into into this a little more, and talk about how americans 'Transcreate' their own shows with time.

Art as a Drive + Show Pitch

It's quite interesting to see what pushes a person to draw. Most people will they do it for fun and others have to make a living of it. But when push comes to shove I find that I withdraw my needs to draw anything.

Most people will say they draw/paint/write to get their feelings out, but I find that when I'm feeling down the last thing I want to do is draw. I've gotten this thing about not really getting to personal on-line (except to close friends). I fear that I give away too much of myself and I usually find that I express my feelings in characters I create. I don't have them scanned but I drew some pictures of Ginger the other day feeling very week and mad. She's a type of person in me that shows my weeker and shy side, and certainly my most feminie side. Demion and Rebecca show my teenage angst and darker sides, while Annie-Mae is my usual appearance and shows my funny normal side or the things I wish I could be.

To pitch a show idea here, I had thought of a show about 4 artists, of all totally different styles, coming together to fight off monsters that were created out of evil feelings. Sure sounds kinda stupid now but it's still in work (hear me out): One character is a grafitti artist, who was raised in gangs and a hard life of crime but after the death of his brother he turned to art. The 2nd artist is a fine artist who paints and does more traditional mediums, the 3rd is a cartoonist who doesn't really use the cartoons as a carrer but is doing alot of bum jobs until she gets published, and the 4th is a young architect who uses mathamatical graphs and measurments as an art form. They use thier skills like weapons but it's not a thing they use on people. The premise is about creatures that are created by artists in their artwork that come to life and try to target and attack the subject that it's about. ex. A gang member tags a store with a symbol that tells other members that that place has to be raided later or belongs to that gang. The symbol will come to life and attack rival gang members or try to rob the store. So our grafitti artist will use his spary paint to block out the artist work and 'save the day'. This just doesn't happen in grafitti art but even fine artists and scuptures will paint or create things that will take over the artist and that artist will become a power of self destruction. In a way it's almost like our 4 artist heros are ghost hunters, only they can see the art come to life and can use thier skills to fight them off. The Grafitti artist uses speed as an advantage, the Fine Artist uses strong artistic background to create strong attacks, the Cartoonist uses her silly stuff to confuse or cause status afflictions and the Architech will build up a strong defence with good math skills. (This sounds corny even to me).
This wouldn't be a cutesy cartoon, I was thinking it be in a serious anime style, almost like Bleach, and would have the characters deal with death and serious problems (like our grafitti artist seeing ghosts of his lost gang members). One thing I think would make it different from other animes is that there wouldn't be alot of talking amoungst the heros, they would use their art to express thier feelings and thoughts to one another. Ex. Our Architect gets a prank pulled on him and gets his hair dyed a different color and the Cartoonst would keep painting her hair different colors to try to make him feel better. The only time you might hear long conversaitions would be when the media is talking about current events or from artists who didn't have the powers of the heros. It would mainly be an art driven cartoon but I was thinking of using other forms of art like even a musican, a sculpter, an actor, and a writer but that's over stepping it at the moment. I havn't given the show much thought or development because it'd take alot of time and money and is too much of a streatch to gain a good intrest. A show pitch is better then no pitch.

"What makes you draw? What makes you go on drawing even when so much stress has given you reason to stop?" There are alot of famous succesful cartoonists/artists out there who've been given enough BS about thier art that would make them want to stop. It's a bizzar artist drive, something in our bones maybe? We have blocks but something will strike us as funny or genius and then you enjoy drawing again. Never give up on your born need to draw, even if you're not good at it, or people are giving you shit about it. Anybody can be succesful you need the right market, I guess then the real issue is do you want to make a carrer of it.

Some of you might be happy that I'm trying not to post fanart to my blog here. If you're an active veiwer of my DA account you'll see that I do alot of fanart. Only one of these characters are mine, which is the girl character. I think my next big bio page will be about Annie-Mae because she is me. Once I get my electrical problems fixed I'll scan a bunch of pictures of her just for you. For those of you who want to know that guy character belong to 8horns, and is © to himself.