Upstream Engineering

This week marks the first of two comics for a little thing me and the boys over at Enliv are doing called "Sight vs. Write." For anybody who didn't catch last Monday's post, the idea is to challenge ourselves to make a comic without words, depending solely on the art to convey the gag, and then the following week depend completely on the writing itself, with minimal art to back it up.

I have to apologize in advance, as I'm not sure that the females in my avid readership are necessarily going understand today's comic. I doubt many of you ladies have had this particular type of experience, but hopefully the guys can relate to the sinister underpinnings of America's public sanitation industry.

Also weighing in on the "Sight vs. Write" debate, we have a submission from Mr. Andy Fenley, a co-writer on last week's comic. I'm inclined to like this one better than the original.

Certainly better than Mr. Brandon "Rick-Roll" Vasquez's similar attempt from sometime last year ;).

Don't forget to check back on Thursday for another animation from around the internet, and Monday for the completion of our "Sight vs. Write" challenge.

And if you're still looking for good entertainment - go see my utter thrashing in MM's first Skeet Thrower Fantasy Draft. Don't worry. It's safe for work. Although I guess my parents don't really have to worry about that anymore.

1990's Commercials - Pixar Animation Studio

Did you know that originally, Pixar sold computers? For reals yo.
Back in '86, Pixar's main business was selling their Pixar Image Computer to the "high end visualization market", like the medical industry. Their hardware sold for $135,000, by no means an impulse buy. Well, in order to sell these bohemith they had to be able to show off its capabilities, so they hired on a Disney animator by the name of John Lasseter (whom I've discussed briefly in previous posts). And so he made some short computer animations using this technology - the humble beginnings of what would later become Pixar Animation Studios. You might have heard of them.

Well they didn't go from selling computers to making Wall E overnight. Along the way they had some major financial troubles, most likely stemming from the fact that not a lot of companies wanted to buy a $135,000 computer (did I mention the $35,000 workstation they had to purchase along with it to make it useful?). So to make some money in between total financial ruin and Toy Story, Pixar made commercials. 71 to be exact. (Check out more on the history of Pixar here - it's an interesting read).

I would be surprised if most of you hadn't seen at least some of these before, but I doubt that it's common knowledge that they were made by Pixar. The most popular and well known of their commercials were a series of Listerine and Life Savers ads. These were also the only ones I could find on the internet (with the help of my boy MM - 300 posts strong!). Looking back at these it's pretty amazing ... I never really thought about how much innovation went into simple things like selling me jelly lifesavers, and then selling me the hygienic product to remove their remnants from my mouth.

This last one is a little ways into the video - at approximately 48 seconds. You should be able to just click about halfway in and see it.