Well, I just wanted to do a quick re-cap of this year's Halloween Countdown.  I hope everyone enjoyed the 31 Days of Monsters, I know I enjoyed putting it together.  Though I kind of want to take a little breather, I can't help but think about what I'm going to do next year.  Hmmmm.  Anyway, enjoy the monsters!

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

Now I kind of want to take a 31 day nap!

Welcome back to the final day of my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown!  I can't believe the month is over.   In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, not to mention my love of 80s animation, I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on today, All Hallows Eve.

Today's monster was voted the creepiest by my lovely wife who just couldn't stand the look of it.  This one is a Class 4 free floating spirit of some alien origin and in the episode, the Ghostbusters have to shuttle up to a space station to fight it…



I believe this is the sort of monster that falls into the category of a horror.   It's all teeth and tentacles, eyeballs and biting mouths.  Sort of like the Blob, this kind of monster doesn't seem all that scary until it starts to grow and the next thing you know there's just no running from it.  I guess it's a bit of fear through suffocation, and this guy is a bit more than I'd bet even Steve McQueen could handle.   Lucky for us the Ghostbusters were on the job.   If nothing else this monster is colored perfect for the occasion.



As for this particular cel, it's kind of neat because it's part of a scene in the episode where this monster is obscured by the gang of Ghostbusters who are trying to battle it.  So this is the first time that most of this art has seen the light of day (not that you couldn't see similar shots in other scenes...)  Here's a couple screen grabs, the first on the left with my cel, and a second which is a more natural shot of the creature on the right...

  

So that's it for the 31 Days of Monsters here at Branded in the 80s as another Halloween has come and by tomorrow morning it'll just be a great memory.  There was a lot of great stuff posted around the internet this year, so if you want to find your way to a lot more content you can head on over to the Countdown to Halloween to check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event.  If you'd like to read more Halloween-y goodness from me, you can also click on the Halloween Archive link to the left (the orange banner with King Kong.)  I don't know about all of you, but I plan on kicking back and watching scary movies with my wife all day and into the night.  Here's hoping we get a good lot of Trick-or-Treators, and I hope every one of you has a great Halloween.  Thanks for stopping by!

We're down to the second to last day of 2009's spooky event, the 31 Days of Monsters Countdown to Halloween.  It's the eve of All Hallow's Eve I guess, and I have my second to last set of monster cels to share.  In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, not to mention my love of 80s animation, I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on Halloween day.

Today's cel is a really fun one that falls into that category of a more finished image.  The monster is from episode 53, "The Scaring of the Green."  Typically, most background elements are separated out onto a layer of their own, be it a painting on paper behind all the stacked cels, or on a cel layer if there's movement involved in the BG elements.  This cel featuring a huge green saber-toothed cat-like bog hound monster (with super creepy spider-esque eyes) chasing Mr. Venkman is a bit of an anomaly in that the BG elements, as well as both main foreground characters are all painted on one layer…



I can see this presenting all sorts of problems in the process, most involving either syncing up the artwork in the various cels in the sequence to make sure the animation isn't so bumpy and making sure the cels are painted in the proper sequences so that everything is colored correctly and overlaps properly.  Maybe the animators were going for something more crude in a chase sequence like this and any jarring jumps between cels would work towards the tone of the sequence.  Either way, when taken out of context like this it works very well as a stand alone piece of art.



I do think the hunter green which was chose as the color of the beast was a little unfortunate as it blends in to the black line-work enough to make the shape and features of the creature a little hard to distinguish.  Luckily I have the pencil under-drawing for this piece, thought it was a little damaged by the cel (the paint on the back of the cels sometimes bonds with the paper drawing underneath, probably in the years that these were stored in warehouses.)  You get the basic drift though…



Apparently, the notation NR-5 refers to leaving paint off the cel as it's transparent on my copy of the finished cel.

I was also lucky enough to find a second cel from the same episode featuring this huge bog hound that shows it with a little more definition in the final cel…



I also dig this second one because of the little bits of light yellow green paint illustrating the creature being sucked into a ghost trap.  It's just a nice juxtaposition of a slight painterly style mixed with the clean cel art...



As weird as it might have turned out, I think maybe his spots should have been rendered in another color to help give him some more overall definition.  Anyway...

Also, for any of you Real Ghostbusters fans out there that haven't picked up any of the new DVDs, I've decided to give away a copy of the Volume 1 Steelbook edition of the show!  There are only two days left to enter, so get to the typing...



This 5-disc set contains the first 25 episodes of the series (including the 1st thirteen episode Saturday Morning run) as well as some fun special features.  So what do you have to do to win this beauty?  All you have to do is send me an e-mail (or click on the Creature From the Black Lagoon monster in the sidebar) and make sure to include the following:

-Please put "The Real Ghostbusters Contest" in the subject line.
-List your favorite monster/ghost/creature from the series.
-Include your name.

The deadline for entries is October 31st at Midnight eastern standard time.  I'll be drawing a winner at random from the e-mails, and will respond to the winner via e-mail on November 1st.  Also, if you feel inclined, I would love everyone to spread the word about the 31 Days of Monsters countdown and the contest, so hit up those social networks and tell a friend (my twitter handle is smurfwreck)!

Once again, if you're enjoying these daily Real Ghostbusters monster posts, make sure to come back tomorrow for the last installment and tell a friend about the 31 Days of Monsters.   If you'd like to read more Halloween-y goodness, you can also click on the Halloween Archive link to the left (the banner with King Kong), as well as heading on over to the Countdown to Halloween to check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event…

Welcome back to my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown!  We're into the top three.  Again, as I've been reiterating all month long (imagine I'm saying this next bit super-fast like John Moschitta in a Micro Machines commercial), in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, not to mention my love of 80s animation, I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve. Whew…

I was thinking that yesterday's flying toothy head monster would have been my top choice, and it probably would be if just on the frightening scale, but today's is the one I think might take away the award for the coolest.  I've mentioned on the this site before how much I like cephalopods, and even though I haven't really gotten into H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos all that much, I do love squid monsters…



When I first came across this guy it was after finding the cel that's below this one, the close up of a similar creature's face.   So I was so happy when I found this zoomed-out view of one of the other spawn of Cathulhu to give the whole thing a bit more definition.  Also, how cool is it that I found a cel where the squid monster is getting his arm blown off!  As you can see from the pencil under-drawing below the destruction is being caused by a proton pack blast…



In the original animated sequence this blast is obscured by another creature in the foreground, so it's kind of cool to finally get a clear view of this type of action in the cartoon.  Looking a bit closer at the pencil drawing you can see where the animator did a bit of a test with the image by using an exacto knife to cut out the lightning-like charges that surround the blacks from the proton packs.  My guess is that it was testing the backlit animation process, but I can't be sure…



As I mentioned, I first came into contact with this guy when I found this cel below.   At a distance the create looks a lot less alien, but when you do a super close-up it gets very weird looking indeed…



These are both from one of my most favorite episodes of the series, #41 "The Collect Call of Cathulhu." 



It was also written by one of my favorite animation writers, Michael Reaves, who has provided some of the best episodes in cartoon series such as He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and Dungeons and Dragons.  I love that for some reason or another he ended up adding the "a" to Cthulhu to differentiate it.  The episode is about as steeped in H.P. Lovecraft mythos as a 30 minute syndicated cartoon could possibly be with all sorts of refrences to the world of Cthulhu like the Necronomicon, Miskatonic University, and the ficticious city of Arkham, Massachusetts.  Just great stuff!



Once again, if you're enjoying these daily Real Ghostbusters monster posts, make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment and tell a friend about the 31 Days of Monsters.   If you'd like to read more Halloween-y goodness, you can also click on the Halloween Archive link to the left (the banner with King Kong), as well as heading on over to the Countdown to Halloween to check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event…

We're really getting down to the wire here, and imho these monsters are getting pretty messed up, especially for having aired on Network television in the mid 80s.  My 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown only has three more ghoulish creeps to unveil!  For those joining the party late, in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, not to mention my love of 80s animation, I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve.

Today we have one of the creepiest bar none.  This probably would have been my pick for the last monster, but my wife is really a better judge of what's creep-tasitc.  Ever since I saw my first Friday the 13th jump-scare back in the mid 80s I've just never been all that afraid of all things horror and monster related.  I also started reading Stephen King and Clive Barker at a pretty young age, so I think I was tempered on the scary.  That doesn't mean I don't appreciate the genre, in fact I love it to death, but I'm very rarely scared or really creeped out (giant spiders, anthropomorphized food products, and multi-armed ghoulies do a pretty good job…)



I'm finding that a lot of sharp teeth, especially ones at weird angles are also one of my soft spots.   I think, like most people, I don't like the idea of being bitten, but being torn to shreds while being bitten seems so much worse.  This guy looks like a giant shark with wings and a really flat snout, and I'll bet it would be pretty ugly of you stuck your hand in that gaping maw of his.  Sort of like that scene in Jaws 4 at the beginning when the family's youngest had his arm bitten off and he held up the tattered yellow rain slicker all wet with blood and gore.   I love that I also got a chance to slip in a bit of Peter and Egon before this list came to an end, especially when they're clearly frightened out of their gourds.

This monster is actually a converted set of roller-coaster cars.  It was the handy work of the Boogeyman, one of the Ghostbusters most famous villains.  He hails from episode #81, "The Boggeyman is Back".



As for the cel itself, I was a little bummed that the black line-work on the photocopy portion of the cel has faded so much over time.  Again, not to harp on the quality issues as it worked at the time and for the the purpose it was made for, but as a collector these overseas produced cels just don't last.  In part I'm glad I have a site like Branded to preserve what is left of some of these cels so that I can at least get a digital copy that'll serve as a record frozen in time for anyone who might be interested in cel animation for years to come.

If you're enjoying these daily Real Ghostbusters monster posts, make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment and tell a friend about the 31 Days of Monsters.  Also, if you'd like to read more Halloween-y goodness, you can also click on the Halloween Archive link to the left (the banner with King Kong), as well as heading on over to the Countdown to Halloween to check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event…

Welcome to day 27 of my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown!  In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, not to mention my love of 80s animation, I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, (is anyone even reading this first paragraph anymore?) and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve.

Today's monster comes from episode 57, "Janine's Day Off", and is just downright weird, red and, well, handy.  There are way too many hands on this guy.  Between his finger goatee, the spider-like fangs coming out of his nose, his two bottom rat teeth, and the extra pair of hands coming out where his ears should be, it's just capitol F-reaky…



This monster is actually made up of a bunch of little red gremlin-like devils that were besieging the firehouse while Janine was trying to teach a temp how to take care of the guys.  Peter, in his infinite wisdom, decided to reverse the polarity on his proton pack and he blasted the creatures causing them to bind and morph together into huge handy here.



Yeah, I don't know what else I can say about this guy besides the fact that I wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley without a proton pack strapped to my back!

Once again, if you’re enjoying these daily Real Ghostbusters monster posts, make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment and tell a friend about the 31 Days of Monsters.   If you'd like to read more Halloween-y goodness, you can also click on the Halloween Archive link to the left (the banner with King Kong), as well as heading on over to the Countdown to Halloween to check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event…

Well, we're into the last week of the Halloween festivities here at Branded in the 80s; there are only seven entries left in my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown.  As I've been reminding you all this past month, in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, not to mention my love of 80s animation, I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve.

Today's monster has a classic design, the ectoplasmic wraith…



I really like the simplicity in this cel, so much so that I don't even miss any additional layers of shadow in the coloring, which is something I tend to prefer in well done cel animation.  This is also, for all intents and purposes, what I expect to see if I ever encounter a ghost, and I can tell you right now that I'd poop myself twice if I do see something like this.  I can only imagine the wailing moans that would come out of those decomposing lungs.  I'd like to note that the cel above and the drawing below were both slightly damaged.  There's a bit of a krinkled warp to the cel and the paper where the wraith is reaching out.

Though I like the simplicity of the one-color palette of this cel, I do sort of lament the nixing of suggestions made by the animator that penciled the original key pose below…



When the pencils were done I think it was the artist's intent to have the eyes and inside of the mouth around the tongue either different shades of green or in other colors (I'm guessing by those area being highlighted in colored pencil, something I've noticed in other cels and their accompanying drawings.)   I think those additions would really have made this cel pop.  Who knows, maybe the overall use of mint green was an error.   Taking these cels out of context as individual pieces of art has it's drawbacks as they weren't intended to be viewed as such, but it's the most visceral connection I have to the cartoons I grew up loving, so that's what I'm going to do…

Anyway, this is actually the spirit of Famine, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.  He appears in episode #49, "Apocalypse - What, Now?" As you can see in the cel below he's riding a steed and is carrying a scale (as used during times of famine to measure out portions of bread.)  Unfortunately he's not riding a black steed, but honestly I'm surprised that this sort of content made it to air on an 80s cartoon in general.  I'd love to find some close-up cels of the other riders, War (I'm assuming the blue horseman in the middle), Pestilence (that yellow-orange guy on the right), and Death (following up the herd.)



In the episode, Peter inadvertently wins a mystical book at auction that contains the trapped spirits of the 4 Horsemen.   While looking for some light reading during lunch, Janine unwittingly sets them free to wreck havoc on New York.





If you're enjoying these daily Real Ghostbusters monster posts, make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment and tell a friend about the 31 Days of Monsters.   If you'd like to read more Halloween-y goodness, you can also click on the Halloween Archive link to the left (the banner with King Kong), as well as heading on over to the Countdown to Halloween to check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event…

Welcome back to my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown!  In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, not to mention my love of 80s animation, I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve.

For today I offer a portrait of a monster in transition, well sort of...



This ugly mug hails from episode 27, "Doctor, Doctor", and is one of the weirder in the series.  Basically, this is the more or less final form of a hybrid creature.  While fighting a specter in a chemical plant, the Ghostbusters inadvertently create a new creature though they don't realize it at first.  The "thing" is actually covering all of the guys up to the neck like a huge glop of red goo (reminding me a lot of the imagery in GBII.)  The guys are admitted into the hospital and while there the goo on each of them starts morphing.  One gets an eye, one a nose, one an ear, and one a mouth.  Eventually the glop slides off of them and forms into a single creature, the disgusting monster you see above!



I find the idea of creatures like this that seem to be made from monster putty are kind of freaky because it would be really hard to dispatch them if the need arose.   I mean how do you stop a hulking brute of a creature when you can punch right through them and it doesn't phase him in the least?  You have to resort to trapping them at that point, luring them into a place where they can get zapped by a downed power line or tricked into falling into a vat of battery acid or something.  When you can't just stop them with a shovel to the face then the whole thing becomes a heck of a lot more daunting…

As for the cel itself, I really like the little details; the bits of leftover hair, the gross bubble of goo in the right ear, and those gnarly teeth.  Just plain ghoulish!



Once again, if you're enjoying these daily Real Ghostbusters monster posts, make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment and tell a friend about the 31 Days of Monsters.  If you'd like to read more Halloween-y goodness, you can also click on the Halloween Archive link to the left (the banner with King Kong), as well as heading on over to the Countdown to Halloween to check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event…

Welcome back to my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown!   In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, not to mention my love of 80s animation, I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve.

It's day 23, and this monster is one of the few that really grossed my wife out…



There's just something unsettling and sickly about his slug-like body, the ultra creepy bone spikes for legs, and the puffiness around his fangs.  I'd hate to see something like this crawling around in my garden. 

This cel also marks the 2nd appearance (3rd if you count the preamble post last September 25th) of slimmer on the countdown, though the one on the Stay Puft cel was so tiny you could have missed him.  I didn't really want to add a cel of slimmer as a stand alone monster since he's really an ally of the Ghostbusters in the cartoon, and honestly, it just seemed a bit obvious.   But I couldn't keep him off the countdown altogether. 

Actually, this really isn't Slimer, but a doppelganger from the containment unit limbo world.  I didn't realize this until I recently watched this episode. I had noticed that there is kind of a weird aspect to this particular drawing of "Slimer".  I didn't remember him every having claws in the cartoon.   I know he has fingernails in the movie versions, but it's kind of weird to see him drawn like this in the cartoon…



When I popped in this episode to get a screen capture for reference, I realized that this wasn't actually Slimer.  So there, it doesn't even really count towards another Slimer on this list!





Contest Update!  There are only 8 days left to enter to win a copy of the first volume of the Real Ghostbusters steelbook set!



This 5-disc set contains the first 25 episodes of the series (including the 1st thirteen episode Saturday Morning run) as well as some fun special features.  So what do you have to do to win this beauty?  All you have to do is send me an e-mail (or click on the Creature From the Black Lagoon monster in the sidebar) and make sure to include the following:

-Please put "The Real Ghostbusters Contest" in the subject line.
-List your favorite monster/ghost/creature from the series.
-Include your name.

The deadline for entries is October 31st at Midnight eastern standard time.  I'll be drawing a winner at random from the e-mails, and will respond to the winner via e-mail on November 1st.  Also, if you feel inclined, I would love everyone to spread the word about the 31 Days of Monsters countdown and the contest, so hit up those social networks and tell a friend (my twitter handle is smurfwreck)!

Also, if you'd like to read more Halloween-y goodness, you can also click on the Halloween Archive link to the left (the banner with King Kong), as well as heading on over to the Countdown to Halloween to check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event…

Well, we're entering the top 10 of the creepiest monsters on this 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown!  In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, not to mention my love of 80s animation, I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve.

It's day twenty two, and I have to say this is a crazy monster.  I've got the feeling that this is an alien, what with all the tentacles and that dome-like shape to his noggin (I haven't had a chance to watch this episode yet if you can't already tell…)



The aspect that really creeps me out is the sideways slit of the bottom portion on his mouth.  It's sort of like the mouth on the Predator, only with more protruding teeth/fangs.  Again, like back on day seven with the Devil, I'm really enjoying the use of aqua blue and orange.  As opposite colors go they tend to remind of me of sports team logos, but I think it works well in this floating tentacled monstrosity.  I also think it's a hoot that he's chucking bowling balls (I'm assuming) at the Ghostbusters.   On top of all this is his general squid-ness, which I always respond to in monsters.  Seems like a perfect time to show off the awesome commission my wife had Mark Rudolph draw for me this past summer...



Once again, if you're enjoying these daily Real Ghostbusters monster posts, make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment and tell a friend about the 31 Days of Monsters.   If you'd like to read more Halloween-y goodness, you can also click on the Halloween Archive link to the left (the banner with King Kong), as well as heading on over to the Countdown to Halloween to check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event…

Welcome back to my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown!  We're closing out the third week and it's really been a blast so far.  For those of you who are just coming to this Halloween blogging event here at Branded in the 80s, in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, not to mention my love of 80s animation, I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve.

Today's monster is a favorite amongst fans of the Real Ghostbusters.  Its name is Hob Anagarak and he hails from episode 52, "Cold Cash and Hot Water".  According to Inuit legend, this beast is the 1st demon sent to watch over a pre-human fledgling Earth.  Eventually he was magically frozen in an obelisk-esque block of lack ice and was lost in the frozen tundra of Alaska.  Peter Venkman's father ends up finding him, and all Carl Denham-like (from King Kong), he brings the frozen monster to New York and then stupidly sets him free...



All I know for certain is that after taking a look at those massive claws, those glowing yellow eyes, and that incredibly long purple tongue jutting out of that mouth full of razor shard teeth and I was a bit frightened.  Add to this the fiery red glare emanating off of him, and it just makes for a creepy image.  I wish I could get a better look at this guy...



Even in the episode this guy ends up blending into the background, so these cels are probably some of the clearest images available of the demon.  I found a slightly different view of this crazy beast.  Just look at those tusk fangs!   Sheesh.  This guy is freaky.



Also, for any of you Real Ghostbusters fans out there that haven't picked up any of the new DVDs, I've decided to give away a copy of the Volume 1 Steelbook edition of the show!  There are only 10 days left to enter the contest, so get cracking.



This 5-disc set contains the first 25 episodes of the series (including the 1st thirteen episode Saturday Morning run) as well as some fun special features.  So what do you have to do to win this beauty?  All you have to do is send me an e-mail (or click on the Creature From the Black Lagoon monster in the sidebar) and make sure to include the following:

-Please put "The Real Ghostbusters Contest" in the subject line.
-List your favorite monster/ghost/creature from the series.
-Include your name.

The deadline for entries is October 31st at Midnight eastern standard time.  I'll be drawing a winner at random from the e-mails, and will respond to the winner via e-mail on November 1st.  Also, if you feel inclined, I would love everyone to spread the word about the 31 Days of Monsters countdown and the contest, so hit up those social networks and tell a friend (my twitter handle is smurfwreck)!

If you'd like to read more Halloween-y goodness, you can also click on the Halloween Archive link to the left (the orange banner with King Kong), as well as heading on over to the Countdown to Halloween to check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event…

It's beginning to feel a lot like…Day 20…here at my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown!   I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve.

So, how do you follow up a really big purple and green spider monster?  Why with something that would eat said spider monster as a snack, namely this freakishly creepy bat monster of course!



Whereas I have a huge phobia of spiders, I was never really all that bothered by bats.   In my eyes they fall more into the cool section of the animal kingdom what with their natural use of sonar, their keen fashion sense (read, neat looking wings) and their hanging front one foot sleeping arrangements.   I know a lot of folks get easily freaked out by bats, most likely because of the fear of rabies, but I think they get a bad rep most of the time.  This guy here though, he might deserve it…



As far as bat monsters go, I'm really fond of the whole man-bat sort of creatures, particularly with examples like the Man-Bat on the Batman: the Animated Series and the scenes with Gary Oldman as the monster bat in Coppola's version of Dracula.   There's also a great, though quick, shot of Dracula as a man-bat in the Monster Squad that I've always loved.  There is a bit of an identification dilemma with this guy though.  In this episode of the Real Ghostbusters (epi. 91, "Translyvanian Homesick Blues") there is a character, a vampire, named Count Volstock who morphs into a creature like this.  But there are also holographic (but none the less scary) man-bats that are huge and take this form as well...



I couldn't find either of these exact cels, so I'm not sure if this is Volstock or the man-bats.  Also, I would have loved it of I'd managed to find a cel where the eyes of the bat were translucent red (for the neat backlit effect in the screencap above.)  Maybe one day.  Also, I really dug that the character designers worked a little bit of Christopher Lee into old Volstock.  Just a nice touch...

If you're enjoying these daily Real Ghostbusters monster posts, make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment and tell a friend about the 31 Days of Monsters.  If you'd like to read more Halloween-y goodness, you can also click on the Halloween Archive link to the left (the banner with King Kong), as well as heading on over to the Countdown to Halloween to check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event…

Welcome back to my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown!  I can't believe it’s already day 19.  Well, as I've been saying, in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, not to mention my love of 80s animation, I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve.

So what's more frightening than a 8 legged brown hairy spider crawling on the wall next to you while you watch TV?  How about a half ton purple and green spider with 10 appendages (two of which end in tiny pinching crab claws)…



I hate spiders.  I mean I REALLY hate spiders.  Hates them so.  I think the day I run across a brown recluse I'm going to stroke out on the spot.  To make matters worse, we've been getting these super creepy red spiders in the apartment lately that have slick hard bodies (my wife loved me enough to describe the crunching sound it makes when you kill one with a tissue), and honestly that was one of my worst nightmares.  Red spiders means that I'll almost always be able to pick them out when they're slinking around as we have beige carpeting and white walls.  At least some of the lighter brown ones blend in.  Out of sight, out of mind you know.   Anyway, I always hate having to sit through giant spider scenes in flicks like Return of the King or the Mist.  Arachnophobia and Kingdom of the Spiders, for some reason, I can handle.



Once again, if you're enjoying these daily Real Ghostbusters monster posts, make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment and tell a friend about the 31 Days of Monsters.  If you'd like to read more Halloween-y goodness, you can also click on the Halloween Archive link to the left (the banner with King Kong), as well as heading on over to the Countdown to Halloween to check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event…

Welcome back to my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown!  We're up to Day 18.  In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, not to mention my love of 80s animation, I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve.

Today we've got an ugly little bugger.  It's looks like a rat that was turned inside out.   I guess I'll call him Pinky.



When I received this one in the mail I was surprised to find that it was a heavily corrected cel.   So much so that there was a copy of the original line work on a second layer that was colored correctly.  It took a bit of work to separate the two layers as the pink paint on the back of the top layer had adhered to the layer beneath, but after I worked them apart I was treated to an alternate color scheme.  The much more muted and realistic red-brown is kind of creepy.  I wonder if that was the reason it was changed to a day-glo pink, or if it was just a mistake…



This guy hails from episode #50, "Lost & Foundry".  He was spooking up a metal processing plant and he ends up having his ions dispersed into a batch of molten metal.  Of course he ends up getting processed into items that end up in the Ghostbuster's firehouse and he eventually forms into a gigantic metal specter/creature.  In the episode he moves pretty quickly so there aren't a lot of great shots where you really get a chance to see him in detail, which is another nice aspect of collecting cels like this.





Once again, if you're enjoying these daily Real Ghostbusters monster posts, make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment and tell a friend about the 31 Days of Monsters.  If you'd like to read more Halloween-y goodness, you can also click on the Halloween Archive link to the left (the banner with King Kong), as well as heading on over to the Countdown to Halloween to check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event…

Well, it's day 13 of my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown and I haven't been slowing down at all (which is nice considering how grueling this posting schedule was in years past.)  Like I've mentioned about two hundred thousand times so far, in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, not to mention my love of 80s animation, I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve.

Today's monster is pretty straight forward, the Mutant Ghost Thug. Complete with tipped forward bowler, wife-beater shirt, and hitched up waders, this guy looks like he could knock your head off just as soon as look at you (with all four of his beady yellow eyes…)



In the episode, #104 "Partners in Slime", this guy is an example of the muscle utilized by a mob boss ghost named Poso.  What kind of struck me while watching it was how off the mark the series was starting to get around this time.  At this point ghosts are trying to take down the Ghostbusters left and right, and there's no rhyme or reason to the styling of the characters.  Why a mob boss?  Why not I guess, as it doesn't do anything for the story.  Also, when I first saw this cel, I expected the voice to come out of this guy would be really imposing.  In reality he ended up in the very whiney annoying kind of range.  I still love his design though...



He's just a pretty imposing yet simple figure.  The one aspect that I really dig is the pencil under-drawing, which is just rendered so well.  I'm not sure if this was a favorite of the animator, or if he was just in the zone that day, but the line work looks so fluid and perfect.  It doesn't feel rushed like so many of these drawings tend to (knowing the time crunch these studios were under to turn around 65 hand-drawn and painted episodes in under a year.)  This is one I'm going to consider framing when I get the time.



Also, for any of you Real Ghostbusters fans out there that haven't picked up any of the new DVDs, I've decided to give away a copy of the Volume 1 Steelbook edition of the show!



This 5-disc set contains the first 25 episodes of the series (including the 1st thirteen episode Saturday Morning run) as well as some fun special features.  So what do you have to do to win this beauty?  All you have to do is send me an e-mail (or click on the Creature From the Black Lagoon monster in the sidebar) and make sure to include the following:

-Please put "The Real Ghostbusters Contest" in the subject line.
-List your favorite monster/ghost/creature from the series.
-Include your name.

The deadline for entries is October 31st at Midnight eastern standard time.  I'll be drawing a winner at random from the e-mails, and will respond to the winner via e-mail on November 1st.  Also, if you feel inclined, I would love everyone to spread the word about the 31 Days of Monsters countdown and the contest, so hit up those social networks and tell a friend (my twitter handle is smurfwreck)!

Once again, if you're enjoying these daily Real Ghostbusters monster posts, make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment and tell a friend about the 31 Days of Monsters.   If you'd like to read more Halloween-y goodness, you can also click on the Halloween Archive link to the left (the banner with King Kong), as well as heading on over to the Countdown to Halloween to check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event…

Welcome back to my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown, day 16!  In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, not to mention my love of 80s animation, I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve.

Today's monster is one of the more infamous in the Real Ghostbusters cannon, the Sandman…



For me, it's not the visuals that make this character so frightening; it's a mixture of his power (being able to put you to sleep and making your nightmares a walking reality for others) and his super eerie voice.   Click here, or on his ugly mug below to hear him go on a diatribe…



The idea that my unconscious fears would both be revealed to others while I slept, and find their way into reality is just bone chilling to me.  We all have our secret secrets, and there's a reason we keep them hidden so deep that only your subconscious dwells on them.  That's one of the things I hate about nightmares, it's not confronting these demons as much as this weird feeling that while I'm fighting them in my sleep others can see them.   If my friends and family worm their way into m dreams it's like they're really there and when I wake those people will have a memory of my dream.   It's like a shared experience, at least for me in my own head and it makes it hard to look some of these people in the eye afterward.  The Sandman has domain over this realm and the idea that he could pry open your mind and makes this dark stuff slither out is just plain scary.



Luckily for me this is only a cartoon.  It's only a cartoon, It's only a cartoon…

Make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment of the 31 Days of Monsters here at Branded in the 80s.  Also, you can head on over to the Countdown to Halloween and check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event…

Welcome back to my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown!  This is just a quick post to recap the first half of this year's countdown (including the #0 cel I posted towards the end of September.)  I can't wait to get to the next 16 monsters!

   

   

   

   

Also, for any of you Real Ghostbusters fans out there that haven't picked up any of the new DVDs, I've decided to give away a copy of the Volume 1 Steelbook edition of the show!



This 5-disc set contains the first 25 episodes of the series (including the 1st thirteen episode Saturday Morning run) as well as some fun special features.  So what do you have to do to win this beauty?  All you have to do is send me an e-mail (or click on the Creature From the Black Lagoon monster in the sidebar) and make sure to include the following:

-Please put "The Real Ghostbusters Contest" in the subject line.
-List your favorite monster/ghost/creature from the series.
-Include your name.

The deadline for entries is October 31st at Midnight eastern standard time.  I'll be drawing a winner at random from the e-mails, and will respond to the winner via e-mail on November 1st.  Also, if you feel inclined, I would love everyone to spread the word about the 31 Days of Monsters countdown and the contest, so hit up those social networks and tell a friend (my twitter handle is smurfwreck)!

If you'd like to read more Halloween-y goodness, you can also click on the Halloween Archive link to the left (the banner with King Kong), as well as heading on over to the Countdown to Halloween to check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event!

We're all the way up to the halfway point of the 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown!  I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve.

Today's monster is a Minotaur/animal Spirit from episode #80, "It's a Jungle Out There".  This guy ends up making a bunch of animals throughout New York super intelligent…



Minotaurs are already sort of imposing and scary, but this guy takes the cake in that department.  Just look at all those extra tusks & horns (not to mention that sharp set of choppers he's sporting!)  What's kind of weird is that while watching the episode I was really getting freaked out by the clopping of his hooves.  Don't know why exactly, but it just got to me.



I think to offset the creepy factor of this monster, the writers decided to add a bit of levity in the episode by introducing Egon's patented rocket roller skates. 



Also, to get a flavor of what some of the super intelligent animal imagery was like, check out these cels (from last year's countdown.)  I had assumed that the ape, deer, and hippo were standing in front of the fall out from an explosion, but it turns out it was just the exhaust from the Ecto-1's tail pipe.



Once again, if you're enjoying these daily Real Ghostbusters monster posts, make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment and tell a friend about the 31 Days of Monsters.  If you'd like to read more Halloween-y goodness, you can also click on the Halloween Archive link to the left (the banner with King Kong), as well as heading on over to the Countdown to Halloween to check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event…

Welcome back to my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown!  I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve. It's day 14 of the countdown, and we're getting pretty close to the halfway mark.  Whew.  Today's Moss Monster digs into that dark recess of fear in my psyche with his multiple sets of arms.  To be honest, most of my fears stem from slightly odd irrational places.  Sure I have a fear of spiders, an intense one, and it because of all the classic reasons be it the fear of being bitten, crawled on, the sticky clinging webs, their little hairy bodies, the quickness with which they scuttle about, etc.   But the overarching issue is with the multiple legs.  The idea of multiple appendages just really creeps me the hell out.  There are some exceptions; ants for instance don't do much except make me mad.  Well, with Moss Man here, it's leaning towards the uncomfortable nature of multiple limbs…

It doesn't help his case that his mouth looks so drippy, and that he has some weirdly spaced teeth.  This guy is also a great example of where/when the character designs on the ghosts and the tone of the stories started diverging in the series.  The episode that features ol' Moss Man here is #113b, "Slimer's Streak", and it has a pretty silly premise involving a weird train conductor ghost that puts the Ghostbusters in a game world.

This guy, as weird and frightening as he appears (to me at least) is basically a ghost dedicated to the game of tag.  You know, Ghosts in the Graveyard, "Tag you're it!"  With a goofy high-pitched, child-like voice and his playful demeanor he comes off very harmless.  The eyes should have been a tip off to his more cartoon-y nature, but that mouth and his many limbs still freak me out...

If you're enjoying these monsters and ghosts, then come back tomorrow for another installment of the 31 Days of Monsters here at Branded in the 80s.  Also, you can head on over to the Countdown to Halloween and check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event…

Welcome back to my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown!   In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, not to mention my love of 80s animation, I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve.

Today's set of sewer rat monsters is sort of a repeat from last year's countdown.   These were actually the cels that got me excited enough to try and compile a whole month's worth of Real Ghostbusters monsters for this years countdown, so I figured they deserved to be on the list.  Also, I didn't have a whole lot to say last year…



Looking back at these, I have to wonder if huge sharp teeth were the writer/character designer's ace in the hole in terms of bringing really creepy imagery into the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.   In preparation for this month's countdown I watched a bunch of episodes and quickly scanned through the rest to try and get an overview of what the various monsters, ghosts, and creepazoids looked like as I hadn't sat down and watched this show in years. 

The more I watched the more I realized that even though there are a lot of scary aspects to the show, a lot of the imagery was more on the tame side of things. I mean it is a cartoon aimed at kids after all, but there are some interesting ghostly concepts that were in the movies that didn’t make it into the show.  Take for instance the initial library ghost.   Whereas her spectral visage was pretty intimidating in and of itself, her transformation into a wailing banshee with sunken eyes and whipping hair was terrifying for the few seconds it appeared on screen.  This sort of thing probably didn't work for the network censors.

But time and again, while scanning through the episodes, I kept noticing that on the creatures that the writers really wanted to come across as terrifying there would almost always be a mouthful of gnarly sharp teeth.  I mean, I'm assuming that as long as these teeth weren't used to actually visually render a background character limb from limb, then it was probably kosher to stick them on a creature.  Teeth in an of themselves aren't really weapons per-se, we've all got 'em (to one extent or another.)  Anyway, these overgrown subway/sewer rats use this idea in spades…



Here's a bit I wrote last year about the pencils…

"As for interesting aspects to this first cel, I really dig the pencil under drawing that I scored with it.  I'm not sure if the under drawing is hinting at the next drawing (which I suspect), or referencing the previous drawing and cel, but I love the alternate view of the creatures with their sharp-toothed mouths all agape.  The creatures sure seem a heck of a lot more fierce that way to boot."

Again, I love getting a glimpse into the process like this.





Hope you're all enjoying these monsters, I know I'm enjoying posting about them.  If you do, make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment of the 31 Days of Monsters here at Branded in the 80s.  Also, you can head on over to the Countdown to Halloween and check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event.   If you're so inclined, you can also dig into my Halloween Blogging archives and read through the last few All Hallows Eve seasons...

Welcome back to my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown!  In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, not to mention my love of 80s animation, I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve.  

Today I present one of my favorite monsters from the series, the King Troll from from the 5th, first season episode, "Troll Bridge"…



Besides the fact that this is one of the episodes that I remember watching back in the 80s, it's also one of the few cels that I've managed to pick up that feature the Ecto-1…



As for the King Troll, I really dig the character design.   He's imposing and weirdly satyr-like with his legs resembling a goat's…



Also, the writers/design artists on the series took inspiration for a weird source when it came to the trolls in this episode.  They drew from Road Warrior imagery, a sort of rag-tag group that's scrounged pots and pans as armor and they've constructed vehicles that look a lot like the stuff in that George Miller film.  You can see the design of the two main villains from Road Warrior in the King Troll as well…





Make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment of the 31 Days of Monsters here at Branded in the 80s.  Also, you can head on over to the Countdown to Halloween and check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event…

Welcome back to my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown!  It's day eleven and in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, not to mention my love of 80s animation, I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve. 

Today's monster, like Moriarty yesterday, sort of has that Scooby Doo-esque vibe to him.   This Pharaoh Zombie character design is pretty cool, especially in a Stargate sort of way…



The design reminds me a whole heck of a lot of a pair of Vans shoes I saw recently that featured the Iron Maiden mascot Eddie re-imagined as a pharaoh/Sphinx god…



This monster hails from episode 69, "The Long Long Log Etc. Goodbye", and is actually the final form of a possessed (by King Todd) thief named Blackie who morphs into this ancient Egyptian mummy monster.  I only got a chance to skim the episode, but if nothing else, picking up these monster cels has really lit a fire under me to go back and watch through the entire Real Ghostbusters series.  There really were a lot of cool concepts being thrown around on the show...





Make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment of the 31 Days of Monsters here at Branded in the 80s.  Also, you can head on over to the Countdown to Halloween and check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event.  Tell 'em Shawn Robare of Branded sent ya!

Welcome to day 10 of my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown!  In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, not to mention my love of 80s animation, I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve.

Today's monster comes from one of my favorite episodes of the Real Ghostbusters, "Elementary My Dear Watson".  It features the odd appearance of Sherlock Holmes & Dr. Watson, as well as their evil arch enemy Moriarty (as well as his creepy hound.)  These characters are exactly ghosts, but physical manifestations based on the energy of a million of people's collective subconsciouses.   The episode has a very Time After Time vibe to it (even though in that flick it's H.G. Wells in the Holmes role, and Jack the Ripper as Moriarty)  I came across a couple of Moriarty cels, the first of which is a bit unrecognizable.

Of all monster imagery I tend to respond to three general archetypes, the lumbering Frankenstein's monster, the various incarnations of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and the utter simplicity of the reanimated skeleton.    I love the skeleton fights in the Harryhausen flicks, the cheap scare in the House on Haunted Hill, and the weird obsessive nature of the titular antique in the Peter Cushing Amicus vehicle the Skull.  The human skull in general has reached a point of iconography so common that it's almost losing meaning as a form of shorthand.  Also, much like the nude form, it's always more potent when loosely draped with something, be it sinew or muscle tissue, or in the least defined eyes instead of deep black pools of nothing.  This skeleton is the initial incarnation of the evil Moriarty, and though it's not his final form, with its eerie halo of noxious ectoplasm, it makes for a very striking image.  It's also the beginning of a very similar (thought vastly truncated) "coming together" sequence as seen in the first two Hellraiser films.





This is my first exposure to a cel that has any for of airbrushing instead of flat painting.  For some reason the airbrushed paint didn't fare so well over time.  The separate layer with the green was basically flaking off the cel.  The paint is almost a fine powder that was being held in place by the skeleton cel on top of it…







Anyway, on to a more defined look for the master criminal.  Whereas the trio of monster/ghosts yesterday seemed to be of the Muppet variety, the character design on Moriarty and his Hound (of the Baskervilles persuasion I'm assuming) seem more in line with something you'd see on an episode of Scooby Doo...





There's something about a pale-skinned gaunt guy in a riding coat and top hat that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside.  I think it's because I equate this getup with the character design of the hitchhikers in Disney's Haunted Mansion ride, which was one of the attractions that my parents tended to avoid whenever we'd hit up Disney World (my parents were creatures of habit and would avoid stuff like Splash Mountain, Tom Sawyer Island, and the Toontown Fair every trip…)  I think because I visited it the least, by the time I first rode the Haunted Mansion it pretty much blew my mind.  Mixed with my love of Halloween and all things horror, it's probably my favorite ride at Disney, though I do so lament the long closed 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea...



There are still 21 monsters left to showcase, so make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment of the 31 Days of Monsters here at Branded in the 80s.  Also, you can head on over to the Countdown to Halloween and check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event…

Welcome back to my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown!   In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, not to mention my love of 80s animation, I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.   These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve.  

For day nine of the countdown I've got another trio of monster/ghosts that illustrates the level of cartoon-y-ness this series reaches.  On the one hand there are a lot of very freaky monster designs (coming later this month), yet on the other it's not strange to find a group like this one that feels a little more at home with the Muppets than in the netherworld…



Of course even with these three the spectrum of creepiness is sort of represented.  While the big light purple guy up front looks like a mutant Kermit, the red on the right is pretty weird.  Just look at those weird tube worm-looking deals on his head.  Are those eyes at the end of those?  Ew.



Personally, my favorite of the three is the unassuming light blue guy in the background.  Turns out this was a series of cels, and you can get a bit of a clearer idea of what he looks like by removing the cel with the purple monster in the front.  Unfortunately he's still obscured a bit by the red guy as they're on the same cel, but you get the basic gist of his design.   I like his way-too-thin skeletal hips, and his humpbacked stance…



These guys hail from one of the later series episodes, #100, Something's Going Round to be more precise.  The red eye-tentacle/worm guy is Dr. McCatheter, a devious ghost who masqueraded as a health expert doctor trying to convince the Ghostbusters that they're allergic to ghosts. 



Though it's kind of fun watching the guys morph into all sorts of old shapes and colors (even plaid), it definitely falls on the more cartoon-y side of the scale in terms of the tone of the series.  The story isn't very tight and it ends up feeling a lot like your basic 80s cartoons.







Make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment of the 31 Days of Monsters here at Branded in the 80s.  Also, you can head on over to the Countdown to Halloween and check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event…

Welcome to the second week of my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown!  I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.   These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve. 

Opening up this 2nd week (as far as the count of days goes) is one of the Ghostbusters themselves, Egon Spengler.  This cel is from episode 45, "Egon on the Rampage".  Basically, Egon gets possessed by a demon from another dimension and hulks out going on a, a, well,  rampage like the title suggests, scooping up damsels in distress and the like…



I thought this cel was kind of interesting because of the mixture of character homages mixed into the design.  There's a little bit of the Hulk in there, with the increased size and tattered jumpsuit still clinging to him (not to mention the unnatural coloring), but there's also a little bit of the Wolfman to that design too with his hairy forearms and fangs.  On top of this Egon's already bouffant hair is taken to a drastic height that borders on a Bride of Frankenstein level. 



Also, in some of the other cels from this same episode I noticed he sort of has a King Kong aspect to him, the unruly beast that really does have a heart of gold and just want to be left alone…



Again, there are what I'm pretty sure are Japanese Katakana kana notating where the artwork needs to remain clear.   Not sure of the translation just yet, but the syllable translations of the kana to English are "chi" (the kana that looks like a fancy seven) and "ki" (the kana that looks like a "t" with a double cross.)  This whole process is like the reverse of a typical illustrative shorthand when inking line art where the artist makes "x" tic marks in areas that need to be filling in with solid blacks.

Again, I hope everyone has been digging this countdown, and if so make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment of the 31 Days of Monsters here at Branded in the 80s.  Also, you can head on over to the Countdown to Halloween and check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event.   I know I've been enjoying the heck out of what others are putting together this year…

Welcome back to my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown!  In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, not to mention my love of 80s animation, I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve.

Today brings probably the ultimate baddy, though it might depend on which side of the fence you sit on, spirituality-wise that is.  What more can I say then, the Devil (insert DUH DUH DUNNNNN reveal music here…)



Actually, it's not exactly the Devil per-se, but a dybbuk.  According to the show (he appears in episode 71, The Devil to Pay), a dybbuk is just a minor demon, but according to Jewish folklore it's a demon denied access to Gehenna for committing a serious transgression in life that spends the after life maliciously possessing humans. 



The character on the show is named Dyb Devlin the host of a hot (couldn't resist the pun) new game show called Race the Devil.  He figures he can get a promotion (according to the episode's writer Dennys J. McCoy in the special features on the DVD) to a highler level by taking the Ghostbuster's souls, but I'm betting the initial idea was that he was just trying to gain access to Hell.  At the same time I think the writers also wanted this to be the one and only Devil as this episode fits the Devil's archetypical "purchasing your soul" story structure.  This is the kind of concept and brave writing (for a children's show) that I think makes the Real Ghostbusters series stand apart from a lot of other 80s cartoons (though we did see something very similar in the Wizard of Stone Mountain episode of He-Man.)

Is it weird that I was super excited about the color of today's monster/deity?  When putting the list together one of the thoughts in the back of my mind was color, and trying to make sure that I represented the spectrum with these creatures and ghosts.  So we've got that orange thing covered.  I'll be honest though, I'm not all that excited about the coat matching the face in terms of color scheme, but what-are-ya-gonna-do?   I am digging the blue hair though…

As far as the imagery goes, call him Satan, ol' Scratch, Beelzebub, the Source of All Evil, Lucifer, Baphomet, Belial, Mephistopheles, Randall Flagg, Apollyon Satan, Clute, Diablo, Ol' Gooseberry, or that drunk guy my mom married when I was six, the Devil is pretty much the end all be all of bad guys (well, except for maybe the Nothing from the Neverending Story.)   He's kind of low on the list because of all his various incarnations (visually), this is one of the tamer versions.  My personal favorite on the way creepy meter is from the Christopher Lee-starring Hammer flick the Devil Rides Out, where he appears momentarily on a stump with the full on goats head and all.  C-R-E-E-P-Y, creepy.



I'm just warming up, so make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment of the 31 Days of Monsters here at Branded in the 80s.   If you're interested in reading up on some of the Halloween seasons past, you can check out my All Hallows Eve archive.  Also, you can head on over to the Countdown to Halloween and check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event…

Welcome to day six of my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown! All through October I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve. 

Today's monster is, well, to be honest, I'm not sure what he is.  For the most part the episodes that I remember from the show are those first which aired on Saturday morning during the fall of 1986.  I do remember watching the show for years beyond, but with my insane cartoon watching schedule I think I missed out on a lot of episodes.  I'm dying to relive the entire series but my copy of the complete series just came this past Thursday and I haven't had a chance to get to this one yet.  I want to say he's the son in a family of monsters (aliens?) that seek out the Ghostbusters for help, but I'm not positive...

Anyway, this guy is one heck of a cheddar head, who's one part Spongebob Squarepants, one part Timer (from those crazy PSAs during the 80s), one part Bart Simpson, and one part freaky Alien Nation-esque Newcomer (Tenctonese for the detail oriented researchers out there) weirdo…



I saw what I believe were a couple of other cels that I think are from the same episode that feature a much more sinister female version of this guy and another odd yellow fiend that looked a lot like Homer Simpson mated with a banana.  Like I said, it's certainly got me burning to watch through the series again.   Unfortunately this cel didn't have an accompanying pencil under-drawing, so this is a solo in the picture department today.  Aside from this poor sap's unfortunate head, what really drew me to it was his very disturbing, skull-like teeth.  Creepy!

Hope you're all enjoying these monsters, I know I'm enjoying posting about them.  If you do, make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment of the 31 Days of Monsters here at Branded in the 80s.  Also, you can head on over to the Countdown to Halloween and check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event.  If you're so inclined, you can also dig into my Halloween Blogging archives and read through the last few All Hallows Eve seasons...

Welcome back to my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown!  In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, not to mention my love of 80s animation, I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve. 

Today's trio of ghosts are some of my favorite, not necessarily for their design or concept, but because they're the protagonists in the very first episode (2nd produced) of the Real Ghostbusters, "Ghosts R Us", that aired in the initial Saturday morning run of the show during the fall of 1986.  This family of ghosts is based on a familial conceit that probably dates back to the Stone Age, though for me it recalls the Looney Tunes shorts with the three bears and Bugs Bunny playing the part of Goldilocks.  You've got the seriously hot-headed father, the slightly distant mother, and the doofus overgrown baby…



If I remember correctly, these three want to put the Ghostbusters out of business by opening up a rival outfit that both causes disturbances and is always on the scene first to stop it.   Though I'm not a huge fan of the visual character design, I do kind of dig the faux-50s costuming, in particular the soda jerk getup the father is wearing.   It's a weird but nice touch, and it's yet another example of the 50s era nostalgia that was wildly rampant all throughout the late 70s to the end of the 80s.

Below are some screen-shots from the episode in question.  The first (on the left) is what these ghosts looked like in their normal ghastly form, and then on the right is the Ghosts R Us makeovers.  Also, that second screen-shot features my actual cel/frame of animation which is pretty neat.  Now you can put the cel in the context of the overall scene...



To add to the whole 50s theme, this episode also opens with a loose homage to the I Love Lucy Show where she gets a job in a chocolate factory.  When the GBs arrive at a call it's at a chocolate factory where all the employees look a bit like Lucy, and there's a gag where the ghosts are making the machines spit out chocolate pieces like a torrential rain.



If you've been enjoying these ghosts and monster animation cels, make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment of the 31 Days of Monsters here at Branded in the 80s.  Also, you can head on over to the Countdown to Halloween and check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event.  Tell 'em Branded in the 80s sent ya!

Welcome back to my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown!  I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.   These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve.  

Today's monster evokes one-fourth of the nerd hierarchy of the most important creatures/beings on the planet, the pirate (rounded out by monkeys, ninjas, and zombies.)  Actually he's also a skeletal, un-dead, zombie-pirate to boot.  Considering I posted a very monkey-like Yeti yesterday, I'm well on my way in working in three-fourths of the nerd-approved gold standard into this countdown.  Now, if I could only find a ninja monster/ghost I'd be set…



When I picked this one up there were a few zombie pirate themed cels to choose from, but there was something about this little guy that really jumped out at me.  Though I love his fiendish throttling of the parrot, but I also dig the slightly sardonic smirk that's creeping into his expression.  I always dig it when animators find ways to make a skeleton's grin malleable enough to show some emotion, something the Filmation artists did with expert glee when drawing Skeletor for the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon.  This is another example, which is skewed just enough to show how much this guy loves choking that bird, but not so much as to make the jaw bone lose it's rigid definition.



This is the skeleton of Captain Jack Higgins, the leader of the scurvy crew of zombie pirates in episode #17, Sea Fright, which made it's debut in 1986.  As you can see from the screen capture below, my cel is missing a couple layers of proton pack blasting energy, as well as the background, but those are both a little tough to come by.  Capt. Jack is a millisecond away from being sucked into a ghost trap, and wants to make sure his parrot comes with.  If nothing else, the above cel is the clearest depiction of this scene because it's unobstructed...



Also, in the pencil under-drawing below there is a bit of a childhood fascination of mine with the Asian text crammed into the empty spaces between the parrot and Capt. Jack annotating where no color is needed and the cel needs to remain transparent.  There's a weird regressive wonder at work in my brain when I see other languages in print, particularly the non-romance/Latin based languages like Sanskrit, Cyrillic, or the various Asian characters.  I realize that highlights my un-traveled, slightly isolationist (if only because these written languages take on an almost runic quality to me) attitude towards other cultures, but it's a fascination I can't help but wear on my sleeve…



Anyway, make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment of the 31 Days of Monsters here at Branded in the 80s.  Also, you can head on over to the Countdown to Halloween and check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event.   See you guys tomorrow…

Welcome back to my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown!  In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, not to mention my love of 80s animation, I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve. 

Today's monster is one of the rarest of the Bigfoot family, the Yeti (or abominable snowman if you prefer…)  Well that's what I thought anyway...



When I picked up this cel I hadn't seen the episode that this big guy came from.  I've since rectified that (my complete Real Ghostbusters set came in the mail on the 1st), and it turns out that this is in fact a Bigfoot, though from another dimension.  I still think he looks more like a Yeti, so I'm sticking to that.

I'm partial to the more simian designs of this east-Asian crypto-zoological marvel, though I do like the various carvings and masks I've seen (particularly the demonic looking ones that decorate the Expedition Everest ride at Disney's Animal Kingdom.)  Also, as I found out last Halloween, I love their one big on-screen monster movie success, the Peter Cushing Hammer classic the Abominable Snowman.



This monster debuted in episode #89, Camping it Up, where the gang goes on a camping trip only to stumble across some trouble.  This bigfoot somehow managed to find a portal from his alien home-world dimension to Earth via a section of limbo.  The gang has to weather through a night with this monster before helping him get back home.

As for this cel, it's one of my favorites because the image is both detailed and it takes up so much of the cel's surface area.   I've mentioned before that one of the pitfalls of collecting animation cels is that so many of what you find is visually kind of deficient.   Like the episode of the Simpson's where Bart wants the Itchy and Scratchy cel that just has an arm in frame, typically cels, even the ones with full character illustrations on them can seem kind of anticlimactic.  This stems from the design of traditional hand-drawn animation process and the multiple layers used to get both depth, and ease of movement.  It's always more stunning when you can find a piece that has a background sheet included, or in the case of the Yeti above, when it take up enough space that it basically looks like a scene right out of the cartoon.

Part of the detail that I love in this piece is the slobber coming off of the big guy's mouth and teeth.  It's another example of the process of visual design that is more or less unique to cel animation and painting in general, the concept of using color to outline and suggest shape.  You're starting to see this concept used widely in illustration these days, as artists are moving away from traditional pen and ink towards a more digital process or at least digitally coloring (replacing parts of the black line work with colored lines to either give the perception of depth of field or just as a stylistic choice.)  It's cool how with just some light blue paint used in outline and not filled in gives the shorthand impression of drool.



As far as the pencil under-drawing goes, I liked that the animator marked off the live are of the cel to concentrate on.  I also like the annotations on keeping the color separate on the tongue and gums, and the red ink needed for the veins in the eyes…

Make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment of the 31 Days of Monsters here at Branded in the 80s.  Also, you can head on over to Countdown to Halloween and check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event…

Welcome back to my 31 Days of Monsters Halloween countdown!  In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise, not to mention my love of 80s animation, I'm counting down 31 of my favorite monsters from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  These animation cels are culled from my personal collection, and my wife and I tried our best to put them in a not-so-scary to really-freaking-creepy kind of order with the creepiest falling on All Hallows Eve.   My wife Carrie and I disagreed of today's placement order, but I went with her advice to put him on the not-so-scary section of the creep-o-meter.  So may I present, Spam Man!



So about that disagreement.  I have a weirdly obsessive fear/fascination with anthropomorphized food, which I've written about in detail before.  There's something completely unholy about food walking around, talking, dancing and looking up at you with puppy dog eyes (or in the case of Spammy above, utter contempt.)  I know a lot of my fear stems back to the scene in Young Sherlock Holmes with the cute little puff pastries seemingly coming to life and stuffing themselves down Watson's gullet, but I also have to wonder how much of it derives from the all but complete anonymity of how our meats are provided cut, cleaned, and prepackaged in our grocer's meat case.   If I was forced to kill animals for my own meat consumption, I can pretty much guarantee that I've become a vegan in record time.   Just visiting a working dairy farm was enough to turn my wife off of meat and dairy for a year.   So my fear of food having sentience, eyes, or a mouth that could bite me back reminds me that a lot of the stuff I put in my body was living at one point.  If it were just up to me, Spam Man here would fall way far down on the "poop-in-my-pants" section of the creep-o-meter.



This guy comes from episode 109.B, Kitty-Cornered.  Slimer happens upon a witch's lost cat that has the power to grant wishes.  He inadvertently brings all the food in the firehouse kitchen to life, which then break free of the fridge and terrorize Luis Tully (the Ghostbuster's Accountant/friend.)  Seriously, look at that anthropomorhic foodstuff.  It's haunting my waking thoughts, in particualr that ketchup riding the ear of corn.  HAUNTING I say.



Anyway, back to the actual cel at hand.   Again, when I picked up this beauty it came complete with a pencil under-drawing, and like yesterday's Stay Puft, the drawing was slightly different than the finished cel which is kind of rare since the pencils are usually kept with the finished cel to act both as a protective layer between it and the other painted cels, and as possible reference later if there is an error.  What's kind of cool about this though is that the pencil drawing provides a slightly different variation on the figure with his mouth closed and the annotation showing the movement that the character is going to be doing (in this case tapping his foot.)  These little bits of behind the scenes stuff fascinate me endlessly (about as much as I’m horrified by the idea of a walking talking hunk of ham!)



Make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment of the 31 Days of Monsters here at Branded in the 80s.  Also, you can head on over to Countdown to Halloween and check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event…

Alright, welcome to the first official post of the Halloween season here at Branded in the 80s.  This Countdown to Halloween is sort of becoming a tradition around the internet blogging community, and I'm happy to be participating for my fourth straight year.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I've decided on a theme this year in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ghostbusters franchise.  Since I love cartoons, in particular the Real Ghostbusters, and I've been actively collecting 80s era animation cels for the past couple of years I thought it would be fun to showcase some of the monsters and ghosts that appeared in the series.  All this month I'll be counting down through 31 of my favorites culled from my personal collection of cels and animation under-drawings.

Again, as I mentioned previously, my wife and I sat down and did our best to order these monsters and ghosts from the least scary to the "crap-my-pants-creepy".  Today's entry is as cute as a 40 foot-tall button, and is "..something that could never possibly destroy us…"  Of course, I couldn't kick this countdown off without talking about one of the most iconic of all creatures that have popped up over the years of the franchise, the one and only Stay Puft Marshmallow Man!



Whether he's the physical form of Gozer the Gozerian (the Sumerian god of destruction) innocently chosen by Ray Stantz (Dan Akroyd) in the first film, or the eventual three-story tall baby-like sidekick of the animated GB crew, Stay Puft is as synonymous with the Ghostbusters as Slimer.  Stay Puft's concept origin comes from a mixture of advertising giants, the Michelin Man and the Pillsbury Doughboy.   The eventual design was so convincing to me that for years I assumed there was a brand of marshmallows called Stay Puft.

His appearances in the cartoon are a great example of how weirdly twisted spin-off adaptations can become.   In fact, the Real Ghostbusters is the center of a lot of weird adaptation issues.  Adding Slimer as somewhat of a pet/mascot, making Egon blonde, and turning Janine into a new wave punker are just a few examples of where the cartoon differs from the original flick.  What's interesting is that some of these changes worm their way into the second film.   I'm surprised we didn't see a return of the Marshmallow Man in GBII instead of the happy-tized-goo-animated Statue of Liberty.



In the cel above we have Stay Puft strolling along the streets of NY, using what's probably the corner of the GB firehouse headquarters as a turning point pivot.  There's also a little Slimer hovering over Puft's right shoulder, no doubt trying to convince him to help the Ghostbusters take down a big baddy.  I was kind of happy when I received this cel in the mail as it came with a pencil under-drawing from a slightly different segment.  It's also kind of neat to see how the animator illustrated where the shadows were to be applied to the eventual painted cel.



I'm not sure how many of you GB fans out there love or hate Slimer (I'm guessing it's pretty close to 50/50), but this tiny version (as well as his E.T.-esque appearance in the cel from last week) is pretty much all the Slimer we're going to get on this countdown.  There might be one more, but I'm really trying to concentrate on the other creatures, monsters, and ghosts from the series.

Make sure to come back tomorrow for another installment of the 31 Days of Monsters here at Branded in the 80s.  Also, you can head on over to Countdown to Halloween and check out lists of a bunch of other sites participating in this year's Halloween blogging event…

Before I start my Countdown to Halloween proper, I wanted to give a quick update on my candy findings for this season.  Thanks to the Insidious Bogleach who indirectly urged me not to give up hope on pharmacy Halloween sections.  I really haven't found anything good at Walgreens, CVS, or Rite Aid in years, but that has turned around a bit.  From Flix Candy, the same makers of the Box of Boogers, Zit Poppers, Bed Bugs, Freaky Fingers, and the Spooky Lip Pops comes the insanely awesome series of Monster Gummys!

          

These things are huge, and the concept is just fan-freaking-tastic.  Personally, with my goofy love of cephalopods, I think the gummy tentacle is probably the best designed confection known to mankind.  The choice of color, the little sugarcoated crunchies inside the suckers, it's just a brilliant work of art.   And the gummy earthworm?  Well that is just the perfect grotesque extension of one of the most basic gummis out there.  It's the Tremors sandworm of gummi worms.   It puts the gummy worm in the chocolate cake "mud" to shame.  Scratch the Tremors reference.  It's the Dune worm of gummi worms.  I want to strap on a nose plug, put in some neon blue contacts, and ride this worm.

But, like almost all Flix candy, these monster gummis have one unfortunate flaw.  They taste a lot like what I'd imagine licking the Toxic Avenger's mop would taste like.  I could barely get a bite of the tentacle down, and don't get me started on the earthworm.  It smelled like a racquetball with a similar consistency to boot.   Seriously, all kidding aside, this is a plea to the folks at Flix Candy:

"For the love of all that's holy, please fire your chef and make your overpriced and exquisitely designed gummi candy edible.  Thank you."

I was going to hold this post until Friday, but I've got a short week at work, and since today feels a whole heck of a lot like Friday I thought why the hell not!  Have I ever mentioned that I really dig Halloween?  Oh yeah, I guess I have.  Well there are only seven days left until the season starts proper, and I have to say that I'm super jazzed about participating in another round of daily Halloween blogging, my fourth to date.   I've been prepping for this year's countdown to Halloween for the last four months, trying to come up with a theme that'll be fun on a lot of levels, and then it hit me sometime towards the end of this past June.   2009 has been a banner year for a particular 80s film and cartoon franchise, the one and only Ghostbusters.   It's the 25th anniversary of the original film, the 20th anniversary of the sequel, and this past year we saw the release of the complete animated series on DVD (which, by the by, is available on Amazon for only $114), as well as a new line of action figures released by Matty Collector that are pretty darn cool.  Also on a personal note, it was just about three years ago that I really began banging this website into a shape that was more along the lines of what I had in mind when I started this whole Branded in the 80s venture with the first official Peel Here sticker column that featured, you guessed it, the Ghostbusters.

So I was thinking back to last year's countdown and one of the things that I enjoyed sharing were a handful of animation cels from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  So, for this year's countdown, in honor of the various anniversaries and releases, I thought it would be fun to dig back into my collection of animation cels and share some of my favorite monsters featured on the RGB cartoon.  One of the things that's really special about the cartoon was the vast variety of monsters, ghosts, and creeps that were in the episodes.  I've picked up a handful of these over the last year and each day in October I'll feature a new monster-centric cel (and any accompanying pencil under-drawings) from my collection.  My wife and I sat down and tried to order these from least scary to uncomfortably creepy, so it should be really fun come All Hallows Eve.  It's the 31 Days of Monsters!

To give a hint of what's to come, I thought I'd share an appropriately themed cel from the Real Ghostbusters…



I fell in love with this cel from the first moment I laid eyes on it because it combines two of my favorite things, 80s cartoons and Halloween.  When I share these on the site I like to try and use it as an opportunity to try and learn something about the process of animation by investigating contextural clues.  For instance, I thought it was interesting that the kid bringing up the rear, the mad scientist or whatever he is, has some weird repaints to him.  If you look closely (click on the image to zoom in), his brain/helmet was touched up on top of the cel.  Typically all of the painting is done on the back of the cel so that the photocopied black line art sits on top of all the layers of paint underneath.  The artist also had to touch up his eye, so my guess is that they painted his entire head and face the same flesh color and had to fix it.

Also, you'll notice that a lot of the black line work is super faded on the cel, turning to a light purple/brown in spots.   I've noticed this in a lot of the Real Ghostbusters cels, and it's one of those aspects to American companies sending their physical animation work overseas to save time and money.  Part of what makes it cheaper is the supplies anf materials used.   Honestly though, I don't know how much of this mattered at the time the animation was done, as it's stuff that could have faded over time, and these cels were certainly not meant to be scrutinized 22 years after they were produced.



I also really enjoyed the pencil under-drawing for this piece.  I love it when the animators put that extra bit of effort into the drawings with separate colors and such to illustrate the differences between overlapping characters and where shadows need to be placed in the final painted cel.   It's also kind of neat to pull back the curtain a bit and see any notes, even if it is in code (or sometimes other languages…)

So I hope everyone enjoys the theme, and I can't wait to start posting some proper monsters.   I'm going to update the site each night, 13 minutes after midnight, so check back often to see what's in store! 

Also, this is a perfect opportunity to point to a bunch more blogs that'll be participating in this year's Halloween Countdown.  As I've mentioned over the past month, I helped create a site that will hopefully act as a resource, corralling the sites that are joining in on the spooky fun.  You can find it at the Countdown to Halloween or you can click the handy banner below…

The Halloween season is pretty much in full swing.  It looks like the Netherworld Haunted Houses are just about to open their doors here in Atlanta (as well as accepting a new performer/puppeteer, congratulations Liz from Puppatoons!)  Most of the stores have their seasonal sections up, and the candy is flowing freely.  Also, it seems like every year I go through a similar phase during September.  Around the 1st of the month I start getting excited for the holiday, and then before I know it the entire month flies by in a haze.  The Countdown to Halloween night begins in just one week!

As I mentioned on Monday, I plan on announcing my theme on the 25th (this Friday), and then the festivities will properly begin just after midnight on October 1st.  We should also have the preliminary list of Countdown to Halloween bloggers up around the same time as well, so keep and eye out for that.  As for today, I thought I'd take a second and mention some of the interesting candy I've seen so far.  Honestly, besides the Bat and Candy Corn Dots, I really haven't found anything that's peaked my interest.  Most of the stuff is pretty standard fare, or repeats of stuff from the last couple years.  Aside from the various mini candy bars, Twizzlers, and multi-packs of Wonka branded confections (like the Giant Nerds), I've seen a lot more off-brand "gourmet" candy corn in all sorts of odd fruity flavors.   I've even seen some chocolate covered candy corn which sounds utterly decadent, and not in a good way.



One thing that popped out at me this year is another selection from Flix candy called Spooky Lip Pops.  These have been around for the last couple years but I've hesitated in picking them up because the track record for decent tasting Flix candy isn't all that good.  They seem to have a great handle on design, but that's about it.  Surprisingly, these creepy variations on the tried and true Ring Pop are pretty darn tasty.



I was glad too because I'd of hated myself if I ended up only liking the packaging…

Next up we have a staple of candy lovers everywhere, Pez.  Though it's nothing new or exciting, I did think it was interesting to see a bag of mini Pez refills on the bulk candy shelves.  Typically you only see some season dispensers in the novelty candy section, and most people probably wouldn't pop for a bunch of those to give out to trick-or-treaters.  Hell, most kids these days probably aren't enamored with Pez (relegating it to the much maligned Smarties category), but I've always loved it.  There are even mini packs of Cherry Pez, which I've never actually seen in stores (only heard about in movies like Stand By Me.)



Ever since the appearance of the Gummi Frog Dissection Kit at Target a couple years ago, it's become a yearly tradition to try and find the most ostentatious gummi product on candy shelves, and each year I've managed to find something bigger and crazier.  Last year Wal-Mart had a three-foot long gummi snake.  This year they're offering something doubly as crazy, a 48", two-headed monstrosity of a realistic gummi snake that even features two gummi rats as snake food!







Granted, I'm well aware that if you really want an insane gummi you can order one of the 5lb bears from Vat19 for $30, but for only $5 you can have more freaky gummi goodness than most people can handle.  The two-headed snake design is just crazy, but 48" of solid gummi candy is insane.  Luckily it even tastes good; though there's no way I'll be able to finish it.   It's just too much gummi for one man.

I had wanted to do a write up of this year's Wal-Mart Halloween section, but honestly it was pretty bland.   I did want to mention a weird trend in their candy pail offerings this year though.  Aside from the growing number of cartoon and movie branded candy buckets which are never very seasonal, I noticed that the large display of your standard plastic pumpkins have abandoned their tried and true orange hue.  All that were on the display were various neon variations in blue, purple, green and yellow.   Maybe the store hadn't fully deployed it's plastic pumpkin army, but if they have then it's a crying shame…

I talk a lot about this idea that I have about branding and how one can transmute the miasma of corporate products and logos that clogs our everyday existence into something useful.   All of this packaging, product placements, all these mascots, and these slogans are really just glyphs on a Rosetta stone.   It's an obscure dialect that contains a key to our memories.   If we're going to live in a manufactured world we have to learn to use it to our best advantage.

Similarly there's an odd rift that develops in the level of acceptance for this monster of commercialistic branding.  The further away we get from something, or if we have a window into which we can see the process of business entropy, the fonder our memories become.  As a for instance, who absolutely, 100% adores the corporate branding of McDonald's?  My guess is that most people would say "Not me."  Of the various demographics that would respond to the corporate branding and products offered, I'd be willing to bet a good percentage wouldn't hate McDonald's, would even admit that they eat there from time to time, but would also admit that they either don't like being sold food through the various cartoon characters or special promotions or they just plain wouldn't care.  At the same time though, I wonder who out there misses McRib sandwiches, Shamrock shakes, Officer Big Mac, the Professor or Captain Crook?  My guess is that most of the people who would recognize these things would probably admit to a fondness for these products and characters.  It's still the same type of low quality food and shilly mascots, but through the haze of memory they seem so much cooler.



So why am I bringing this up today in a post about some pre-Halloween excitement?  Well, I can't help but love Target around this time of year.  In fact, of all the Halloween traditions I've been adopting over the past decade, exploring the new spooky displays each year at the mega department store chain is fast becoming the start to my seasonal fun.  I know there's something a little unhealthy about getting so excited about new store displays, seasonal branding, corporate themes, and intellectual property partnerships, but I do.  

In fact, for once I can feel the future nostalgia building as all of this stuff, the characters, products, and signage starts seeping into my consciousness.   I can already see the day when the company will switch gears to follow a new, cheaper, pared down trend, and I can already feel myself missing the current one.  It's sort of like that cliché wish where one imagines utilizing time travel to go back and grab all the stuff that you miss from your childhood, except I'm already there.  The future me is sending back messages via brainwave wifi technologies, begging me to scoop up every piece of flat scan-able branding, or else…



Honestly, this isn't even a reaction to the undeniable awesomeness of this year's crop of Target Halloween goodies.  Some of it is pretty darn cool, but it's nothing all that special.   I just know I'll miss it when it's gone. 

So what exactly is it that I'll miss?   For one, Target finally hit the nail on the head in terms of finding the perfect pre-existing property to partner themselves with.   In years past they've featured unique branding like the Edgar and Ellen characters, which, though appropriately seasonal, were a little bit too spindly in design, and maybe a little too specific in character as they have a well-defined back story in the book series.  Last year the theme was Domo, which though neat in and of itself, was sort of a misfire in terms of Halloween branding.  Dressing Domo up like Frankenstein doesn't make him seasonal (that's a trick Disney has been attempting to much greater success with much more recognizable branding and characters for years.) 

This year though the partnership is with Skelanimals, a line of gothy, stuffed animals and clothing.  The basic premise revolves around a spooky design for what I assume are dead animals that makes each character look like a living x-ray where the skull and bones are visible.  It has the taste of Johnny and his gang of Cobra Kai during the Halloween dance scene in Karate Kid.  Personally I think this is a genius licensing agreement.  Not only are the Skelanimals cute and iconic, but they've got a head of steam developed via stores like Hot Topic where they've been featured prominently for a few years.  For the uninitiated they don't necessarily carry any anti-goth resentment baggage either.  They're at the perfect buoyant level between under and over exposed, and they just feel like something that Target would have come up with on their own.  Oh and my wife loves them to death.



Along with some neat exclusive glow-in-the dark plush variants, the Target Halloween section also features a million other Skelanimal branded products like pillows, key chains, hats, gloves, t-shirts, hoodies, candies (M&M exclusives and little tins of mints), as well as a trifecta of brand merging with the release of Target specific Skelanimal Bounty paper towels & napkins and Puffs tissues.  There's also a line of hard plastic figurines that could easily be mistaken for vinyl toys (because we did)…



One of the aspects of the Target Halloween section that I love is that they don't put all their eggs in one basket.  In addition to the main theme each year there are also mini ones directed at different demographics.   Where as Skelanimals are there to target the tween, teen and twenty-something's, there is also a more generic house branding that aims at the 30-something's and older crowd.  For the past few years this section has been devoted to El Día de los Muertos, the Mexican Day of the Dead holiday.  This year this is being morphed into a more tattoo centric crowned skull and dragon theme…



Personally I think it's a little weird and trendy, but then I tend to stray away from most generic iconography when it doesn't have a particular story to tell.   I love skulls in general, but they're so simple and relatable (we've all got 'em.)  When you throw a crown on them, then it becomes pointlessly specific and enters into that realm of punk/biker clip-art that just makes my stomach queasy (like the ace of spaces, a set of snake eyes dice, barbed wire, an eyeball in a ball of flame, or a burlesque girl lounging in a martini glass.)  I just don’t get the appeal, especially considering that this subculture tends towards individuality, but these symbols just become a uniform.

Along with this theme Target is offering a new version of their over-sized skull candy dish greeter that I fell so hard for last year, though it's less Day of the Dead and more brushed metal…



The last demographic that Target has been attempting to capture is the more obvious youth market which is the bread and butter of Halloween.  In the last couple of years they've been doing this a little awkwardly with the Edgar and Ellen and Domo branded products, but there's always been an in-house branding that hasn't gotten a lot of attention featuring cute child-like versions of Frankenstein, Dracula, a witch and some creepy animals like cats and spiders.  Mainly these characters have ended up on the various paper products (plates, one-use table cloths, paper towels, etc.) and in my opinion they weren't pimped quite enough.  This year Target has introduced seven new characters, three of which are being heavily featured on a lot of different products ranging from candy to candy bowls.  There's a neat blue witch (that looks like a cross between Sally from A Nightmare Before Christmas and Jill Thompson's Scary Godmother), a little kid dressed up as a devil (that's reminiscent of Lock, also from A Nightmare Before Christmas), a ghost, a weird one-eyed bat, and three monsters.  These three monster characters are what really impressed me with the new spread in the store..



They've even gone so far as to name them, giving them a little bit more individual identities.   First up we've got Trex, the green Godzilla-esque lizard monster…



Next up is Schmorg, the furry, orange, one-eyed, Cousin It, chocoholic of the gang…



And last, Zen, the three-eyed, happy, blue gangly monster…



On the one hand I love the character designs, even on Zen who is straying from the typical Halloween color-scheme.  These are a weird cross between the work of comic writer/artist Evan Dorkin (of Milk & Cheese, Hectic Planet, and Dork fame) and the tone and feel of the monstrous characters on Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends.  In fact Dorkin has been doing a series of monster drawings on his blog that are so close to these Target characters that if they didn't hire him to design them, then the folks who did must have been fans and heavily influenced.  My favorite bit of branding with these monsters are the ceramic candy dishes…



Unfortunately, as far as the actual candy and goodies go, besides the new additions to the Dots family, there wasn't much to speak about this year at Target.  The Jones Soda offerings are the same from last year and I haven't found any interesting candy that wasn't available before.  I was hoping to find a new series of the Nerds test tubes or some other obnoxiously giant gummies, but there really wasn't anything exciting.  Oh well, I guess I'll just have to make due with the new branding.

Again, since I'm invoking Halloween, I thought I should point to the Countdown to Halloween site.   It's a resource for finding excellent Halloween blogging content during this coming season.  As I've mentioned, it's the home for a list of blogs participating in the ghoulish fun of the holiday.   I've also created a couple badge/buttons you can use to show your creepy pride and participation in the event if you'd like.  I plan on posting every day during October, and I've chosen a wicked theme that I hope everyone digs.  The festivities start in 13 short days!

I swear I'm starting to get a little crazier every year now.  The beginning of September rolls around and I tell myself I’m not going to start getting all antsy for the Halloween festivities.  There are two full months before the actual holiday and a solid 30 days before I start belting out my annual Halloweeny posts at Branded.  I keep telling myself that and then I walk into a Target looking for some pistachios and I find some new Halloween candy that I can't ignore.  If it's just been the seasonal wrapping on some packages of M&M's I would have walked right past them.  Even a candy combo bag with Frankenstein's monster peering at me wouldn't have been enough to break my icy patient exterior of waiting-on-the-season sternness.  I don't want to turn into one of those retail zombies that starts shopping for Christmas wrapping paper on Black Friday.   I'm supposed to rally against big box giants pushing holiday merchandise on me three months in advance.   Halloween is for October damnit!  Sigh.  Here I am though.   It's Sept. 5th and I've officially started my season off by picking up some great packages of candy that were just daring me to buy them, take them home, unwrap them, photograph them, and taste test them…



I suppose I should start with something old.  My favorite Halloween candy from the past two years has to be the genius Ghost Dots from Tootsie.  When I first saw these in 2007 I couldn't believe just how perfect this variation on your standard Dots candy seemed.   It's so simple, and yet so intriguing.  They started with the run of the mill mystery flavor gimmick, removing the typical colors (but keeping the original flavors) and going with a monochromatic scheme.  The first inspired stroke of genius was choosing the glow-in-the-dark pale minty and slightly translucent green evoking all sorts of ectoplasmic ecstasy.  Then it must have been clear to call them Ghost dots as they're already iconicly shaped (just a jagged trim along the bottom short of being the perfect Pac-Man ghosts.)  It's just so freaking simple and pure…



There were no new additions to the spectral Dots family last year, but this year the guys and gals at Tootsie surprised me by introducing two new varieties.  The first one I'd like to showcase is better, both design and taste-wise, of the new duo (though it doesn't quite trump the awesomeness of the Ghost Dots.)  Blood Orange flavored Bat Dots…



Though visually these aren't as interesting as the Ghost Dots, I have to say that I'm digging the inky black little guys.   I'm not a big fan of the licorice flavored gummi candies, but I've always thought black candy just looked cool.  Hell, everything looks so much better in black.  I'm sort of lamenting the fact that Tootsie chose to stick with the classic shape for the candy.  I think these are screaming out for bat wings, though I'm sure it would have been cost prohibitive for a seasonal confection…



As for the taste, these guys aren't half bad.  They strike a nice balance between sweet and tart with a good hint of citrus, though I'm not sure how accurate the blood orange flavor is.  I'm pretty sure they chose to utilize the creepy nomenclature specifically to evoke the holiday, but this opens up another area where these candies could have become legendary.  Though classic Dots (as well as the Ghost variety) are individually comprised of a single color, the other new entry into the Dots family this year introduced a dual-colored Dot.  Since the technology already apparently exists, I think the Bat Dots should have utilized this and had transparent red tops or bottoms.  It would have just had that extra bit of fun.  These are hardly a failure though…

Anyway, the other new variety is another in a long line of candy corn influenced sweetness.   I've written about my feelings towards the uber sweet tri-colored kernels before, and I have to say that I’m really not a fan of candy that tries to disguise itself as the classic Halloween staple if for no other reason than the flavors end up tasting way too much like cotton candy (which I despise, at least flavor-wise.)



I have to give this variety points for looking pretty cool, but it pretty much ends there.  The first CC Dot I popped into my mouth wasn't bad.  It had a mellow flavor more along the lines of caramel or sweet cream.  The second was just too sweet.  The 3rd, 4th, and 5th just tasted like chemicals, and the rest will probably find a home in the trash.



One out of two isn't bad though, and adding Bat Dots to the family portrait with the Ghost Dots gets me excited for future installments.   I'm personally holding out for Witch's Warts Dots, all white Ghost Dots II in a new flavor, and Silver Bullet Dots (you know, for killing gummi werewolves.)

While I'm on the subject of Halloween, I might as well take this opportunity to announce a new website called Countdown to Halloween!



Basically, over the last three years I've noticed an amazing trend in some spooktactular holiday spirit when it comes to the celebration of all things Halloween.  There have certainly been those (like Matt at x-entertainment.com) that have been spreading the good word for awhile, and there are a plethora of wonderful sites out there dedicated to making every day of the year a little bit more orange and black, but in the last few years there has been a surge in fiendish fun around the month of October that really gets this dried up and dusty ticker of my beating again.  In particular, in the past two years there has appeared a list, usually cobbled together by a couple of swell guys John Rozum and John Knutson, that gets passed around from site to site and really makes the whole experience fun and exciting.  For one, it provides a virtual vault of horror, a crypt of terror, a, um (well geez, I guess EC Comics should have come up with another great title for me to lift from), oh wait I know, a tomb of dread, a virtual cornucopia of amazing stories, photos, comics, reviews, crafts, toys, songs, radio plays, jokes, and general commentary on a holiday that a lot of us hold dear.  This list also serves as a centerpiece for a spur of the moment community, a virtual meeting place, and the type of communal experience where the internet is the perfect forum.

Countdown to Halloween is a home for this list.  Note, it's not the home.  Part of what makes this season of creepy blog-a-thons so special is that there is no expectation, no rules or guidelines, but at the same I think it would also be beneficial to have a place to point to, a hub.  This isn't a union; it's intended as a resource.

So if you're planning on another year of terror inducing blogging during the Halloween season, or if this is your first time trick-or-treating alone, feel free to let your intentions be known.  You can either comment at the Countdown to Halloween site, add your voice to the comments on Mr. Rozum's blog, or you can @tweet or follow Halloween_Blogs, on twitter.

As for my plans for this season, well, I'll announce those as we get a little closer to October…