About Me

Rob Pincombe is a prolific television writer, recovering comedian and sometime comic artist/storyboard artist who just wasn't satisfied with a single blog. He writes about sci-fi and fandom at rebelalert.com, Canadian comics at comicanuck.com, and shares thoughts and insights on writing at starkravingadventure.com

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Introducing... Boba Fett



Welcome to the rebellion. I went absolutely bonkers for this cartoon as a kid, when it aired as part of the infamous Star Wars Christmas Special. The first screen appearance of Boba Fett was easily the best part of the show.



The animated short was like nothing I'd ever seen. The designs are part ILM/part fairground caricature artist/70's underground comix and it was our first ever look at badass Boba Fett. Even though Boba never actually does anything in this, it was all about the tease. This dude had potential to rival Darth Vader in coolness.


From small screen...


...to tall screen.

For a young Canuck like me, the most amazing thing was that this short was by by an upstart Canadian company named
Nelvana, now one of the largest animation companies in the world.


It somehow made the possibility of being connected to that Hollywood/Star Wars universe so far, far way seem less remote. They so impressed George Lucas this short became a precursor to is a precursor to their later Droids and Ewoks series.




At the time they were making animated shorts in their Small Star Cinema series and moved into really unique, and awesome animated specials like their early Christmas Two-Step, their breakthrough production was
A Cosmic Christmas. (Don't believe me? View it here!).



And of course, the Halloween special,
The Devil And Daniel Mouse...



Which inspired their ambitious feature debut, Rock And Rule!



After the Star Wars Christmas Special, Nelvana continued the galactic holiday themed specials with Intergalactic Thanksgiving, Romie-0 and Julie-8, Take Me Up To the Ball Game and the not so sci-fi Easter Fever (the very first animation voice credit for Maurice LaMarche: voice of "The Brain" from Pinky & The Brain!).

All fun, unique specials. But this really is about Boba Fett. He's a man of few words but we'll give him the last words today.



Bad... Ass.

END TRANSMISSION

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