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List of Famous Insects
18 years ago
Though was never my intention to go quite so far with the bug drawings, its been kinda fun, actually, and I'll keep with it for awhile yet (as I have a tonne of unused ideas that are still waiting for a) my skill to improve enough to do them justice and b) the spare TIME to do them justice. Mostly so I won't necessarily have to go back and -redo- the same pieces that should have been cooler the first time around.
*takes deep breath*
Anyways, was thinking of doing a few more famous insect tribute pieces and wanted to compile a list of 'em from movies, books, folklore, wherever . There's a boatload of secondary characters who are bugs as supporting cast in anything involving smaller morphic characters or just aliens (American Tail, Titan AE - both by Don Bluth and Mulan's Lucky Cricket for instance), but there's enough main insecty sorts out there to compile a decent list.
Also, there's a fair amount of movies where bugs are tossed in as the 'swarming/horror element' (MIB, The Mummy, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Creepshow), or even the main badguy of the film. (Them, Starship Troopers, Swarm, Mansquito - a wonderful howler any MST3King group of people would LOVE to tear apart.), and countless other B film horror/T&A films too numerous to go into that I haven't had the priviledge to eat popcorn to.
Thing is, if you want insects as NOT the badguy/negative aspect characters, you generally turn to animation, at least in film.
So far, off the top of my head, in animated movies featuring major insecty characters there's:
The Ant Bully (Haven't seen)
Antz
Arthur and the Invisibles (Haven't seen)
Beast Wars (Waspinator - okay, he's a ROBOT bug, but still)
The Bee Movie (not out yet)
A Bugs Life
Hoppity Goes to Town
James and the Giant Peach
The Phantom Tollbooth (Chuck Jones' version of the Humbug is very cute)
Pinoccio (Jiminy Cricket)
Note, in animated shorts, CG, Traditional or otherwise, the list gets prohibitive - I think partly because insects can be easily 'tooned' and oversimplified, compared to more familiar things like people or animals humans have a closer association/fascination with. But situationally, once an insect is sentient, the possibilities for situation comedy/cool things to do skyrocket because you can mess with scale, surreal 'kitchen or backyard jungle' settings, plays the insects normal behavior. Old Warner Brothers, Disney, and MGM cartoons are classic examples, but other short films, like Joe's Apartment.
In fiction, besides the folktale Anansi of African lore (well, he/she's a spider, but I'll include arachnids and land-crustaceans into the whole concept of bugs), the lazy grasshopper vs. the industrious ant of fables, and countless children's books (The Very Hungry Caterpillar anyone?), I'm having less success coming up with pop cultural insect characters in books. Even Jiminy Cricket from Pinoccio gets short shrift in literature, as in the original version, the ungrateful wooden puppet squashes him for meddling pretty early on. Still, there are a few literary bugs that come to mind:
Archie - The Cockroach from, and author of, Archie and Mehitabel (wonderful, philosophical/funny read).
The Humbug - Phantom Tollbooth (A bit different than the Jones version, in text, as well as in Fifer's scribbly drawings of him)
Woggle-bug - from the OZ series.
Music, to me, is even harder to find insect references, beyond the one about the rubber plant, and Oingo Boingo's Insects.
Anyone got any other obvious or obscure ones I probably overlooked?
*takes deep breath*
Anyways, was thinking of doing a few more famous insect tribute pieces and wanted to compile a list of 'em from movies, books, folklore, wherever . There's a boatload of secondary characters who are bugs as supporting cast in anything involving smaller morphic characters or just aliens (American Tail, Titan AE - both by Don Bluth and Mulan's Lucky Cricket for instance), but there's enough main insecty sorts out there to compile a decent list.
Also, there's a fair amount of movies where bugs are tossed in as the 'swarming/horror element' (MIB, The Mummy, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Creepshow), or even the main badguy of the film. (Them, Starship Troopers, Swarm, Mansquito - a wonderful howler any MST3King group of people would LOVE to tear apart.), and countless other B film horror/T&A films too numerous to go into that I haven't had the priviledge to eat popcorn to.
Thing is, if you want insects as NOT the badguy/negative aspect characters, you generally turn to animation, at least in film.
So far, off the top of my head, in animated movies featuring major insecty characters there's:
The Ant Bully (Haven't seen)
Antz
Arthur and the Invisibles (Haven't seen)
Beast Wars (Waspinator - okay, he's a ROBOT bug, but still)
The Bee Movie (not out yet)
A Bugs Life
Hoppity Goes to Town
James and the Giant Peach
The Phantom Tollbooth (Chuck Jones' version of the Humbug is very cute)
Pinoccio (Jiminy Cricket)
Note, in animated shorts, CG, Traditional or otherwise, the list gets prohibitive - I think partly because insects can be easily 'tooned' and oversimplified, compared to more familiar things like people or animals humans have a closer association/fascination with. But situationally, once an insect is sentient, the possibilities for situation comedy/cool things to do skyrocket because you can mess with scale, surreal 'kitchen or backyard jungle' settings, plays the insects normal behavior. Old Warner Brothers, Disney, and MGM cartoons are classic examples, but other short films, like Joe's Apartment.
In fiction, besides the folktale Anansi of African lore (well, he/she's a spider, but I'll include arachnids and land-crustaceans into the whole concept of bugs), the lazy grasshopper vs. the industrious ant of fables, and countless children's books (The Very Hungry Caterpillar anyone?), I'm having less success coming up with pop cultural insect characters in books. Even Jiminy Cricket from Pinoccio gets short shrift in literature, as in the original version, the ungrateful wooden puppet squashes him for meddling pretty early on. Still, there are a few literary bugs that come to mind:
Archie - The Cockroach from, and author of, Archie and Mehitabel (wonderful, philosophical/funny read).
The Humbug - Phantom Tollbooth (A bit different than the Jones version, in text, as well as in Fifer's scribbly drawings of him)
Woggle-bug - from the OZ series.
Music, to me, is even harder to find insect references, beyond the one about the rubber plant, and Oingo Boingo's Insects.
Anyone got any other obvious or obscure ones I probably overlooked?
I'll have to research those -and ... Capitol Critters had bugs?! That one I had heard of, vaguely, though not with enough detail to realize it was bugs instead of other funny animal folk.
And so on.
No one feels bad about smishing a small bug, and much less so when its homicidal and 6 feet tall and doesn't speak your language!
There's one scifi novel with a mantis on the cover, reaching out to place his palm upon a human's, but never got to read it, and can't remember the name of it now. Humanx? Something like that.
As for vid games, yeah, bugs are pretty widespread there too, as villains, and occasionally as playable sides/factions/races.
Sword of Stars is a 4C, turn based game that's decent. There's a lot of things I don't like about the game, but it does have a style I like, and the insect faction Hiver voices they got range from Incredi-Super Sexy to funny Waspinator-esque. Artwork of the bugs in SoS is kinda neat too.
One other 'bug' race from scifi that starts out 'bad' and reforms to 'sympathetic/misunderstood' is the enemy Queen/Princess from Ender's Game.
The whole thing about, if we were wiped out tomorrow, the cockroaches would still survive - in this movie, turned into the Cockroaches weren't going to -wait- for us to wipe each other out.
Its also the only movie I know of where an -art- technique, 'value patterning', where you just have to get the most basic shadows/highlights to fool the eyes, becomes the main weapon/plot point of the film. :>
The world needs motion pictures with moar nice bugs though, yes.
[/nerdbabble]
Wow, for a list of random 'buggy' horror films, I've actually seen more of those than I would have expected.
They Nest and the Mimic sequels I missed, 8-legged Freaks I -wanted- to see in the theatre, but I couldn't get anyone to brave it out with me, despite the fact that -I'm- the one that shrieks and ducks and watches scary films through a lattice of fingers to protect me from the baddies!
Mimic was one that the people I saw it with panned pretty badly, and being a bit of a social chameleon at the time, it affected my own judgement of it, though in retrospect - there were things I -really- did like about the way the film unfolded.
And ... 'how the monster works'.
*thankies for the recommendations!*
*sneaks off to watch Men in Black*
*sneaks off to watch Men in Black*