Animated Calvin and Hobbes

Only once a generation or so does a comic strip come along that is embraced that it becomes a classic. Peanuts, of course, is the ultimate example but more recently Calvin and Hobbes fits that bill. It was a real shame Bill Watterson quit after only a decade or so of doing it… the art, characters and writing all blended to create something special. Even his “off” days, the ones where the gag was one of those weak ones, were enjoyable.

This is via The Daily Cartoonist:

This apparently was created as a final project by an Italian film school animator. I’m not sure how I feel about it, as it’s quite against copyrights to use these characters at all. Of course being that it’s in Italy, U.S. copyright isn’t enforceable and I don’t know if Italy has any arrangement with the U.S. over copyrights. There are quite a number of “Calvin and Hobbes” amateur shorts on YouTube already, so I guess Universal Press isn’t too concerned. Given Watterson’s famous aversion to merchandising his characters, that surprises me somewhat.

This short is the most ‘animated’ of all the ones I’ve seen on Youtube. It’s pretty well done and stays quite accurate to Watterson’s drawing style. Even given it’s in Italian, the infant like squeaks uttered by Calvin don’t seem to fit his character, but there you are. Obviously heavily influenced by the Peanuts cartoons, even down to the piano music in the background.

UPDATE: The original video has been removed from Youtube. Clicking on the Youtube logo brings you to a page with the message that reads:

This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Bill Watterson

I guess Bill managed to drag himself out of his cave long enough to crack down on Youtube. I didn’t know they had internet access in the Ohio wilderness. Now if he could just do something about those decals of Calvin pissing on a Ford logo….

UPDATE II: As of 11:00 am CST, the video is back under a new link and was working again above. It’ll probably be gone in a few hours, so enjoy while you can.??ᬨ‚Ć