UTS Sydney International Animation Festival

 What's Onion:  UTS Sydney International Animation Festival 

@ UTS. 25-28 September 2013  http://www.siaf.uts.edu.au/

This Wednesday through to Saturday is the Annual Sydney International Animation Festival at UTS. With a ton of FREE talks, workshops and viewings theres plenty to keep us animation fans talking for ages.

Liquid Television's, John Andrews will be there talking about everything from Beavis & Butthead, The Maxx, & Aeon Flux through to South Park & Family Guy. Theres also workshops on writing for Children's Animated Series, student animations, Sundance award winning documentaries as well as the Oscar nominated adventure The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello by Anthony Lucas.

The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello

Best of all it's Free (all you have to do is register & turn up! So head over to http://www.siaf.uts.edu.au/ and check it out!

The Maxx

 Retro Animations:  MTV's Oddities: The Maxx. 

Maybe you missed it first time around or maybe you weren't around at all then... either way you should check out MTV's THE MAXX.

Its been 20 years since Sam Keith's comic was first released by Image Comics and 18 since the series was released on MTV's Oddities. This wonderfully dark, moody and violent series covers a lot of bases, everything from depression and homelessness to alternate worlds and monsters. Mixing them up with wicked style.

With bad guys (Mr Gone) that are seriously bad. Good guys, (The Maxx) that are seriously unstable and Heroines (Julie) that have seriously messed up pasts... all linked together through past events and an ability to travel into the alternate (or is it the real) world, Pangea/Outback/Australia.

Maxx is a huge, violent, depressed homeless guy in a purple suit with massive spikes on his hands that just also happen to be his middle finger, which is a nice touch. He struggles through everyday life, living in a box with his only friend and ally being Julie, a freelance social worker, who is being stalked by Mr Gone, an awful murderer & rapist. 

All three travel between the real world and Outback (sometimes called Pangea or Australia) a place filled with, among other things, Isz... small white eyeless creatures that when bought through to the 'real' world turn black, powerful and bloodthirsty! These are the bane of Maxx's life in both worlds. As the King of the Outback, Maxx's reason for surviving is to protect the Jungle Queen (Julie)... fighting off Mr Gone where-ever he goes.

The graphics in this animation stay true to the original comic and jump between clean and bright to dark, scratchy and dirty in others... used to great effect to show the mental and physical anguish the characters, particularly Maxx, go through.

Not only does this series have some seriously cool fight scenes but it also shows a depth of character and an insight into the hopelessness of the depressed and homeless. 

Absolutely a must watch on anyones list!

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of The Maxx, you can watch all the episodes at MTV The MAXX. I've put the first episode here for you, but a bit of a web search will find you all the episodes without the amazingly high advert content!

The Maxx - Full Episodes