Happy New Year

[Garrett Gilchrist]

I won't miss 2013. The economy continued to stall, Congress did nothing at all, and people continued to be poor. I scraped by on very little money and survived, barely.

But there was a lot to like about 2013 regardless.

I guess we can talk about movies and TV.

On the big screen, Robert Downey Jr. returned for Iron Man 3. It didn't give fans the Mandarin from the comics, but was another great outing for the character. World War Z and Pacific Rim got good notices (I haven't seen either), Monsters University wasn't bad for a sequel, and The World's End provided an interesting end to the Simon Pegg/Nick Frost/Edward Wright "trilogy" that began with Shaun of the Dead.

We returned to Peter Jackson's Middle Earth in The Desolation of Smaug. Martin Freeman as Bilbo is miles better than Elijah Wood ever was as Frodo. And Evangeline Lilly as an elf archer, although an invented, shoehorned in character, does everything right that Liv Tyler's Arwen did wrong. Sylvester McCoy is also surprisingly welcome here, perhaps because his character has a certain sense of humor. But for the first time I'm feeling like this film was simply more of the same, without much of an emotional connection to the audience. It felt curiously rote and joyless. Smaug, the CGI dragon voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch, is a showstopper though, and worth the price of admission on his own.

On the small screen, we had Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Joss Whedon has created some of the best TV series in recent memory, and Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen have done great work in the past. On The Avengers, Joss's task was to create the biggest and best Marvel movie fans could imagine, and somehow he and the crew pulled it off. But this small-screen outing, something like a less stupid version of Torchwood, was just too dumb for me. I stopped following it after a few episodes.

Breaking Bad ended, gloriously. So did 30 Rock. Dexter wasn't so lucky (or in possession of its original creative team). On the internet, a fox said something and Rebecca Black returned, showing possible signs of talent.

Doctor Who fans got a wonderful surprise - the few of them that were actually surprised, anyway - as the previously-lost 60s stories The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear were released to iTunes. For nearly three years now, rumors have spread that three tons of film representing most of Doctor Who's 106 legendary lost episodes were found in Africa. Back in 2007-2009, I undertook a project to animate these lost stories, although now it seems I needn't have bothered!

http://orangecow.org/who-sprites2/1guide/

At any rate, the official folks haven't announced anything more yet, despite strong rumors about Marco Polo, The Crusade, The Massacre and other classic stories. It's Doctor Who's 50th anniversary this year, with 11th Doctor Matt Smith departing at Christmas to give way to 12th Doctor Peter Capaldi. I've grown very tired of Steven Moffat's writing, but there was still a lot to enjoy from Doctor Who this year. The Ice Warriors returned in "Cold War." Paul McGann's eighth Doctor returned in "Night of the Doctor." David Tennant's tenth Doctor returned for "Day of the Doctor," a fun feature-length outing which screened in 3D in theaters, and which also featured Billie Piper, John Hurt and, in the show's most surprising moment, fourth Doctor Tom Baker. Meanwhile, Mark Gatiss's docudrama An Adventure in Space and Time told the story of first Doctor William Hartnell. The classic Doctors including Baker, Baker, Davison, McCoy and McGann returned for Big Finish's audio adventure The Light at the End (and many other stories, as usual). And Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy, along with surprise guests, starred in a half-hour comedy special, The Five(ish) Doctors.


For me, after two years of work and eight years of research, this was the year I finally got The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Cut Mark 4 into a fairly complete, showable state - and show it they did. It's been screening at film festivals all across the world.

Nothing we accomplished on The Thief - and we accomplished quite a lot - would have been possible without the assistance of people at this forum - that's you - and on Facebook and elsewhere. We transferred rare film in high definition, which made all the difference to the quality of this edit. Your support at the Friday Livestreams helped me power through a huge amount of work in Photoshop and elsewhere. Through your donations we resurrected a portfolio full of rare early production art. Through your donations I was able to attend the only ever public screening of Richard Williams' workprint, and shake Richard's hand.

Restoration work continued on Richard's other work with help from Christoph Nass and Helge Bernhardt. I also undertook an ambitious project to restore quite a lot of otherwise unavailable specials starring Jim Henson's Muppets, and a big restoration project for The Bonzo Dog Band is underway.

As an artist I created a lot of interesting stuff - fantasy characters, mostly. And a six-page comic about a Super Mario Bros. character. I continued to work on my second novel, Ragland, a complex and surreal piece about the end of the world. I was a vending artist at one convention ... that's about it I think.

For Cinemontage magazine, I interviewed the sound team of Dexter, the editors of Iron Man 3, and longtime Robert Zemeckis editor Arthur Schmidt, as well as his Back to the Future co-editor Harry Keramidas (who helped me track down some rare Thief and the Cobbler footage).

And there were a lot of other things I'm surely forgetting.

Anyway, I survived.

How about you?

[Dennis196492]

It was an alright year, it had a lot of good things, but a lot of stink bombs too. (I'm looking at you, Oz the Great and Powerful). A ruckus happened in my country over abusive taxes over most products, people went on the streets, fights happened, all hell broke loose, and....nothing happened right after, it died down, now the PlayStation 4 is 1890 Dollars, and no one's doing dick about it. I advanced somewhat in my drawings, got myself a few ideas for whatever, and worked on 2 fan-edits, currently I'm working on Super Mario Bros.

It was a treat downloading The Thief Mark IV, and seeing those beautiful scenes in High-Definition for the first time, as well as reading about Richard's Workprint and maybe shaking up some internet drama for the laughs. The Wii U had a terrible starter year, while the 3DS got a fantastic second year, tons of great games on all platforms, not just Nintendo, as well for other great games coming up.

Here's to 2014.

[GeoNine]

Was a bit of an interesting year overall, though at the same time feels like not much has happened.

I got through another year of college, made it through what people consider the hardest classes of my major.

Been getting more serious about my personal work and actually getting projects going or at least getting basic ideas on paper instead of just letting them float around in my head. And from that I've also become more focused on what I'm actually aiming for when I graduate rather than just a general idea, so that's a big thing for me (and for getting my parents off my back).

Other than that, it's really been small things all around, watching more updates for Thief, waiting on new game releases, and working with people on projects left and right trying not to fail classes.

[Reegar]

I take it you weren't big on Man of Steel?

[M-M]

I had a couple of cinematic experiences this year that I felt left a bit to be desired.
I felt like Star Trek Into Darkness could have distanced itself from the source material so much more than it did and have created a really epic story, but instead gave me an admittedly enjoyable action ride.
Man of Steel was just so odd to me in terms of a Superman movie. I'm still not sure what to think of it.

Actually, I saw two movies based on true stories (The Fifth Estate and Saving Mr. Banks) and found them far more enjoyable.

[Garrett Gilchrist]

Animaniacs - New Year's Eve
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97V5cDhnyfA

[JustinHoskie]

It was a fine year for me. I wrote possibly the best thing I've ever written, put together a soundtrack to Little Shop that I'd wanted to do for a couple years, finally got my hands on all of the Little Shop video bootlegs I wanted, started work on a complete soundtrack to Les Miserables, after years of waiting, the Shrek the Musical DVD FINALLY came out, Hell froze over and a live musical production aired on network TV, and it was announced that JK Rowling wrote a book under a pseudonym, is producing a Harry Potter stage show, AND is writing the screenplay set in the wizarding world! Also, I just started work on The Wizard of Oz script that's been clanking around in my brain for about five or six years, and I've had a few personal revelations.

I also realized just how much I still care about Family Guy when they killed off Brian, my computer broke, and I've had some personal problems, but you get the good with the bad.

[Garrett Gilchrist]

http://www.toughpigs.com/auld-lang-swine/

[SmarTeeMackxs]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_IvCsWzV5U
An oldie but a goodie...

[Garrett Gilchrist]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJR44H48POo