Real Ghostbusters Online takes us down memory lane with this wonderful unboxing video of the Real Ghostbusters Firehouse by Kenner. The firehouse, which has been in storage for nearly 22 years, was factory sealed is opened for the first time during the video.
Also, a friendly reminder, only 5 days remain to pre-order the Real Ghostbusters DVD collection before the 10% discount expires.
A trip down memory lane as we wait for Activision to decide how it should flush their only chance at redeeming their long history of publishing sub-par Ghostbusters video games.
The official Real Ghostbusters trailer that aired during the San Diego Comic-Con which includes on-air commentary from J. Michael Straczynski. Just a friendly reminder, be sure to pre-order your collection before September 1st and save 10%!
The collection includes over twelve hours of bonus material including documentaries and twenty-one innovative on-camera commentary tracks featuring producers, writers, artists, voice actors, and other personnel. Also included is a never-before-seen promotional pilot, over eighty on-camera episode introductions, art and photo galleries, scripts, storyboards, informative booklets, and much, much more. Don’t miss out!
Ghostbusters.net member Bativac illustrated and inked versions of the Kenner Real Ghostbusters Fright Feature Figures. If you are a child of the 80’s and you loved Ghostbusters, you had these! I don’t know about you guys, but me and my friends (circa 1987) had a real problem with Egon’s tie breaking off. Nice work Bativac!
Newcomers: parts one, two, and three. Now on to the next chapter… Peter Venkman.
As we move towards the final two characters left on the list, we start to find that the designs look less and less like their live action counterparts, yet capture more and more of the character’s traits. With Peter Venkman (and lastly, Egon), we see animation character design at its best. They show us that a character can be interpreted many different ways, yet still retain the soul that everyone relates to.
Those traits being:
These traits are manifested in two ways within the translation of the face. First, the literal cross overs from Bill Murray. They kept the hair line, cheeks, nose, the tired / jaded eyes, the smirk, and the flat “butt chin” . Secondly, they created traits from scratch that best represented the character. Most notably, his hair. Dana put it best when he said said “you look more like a game show host”. And what do all game show hosts have? Nice hair! Which is why the cartoon Venkman has much more styled hair than Mr. Murray…especially with the nice pseudo cow lick bangs with the lovely curl at the end. But the hair is just messy enough, and just long enough in the back, to pay a little homage to Murray’s hair while still taking it into the TV show host / ladies man realm. Another significant change is the head shape. Murray’s head is shaped like a rounded square. Problem is, in animation, a round head suggests innocence or youth, while a square head suggests someone is dense or dim witted. Venkman is neither. So they narrowed his face into more of a tapered rectangle. The narrow shape and slight “V” angle makes him both witty, and more attractive. Which plays well into his womanizing routine.
Venkman’s body shape fits Murray pretty well. But the main changes come in the suit colors. Again, these colors were chosen because they represent his character traits. Venkman is no doubt the most popular character associated with Ghostbusters and fans are going to want him to remain true to the movie. But alas, the classic Tan suit is already used for Ray, as his character best represents the heart of Ghostbusters. Venkman also represents the heart…but a slightly darker, more cynical heart. What is a darker version of tan?…brown. Also, people who prefer brown, tend to not be impulsive. And as we all know, Venkman rarely likes to just dive into a situation head first….he lets others do that for him. “Go Get Her, Ray!”
Now Venkman also has dark blue-green accents to his brown suit. People who prefer blue-green tend to be discriminating (dismissed Walter Peck right away), poised (always appears composed and self assured), as well as attractive and charming (both play into the lady’s man routine). And of course, blue-green is an opposite on the color wheel with brown. Contrasting colors always go well together.
So there you have it! By taking some of Bill Murray’s features, adding some classically attractive physical features over top of that, as well a dash of TV host hair, and colors that reflect those character traits, you get a timeless Peter Venkman animated design that doesn’t “look” like the live action Venkman, but sure as hell feels like him!
In the next and final chapter, I will be discussing Egon.
Too Zuul For School
Charge up your Proton Packs and get the P.K.E. Meter running! One of the most popular animated series in television history to spin off from a major motion picture, The Real Ghostbusters, will soon be available for the first time on home video from Time Life. The 25-DVD set includes all 147 astonishing episodes of the seven-season series for over 55 hours of ghost-busting goodness — in their complete original form, but remastered for picture and audio perfection. Produced by some of the team members behind the legendary Ghostbusters motion pictures, The Real Ghostbusters features scripts by some of the top names in animation, science fiction, and horror history, and top-quality visuals, plus a voice cast that included Arsenio Hall, Dave Coulier (Full House), Maurice LaMarche (Pinky & The Brain), and many more!
The Real Ghostbusters: The Complete Series also features over twelve hours of fascinating bonus material, including documentaries and twenty-one innovative on-camera commentary tracks featuring producers, writers, artists, voice actors, and other personnel. Also included is a never-before-seen promotional pilot, over eighty on-camera episode introductions, art and photo galleries, scripts, storyboards, informative booklets, and much, much more.
Housed in a specially-designed box that recalls the award-winning and innovative Man From Uncle “briefcase packaging” and the Get Smart “phone booth set,” The Real Ghostbusters: The Complete Series 25-DVD set will be available for purchase exclusively online via The Real Ghostbusters DVD website www.realghostbustersdvd.com for $179.99.
“The Real Ghostbusters has had a strong and vocal fanbase for years, and the series has been one of the most requested shows for DVD release” says Jeff Peisch, head of Time Life’s video division. “Time Life has a long history of releasing classic properties in a way that viewers appreciate, and we intend this Complete Series release to be extraordinary. From the digitally restored episodes to the extensive bonus materials, this set will have fans calling for the Ghostbusters again and again.”
To produce the most comprehensive selection of extra materials ever seen for a complete animated television series box set, Time Life has engaged the services of Special Features producers Andy Mangels and Reed Kaplan. Mangels is a best-selling novelist, author of Animation on DVD: The Ultimate Guide, and the producer whom TVShowsonDVD.com called “legendary.” Mangels and Kaplan are producing the five documentaries, 21 commentary tracks, and a multitude of other extra content surprises. The duo were assisted by James Eatock of cereal:geek magazine. “I hope that fans will be spooked by how much cool material we’re putting together for this set,” said Mangels. “We’re including everything we can, short of duplicating the keys to the Ghostbusters car, the Ecto-1.” Covers for The Real Ghostbusters set and its interior cases will be by comic artist Emiliano Santalucia and MVCreations.
Spinning off from the box office mega-hit Ghostbusters (1984), the animated series The Real Ghostbusters debuted on ABC in September 1986 to tremendous ratings, critical acclaim, and an audience that ranged from kids to adults. The series functioned as a direct sequel to the movie, following New York’s paranormal investigator team — Dr. Peter Venkman (voice of Lorenzo Music, later Dave Coulier), Dr. Egon Spengler (Maurice LaMarche), Winston Zeddemore (Arsenio Hall, later Buster Jones), Dr. Ray Stantz (Frank Welker), their secretary Janine Melnitz (Laura Summer, later Kath Soucie) and their gooey green mascot Slimer (Frank Welker) — as they faced ghosts, goblins, trolls, demons, monsters, and even the Boogieman! In 1987, a syndicated version of The Real Ghostbusters aired Monday-Friday afternoons, while ABC continued to produce the Saturday-morning show.
The Real Ghostbusters eventually garnered a primetime special — which was nominated for an Emmy® award — and switched to a one-hour format in 1989, titled Slimer! and The Real Ghostbusters. This later version added a series of Slimer! short cartoons, aimed at a younger audience, but wacky and clever enough to still appeal to older viewers. By the time the series finally completed its run in 1991, 134 episodes had been created. The Real Ghostbusters was a hit in worldwide syndication, and also led to hugely successful toy lines, multiple comic book series, and fan clubs and web pages that keep the ghostbusting spirit alive — or undead — today.
This is it, this is definitely it! If you’re a fan of The Real Ghostbusters, you’ve been waiting for this DVD collection, and it is finally here.
The 25 DVD box set will contain all Real Ghostbusters episodes, all Slimer! episodes, and over 12 hours of bonus footage which includes:
- The original promotional pilot for The Real Ghostbusters, NEVER BEFORE AIRED
- 21 on-camera Commentary Tracks with producers, voice actors, writers, animators and production personnel
- 5 exclusive Documentaries
- 86 Episode Introductions
- 16-page booklets include episode synopses, trivia, and art for every episode!
- Plus Scripts, Storyboards, Image Galleries, Music & Effects Audio Tracks, and Much More!
- Interviews with J. Michael Straczynski (Writer & Story Editor), Maurice La Marche (Voice Of ” Egon Spengler”), Laura Summer (Voice Of First “Janine Melnitz”), Kath Soucie (Voice Of Second “Janine Melnitz”), and Many Others
This is, without a doubt, the definitive collection of The Real Ghostbusters. You can pre-order your copy before September 1st and save 10%. The collection is scheduled to ship on November 15th.
Note, prior to publishing this article, I placed my order and was charged the full amount. A simple call to customer service solved this issue.
TvShowsOnDVD.com is holding a contest to determine the art direction for the Real Ghostbusters DVD box set. Please keep in mind that these are early concepts and may change.
Voting ends this Friday, so as they say, vote early and often.
Ray’s character design is the Yang to Winston’s Ying. Where Winston’s design might have been the most difficult translation from film to animation, Ray’s design was no doubt the easiest. Of all four Ghostbusters, his translation is most direct, even down to the color choices. This can be contributed to the fact that Dan Aykroyd physically embodied most of Ray’s character traits so well.
And what are those character traits?
How were these qualities translated into the character design? Lets take a look at the face.
As I wrote earlier, much of Akyroyd’s features were brought over due to the fact that he physically embodied the character so well. This is rarely the case with movie to cartoon translation. But one can contribute this to the fact that Ray Stantz is really just Dan Aykroyd with a fictional name. The part was writen for him, by him, about him. So many of Aykroyd’s qualities cross over. As you can see, they mimicked his chin, lips, and nose almost perfectly.
To accentuate the qualities of pure heart and child like enthuasiam they took Aykroyd’s already established features and made them more child like by making his head more round, adding a fair amount of pudginess to him and giving him larger eyes. As a matter of fact, Ray has the largest eyes of the Ghostbusters. The other main change is his hair. Winston and Peter both have dark hair, to add variety to the group, they gave Ray lighter, brown hair. Besides helping him stand out, the lighter hair also brings out more of the child like qualities since most children rarely have dark hair right out the gate.
As for the body, much of the same rules apply. They gave Ray, Aykroyd’s basic body, and altered it to enhance the child like characteristics and help him stand out from the group.
Just like with the face, they added some pudge to round him out, and give him a slight pear shape. They also made him the shortest of the group. This again shows him as more youthful, also makes him more recognizable standing along side the group. Since Ray is the character translated most directly from the movie, his suit colors reflect that by remaining the same and retaining the tan color scheme, with no variation in color along the collar and cuffs. Where as the other characters had color schemes that reflected their personality, Ray kept the colors of the movie. Why? Because Ray IS the Ghostbusters. He is the heart and soul of the team.
In the next chapter, I will discuss Peter Venkman.
Too Zuul For School
Nelmari Claassens, Sony Pictures Marketing Manager, talks about key titles in Sony’s Blu-ray line-up for 3Q 2008.
In preparation for the 25th anniversary of Ghostbusters, a 50 gigabyte Blu-ray disc with Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II will be available in high definition, along with interactive games, episodes of the Real Ghostbusters, and more.
It seems as if everything discussed (and more) will be released on one Blu-ray 50 GB disc. Both movies, all the extras and bonus content on one disc. That said, what do you think the packaging should look like?
Classic black box? Green slime? Something new?
Discuss it here on the Ghostbusters Message Board.
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