Product Info
Product Name: Fritzkreig: The Aerial Adventures of Fritz the Fox, Vol. 1
Category: Animated Movie
Author: Barry Munden
Publisher: Spanish Castle Graphics
Release Date: Released 2003
Sys. Spec: DVD Player or PC with DVD player
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A few years ago, I was introduced to an amusing character called "Fritz the Fox." Fritz arrived on the combat simming scene as a series of very amusing Flash animation shorts. Barry Munden, Fritz's creator, would post links to his short Flash animations on the various community forums and we'd all get a good laugh.
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Fritz takes aim at a bogey  |
Lo and behold, a few months back, I got an email from Barry telling me he had produced a standalone DVD of Fritz's adventures called, "Fritzkreig." Now, I liked Fritz, but a whole movie? I agreed to receive a complimentary copy and review it for this site, but I honestly did't think it'd be all that great. Some weeks later, the DVD arrived in the mail and I was immediately impressed with the DVD box in all its full-color airbrushed glory. Hmmm? So far so good!
The main feature is, of course, "Fritzkreig," and is 16 minutes in length, but more on that in a moment. Also included on the DVD is a short feature called "Fritz Alley" in which Fritz, flying for the Americans in the Korean war, tries to outwit Colonel Mao (a flying Siamese cat in a MiG Fishbed). This was a hilarious short bit in which Fritz first gets shot down while flying a P-51, but returns later in a dual fuselage F-82 Twin Mustang. I won't give away the joke, but it made both my wife and me laugh outloud.
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| Secret weapons of the Luftwaffe? |
Now back to "Fritzkreig." In this main feature, we watch fighter pilot Fritz in a series of amusing engagements starting in Germany at the beginning of WWII proceeding through France, Britain, Egypt, Russia, and then back to Germany to close out the war. Fritz flies all manner of aircraft starting with a very shakey Fokker monoplane that birds can fly faster than, to Bf-109's, to stolen RAF Spitfires, to Me-163 rocket planes and Me-262 jet-powered Stormbirds. Each of these planes is very faithfully drawn so the aircraft aficionados out there won't be disappointed.
Now, I'm not recommending this DVD be used in high school history classes in order to learn about WWII, but for a small child, it might just be the ticket to get him or her interested in the subject as the animations of the planes are quite faithfully reproduced and the series of adventures are chronologically and geographically accurate.
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| The illustrations are very well done, indeed! |
So, what happens in these adventures? Well, I really don't want to give away the jokes, but let's just say that our hapless hero Fritz gets "shot down" by bunnies (yes, bunnies), lightning, farmers with guns, vodka bottles, and blimps to name but a few. Should you be asking yourself whether the violence level is suitable for kids, don't worry, the situations are very tame. Whereas today's cartoon humour is very raunchy and extremely violent, you'll find that Mr. Munden had opted for wit and humour over today's mainstream cartoon bludgeoning techniques.
Further to Mr. Munden's deft hand at wit over more overt comedic techniques, there's no actual dialogue as the humour relies entirely on the character's expressions and an exceptionally good soundtrack with lots of authentic aircraft engine and gunnery sounds. A tip of the hat to the music too, as this definitely reinforces the humour as each gag unfolds.
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| Fritz's sidekick, Hans, gets booted out of the cockpit for bad behaviour. |
Feeling that I would be limited in describing the movie for fear of "giving it away," I asked Mr. Munden if he'd mind answering some questions about the creation of the Fritz DVD. He cheerfully obliged and that interview follows:
CSIM: How did Fritz come to be? What inspired you to create this character?
Munden: Fritz was originally a one-off cartoon I did just to amuse my youngest son, who loves airplanes. My son enjoyed it so much, I made another one. And another one. And another. Eventually, I needed a place to keep all these cartoons, so I built a website to host them. The website rapidly attracted a following, so I decided to make more. Because of Fritz, and some other animated work I have done, I decided I wanted to try my hand at making a cartoon just for DVD, and Fritz seemed like a natural choice. But ultimately, I just did it because I like to hear my son laugh.
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| Fritz in his stolen Spitfire eludes his own countrymen in Heinkel bombers. |
CSIM: How long did it take to complete the Fritz movie?
Munden: Several months, working a few hours every day. A good week for me produced about 1 or 2 minutes of animation, on the average. Most of the time was spent creating new material, although all of the older Fritz toons for the web had to be reworked to bring them up to the standard I set for myself with the newer material. Since bandwidth and computing power is an issue when you make cartoons for the web, the older stuff was kind've primitive. With DVD, there is no such limitation, so I was free to pull out all the stops visually and have fun with it. The addition of an original score was one improvement that really sets the DVD apart from the web stuff. And I was free to use better quality sound fx.
CSIM: What future adventures have you planned for Fritz?
Munden: I've decided that Fritz will have to find some flight time somewhere, now that the big one is over, so I'm planning on putting him in a USAF flight jacket. I figure he would've gone wherever the planes were, like any pilot. I've already done one short toon, Fritz Alley, which pits him against his new nemesis, Colonel Mao. It's on the DVD. A lot of vets enjoy Fritz...in fact he's on a USAF patch...so it seems natural to get him flying under the Stars and Stripes. And I can see some real gag potential with modern guided weapons.
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| Fritz and Hans in their Stuka. |
CSIM: You said he's on an Air Force flight patch?
Munden: Yes. Some of the pilot's training at Moody AFB liked him enough that they had me design a flight patch for them with Fritz flying one of their T-6's. It came out nicely...I have one on my own jacket.
CSIM: How has the response been to the DVD? Is it selling well? Are the sales enough to validate all the effort it took to create?
Munden: Initial response to Fritz was excellent, considering he was just a garage undertaking for a niche market. Many people (from all over the world) bought several copies, and I have yet to get a single return. Unfortunately, my marketing resources are pretty limited, so Fritz depends on word of mouth for sales, which means how much money I make really depends on how much noise I make. There is no danger of my getting rich from him any time soon :-) I don't have much love for time-consuming marketing, really...I'd much rather be working on the next thing. But I find his reception encouraging, and I think his popularity will only grow as I make more cartoons.
CSIM: On the DVD is a section called "The Making of..." in which I really hoped to see how you made the Fritz movie, but it's just a humourous section. I'm sure many would love to see and learn about the actual process of creating such an animated feature. Do you have any plans to document the actual processes, procedures and types of audio and animation software you used?
Munden: I suppose if I were smart I would market an overpriced how-to-make-your-own-funny-aviation-cartoons book with a shrinkwrapped CD and make tons of money, but I always hated those books. Some of them are useful, but most of them aren't worth the paper they are printed on. They rarely teach you anything that wasn't already in the manual. My advice to anyone wanting to animate is to not worry so much about software and learn how to draw. You can learn software very quickly, but learning to create good artwork and good animation takes much longer. It is all about time and practice.
Fritz took a lot of time and effort and not all that much software, really. I used Illustrator and Flash for the art and animation. All the rest was stuff that ships with any new Mac...Quicktime, Sound Studio, iDVD. You can really do a lot with no frills software if you are creative with it. Quicktime Pro is truly the swiss army knife of multimedia. And, oh yes, I still use a number two pencil and sketch pad...probably the most cost effective tools I have. The hardest part of making Fritz for me has always been coming up with the gags, and there is no substitute for a sketchpad and number two pencil when brainstorming.
I suppose the Internet played a vital role, too. The music was composed electronically by Mark D'Errico, an excellent composer from Canada, whom I would never have been fortunate enough to know were it not for the net. He wrote and performed all of the music on the DVD, syncing it to the animation I sent him, and really did an outstanding job.
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| Russians in an IL-2 Sturmovik bomb a Tiger tank. |
CSIM: Will you venture out of the 2-D animation realm into the 3-D realm? Any plans to create an interactive Fritz game?
Munden: Some 3-D tools might've been handy for some of the animation, as a shortcut, but I found that I could live without it, especially for the time and money I would've spent. 3D work is very time consuming...if I'd done Fritz in 3D, I'd still be working on it. And I'm not sure it would've been any funnier for it. Personalluy, I prefer my cartoons in 2-D. Sometimes 3-D can make what should've been cute into something grotesque. Look at the recent remakes of the Dr. Suess stuff...it's creepy. Disney's movie Dinosaur scared kids clear out of the movie theater (I know for a fact...it did it to mine, too. The ticket lady who retunred my money said they were shovelling out refunds to parents with crying kids by the bucketful) 3-D is great at making things look real...but cartoons aren't supposed to look real. They are supposed to entertain. The bottom line is that, whatever software you choose to use, in the end it is the story that counts.
I have no plans for a game, although many flight sim fans have made their own Fritz skins. I've thought about having a "Skin the Fox" contest and including some on the next DVD.
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| Even aliens get into the act as this UFO gets on Fritz's six. |
CSIM: What do you do for a living, and what does your family think of all the effort you've put into Fritz?
Munden: I freelance as a designer and web developer. My wife was and always has been wonderfully supportive of every harebrained creative impulse I have. That's one of the many reasons I married her ;-)
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I just want to thank Mr. Munden for answering my questions and I recommend to any of you with kids, or are a kid at heart, to buy this DVD video as it's good clean combat simming fun—and that's something we surely need more of.
You can order the DVD at FritzTheFox.com.
