Neil Gaiman remarked on his blog that images his agent emails from Germany end up with the colors inverted, and posts an example of a Coraline poster:

Coraline (German, inverted colors)

“…ah yes, I thought. That’s the sequel, all right. CORALINE APOCALYPSE”

I used to run into this with TIFF images when building websites. (No big surprise, given that there are a million variations on the TIFF format.) I think it was around 2000 or so that I was working on a website for a law firm, and they sent me their logo. The logo, as I received it, was yellow on light blue, so I built a site with black text on a white background for the main areas, and yellow on light blue (matching their logo) for the title, navigation, and borders.

I sent them a link to the test site. They looked at it, and said it was very nice, but could I try to match the color scheme on their logo instead?

It turned out that red and blue had gotten switched around (and possibly more, because I can’t remember how the yellow ended up in there), but anyway it was supposed to be white on light brown. I switched the channels, redid all the graphics and styles for the site, and they stuck with it for several years.

Back on the subject of Coraline, Gaiman adds in his post that the film has become “the second highest grossing stop-motion film ever” after Chicken Run. So why does it seem to be forgotten already? Just two months ago, commentators were falling all over themselves to say Coraline was the turning point for 3-D animation being part of the storytelling and not just a gimmick. Now everyone’s talking about how Monsters vs. Aliens is the turning point for 3-D animation being part of the storytelling and not just a gimmick.

2 thoughts on “Color-Switchin’ Coraline Apocalypse

  1. puh-leaze Monsters vs Aliens? It’s a B-movie bash with some sentimental moments. Fun but hardly something to fall over in idolatry…

    Coraline however has a sensibility if that can be said. 😉 lol Apocalypse, I like it. 🙂 Beldam hand comes back from the well in pieces and opens the door and the other world floods in…

  2. *sigh*

    3D mark that I am, I’ll see just about anything. (I used to say *anything* but they really pushed me to the limit when that Jonas Bros. feature was announced. Luckily, it debuted without my knowledge, so we’ll never know just how addicted I am to that third dimension.)

    Unfortunately, the local theater that I frequent only keeps flicks in 3D mode for a week or so ( or so I hear ), so I’ve missed Coraline and others due to a lack of info.

    Man, what a rant. All I meant to say was that I like the funky colors.

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