Sitting Ducks-Volume 1: Duck Cravings

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General		Extras
Category	Childrens	Featurette-Where's Aldo? Biographies-Character DVD-ROM Extras-Game-Grab The Duck Featurette-Test Animations (2) Trailer-2
Rating	?
Year Of Production	?
Running Time	74:47
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Walt Kubiak
Studio Distributor	Universal Pictures Home Video	Starring	None Given
Case	?
RPI	$29.95	Music	Kick Productions Riccardo Mulhall Terry Neale

    Maybe I am having a bad run, or worse, maybe Region 4 is sinking to new lows. This is the third disc in a row that has had some problem with the content that was a conscious choice by someone somewhere. To be fair, this is a disc for the kiddies but I don't really think that is a good enough excuse to pan and scan the transfer. The original seems to have been somewhere around 1.85:1 as shown by the letterboxed image in the musical trailer included in the extras. A quick comparison to the 1.33:1 main feature shows that the sides have been chopped.

    We have all seem that wonderful poster by Michael Bedard with the duck sitting on the deck chair looking over his shoulder at the bullet holes in the wall behind him. Michael Bedard has also written a children's book based on the same character with the addition of a crocodile. This TV show is based on those books. Michael Bedard's posters and sculptures shows a great sense of humour, at times a very dark humour and at times very light. A cartoon attempts to convey more with less - cartoons are life distilled to a series of simple lines that are used to convey information. This is often humour, and the greatest of cartoonists can create an incredible depth of message with the simplest of images. You can read so much into the famous sitting duck poster even though its style is very simplistic. The same applies to traditional animation, or in this case 3D computer animation. The animation is styled very much after the posters and is instantly recognisable.

    In the world that this story inhabits there are two towns near each other; one is Duck town, the other Alligator town. Those in Alligator town just love to eat those in Duck town. A function of the natural order as it were. Our story revolves around two characters, one from each town. Bill is a duck, a slightly smaller-than-average duck who, through a strange series of events, ends up best friends with Aldo, an alligator from Alligator town. Each episode explores this strange relationship and the reactions of their friends and relatives.

Running Duck (10:35)

    The premiere episode where Bill and Aldo meet. If the author of a certain fable about a mouse and a lion were still alive there might be copyright questions being asked.

Hic Hic Hooray (10:35)

    Bill is having a family get-together to play a rather complicated board game, when one of his relatives cries off leaving them one player down. Aldo wants to sit in but Bill has not yet told his family that he has made friends with someone further up the food chain. Aldo convinces Bill to let him attend disguised as a duck. An unfortunate case of the gigups (alligator hiccoughs) threatens to derail the entire evening.

Peeking Duck (10:35)

    Aldo is having a little difficulty adopting to life in Duck town, in particular with not eating the residents. After being asked to house-sit for some neighbours of Bill's, he comes under suspicion of having eaten them.

Midnight Snack (10:35)

    After a little sleep eating, where Bill nearly becomes a snack, the friends set out to try and 'cure' Aldo of his craving for duck meat. They try aversion therapy and a psychotherapist, neither of which works, and nearly end up having to break up a great friendship until a solution is found.

Ducks On Ice (10:35)

    A nice little stroll down to the frozen lake that separates the two towns leads to Bill and his friends being blown across the lake to Alligator town. They are roped into a local game of ice hockey with some young alligators and must play for their lives.

Great White Hype (10:35)

    At a boxing match between an alligator and a duck, something just has to be going on behind-the-scenes.

All In A Day's Work (10:36)

    Aldo is very reluctant to admit what his actual job is at the bowling ball factory. Bill decides to infiltrate and find out and gets into more than a little trouble.

    My thanks to the designers of this disc for not putting the full opening and closing credits on each episode, but only at the start and end of them all. I get very tired of hearing my son asking for another episode as the opening credits roll again and again on some discs.

Video

    Sharpness is somewhat down on this disc and I cannot decide if this is inherent in the source material or a transfer issue. There is a very smooth look to the animation, similar to the artwork mentioned before, but this goes a little beyond what I would have thought was correct. There is also some loss of resolution during movement such as at 14:25. Shadow detail is good as are the black levels, but there is some low level noise present.

    Colours are very good with bright and fully saturated colours abounding - plenty here for young kids to watch. The colours are slightly affected by some posterization in some scenes.

    While there are no big MPEG artefacts, there is a fairly large amount of minor pixelization and some posterization. At 10:53, the background is clearly affected by these problems and a lot of other scenes have this problem as well. The constant mosquito noise can be a bit distracting on a large screen. There are also a few problems with loss of definition during pans such as the big blocks half way up the building at 10:42 - the black lines in between the blocks appear and disappear over a number of frames. Again, I wonder if this is a source rendering fault or a transfer problem. While this should be a direct digital transfer, I do wonder if it is perhaps not. There are no film artefacts but the noise is very reminiscent of video noise that has been digitised.

    There are no subtitles.

    This is a dual layered disc. The layer change must be between episodes as I could not see it while watching the content.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are no problems with the dialogue nor with the audio sync.

    The music is quite fun and blends well with the overall theme. Kids will enjoy the upbeat feel.

    There was no surround nor subwoofer activity.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    After an initial screen prompting you to select your language of choice, we are presented with a static menu with a picture of three of the characters from the cartoon. There is no audio and after a time the main feature starts automatically.

Bonus Episode (12:00)

    Another episode from the series. In this one, Bill and Aldo have a falling-out and Aldo disappears from Duck town. Bill and his friends decide to try and disguise themselves as alligators and find Aldo with predictable results. Also presented at 1.33:1 and accompanied by a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack.

Character Line Up

    A static page with a very small amount of text concerning ten of the characters in the series. The text is accompanied by a picture.

Game

    A very silly little game written as a flash presentation. The object is to move a static picture of Aldo across the street and pick up Bill, all the while avoiding falling milkshakes.... ad infinitum. As soon as you get Bill to the other side, the score increments by one and he is back on the wrong side. The menu entry when selected tells you to click on the .exe file in the top directory of the DVD for Windows and on another file for Macs.

Test Animations

    Two test animations, one by Creative Capers (1:05) and one by Krislin Elliot (3:09) both presented at 1.33:1 and accompanied by a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack.

Trailer (1:05)

    Presented at 1.33:1 and accompanied by a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. This trailer advertises three videotapes of the series.

Music Trailer (1:07)

    Presented at 1.85:1 letterboxed and not 16x9 enhanced with a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack, this is a number of clippings from the series set to music.

    There does not appear to be a Region 1 version of this disc available at this time, leaving by default a Region 4 winner.

    While this series seems to start a little slowly it does gather pace towards the end of the first season. It is also currently playing on the ABC at some unreasonable hour of the morning and manages to keep my son entertained while we get ready for work. Later seasons seem to be even better with the humour becoming a little darker and sharper.

    The video is a little disappointing.

    The audio suits the material.

    The extras are a nice inclusion.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall