I WANT TO EAT A NUT OF LAERMA!

HAPPY, HAPPY, JOY, JOY!

I wrote the following entry about John Kricfalusi's blog over at the F*ckin' Otaku forum. Since I don't feel like writing the exact same thing over slightly differently, I'll just repost it here.

This isn't really a "ha-ha funny" link (though there's plenty intentionally funny on it), but Quebec-born Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi now has a blog, and it's very worthwhile reading if you're interested in animation from a creative standpoint, as John K. gives a lot of advice and insight into the creative process, and I don't mean to imply that it's a dry tutorial. You can learn technique elsewhere. John K. is more interested in giving the philosophy behind the technique, what works and what doesn't. (He also does a lot of celebrity caricatures, and he shows a lot of concepts of series he wants to develop further but can't due to lack of network interest in animation that isn't safe, assembly line stuff.)

I've known about his blog for a little over a month, but it's now getting some serious media attention.

One thing that would be of interest to people here: in his most recent entry, John K. touches upon anime and discusses why he doesn't particularly care for it. As an old school "full animation" animator, and one who hates sticking to model sheets and drawing the same expression twice, you can easily imagine that he is someone who would be bothered by the limited animation and all of the shortcuts the majority of anime series use, especially the "floating" mouths that don't seem to be connected to the faces they're on. Personally, I think it's possible for anime fans to be aware of the shortcuts and still like the "style" for what it is, but I can understand what a "full animation" purist would hate about anime. I could reply and mention exceptions (and preach to him that anime has a mulitple of styles), but, eh, I wouldn't want to come across as being too much of an anime fanboy.

John Kricfalusi is hardly the only major North American animator out there with a blog, but the other one I look at from time to time, Venture Bros. creator "Jackson Publick"'s Livejournal, is much more of a straight "what it is we're working on right now" kind of deal.

Hmm... for Google purposes, some stuff I forgot to mention is that John Kricfalusi's animation studio is named Spumco, which doesn't currently have a website (it used to, I don't know what happened there), though there is this impressive unofficial Spumco site. Also, Katie Rice, the young cartoonist who the bulk of the entry I linked to is about, is working on a video about girls for "Weird Al" Yankovic, woo hoo! And John Kricfalusi was born in Chicoutimi, Quebec, which doesn't exist anymore as an independent city, since it was merged into the Ville de Saguenay.



Also, for anyone who's been waiting for this, the DVD of the ill-fated Ren & Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoons, the ones that Spike TV aired for a few weeks in the summer of 2003 before they decided that they were too extreme, will be released on July 18^th.

Maybe I'll pick it up. I've been meaning to get the John K. Ren & Stimpy episodes on DVD, but haven't gotten around to it due to lack of funds. (I have a lot of the ancient Nickelodeon VHS tapes, though. They're orange.)

posted by Steve Brandon @ 11:49 PM