John Kricfalusi?s new blog

Pretty valid critics about him. But you know what? He?s doing in his blog something that no one in the industry has done before....




TEACH ANIMATION TECHNIQUES AND PRINCIPLES TO STUDENTS FOR FREE.





I don?t like much of his stuff, but I apreciate all the experiences in the industry he shared on his blog. (yeah, even if is just in a terapeutic way)
 
A couple, but as usual, they've gotten openly hazed for being braindead philistines.

Plus, John doesn't even critically discuss why he attacks these cartoons, like his outrageous comment about Disney cartoons being aimed at a certain group of people without explaining why)
 
It's strange though, his followers do annoy me, but there are a few of them who have some solid points. John K does talk about how crappy it was to work for Filmation cartoons and people who post on his blog talk about their experiences working on toy-centric cartoons from the 80's and early 90's that didn't allow for creativity or innovation and how it was basically hell to work on these shows, show that a few of the members here at Toon Zone praise on a few occasions.

In fact, I believe I remember reading a post from someone who worked on Tiny Toons, basically describing it as hell... hmmm.

And the Disney bashing I kinda agree with to a certain extent, they do try to "preserve the Disney style" and do the same thing over and over again, even today, and other animation studios DO try to be "Disney" and fall flat, but it doesn't seem to bother the industry or the general movie going public, the only ones who have anything bad to say about it are the ones who work for the industry.

I don't like the suck-ups, but being someone who wants to work in animation (less and less as I read the TAG blog and see live-action rise) I kinda take heed when someone says they've worked in this industry and experienced the anguish of it and what they have to say.
 
Yeah, they're pretty much the only truely worthwile thing in his blog, at least for me.

I've been wondering how much of an influence Ralph Bakshi had on John K's art? Along with Clampett, I always assumed Bakshi was a big influence, especially with those two workin together on the Mighty Mouse series.
 
He criticizes Ratatouille and calls it "bland" when the his best stuff is Ren and Stimpy and The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse... hmmm...

I'd like to see him make a better movie then Ratatouille or The Incredibles and actually DO something good... then maybe I'd respect his opinions a bit more.

I respect the guy for having such a passion about animation but I think a lot of his opinions are... very very flawed.
His blog does have some good stuff on it once in a while but I wouldn't recommend it most of the time.

Oh yeah, I love how he criticizes Disney for having "realistic" animation but then treats Bakshi as some sort of god even though Bakshi's done his fair share of "realistic" animated films using rotoscoping...
 
He probably didn't like Ratatouille because Remy didn't squash and stretch like a maniac, do wild takes with giant stretchy eyes and perform "funny" mildly homosexual acts with his rat friends while making feces and nipple jokes.

John K may have a decent animation sense but that stuff is what he thinks makes cartoon funny. Vulgar characters doing butt and body function jokes.
 
Look no further than the executives giving the notes and the general populace watching the shows. Sadly, sometimes good writing doesn't sell.
 
I think we're getting off the point here. Maltese was still a trained animator before he became a cartoon writer - he wasn't some schmoe off the street who'd given up a career in some wildly different profession. And if the guy had no drawing talent, how was he able to advance from cell painter to in-betweener? You're making a heck of an assumption there IMO. Not to mention that "writer first, cartoonist second" jazz. I quoted from a well-researched book how Maltese's career progressed, and here's a more direct quote from it:

Maltese left the Fleischer studio in 1936. Having risen from opaquer to inbetweener by early in that year, he wanted to become an assistant animator and was, by his entirely believable account, fired for trying to advance too rapidly at what was by then a heavily stratified operation. After two months at the Jam Handy industrial-film studio in Detroit, he moved to Hollywood in April 1937 and joined the Schlesinger staff as an inbetweener in May.

Maltese was still trying to become an animator...when he was pushed into the story department in August 1939, he said because "the front office" was impressed by the comic pieces he wrote for the Exposure Sheet, the studio's newsletter.

Doesn't sound like the guy's ultimate dream was to be a writer. Sounds like and I quote, he was pushed into it. Which I think perfectly illustrates my original point: he was a cartoonist first, writer second, in every sense of the phrase.
 
My "first, second" statement was in the sense that he was primarly a writer, not which one came first time wise. Perhaps I should have made that clearer.

Yet, my point was to showcase that you don't have to draw good in order to write a good cartoon. Whatever someone does outside the studio shouldn't really matter as long as your product inside the company is good.

Kricfalusi would have probably never hired Maltese, following his own philosophies.
 
I will agree with you about the executives. And I sort of agree with you about good writing not guaranteeing success for a show. However, I think there are reasons why a show doesn't resonate with the public that have nothing to do with the writing. Even if the writing is clever, perhaps the reason for a show not connecting with its viewers is that its characters are too mean-spirited or the premise is too difficult to follow or the situation is too offbeat to easily identify with, etc. etc. Your average viewer doesn't say "I don't like that show! It's too well-written!" :anime: At least I know I don't.
 
John K. found Chuck Jones to be a rather bland director, mainly because the majority of his cartoons (save for The Dover Boys, and maybe a few others) don't fit Bob Clampett's "golden, wild" animation style. If Chuck was just an animator and not the director, though, John enjoyed the cartoons (i.e. that episode where Porky's dog gets drunk on hair tonic).

He makes that point numerous times on the Looney Tunes: Golden Collection DVD commentaries (volume 3) and his When Cartoons Were Cartoony interview special with AWN.
 
Huh? No. I don't. Chuck Jones is my favorite Looney Tunes director. The 'tude' I'm talking about is something like this:

lolabunny.jpg


Or this:

bugsbunny7.jpg


'Modern' renditions of the classic WB characters.

None if the Chuck Jones Bug's I can remember look or act like that.
 
Eh, I dunno. I remember him saying that Jones cartoons had personality, and that they had good facial expressions which emphasized exactly what a character was thinking. And I agree with that.
 
I do like some of John's stuff, but I agree about the lessons he teaches, and those lessons are invaluable IMO, especially about cartoon comedy. I particularly love the Fleischer Popeye stuff he's posted. And he makes a great point when he wonders why today's cartoons aren't being written by cartoonists, but by some former lawyer or failed stand-up comedian and/or their girlfriends. Good question. Damn good question.

What gets me is that while Flash has made physical movement easier to achieve in animation, most of the new cartoon characters animated by it just stand around and yak yak yak. How come a painstakingly-animated-by-pencil classic Tom and Jerry cartoon still has more effective comic movement than a high-tech Flash toon?

I guess I just don't understand the process.
 
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