John K's latest post...

B

Bikerchcka21

New member
Ok, those who have read my posts in previous threads concerning John Kricfalusi that I respect the guy for his love for the animation artform, and a lot of the stuff he posts on his blog concerning animation principals is good, but think a lot of his opinions on modern animation and how animation should be done (which to him is ONE WAY and ONE WAY only...) is bogus.

Well, his last post is one of those "bogus" posts:

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2008/11/solid-drawing-preview.html

Now the thing that irks me most about this post is NOT so much the lack of respect for the Disney animators who worked on this... he seems to make most of the Disney animators out to be talentless hacks who graduated from the School of Satan (aka CalArts)... with a few exceptions like Ken Duncan but doesn't even give him a kind word this time.
Even though I find that a bit insulting as my dad was an animator at Disney for 11 years... the guy is entitled to his own opinion about the film.

No, that's not the thing that bugs me most this time around... it's the fact that he posts THE WORST images from Treasure Planet to illustrate his point. He posts really ugly inbetweens (which are TRANSITIONAL poses and are not the poses that are meant to be really looked at) and then makes it out that the whole film looks like that and that all the poses in the film look like that.

Then he posts some really beautiful Bugs Bunny and Popeye KEYS and puts the ugly Treasure Planet inbetweens up against them and basically says: "See how ugly THESE are compared to these? Who would want to see this stuff!"
He's done it in the past also. And it really gets on my nerves. It's like he goes through the film and picks out the ugliest inbetweens he can find.

I don't want this to become another "let's Bash John K!" thread, but I think this issue needs to be addressed... and I'm too nervous to post any of my thoughts on his blog because I'll probably be attacked by his worshippers there. I'd like to talk to him about it... I'd love to do that... it's the people who read his blog like it's animation Scripture that I'm worried about.

But since I have no way of talking about it to him personally, I'd rather just discuss it with the people here.
Does anyone else feel the same way? I'm not the only guy who's noticed this right?

I'm not saying Treasure Planet is THE BEST film in the world but still... it's a decent film and I do like it a lot and I love the animation... especially Geln Keane's on John Silver.

I really do respect John K but sometimes he really irks me when he does crap like this.
 
So, basically the only valid type of Animation design is that of the old CLAMPETT Warner Bros. cartoons of the 40's, although peppered with nipples, butts and grotesque closeups?

I can't speak for others, but I'd rather have a large variety of animation styles and designs than have everything hew towards one extreme or another.
 
He called the animation on Doug (one of R&S's competition) "drawing for r-words," and even criticized Invader Zim because of its color scheme (purple, green, pink and gray).
 
Treasure planet was a terrible movie, had awful designs, and should be avoided altogether. I'm not saying this as a John K fan, but from an animator's standpoint. It was just a bad production. And transition poses should look just as good as the poses themselves that they go between. Saying that 'they're just transitional poses' means that you're accepting bad work for a reason that doesn't even actually exist ('which are TRANSITIONAL poses and are not the poses that are meant to be really looked at' - what? while I respect your ability to have opinions that is not one to toss around if you want to come off professional). Disney had the budget to make this look good - but the designs are floaty and that doesn't make good animation. It should just be common sense. The animators who worked on them should not be faulted - they were just the slave labor working with what was supplied. But the character designers and the people it went through should have taken a step back and thought 'wow, this just won't work'. And in defense of John, he's posted a lot of Popeye inbetweens that have looked great. I don't have any links on me that shows this example so this should be taken with a grain of salt. Oh - one more thing - being in art school myself, I'll tell you that you don't learn crap there, and it's evident by the people's work that I'm around. It's awful, even the ones who've been there the longest, and then they go out with those skills and work on stuff they have no business to be working on. So, just saying.
 
I disagree but... to each his own.

An inbetween is just that... an inbetween. An inbetween is a drawing that goes inbetween two key poses. Sometimes, inbetweens are downright ugly looking and sometimes that is necessary to get from one pose to the next. A character may make an ugly face or kind of a strange pose getting from one pose to the next. You see it in the best Disney films as well (as John K has repeatedly shown... he'll post an ugly Peter Pan inbetween and then put that up against a great Daffy Duck pose from The Great Piggy Bank Robbery or something to prove his point).

I'll post some example of some pretty bizarre inbetweens later.
 
Ok, I get where you're coming from, so I'm not trying to be hostile - but a transition should be well designed and crafted on an animator's standpoint and there are a lot of moments in Treasure Planet and in disney movies in general where they are not because of the designs supplied. I'm just saying.
 
Okay. It's cool man. I get where you are coming from too.

Here's an example from a non-Disney production of some really really bizarre inbetweens. From Cats Don't Dance:

Key Pose 1:

http://bp1.blogger.com/_ZfuIfdBJC2s/.../capture+6.jpg

Inbetween:

http://bp1.blogger.com/_ZfuIfdBJC2s/.../capture+7.jpg

Inbetween:

http://bp3.blogger.com/_ZfuIfdBJC2s/.../capture+8.jpg

Key Pose 2:

http://bp1.blogger.com/_ZfuIfdBJC2s/.../capture+9.jpg

If you take these drawings out of context... they may be "ugly" or "unappealing"... but if you actually watch this shot full speed, you will find that these bizarre inbetweens enhance the animation.
 
These are really good inbetweens! However Planet deals with a different style of weird 'realism-cartoon' that Disney seems to like, and it doesn't work well with transitions. But good post - enjoyed the pictures.
 
John K actually did a post a while ago where he looked through a Captain Hook scene in Peter Pan frame-by-frame and the inbetweens were actually even better drawn the key frames.
 
Yeah, I love them :D Cats Don't Dance is definitely worth checking out if you haven't seen it.

Yeah, a lot of the inbetweens for "realistic" animation can be quite ugly to look at... the stuff John posted on his blog is proof of that.

However, you've gotta remember that this stuff is meant to be seen in motion. The inbetweens go by SO quickly and a lot of them, be it cartoony or "realistic" animation, are quite bizarre to look at.

I guarantee none of those pictures he posted are keys. They are breakdowns or inbetweens and they do look strange.

Thanks! Here's some more. I got these from John's blog actually... he was going through this scene frame by frame discussing these inbetweens. These are from Peter Pan:

http://bp3.blogger.com/_mJ4lc_Q9Q6k/RoCVnwwO9hI/AAAAAAAAFYY/5eDHLA1h6bE/s1600-h/Hook18.jpg

http://bp3.blogger.com/_mJ4lc_Q9Q6k/RoCVnwwO9hI/AAAAAAAAFYY/5eDHLA1h6bE/s1600-h/Hook18.jpg

http://bp0.blogger.com/_mJ4lc_Q9Q6k/RoCVoAwO9jI/AAAAAAAAFYo/RZpELOTLlVo/s1600-h/Hook20.jpg

^^Again... BIZARRE inbetweens (or breakdowns?)... but they go by so darn fast you can't even see them unless you step through. But they work getting from one pose to the next.

----

Here's John's newst post. More Disney bashing with ugly inbetweens.

Looks like an inbetween here:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_mJ4lc_Q9Q6k/STQsJgSHuJI/AAAAAAAASwU/1Ws4nRgPhPw/s1600-h/PDVD_059.jpg

This may actually be a key... hard to tell:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_mJ4lc_Q9Q6k/STQtH-AA36I/AAAAAAAASws/ie2akox3CUQ/s1600-h/135029ed.jpg

Definite inbeween. You can tell John Smith is moving into a key pose:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_mJ4lc_Q9Q6k/STQs4h9NFSI/AAAAAAAASwk/i-8NgCC3Cpw/s1600-h/f48f3c7f.jpg

Hard to tell with this one. May be a breakdown:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_mJ4lc_Q9Q6k/STQsipZ68KI/AAAAAAAASwc/OIG8JA8v2ts/s1600-h/71c91486.jpg

This may be a key. I actually think this is a pretty cool drawing:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_mJ4lc_Q9Q...0/6tjWZQ3mljc/s1600-h/TREASURE_PLANET-249.jpg

Yep. posted them above as examples.

----

Anyway, back to my point... the idea of posting an ugly inbetween from a Disney feature and then placing it next to a great Rod Scribner key from a Clampett cartoon to see the "difference" that doesn't exactly make me respect his opinion and it comes across as dishonest and arrogant.

More examples of him posting inbetweens:

http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4525/2278/1600/926263/34sword.jpg

http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/4525/2278/1600/989773/6sword5.jpg

http://bp1.blogger.com/_mJ4lc_Q9Q6k/RfiYiUS-iGI/AAAAAAAACcY/mpVN14bSZus/s1600-h/10211995.jpg

I'll look for more. He's posted a few from Iron Giant that I wanna post here.
 
This debate is somewhat over my head, but I find it funny that the best insult John K. could come up with is calling the movie "Pleasure Package". It's sort of an unofficial rule of parody titles that unless you've got a really good pun going, you should only change one word of the title.

It really was a pretty bad movie, though.
 
Does John K still work? I'm sure he does but what exactly does he do now and for the last few years? Besides rag on anything he doesn't like on the internet.
 
I think he's working on a new George Liquor cartoon...

As for how he makes money now... no clue. I know he's done commercials and music videos so maybe he's doing some of that on the side.
 
That's probably the least of my concerns with Invader Zim. And as creeped out as I am by that show, I'm still morbidly curious as to what all I missed, seeing that I didn't even watch a full ep.

Getting back on topic, though, I'm quite surprised at the stuff that I'm reading in John's blog. He seems to come off as a mix between a guy who knows what he's talking about, and a guy who's just ranting endlessly about something where he thinks he knows what he's talking about. Some of his nastier posts seem very narrow-minded to me. Even though I detest Ren & Stimpy I have nothing against John K. He's welcome to his opinion, even if it's sometimes biased and patchy like this.
 
Meh, never liked John K's work. Always found it ironic that he would take everybody else's art and hard work and say that it was hideously ugly when most of his stuff was equally awful if not worse.
 
He making new George Liquor cartoons for the internet. They were supposed to primere in October, byt I think they switched sponsers. Also, a book about John K. is coimg out next year from Picturebox. I'm really looking forward to it.

Anybody else read Mike Fontanelli's memories on working on the Simpsons? Well, here they are:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=22406604&postID=1112770275577316198

Also, John K. has been talking alot about his work on the 1980's Jetsons revival (which, perhaps not coincidentally, will be released on DVD sometime soon), as well as that Flintstones laserdisc he helped put together back in the 1990's.
 
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