Thursday, September 07, 2006

The Flintstone Flyer - Carlo Vinci, part 1

Here's proof that the Early Flintstones have funny and unique stuff in it. I love these drawings and how Carlo combines cartooniness with realistic man-type character personalities.

FRED SNORES







FRED WALKS OVER WALL

This couldn't happen in The Honeymooners and wouldn't in The Simpsons. A cartoon sitcom can never compete on an acting level with a live sitcom, so to make up for that, you should put in some cartoon humor to balance things out. Obviously.

Wait! It's not obvious, is it? No one does it!



FRED LEAPS OUT OF HAMMOCK




Look how funny these drawings are! And completely off model!...which would make poor old Ed Benedict furious and me grunt with delight!


FRED'S BENT WRIST, ASS, BACK AND TEETH







This expression is perfect for Fred's emotion in the scene. It doesn't exist on any model sheet and wouldn't be allowed today. Carlo listened to the track and drew how he felt Fred was reacting.

In 1985 I was supervising The New and Crummier Jetsons in Taipei and I called Bob Hathcock, the producer at Hanna Barbera and asked him for casette tapes of the voice actors' recordings for the cartoons I was supposed to draw. Bob sounded confused. He cupped his hand over the receiver and I heard him talking to his junior producer, Jeff something-or-other who hated my guts. "Is that Kricfalusi on the phone again? What the Hell does he want now?"
"He wants the recordings!"
"What the f***k for?"
"How should I know? Just send them to him. No one else will take this job!"

Well it seemed obvious to me what I needed them for but to no one else at the time. I wanted to draw specific expressions for the characters that matched the inflections that the actors gave the characters in their line readings.
By the 1980s cartoons had decayed so bad that no one knew what an expression was anymore, let alone a specific custom-tailored one. They expected you to literally trace the 3 poses they provided on the model sheet. Trace them over and over and over again until you become a mass murderer.

Like they do on the prime time TV cartoons today. It makes me wonder why you would ever need more than one episode of a cartoon that always has the same drawings in it. That's why I can't watch crap today. Within 2 minutes you've seen every drawing you are ever gonna see of a modern cartoon character. ?????????????? Explain this to me!

I can't even figure out why Nickelodeon or Film Roman or these places have live artists on staff. Why not just do what South Park does? Put the models in the computer and just copy and paste them over and over again. Why torture creative artists? I think the studios like to pretend that something creative is going on, so they hire artists then tell them not to ever make art. But dress retro so we can feel like we're wacky.









NOSE POKING

I'd swear Ed designed Barney's nose just so the animators could have fun molesting it.


FF04nosehandling1
Uploaded by chuckchillout8

Wanna know something crazy and evil? There is so much money being spent on cartoons today that they could easily animate the cartoons here, and then we could get some individuality in them like Hanna Barbera did in their first couple years of existence.

Know where the money goes? To useless people who don't draw, to scads of executives, to "development", to voice directors, to story editors, so-called writers...tons of cash goes into market research - which is like Scientology for executives. Money is just burned away today-money that could go directly into the product, to the artists so they could bring back animation to the country, learn their craft right again and then contribute some personality and fun and make each cartoon unique.

We need to bring back common sense to this business. Will we? Nah.....