Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Raketu - Bobby Bigloaf

2 main pencil drawings:

This cartoon was to be very limited indeed. Only 2 keys.





Lip Sync:


...and some mouth positions


..and a ton of recorded dialogue.

I had to figure out a way to keep the cartoon moving and interesting while drawing attention to the important verbal points in the message.

This is not my favorite way to do things, but it was all that the time and budget allowed for. I Haaaate having to rely solely on words to get a message across, but here I was stuck with the problem.



inked by Brian Romero, colored by John:

Then I remembered one of my favorite cartoons from my childhood-Roger Ramjet!

Roger Ramjet was an extremely limited animation show. Almost no animation and no inbetweens.

But it had hilarious dialogue and acting by Gary Owens and other radio personalities of the time. The stories were funny and fast paced.

And on top of that, Fred Crippen and Bob Kurtz figured out a way to make the visuals funny without actually animating anything!

First, they designed and posed the characters funny.

Then they devised a style of cutting that made the show even funnier and drew your attention to the jokes and vocal acting.


Roger Ramjet - cutting theories:





Roger Ramjet is the funniest TV cartoon ever. It has clever writing, acting, drawing and cutting. It is very low budget but that didn't stop every creative talent on the team from making the most of every creative opportunity! No one said "Only the words can be funny!"

Roger Ramjet clip:





Roger Ramjet is sort of Jay Ward done right.

Now, the words in the Bobby Bigloaf Raketu ad aren't as funny as Roger Ramjet, because after all, it's meant to be a commercial not a story, but I tried to use the cutting technique to make it funnier and make the meanings clearer.

















Also, Eddie does the voice of Bobby!