Thursday, April 09, 2009

Big House Blues - Spumco 1 - fluffing Stimpy Pillow

Ren and Stimpy
Here's a scene that I posed out in layout and basically had inbetweened. The poses were designed on the storyboard and then polished in the layouts. Then I added charts and had 'em inbetweened.
The mantid nabs the soft pulpy object, without emotion, only intent.
Here's a famous early example of a Ren and Stimpy jump cut. It's theoretically not supposed to work and I'm sure we got notes from Scary Marrington over it.
I had to reposition Ren to make this scene of him fluffing Stimpy like a pillow read. I also painted the cheesy color card.
The fluffing was done basically straight ahead as a cycle. I anticed by stretching Stimpy first,
Then squashed him all the way, and eased him out of the squash back to the antic, and repeated the action a few times.
http://www.animationarchive.org/pics/bhb27-big.jpg
Note that there is rough timing (the "slug") written on the storyboards.

Since Stimpy is a pillow, of course feathers have to fly out of him. Cartoon logic.
It's also an example of what I call "insect Ren". It's Ren asserting his instinctive rights upon his symbiotic partner and showing absolutely no emotion about it. Stimpy, of course goes along with it out of pure obedience to the insect life form higher on the evolutionary scale than him.
Antic....
swing right
stretch and add a streaky Anime type BG to help accentuate th quick motion....
This section looks like it might be Lynne's, I can't honestly remember; it's been so long.

Swing Stimpy up into another antic and cushion the antic...
Then squash him down and press him into resistance. The more Ren presses Stimpy, the more Stimpy's nose expands like a balloon filling with air...naturally.
When the insect lets go, Stimpy recoils and wobbles to a stop.
Ren rubs his hands as if doing a professional job.

Then Stimpy slides down the wall into final pillow position.
Ren antics 3 times in a row here. 1 above
2, into layout antic...
3 Into jump antic...

Jump up fast - 1 drawing only
Float in an arc above Stimpy,
Then fall fast and sink into Stimpy's soft underbelly.
The BG btw, is another one of my cheats. Simple and gray, the easiest way to make characters read well.
This is played like it happens every day, so the characters don't show any surprised reactions to it. I like having some scenes where characters merely function by brute instinct. It's what's funny and cute about animals and dumb relatives.

By the way, try to imagine writing this scene in script form. It could only have been storyboarded to make any sense. If you wanna see the original board, go to the Asifa Archive and flip through it. It has many more scenes that we had to cut for time, but the cartoon looks a lot like the poses in the board. I wish I had saved the layouts, because there would have been more poses there than in the storyboards.

http://www.animationarchive.org/2006/10/media-ren-stimpy-big-house-blues-seq.html




High rez that you can step through...

http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/spumco/RenStimpy/1BHB/LynneJohnFlopPillow.mov


Next...a Dave Feiss scene, then more Bob and Kelly treats.

Oh, and check out Kali and Nico's Devo video:

http://kalikazoo.blogspot.com/2009/04/nico-and-i-present-jerkin-back-n-forth.html