My whole TV system is geared to "pose to pose" animation. We draw the layout poses at Spumco, then ship them to overseas studios for them to connect the poses.
When I do animation myself, my more natural tendency is to go straight ahead, or if there are poses in the layouts-to sail right past them.
I don't have the patience to draw a lot of inbetweens that look very close to the keys, so I draw all the inbetweens for fun - even if you don't see them all in the actual animation, it's more fun for me.
It alleviates the boredom (for me) of doing traditional conservative animation.
I just like doing funny drawings.
http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/spumco/RenStimpy/1BHB/JohnBigSleep.mov
26 comments:
Never mind the context. I'm laffin' just lookin' at those stills!!!
Often imitated, never duplicated. Your R&S shorts were some of the strongest cartoons ever made.
BEAUTIFUL!jUST BEAUTIFUL!What about a traditionally made feature with Ren and Stimpy? Any plans for that?
Is it difficult to keep a thick line consistent for a short like this?
I've heard executives complain that the reason not to do thick lines for the characters in animation is that if they're ever inconsistent the end result is a bit like Ed, Edd and Eddy or Mother Goose and Grimm ( the cartoon ).
These executives have obviously never seen the animated Beany and Cecil or the first season of The Flintstones.
Every one of these drawings would make great T-shirts. Too bad no one at Nickelodeon's marketing department was paying attention.
- trevor.
Daah, what's the big sleep, Ren?
The R&S pilot was the only episode that had traditional brush inked cels, no?
Isn't this the scene where we hear the sound of swarming bees? Love to hear more of your views on music selection and SFX.
I love this bird Ren. You should do a cartoon where Ren is a bird and he gets swine flu from Stimpy.
Don't you dislike those U-shaped closed eyelids that are used in the first image?
I dislike them when they are drawn flat and used all the time.
That's what makes the cartoons so much more funny, those hilarious drawings. And the voice, oh MAN!! It's hard to think of a funnier cartoon voice than Ren Hoek.
Anytime I hear Ren or Mr. Horse I just can't keep myself from laughing.
God love Billy West, I envy his career. He is one talented guy but there is one voice (Just one) he cannot do and that's Ren. That is one of the biggest parts of what ruined the show for me. Then I noticed the drawings weren't as funny and the stories started going downhill. I missed every show after the third season because it became unwatchable for me. They have been rerunning R&S on some network and I caught a couple shows from the later seasons. God they are AWFUL!!! Cartoon execs are so dumb.
I still love Billy though. He was a force of nature on the howard stern show.
John,
Which do you prefer, the super sharp look you get when vectorizing the inked drawings in the computer, or brush inking on cels?
Brush inking on cells, but those days are long gone...
This is soooo good!!!
Love the crazy drawings!!
YES!!!!!!!!
Baby, those inks are tight.
Now, I know when we discuss "your" "style" things get very dicey, like a non-denial denial. But I remember when the show first aired... at the time (late highschool) I had shunned my mass art forms to read Nietzche, discovered Da-Da, and pull bong rips to dementia (I was one of those, yes), but I do remember recognizing: "oh, hey, that must be new stuff from the Bakshi Mighty Mouse guy..." Where there's that kind of recognition, there's identity to the style.
My mother STILL quotes that line, even a whole decade after seeing it. I remember the second shot of Ren the most vividly, what with the swirly pink color card.
The Big Sleep!
A great moment.
I always enjoyed that the poses were not predictable and repetitive. And the incongruent backgrounds thrown in made for
visual splendour.
MY GOOD I LOVE THIS
GOOD LUCK JOHN
PLEASE VISIT MY BLOG
You da bomb John K.!
I remember laughing my pants off the first time I saw it.
Are you working at any particular project?
I know the Nick execs gave you a hard time with a lot of things on ren and stimpy and I was wondering if they gave you a hard time with this episode because of the big sleep obviously referencing being killed. I can just imagine the execs telling you "Are you crazy? That's to upsetting for children to handle!" Good thing they left it in!
I'm fascinated by the part where Ren almost falls off the left side of the screen and then jump cuts back into place.
Feels a lot like a mistake, but also gives it a bit of chaotic energy.
Brush inking on cells, but those days are long gone...I think one could approximate this look very closely in software.
Softer lines, small subtle shadows between the cell layers to simulate thickness, adding small noise in the movement vectors to approximate manual position adjustment, maybe some small colour invariances between cell changes...
Even in the digial realm, nothing has to look digital. Too bad I already have a topic for my diploma thesis...
Those veins on his eyeballs are insane!
The good thing about not having a cartoon that is just talking heads is that scenes like this are very memorable and instantly recognizable. Its just that I remember every frame of this and I haven't seen that episode in years and most cartoons if the key frames were shown to me I wouldn't even know what episode it was from! Let alone exact scene!
I hope that made sense.
~Becky
Your animation is so great, I'd like to see the way you act in live action, John.
I don't think you realize just how fuggin' brilliant these line drawings are. They're really incredibly clever.
Then again, maybe you do...
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