Hey folks,
Lemme talk of two little concepts about my cartoons:
The Spumco Style
Spumco Acting
OK firstly, as I've said before there is no specific Spumco style. The style of every scene in every cartoon I do depends on who is drawing the scene (both storyboard and layout), who painted the background and what the scene is about and how the artist and the characters are feeling at the moment.
In a general sense the Spumco style is a combination of my style (which changes all the time) and the styles of whichever star artists happen to working on the cartoons with me at the time.
By star artists I mean artists who have special talent-even by Spumco standards and have a unique personal style and outlook. Not many artists have this but Spumco seems to attract them.
Now this very concept-of allowing individual artists to bring their own style to the cartoons is in this modern era of blandness unique to Spumco. Every other studio is completely anal about forcing all the artists to follow the model sheets and all draw the same, and every cartoon has to have the same look every week for 10 years running. Screw that!
One important aspect of the Spumco style is the specific acting. In other words, we try not to repeat stock expressions over and over again. I have a rule that you are never allowed to draw the same expression twice in your life at Spumco.
To make this even harder, the expressions you have to make up have to also fit the particular charcter and the very particular emotion he or she is feeling at this one unique moment in his/her life.
Whew! Sounds impossible? It almost is but we try for it.
By the way, you really have to have strong fundamental drawing skills if you are going to try to draw specific custom made acting. Ask any artists that have ever worked for me how hard it is to do.
So below are some frames from the Lost Episodes of Ren and Stimpy. These cartoons are an advance in the acting we did in the original series which was already a revolution in cartoons.
The amazing thing is many of the artists who did this work were very young and for some it was their first job.
We also had Ren and Stimpy veterans Eddie Fitzgerald, Jim Smith and Vincent Waller drawing for it.
Look at the pics below and I will tell you who drew them and then see if you can define the Spumco "style" in simple terms.
me-although Ren is an inbetween...
Vincent
Helder Mendonca shows us duck lust
Fred Osmond has an eye theory for you...
This is a combo of me and I think Nick Cross...but it's a caricature of me when I'm being perverted
This is a final drawing by Katie Rice inspired by a rough from Nick Cross. It thrills me when I see combinations of different artists' styles! When you let people create and influence each other you end up with lots of new ideas and drawing techniques.
Here's Katie and me...
Here's a layout by...(I don't know yet!) but it's from a tiny scribble I wrote on my timing notes.
Here's me. I make this face all the time.
This is Warren Leonhardt (I hope I spelled it right!)
Jessica Borutski.
Katie did the girls and Luke Cormican drew Ren.
Nick Cross drew this great stylish picture (of course I modeled for the crotch)
I've talked to some of my artists about the "zone". This is a creative state we all want to be in all the time. It's when all the rules and restrictions that you need to be a good artist and to plan your scenes are lost for a sublime moment in your subconscious and then somehow out of nowhere weird things just squirt out of your pencil that you could never think of using mere logic.
It usually happens at about 4 in the morning. I was in the zone when I drew that Ren above. His eyes don't make any physical sense, but you can tell exactly what he's feeling from the weird shapes. It's weird but specific at the same time.
Start arguing...
