Treehouse Opening Pt 5 - The Fear Of Paganism

I love Abe...He's so lumpy!

Do you think superstition is God's funniest creation as I do? Of course, parasites are right up there...

Treehouse Opening Pt 4 - Dire Consequences of Trick or Treating

Believe it or not I really wanted to do some straight story stuff with the Simpsons. By 'straight' I mean a narrative story (as opposed to a song or strictly abstract visuals). I was dying to do a caricature of the Simpsons characters' personalities as well as their design. - like what I do with the Hanna Barbera characters.

I think Abe is a fun character. Old and cantankerous, I figured I'd make him older and more cantankerous. I thought I'd throw in that he'd also be very religious and superstitious as many old timers are.

*An animation history irony:

People tend to think of cartoons as exaggerations of reality - and that was pretty much taken for granted up until the 1960s. 

 In 1960, Hanna and Barbera created the first prime time animated cartoon - the precursor to the Simpsons and every other cartoon sitcom that followed.

The characters and situations in the Flintstones were inspired by the live action "The Honeymooners". So you would imagine that the animated show would be much more exaggerated than its live-action counterpart.  
 

The Honeymooners

Flintstone

While I love the Flintstones, the irony is that it is really a toned-down version of the Honeymooners. The live characters in the Honeymooners are much more exaggerated than the cartoon. They have more depth to the personalities and a much broader range of expressions and gestures.

I don't know how this came about, but the Flintstones' animation style must have seeped into the consciousness of generations of TV watchers all the way to today. Every animated sitcom that has been ever made is less exaggerated than characters in live action sitcoms - and even less exaggerated than real people in general (and even less exaggerated than Hanna Barbera cartoons).

So I wanted to do an experiment and reverse the trend by animating the Simpsons using their same basic personalities, but adding more range and expression to the acting - by caricaturing what is already there in a milder form.

Alas, Matt, Al and I came up with so many ideas - including a song, that we couldn't fit them all into the minute and a half slot. Maybe they'll let me animate a whole episode one day.

Treehouse Opening Pt 3 - Abe's Warning

 Abe: "Liars and deceivers,

Concealers of the TRUTH!

 On Hallow's Eve there's worse to fear

than Men who torment Youth!

 

The Lord abhors your vile disguise!

You think to cloak your SIN!

 While out their lurk the fiends of HELL,

 Who crave your souls within!

Treehouse Opening Pt 2

 Originally we had kind of a story going on, that led into the song.

The whole concept was inspired by a show on the Jesus channel, starring Bob Larsen, famed exorcist and radio host who firmly believes that Halloween is Satan's Day and that more kids get possessed by demons on that night than any other day...wanna know more?

Treehouse Opening - pt 1

We had a longer version of the cartoon planned originally but there wasn't time in the show to use it.
Here's part of the original opening:

more to come...

Treehouse Of Horror Storyboards 3

Here's the ending.

Here's an interesting fact about cartoon production - well maybe it's not so interesting but drawing storyboards is a lot of fun and I do them super fast. Then I spend a much longer time just trying to get the final animation to retain some of the life in the loose story sketches.

I was asked to add this ending to the cartoon at the last minute and all my animators were killing themselves to do the graveyard sequence.

I didn't want to break their hearts by adding all these new scenes so I went ahead and did the layouts and animation mostly myself. Of course I had help from Gabe and Nick, Jesse, Aaron and many assistants in cleaning up and inbetweening.

Some of the scenes believe it or not were crazy complicated - like the monster pulling Homer's soul out of his body. It was easy to sketch for the storyboard but turned out to be a nightmare to figure out how to get it to work.

Boy, executing ideas in animation is a lot harder than coming up with them. I really feel for animators and think all people in animation whether they are story people, directors, designers or show runners should do animation for a few years so they see just what is involved before they ask others to realize their ideas.

Whew!