TVSquad

Ren and Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi is one of those people I would love to sit in a room with and listen to his rants. Since I'm still working on my John K. Kidnapping Machine, I have to settle for his blog (Warning: NSFW), which he's been using to provide sage advice to people interested in becoming animators and cartoonists, and to slam the conventions of modern day animation, most notably on shows like The Simpsons, Family Guy, and South Park. On this post, he talks about how characters in old cartoons evolved at a much faster rate than characters on any of the aforementioned shows. As ideas grew and changed, so did characters. He writes: "You have to be raised in an uncreative environment in order to blindly accept how bland and crappy everything is today." Later in the post he adds: "No one should accept professional work that looks like they could do it themselves."

In the comments section of the same post, he further asserts that "the very concept of animated sitcoms is faulty in the first place." His argument is that no character in an animated sitcom has ever been able to emulate the best actors in the best sitcoms. And as pure animation, they don't exactly hold up, either.

Is the creator of Ren and Stimpy going to create a cartoon for the kindergarten set? I have no idea, but he wants to. I know the link is a couple months old, but the story actually goes back to the late 90s. That's when Kricfalusi created some animated spots for Old Navy featuring a group of little girls who will also star in his new venture, titled The Hearthaches. From what I can gather, there's no studio attached to this, so it's still in the "pitch" phase. Nevertheless, I would love to see the kind of spirit and energy put into so many of Kricfalusi's grotesque-but-hysterical cartoons filtered through a more "girly" lens.

Regarding his approach to the series, Kricfalusi wrote this: "I feel my duty is to make cartoons that have tons of fun and magic in them. I wouldn't give kids asparagus ice cream you know. I give neopolitan [sic]."

That should be the mantra of anyone who makes animated programs for children.

I've been spending an insane amount of time over on John Kricfalusi's blog, and the other day I saw this post which I thought some of you might find interesting. It seems John has been hooked up with a gallery and plans to sell some original pieces through his blog. My excitement over this was instantly dilluted by the notion that I'll probably never be able to come up with the kind of money these drawings will most likely take in. John K, to get the unenlightened up to speed, was the creator of Ren and Stimpy, and has worked alongside such animation legends as Ralph Bakshi. The man is an icon in the world of animation (and a very opinionated one at that). Seeing him embrace the whole blog concept and interact so freely with his fans is quite refreshing, and his genuine enthusiasm for animation, style, and design, not to mention his expertise, makes his blog worth checking out.