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Sunday, 25 August 2013

Let's talk some goddam cartoons

     I hope your dreams have been haunted by sweaty man-boob, because there's so much more coming down the pipe.  Before I drop that load on you though, let's talk about some fuckin cartoons.  We're living in a world of people who grew up with John Kricfalusi cartoons.  John K, love him or hate him (I manage to do both), has had an enormous impact on animation.  He managed to blend classic cartooning styles (Felix the Cat, Betty Boop, etc.) with modern sensibilities (gross out humour, extreme violence, butts) and make something we had never seen before.  He's also the classic example of an artist getting the shaft when it comes to control of their own work.  It's a sad fact that for most things to get produced for our consumption, they have to be profitable.  Nickelodeon was notoriously difficult to deal with, although to be fair, so was John K.  The partnership went very well for the first 2 seasons of Ren and Stimpy, until Nickelodeon canned him for being way too difficult.  The show immediately went to hell without the creator's vision, and John K's work began to get more bizzare and upsetting.  The leash they had kept him on made him focused, and he couldn't just rely on gay jokes like he wanted to.  But, for those 2 seasons, cartoons were redefined for future manchildren everywhere.

    The internet lets us toss the creator/publisher relationship to the side.  Besides the drawing tutorials I've been using it for, YouTube is also full of independent animators.  Since my goal here is to start putting things on YouTube, I`ve been searching for people who are good at that sort of thing.  Here`s what I`ve found!

Egoraptor  - I`m usually not very down with people who focus on video game jokes.  It`s a dicey field with a few people at the top doing all the good jokes, with a whooooooole lot of bullshit floundering around at the bottom.  Luckily, this guy is not a 1-trick pony.  His voice acting is not great, but everything else is excellent.  He draws heavy inspiration from Ren and Stimpy, and it really shows in his later work.

OneyNG - This guy is killing me lately.  It`s like Ren and Stimpy crashed into South Park.  His Dragonball parodies are good enough to be funny whether you love or hate Dragonball, and his Harry Potter shorts are so funny they hurt.

Sick Animation - These guys have been around forever, and prove that you don`t have to be able to draw at all as long as you`re a hilarious asshole.

Psychicpebbles - A collaborator of OneyNG, working jointly on Hellbenders.  Also has a metric ass-load of shorts, but Hellbenders is just peaches.

     There are a lot of traditional t.v. cartoons that I want to talk about as well, but that`s for another update; you want images of gross dudes, and now is the time to give them to you.  Enjoy!


     This is another in the series of "try to make band posters".  Remember Altered Beast? Pretty sweet arcade and sega game where a dude gets progressively more ripped until he turns into a crazy monster and starts ruining everyone's day.  I want to do a series where a guy gets fatter and fatter until he turns into a big fat monster.  I'm not so good at drawing monsters yet, but god damn am I getting good at drawing fat guys!  Look at those hands! Those are great fat guy hands!



    My previous experiments with perspective went pretty horribly, and since then I tried to learn as much as I could to make things not suck.  This is making use of the single-point perspective method, and it looks like using established methods is a viable way to make drawings that don't look like total shit.  The biggest problem I'm still having with perspective is those sneaky hands; just can't trust them.

    
     I might be mistaken, but I think this one is a two-point perspective.  Aren't you glad I'm putting this education to such excellent use?  I'm sure there's an art teacher somewhere with a single tear rolling down their face.  This is the one I'm proudest of, and confidently call it my best to date.  That's not saying much, but whatever, fuck you, I'm still proud of it.

     I want you to be aware of how much time I've spent on google image search, sorting through results for "manboobs" and "male muffin-top".  It's probably longer than the average person will spend on it in their entire lives.  On that note, until next time, and always be on the lookout for a good muffin-top.