Cartoon Hype: That's Great John and Sam

 I baffled by John K's ( creator of Ren and Stimpy) joy of his opening of The Simpsons. Though it was original and fun it was out of place with a show that should have died or tried to make itself better. Cartoon Brew has a great interview with John, one part surprised me was the involvement of, Matt Groening meeting him for lunches to discuss it, because I thought he just collected paychecks from the show. Weird that it required multiple lunches to discuss, a 35 second piece of animation that was eventually done in house by John himself.

I've felt John's work in animation has three parts.
1.He is a great animator, one of the best. He helped bring back the style of crazy cartoon animation.
2. He is the worst storyteller in animation. Plots from he's show make no sense.
3. He has an ego.

1.His web-site has a ton of traffic and his work and proteges and people who his helped launch have gone on to be great animators.
2. I remember watching The Ripping Friends, the plot's never made sense, I don't mean in a funny cartoon way, I mean they made no sense. He threw in Jimmy, the idiot boy for no reason, he's old creation. I bring this up now, because he did it again in a music video I'll get too.

The new Ren and Stimpy show he created was awful, all it was, was violence and gross, there wasn't humor, there wasn't writing, there was just what John thought was funny to himself, because he had total control of that show.

3. He said he invented internet cartoons. I was at some event he was at where he premiered the un-aired episode from Spike and he blurted it out during Q and A. For a top animator, he hasn't been part of a cartoon series for some time and after Ren and Stimpy his resume flip flops, with no long time series.

  He did this music video for Bjork


He sort of crammed his characters, like Jimmy into it. I wonder if that was asked or he was just lazy and wanted some reminders of his other work. It looks like a shameless plug.


One part of the interview with Cartoon Brew grabbed me saying how much his style changed from a few years ago. Which is somewhat true, but he's animation still seems too flash like, like he hasn't mastered the way to make it look right.

The insane changes of shapes and movements of characters was great.



Sam Register at Mip Jr


Same Register is in charge of revitalizing old Warner Bros cartoon properties, he recently gave a speech at  MIP Jr. is a convention to show off child's programming that take place in Europe. MIP COM is the main convention, you can think of it as a get together of new show properties. Why it takes place in Europe instead of America, the main source of entertainment is unknown to me. This is where big companies and channels find shows to sell across the world, many being American properties.

Here are some points from Sam's speech

-Warner Bros Animation cares nothing about new ideas, if you want a new show concept without using known characters you have to approach Cartoon Network Studios, not Warner Bros Animation.

-Sam Register is a very boring man and his jokes fell flat during his speech.

- ThunderCats, changed for the better and brought back. See this one is the game changer, with all the other shows that are awful from Sam, one is actually good. It maybe due to the producer or show runner of the series he mentioned.

-There is an extremely small talent pool it looks like for cartoon actions shows. As I thought, there just aren't that many animators or animation houses that are around or trusted by Warner Bros.


-The Green Lantern cartoon will be better than the movie, but it still won't be good.


-HE WAS THE ONE WHO TOLD BRUCE TIMM TO USE CGI FOR GREEN LANTERN!

-You can tell right away he doesn't want to do this anymore, he wishes he got picked up by another studio, but those studios can tell he's lost it.

mini-points on the DC Nation clip

- you start off the clip with a family being murdered?
-No one knows who Trevor Bane is or cares

- Jim Lee is already full of himself, he doesn't need more screen time
-The shorts look good, I hope you something that wasn't produced years ago like that Plastic Man cartoon

"if I and try and make the Looney Tunes as good as they were I won't be able to do it"

"there's no point to make it as good as it was, that ship has sailed"

-He brings up how a producer/showrunner on the next Batman show ( Glen Murakami) has not e-mailed him back in three days over something. The showrunner is fighting him on something, maybe Alfred having guns, Katana being Batman's sidekick or awful designs.

-Not amazingly he and the executives control the shows more than the showrunner's which usually makes shows be predictable, boring and the same.