Holy Popcorn Batman!!!

So it's Tuesday and Popcorn is back after a short break with more corny nonsense - enjoy...

John K Talk

So, last weekend I had the pleasure of attending the Bristol Animated Encounters Festival. I was on a panel at the wonderful DepicT! competition and presented this year's Audience award. Good times! I also got a chance to see a talk by animation legend John K.

He talked a lot about his influences - particularly early animation, 1940s classics and 1940s live action acting. He also screened several shorts including Tex Avery's "Bad Luck Blackie" which I've included below. He here's a few o the notes I took away from that lecture...

On Cartoons

Animation works best when it does what live action cannot do

Cartoon vs Animation
Animation = to bring things to life
Cartoons = FUNNY drawings/animation

On His Influences

Tex Avery created contolled choas - there was always a well structed story underneath the cartoony mayhem - eg. Bad Luck Blackie (1949)



Bob Clampett had the cartoony craziness, but more importantly had characters with strong, identifiable personalities

Live action influences
- 1940s film noir acting had intensity eg Peter Lorre & Kirk Douglas
- 1950s - 1970s American sitcom acting for strong perosnalities eg All in the Family

1940s cartoon mayhem + 1940s intense acting + 1950s sitcom personalites = Ren & Stimpy!

More flippin' notebook doodles?

Yep, sorry about that. Still got lots of things going on with work and variuos projects, nothing I can blog I'm afraid, so it'll have to be some of my patented notebook doodles ...

Redecorating the studio....continued

Stale Popcorn

So this one is a bit late...and it's halloween themed....after halloween - so doubley late - I should be ashamed of myself...