John K. comes across as an angry lunatic online. He wants to make great cartoons the way the mid-century masters did and that puts him as a man out of time. He ties his own noose for a lot of folks by having deadline issues, drag through the mud politics, and pitches that ring with misogyny. However, if you cut through the perceived arrogance, he knows the craft like few people alive and has a lot of great things to say..that people love or hate..but can't help but learn from:

John K on executives.

The executives never come to the obvious conclusion that a normal sane person would, that when a new show comes along that destroys the previous religious beliefs, that the reason for the success is the person who made the show.

The thinking he describes, and the psuedo-science of trend watching, exists in every industry that we've worked in; publishing, animation, advertising, and interactive. If you want to be successful in any of them, you presumably have to recognize the person-with-title...the person with cash flow...who picks the right creative for the right project and racks up the successes by giving the creative's freedom and a sense of ownership.

Stay away from the person-with-title who thinks they ARE the creative.

Labels: animation

A full year ago we did the production and animation on an anti-smoking PSA for http://www.walkingtimebomb.com/ that recently went up on their website. (Click Animal Kingdom)

The idea is that addiction is a predator in a "Wild America" nature show parody with voice over by the REAL Marty Stouffer. It was written by Hunt Adkins and designed/illustrated by Jordan Crane. There was a fast couple of weeks turn-around for the animated piece and then the whole thing was shelved for a year. When it resurfaced, several of the violent/gory predator scenes were cut, even though the fake ratings screen still says "head explosion and limb loss."

It's too bad because these were the scenes with the most time consuming and well animated. They contained multiple characters and Max did an amazing job with the documentary style camera movement on the final scene where the camera plucks the guy's leg off. When we got the script we were shocked and excited that they'd let some of the stuff in there fly..but they did..until they didn't. I'm not sure that it would be ok to show the full clips of these cut scenes (our first lost footage!) but here are a couple screen grabs:

Labels: animation