I have mixed feelings about the guy.
On one hand, it's rare to see a modern cartoonist who has as much love and respect towards the classic Looney Tunes and such.
On the other hand, he seems to have a burning hatred for any animation that isn't Looney Tunes, Fleischer, etc.
He's given plenty of good advice, especially circa 2007 on his blog, but you need to approach him with a saltshaker full of skepticism. Half of what he says at any given time is his bias bleeding into his advice.
Think of what filmation did to John as what abusive parenting did to David Willis, you get from where he is coming from, but the trauma was too much to him to be sane again
My parents went on a Disney cruise and met John without knowing who he was. Apparently they had a great time and keep in contact.
sounds like a really nice guy
As long as you don't trigger him, yeah.
He's one of those people you can only befriend if you don't share an interest.
...
I don't know, he and Mike Judge share an interest in UFC and collaborated together.
Listen to his advice
Ignore his criticism
So when he talks about classic UPA cartoons and what makes their simplistic designs so appealing, listen. But then when he starts talking about how Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs tries and fails those same designs because they don't work in 3D and it looks like it's done by a bunch of wannabe cartoonists, ignore.
This.
His lessons are some of the bests.
johnkcurriculum.blogspot.com
I'd grab Katie's pooty booty if you know what i'm saying
>But then when he starts talking about how Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs tries and fails those same designs because they don't work in 3D and it looks like it's done by a bunch of wannabe cartoonists, ignore.
But that's literally the opposite of what he said.
And why ignore his criticism? You don't need to get triggered just because he hates Tiny Toons. Just agree to disagree.
>Ignore his criticism
Nah, why would you ignore the criticism of someone with experience and knowledge? Even if it's biased or nitpicky he's bound to raise some valid points.
Because bias clouds the experience and knowledge.
Looks like he just posts pages from Preston Blair, which is good.
Any word on Cans without labels?
We are slowly approaching five year anniversary of the whole project.
If I could compare John K with anybody it would be Frank Miller. He's the guy that everyone loves to hate but gets the last laugh at the end. Both are mocked for being two harshly critical old guys with "antiquated" views on their medium, which is funny because when it comes being cynical and critical no one does it better than veteran animators, just look at Miyazaki. But Miyazaki gets to deflect any criticism or mocking because the quality of his later works never really downgraded that much where as Miller's and Kricfaulusi's certainly did. This is not to say they are "hacks". You don't get to have an entire generation copycat you by being a hack. If you where to play a game where you watched every single post-Schumacher Batman Movie and took a shot whenever a Miller reference poped up you would need a liver transplant. It's almost mandatory that every new Bats movie have a Miller reference, so while everybody is laughing they can't also help but use his ideas in their movies. Same with John K, every cartoon has to have a reaction image or a gross up close up, or a character going through some kind of mental episode, even shows like Steven Universe, and don't even get me started on YouTube animators who all do his style verbatim. I even remember when that fat fuck Kyle made that comic attacking John K and even he couldn't help but draw in John K's Ren and Stimpy style.
Intellectually I know the main probably raises some legitimate points but that's stymied by the fact that he's never made a single thing I've actually liked.
Having said that, at this point can we even really call Kricfalusi a "modern" cartoonist? He hasn't been particularly relevant since like, 1992.
>On one hand, it's rare to see a modern cartoonist who has as much love and respect towards the classic Looney Tunes and such.
Any cartoonist with a shit shit loves Looney Tunes and appreciate animation history. Which is actually a large amount.
Yeah, but the thing is, while John's got supporters, he gets no work. Frank gets work but has few people supporting him these days.
So the real question is- Which one fell harder?
He did make APC and Ripping Friends in the 2000s. And then there's those Simpsons couch gags he did. So I wouldn't say he's that irrelevant yet. Regardless of Cans with Labels taking this fucking long to make.
I think the first time I decided I couldn't stand John was when he went off on Richard Williams.
he a cuck
The thing I really hate about the "HACK!!" thing is when people apply it to much older artists like John K or Frank. Like, yeah, no shit people who start to age might not be as great as they were when they were younger at their peak, mental capacity. I think it's fair to call young one-hit wonder artists hacks, but do people really fucking think a 60-year old is going to be able to do the same level of cartooning work to his 20-year old self? Especially ones who have succumb to getting a bit rusty by not being in the industry for awhile and drawing very little throughout the day?
Just because Miyazaki, Glen Keane, and Richard Williams are willing to die drawing doesn't mean every artist can sustain that same energy up to their old age.
Probably John. He still gets a lot of work from adult swim and Miley's cyrus but Franks got a mega-huge entertainment industry appropriating his works. That being said for his age John K looks amazing, Frank on the other hand looks like something that would haunt your nightmares
That bothered me too, although Bakshi also talked some shit about Williams. Like I said animators love to talk shit. I've been around animation professor who have worked in the industry and they love to talk shit. Knew a lady who worked on Nightmare Before Christmas as soon as some kid mentioned Tim Burton she went off on what a pain it is to work with him. Many keks where had
I wonder how they'd handle Mr. Enter!
I'm Hungarian and I know some animation students. Many look up to the guy since despite his Ukrainan descent from his father's side, Kricfalusi is obviously a Hungarian name (it means "from the village Kric"). Gábor Csupó is also a legend for them, but that's beside the point.
John K is very divisive when it comes to his opinions. Many of the new blood view his criticism of modern animation as ramblings coming out of bitterness and made up on the go while traditionalists drink his every word as fucking scripture.
Funnily enough they unanimously bash the guy for his Cans Without Labels scam.
They wouldn't his autism is too strong, I though Linkara was bad but holy shit
Miyazaki and the Nine Old Men didn't lose their skills as they got older because they actually practiced and didn't let their technique go to shit. John has no discipline and gradually lost his ability to animate anything.
Yes, so what's wrong with a person gradually slowing down in their field? He still shares lessons and has the experience to back it up, so I don't know why his current art invalidates all the techniques he used for decades while he was actually in the industry. Just because a coach can't demonstrate the same level of physical prowess as a young quarterback doesn't mean he doesn't know what he's talking about.
You can't lose something you never had to begin with. John is incapable of accomplishing anything without someone holding his hand and stopping him from doing stupid stuff.
>Just because a coach can't demonstrate the same level of physical prowess as a young quarterback doesn't mean he doesn't know what he's talking about
Terrible analogy. In sports, great players seldom make great coaches or managers.
>So, what’s the secret, I asked him, to staying sharp as a draftsman in his ninth decade? Life drawing, he says. “It’s the hardest thing you can do. When you get out of it for six months and you go back in, you realize you’re a bum. That’s why people don’t go back to it. They say, ‘Oh, I did that in art school. We don’t do that anymore.’ And then you get stuck with cartoons.”
Interesting because Williams says exactly the same thing as me, which is that if you don't practice your drawing skills constantly, you'll lose the ability to do them in a hurry. Granted, he did Prologue at his own pace and wasn't having to adhere to the schedule demands of a cartoon series (which would be somewhat unreasonable for an 80 year old man anyway), but considering John K is over 20 years younger and can't complete a 15 minute short like CWL despite all the time in the world to do it, it just proves the difference between a real talent and an undisciplined clown.
I rewatched his Simpsons and Miley Cyrus work, and honestly I don't think he has regressed. What we're seeing is an artist pushing his ideas and theories to the extreme, without concern for elements that are not part of his personal idiom. This is a fairly common occurrence in the twilight of an artist's career, when their time is better spent experimenting rather than on polish.
What we get is something grotesque, something far out of mainstream, but a pure distillation of John K. It's what his ardent fans want, it's what his commissioners want. I don't count myself as one of his fans, but I'm willing to give credit where credit is due,
Yeah, this. John needs people around in order to function. Younger people are the best because they are impressionable and moldable, and too inexperienced to know when he's taking advantage of them or working them to death. I think John just wants a crew, but he's too fucked up to keep anyone around.
>This is a fairly common occurrence in the twilight of an artist's career, when their time is better spent experimenting rather than on polish
And yet, he also criticizes animators who want to emulate 1960s Disney, when the Nine Old Men were in the latter part of their career and had become formalists rather than innovators. He can't even live by his own words.
>Younger people are the best because they are impressionable and moldable, and too inexperienced to know when he's taking advantage of them or working them to death
Or more accurate to say, they would give you a fresh outlook on life and keep you in touch with the contemporary scene.
John going on a Disney cruise seems so weird. He probably did it ironically, the freakin' hipster.
Oh good, it was re-uploaded
What I mean is, he had a blog post explaining the origins of the CalArts style and that it came from 60s Disney, when the Nine Old Men had reached a point that they were complete masters of construction and drawing from life after decades of practice, but at the same time had formalized their style and were no longer moving the envelope forward.
Yeah, my original channel got flagged down because Japan is really anal about posting their old 70's/80's music on Youtube
>because the networks were all run by dykes who didn't like drawings of sexy girls
Funny way of saying they were controlled by the soccer mom lobby. I mean, the networks in the 80s were super strict on content. It couldn't even have subtle innuendo in it, and cartoons all had to have an uplifting message like stay in school and don't do drugs or other shit like that.
There's no way this is true.
Yes and no. Many old golden age animators went on to work for the likes of Richard Williams and Bakshi with different styles and ideas. The reason why the whole CalArts meme exists is because of this: since it's inception it was a strictly Disney school, hell Michael Eisner got his start as a Board of Directors of CalArts, it was part of Walt's plan to educate a new generation of Boomer Disney artists, and of course this meant that many of Walt's nine old men wound up teaching there and I'm almost certain it was in the company's best interest to teach them in a strictly Disney style. Because there where no Warner Bros. or MGM animators teaching them it of course became a Disney school, yet many of these animators went on to do independent projects with other studios they got rid of their Disney style, some of the nineold men actually worked on the Little Nemo anime film, while the old Looney Tunes guys worked on Fritz the Cat and Heavy Metal. The problem with CalArts (this is where John K is right) is that even after many of the nine old men had died kids from CalArts where still trying to copy them, and they would copy the Disney style as opposed to the amazing construction that could be found in Disney works
>2017 and starting a John K thread isn't an auotmatic ban.
Billy West pls