JOHN KRICFALUSI: GENIUS!

John K recently did some astonishingly creative cartoons for Cartoon Network, and I'll discuss one of them here. Actually, it's not a whole cartoon, but a half-minute promo for CN's "Adult Swim." Quick spots like this will attempt to lure adults to the late night show, while warning little kids that the cartoons are not for them.

In this cartoon a cute little Girl Scout and her friend head for the Adult Shack to watch Adult Swim Cartoons, and are stopped in their tracks by an irate Kirk Douglas-type character.

He's outraged that these little rugrats would presume to set their unworthy eyes on the ultimate adult TV show.  He chases them away then storms back into the shack, in the process executing one of the funniest walks in the history of TV animation. That's it...that's the whole story! I warned you...these spots are ultra-short!

Here we are (above) at the halfway mark with the curmudgeon ranting at the kids. This is no ordinary curmudgeon, but rather a fearsome, wild, Type "A", bull curmudgeon, the kind that in real life does a wide angle lean down into your face, allowing you to see  to see every microcapillary and boar bristle on his smoking hot skin.

The curmudgeon (above) turns to walk back to the shack. John, being John, chooses to turn him around in a way that makes it clear that he only has two dimensions.

There he goes...

To give punch to the unusual turn, John pops on a yellow background...

...and widens the shot.

The old, blue night sky background dissolves back in...

...as Kirk completes his turn.

Now commences one of the funniest walks you'll ever see on TV.

John's really into animating on his own films now.

He loves doing dialogue scenes.

A lot of people think good dialogue depends on having the right mouth charts. That's not true.

Dialogue involves the whole face, and sometimes the whole body. You have to act the dialogue, and not simply put weird mouth poses on it.

Dialogue is a great excuse to explore emotions that we try to hide from the world. To see what I mean, film a friend as he speaks, then still frame it.

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The chances are that you'll discover a whole range of mood changes in what appeared to be simple speech.

In still frames, even happy people appear to be alternately sullen, quizzical, pained, awed, surprised, bored, elated, depressed, suspicious, dominant, submissive, etc. In animation these quick mood swings can be hilarious.

Speech itself is kind of interesting, apart from the emotions it conveys. Sometimes the mouth doesn't want to say what the speaker commands it to say.

Sometimes a syllable can hide inside your character's mouth and he has to dig around for it with his lips and tongue.

When he finds it, he pushes it to the front and it explodes out,

Sometimes the whole body refuses to take orders from the mind. My own, Eddie Fitzgerald belief, (developed from years of watching John K, Scribner, Tyre, etc.) is that the body and face parts don't always work together in harmony.

The brain decides what emotion it wants to convey, and different parts of the body either conform or rebel. It's as if they had minds of their own.

Funny, blustery characters have a special problem with getting parts of their body to co-operate with each other.

You feel sorry for people like that. Even when they're trying to intimidate you, they have to devote part of their attention to putting down this inner mutiny.

Sometimes a character just can't take the weirdness of it all, and he begins to cry.

An instant later he forgets why he was sad, and puts himself to the task of preparing the next syllable.

But I digress.

Back to the film again: the curmudgeon pushes a man out of the way while he rants.

This reminds me of something McKimson was supposed to have said, that much of Warners' humor had to do with pushing people.

He arrives at the shack immediately after pushing the guy. His arm is still extended.

Now he rallies his whole body for a really big syllabic explosion.

I love how he telescopes his pushing arm (above) back into his body while he anticipates down.

BAM! This syllable gets a big accent. I wish I'd included more inbetweens, because I think the unattached tongue travels all over the mouth here.

'More fun with the eyes. No doubt this is justified by something on the soundtrack.

Watching all these inbetween expressions has been a ton of fun. I feel sorry for animators who only do extreme poses and let their assistants do the rest. Surely a really funny animator will want to do his own inbetweens.  On scenes like this an assistant is mostly for cleanup.

We continue to track along as he walks into his shack. He reminds me of a Trapdoor Spider returning to his lair to wait for another victim.

I can't help digressing again to imagine how a lesser director would have handled this final glimpse at Kirk. My guess is he'd have stopped the curmudgeon at the door, then on a new angle had him deliver a final line, and slam the door behind him. What a mistake! That would have given too much emphasis to the door. Like Marty Feldman said: "People are funny, not things."

Here's (above) an excerpt of the cartoon showing most of the poses I discussed here. Many thanks To John K who allowed me to bypass my computer problems and load these pictures remotely from his house.