{"id":4776,"date":"2012-08-09T23:44:09","date_gmt":"2012-08-09T23:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.skwigly.co.uk\/?p=4776"},"modified":"2016-08-11T11:52:41","modified_gmt":"2016-08-11T11:52:41","slug":"a-conversation-with-john-kricfalusi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.skwigly.co.uk\/a-conversation-with-john-kricfalusi\/","title":{"rendered":"A Conversation with John Kricfalusi"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s one week left to donate to John Kricfalusi\u2019s first crowdfunding endeavour, the all-new standalone George Liquor short <\/em>Cans Without Labels. Over the last month the Canadian-born animation legend responsible for <\/em>The Ren & Stimpy Show and all manner of similarly manic cartoon lunacy has been drumming up support for his latest short from its own prospective audience. As of this writing over 2,500 supporters have stepped forward to help make the film a reality, incentivised by some of the most droolworthy rewards a crowdfunding campaign has offered to date. Skwigly was incredibly fortunate to have some time with Mr. K to discuss this latest venture, the body of work that came before it and the promising future of creator\/audience relationships it could lead to.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 John K.<\/p><\/div>\n

My Dad was completely against brand names, didn\u2019t like to waste any money. There was a supermarket nearby that had a shelf at the back of the store where they sold damaged goods, and they\u2019d mark the price way down. At the bottom of the shelf were all these cans that had no labels on them, all they had was a big fat marker that said \u00a25 or \u00a210, so you didn\u2019t know what was in the cans. My Dad thought he could figure it out, he thought he was a can scientist \u2013 he\u2019d study how many rings were around the can, whether it was a gold label or a silver label and then he would shake it, listen to the sound and spend a couple minutes putting it all together until \u201cBingo! Beef stew!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

We knew there was no beef stew in there.<\/p>\n

There wasn\u2019t anything<\/em> edible in there, no Spaghetti-Os or anything like that, nothing that you would want to eat. You couldn\u2019t waste anything so once he started opening the can, even if it wasn\u2019t beef stew, you had to eat what was in it – because otherwise you\u2019d be wasting food – and it was always something completely gruesome. We had a limp chicken once, a chicken with its skin coming off and a whole head floating around with staples in its ears; Naaaasty stuff. So I came up with this idea, why not tell the story through a cartoon, have George Liquor serve his kids cans without labels? That\u2019s the origin of this. A lot of the George Liquor stories were kinda based on things that happened when I was a kid, things my Dad did.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So begins the most recent in a long string of unique and compelling animated projects undertaken by John Kricfalusi<\/a>, the man possibly best known for his distinctly intense contribution to children\u2019s television culture The Ren & Stimpy Show<\/a><\/em>, back in 1991. Despite the show\u2019s notoriously tumultuous production, it has remained one of the most commonly cited influences for a whole generation of cartoonists, illustrators and animators, with a ripple effect that has changed the landscape of TV animation. Since then he has forged a highly reputed career directing commercials, music videos, TV spots, TV specials and as one of the key pioneers of web-based Flash animation, with online serials The Goddamn George Liquor Program<\/a><\/em> and the evocatively-titled Weekend Pussy Hunt<\/a><\/em> for Icebox. The titular lead of the former (voiced by Michael Pataki who unfortunately passed last year) has been a mainstay of the Kricfalusi universe since the early days of pitching Ren & Stimpy<\/em>, so it\u2019s fitting that he take the lead in this latest film. Having been put on to the concept of crowdfunding through friends (including The Pig Farmer<\/a><\/em> director Nick Cross<\/a>, who had found success through it), Cans Without Labels<\/a><\/em> is John K\u2019s first such stab at turning to a prospective audience for funds.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t think people would actually pay for anything on the internet, because for years people were allergic to that, they wanted to bootleg everything. So I\u2019ve finally tried it, and I\u2019m amazed at how it\u2019s doing pretty well. This is a way to be direct with the audience, just give them what they want and not have a bunch of people second-guessing everything you do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is this direct communication that holds the most appeal, as it has the potential to determine the direction and artistic progression of not just this current project, but those to come down the line.<\/p>\n

An entertainer is gonna listen to the audience, right? If you\u2019re a standup comedian and you go up and tell a bunch of jokes that you thought were hilarious, and there\u2019s crickets\u2026well, you\u2019re gonna revise your routine. It\u2019s a little harder to do that with animation, because you can\u2019t do it live, but crowdfunding is the best invention ever for entertainers, I think.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Layout for “Cans Without Labels”, \u00a9John K<\/p><\/div>\n

Favouring the traditional process of hand-drawn, 2D animation over CG, the film\u2019s layouts have been rendered in pencil, with the planned animation to combine ToonBoom and Cintiq.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s still traditionally drawn, not just moving a cutout across a screen; There are a lot of drawings in there, all hand-drawn, so it\u2019s traditional in that sense. We colour the characters on the computer \u2013 nobody can do cels anymore, it\u2019s too expensive. I love real painted backgrounds. I might do some of those in this cartoon, if we get the budget we need then we\u2019ll maybe hire some of the \u2018Ren & Stimpy\u2019 background painters to do some of those traditional, beautiful backgrounds.
\nWe had a really elaborate system when we were first doing the Flash cartoons: Drew everything in pencil, inked it, but once we turned it into vector art, it would destroy the lines, make them look weird. So we had to add a step called \u2018Optimisation\u2019 where I had a whole army of people who would take the screwed-up vector lines and move those little points around to make it look like the original. That was expensive and time-consuming – and irritating – but I don\u2019t have that problem anymore, I can just draw in ToonBoom. The brush is so good in ToonBoom that when I do a line it\u2019s like a finished ink line, it eliminates all the stages in between the pencil line and the inking. Not only is it faster, it looks better.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n