![]() It’s perhaps fitting that the episode was selected to precede the terrible Adult Party Cartoon episodes a decade later. It contains some of the best animation in the entire series, yet at times we still wonder. The banned Nickelodeon episode “Man’s Best Friend” seemed to crystallize that dilemma as George Liquor, the bastard son of the frightening Clint Clobber from Gene Deith’s awful Tom & Jerry cartoons, abuses our main characters through a series of cruel and unusual practices. Yet there were a few moments when you wondered to yourself whether the show had actually gone too far in its goals, which is why those scenes will likely never be repeated by today’s programs. By contrast, “Ren and Stimpy” seemed not to be aware of its own limits which added to the fun and insanity of the show. “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “Adventure Time” display a consistent awareness of how far they can go even at its most risqué. What ultimately distinguishes today's shows from its inspiration is how they go about that grey area of knowing when enough is enough. Some shows look dated with the passage of time, but the look of this series remains timeless after all these years. They vary from suburban Middle America to flashes of Jackson Pollack, taking their cue from the great Bob Clampett cartoon, “The Great Piggy Bank Robbery” (1946). ![]() You can’t help but fall in love with their paintings. This romanticized look was established by the beautifully painted backgrounds of Bill Wray and Scott Wills. If you look at the art direction you will find touches of Mary Blair and Hanna-Barbera from the 1950’s. The final result gave the show a more vibrant, polished, and bold look to it that easily placed it above its competitors. and Carbunkle Cartoons worked very hard to make show that the time and money was spent on the technology. This was not the case however with this series as John K. Studios like Hanna Barbera had done this before in the 80’s on their shows but only for the sake of austerity which is why those products looked very cheap and washed out. The animation was also significantly better as the show experimented in digital ink and paint, a relatively new process at the time where the drawings and the layouts are all done by the hand but the ink and paint are done on the computer. You can see the influence of Milt Kahl in that respect with the graphic appeal of the design and the expressive movement of his hands. His grotesque facials are not on model as we would know it, yet we are still drawn to the visuals as they move from one extreme to the next. Notice in the animation how expressive Ren’s movements are. Take for instance the scene in which Ren is confronting his cousin Sven and Stimpy. ![]() So the animators put an emphasis on extreme poses and facials for the characters to fully exaggerate their emotions. As an animator who cut his teeth in the industry, he strongly felt that the current crop of cartoons relied too heavily on fixed poses and generic expressions to keep the assembly line going. John K., a protege of his mentor Ralph Bakshi, advocated through his studio Spumco a very progressive style of animation that rejected what was commonly being applied to television cartoons of the day. ![]()
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