..again, John K?

Oh, like Ren and Stimpy.

Yah. -.-;

I guess you recently watched the Simpson couch gag made in John K style. I really did feel exagerated, there.

*it really did feel exagerated

No, but I hate all the derivative styles based on that sort of grotesque attitude. It's running rampant here on FA too. :\

It's funny once. That was ten years ago. Now everyone just needs to stoppit and learn what art is again. :P

I like how Augenblick Studios does it

Neh, they still have the "the world is ugly, so let's make it hideous" attitude to their work. :\

If you're gonna point out some of that, there's always "The world is ugly, and there's something beautiful about that, so let's make that beautifully ugly" the way Triplets of Belleville did- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npro9kjyaJk - NONE of those characters are in the "Ain't I just da cyutest widdle thing?" style, but there's still something wonderful about them. :D

idk, I really think the Warden and Jailbot looked great, as well as the compound itself

The John K style may not be the prettiest thing in the world; however, it does afford you the license to be WAY more expressive than pretty much any other style out there. I'm personally a fan of it, but I do understand the technical criticism of it. Though, I do wonder how much of the dislike for the style is a product of what it produced.

Also... I take it this is a response to Apple.mov?

And many many MANY other animations and arts.

And you know what? You can be that expressive with a style without visually gouging peoples eyes out with your style.

Try doing JohnK levels of exaggeration but keep the characters looking GOOD. It's possible, people just don't try it. :P

If you've seen The Northern Incident by the same animator who did Apples.mov, he pretty much managed it. It's the exaggerated feel, but without the inherent zaniness, which winds up producing a fairly appealing output.

I was actually thinking more like Triplets of Belleville :D

If you create it, I will join! I've never been a fan of his designs.

Funny thing is, John K. Doesn't really follow what he preaches. He might know his shit about cartoon and construction, but hardly any of his work follows it. All he does recently is scribble a random organic shape and try to make a character out of it. Too much of anything can be bad. I'm not a fan of John K. at all, but I AM a fan of what he's a fan of and tries to share. Or used to anyway. Bob clampett, Ub Iwerks, Max Fleischer, etc., are my inspirations, not John K.

Also every once in a while I get a comment saying "Oh, it looks like John K. drew it", which does bother me a bit, but I know it's just ignorance.


Also John trys to make every frame "funny looking." I think he has some sort of valid argument there, but he always makes his pictures actually "funny-looking" and not "fun to look at" if that makes sense.

you and me both, i am not a fan of John K style at all!

I would join too, I think most of his stuff is hideous. Ren & Stimpy had some funny writing but even then I didn't really enjoy the grotesque/gross-out aspects of it. It amazes me that people are still making cartoons influenced by that style. Can we go back to characters that are appealing?

What about all the pony love and tolerance?

I'm less a fan of the guy's animation philosophies than I am his animation style.

To be a bit more clear, I hate a fair chunk of his philosophies, but not all of them. I doesn't help he can be something of a jerk in the way he expresses himself, which doesn't win him any favors in my book.

EXACTLY.

not a fan either

John K., as crass as he is, is quite clever. He's got some effed up character designs, but there is some definite streaks of genius hidden in a lot of his works. He's a master troll! You can tell he does a lot of this stuff to be irritating. He can turn it off at will! But MAN... to those with a good eye for 'i see wut u did thar'... hahaha... I can't explain it, man.. I just can't explain it.

As for people doing copycat stuff... they are probably not copying the right thing, if you know what I mean..

Kinda like people that laugh at a stupid fart-type joke on the surface of Tim and Eric's Awesome Show, when they don't even understand what the real underlying joke is. Freaking geniuses, they are.

I like John K's stuff, although his art style is pretty out there. Makes me think of something between the really messy/lazy hanna barbara stuff and overly detailed and grotesque shit like "rat fink" that you'd see on punk rock and hard rock album covers in the 70s. He's kinda like the quentin tarantino of animated shit. You know, not everyone's gonna like him, right? And he lays it on thick, but knows quite a bit about the stuff that inspires him. The result is expressed in both of their respective styles, and while some people may consider it insulting to the source material, it is still an authentic thing in its own right, and not just derivative nonsense.

John K's grown more eccentric over the years though; it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that his relative lack of employment these days has let him go a little more nuts in his artstyle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5RflXVhaCQ

Good lord, was that really done by him? It looks more like a parody of his work by someone who hates his ever-loving guts!

I totally wasn't kidding about the crankshaft part

agreed :I

Didn't they make a website devoted to John K and his creations?

I loved Ren and Stimpy

when I was 9. :D

Yay, I hate it too! I've never understood Ren and Stimpy, or why anyone likes that show. I didn't get the APPLE.MOV video either. IT IS ALL RETARDED >8|

And yet I watch Themrock on DA.

Then you'll HATE this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxAJqvslV7M

It's been mentioned several times on this journal already.

Though that wasn't the only thing that inspired that journal, I just keep seeing stuff in that style where people are like "ISN'T THIS AWESOME!"

It's like someone stopping you and saying, "Dude, quick, come look at this massive turd I just crapped, before I flush it, it's AMAZING."
Um no. No, no. Ew.
Or like what  calbeck said above.

You know,  MKaz's work was full of Hanna-Barbera Influenced Character Design and Cynical Grotesqueries long before Nickelodeon let Kricfalusi warp the minds of a generation of future artists. The difference is that Kaz has a much better design sense -- or maybe just better taste -- and his characters always looked appealing and sympathetic.

Ren & Stimpy never looked better than when Marvel hired Kaz to draw their licensed comic book.

I don't mind pointing out the ugly of characters as long as it's done with some design sense. Like Triplets of Belleville. I just think John K has all the design sense of a grisly car accident. :P