Toon In, Turn On
Not long ago it seems, content was king. Or so we were told. Then, of course, the colossal failures of DEN, Pop and Pseudo sent employees packing and investors reeling, and the "content-is-king" mantra suddenly appeared suspect. The media, too, jumped on the gloom-and-doom bandwagon and began trumpeting that content — as online entertainment — was indeed, a dead-end business proposition.
But is it? Despite the well-publicized struggles of entertainment-focused content sites, the emergence of online animation has spawned a new kind of art form and explosive popularity among up-and-coming animators. With relatively low production costs and a barrier to entry not at all comparable to other forms of media, animation has made its mark as the dominant form of entertainment content on the Web.
The growth of online animation has spurred a whole host of popular entertainment sites like www.shockwave.com, www.entertaindom.com, www.heavy.com, www.wildbrain.com and www.icebox.com, plus many independent animation studios like Honkworm, Joe Cartoon, Spumco, CampChaos and others. Many of the sites mimic the television experience, showing weekly episodes, unveiling series premieres and picking up and dropping shows on a regular basis.
"The audience today is much more hip than it was ten years ago. They've gotten a taste for wild animation, and they like it."
Already, many veterans from the old school of cartooning — including some who reached stardom though television, film, and comic books — have made the transition online. In addition, much of the animated content online pays homage to the best (and sometimes worst) aspects of the medium throughout history.
"Television's going to die," says animator John Kricfalusi, best known for creating The Ren & Stimpy Show. "As soon as I discovered the Web, I realized that it was going to be the future of everything." Kricfalusi says he loves the freedom he has found on the Web.
In 1992, after just two seasons of Ren & Stimpy's run on Nickelodeon, Kricfalusi lost creative custody of the show. Nickelodeon continued to run the show, but without Kricfalusi, it had lost its soul. Amidst the fallout, one character, George Liquor, was deemed too indecent for children and kicked off the show altogether. The ugly, foulmouthed, red-blooded (and red-nosed) American may not have been a role model, but at least he was for real, says Kricfalusi.
Kricfalusi knew the time was ripe for change and that the future of characters like George Liquor, would not be in television. The suits at the networks were just too set in their ways to take a chance with unbridled, wacky humor or straight-for-the-jugular social commentary. He opened his own animation studio, called Spumco, and started experimenting with Macromedia's Flash software to create Web cartoons.
The Goddam George Liquor Show finally made its premiere at Spumco.com in 1997, making the television castaway the first cartoon ambassador to the Internet. Kricfalusi's latest online series is Weekend Pussy Hunt (shown at popular Web sites near you), which tells the tale of a diabolical dog who will not rest until he catches the pussycat who insulted him. The cat-and-dog serial is actually a throwback to the tension and suspense of 1930s film noir.
In Weekend Pussy Hunt, Mr. Liquor has a supporting role as Dirty Dog's master; the show has received rave reviews by viewers, whose e-mails are posted online. Spumco is currently working on other cyber-ready cartoons, including Big Pants Mouse and The Slab & Ernie Show, reminiscent of classic stand-alone comedy routines. "It's going to be three guys doing comedy gags," Kricfalusi says of Slab & Ernie, making reference to The Three Stooges. He stresses that good comedy needs to look funny, and not be merely sugar-coated with jokes.
Kricfalusi has even had some rejections online. When Microsoft Network (MSN) was starting its entertainment site, it initially approached Kricfalusi about doing some online cartoons. Eventually, MSN backed out of the deal because of initial negative reactions from focus groups, and ultimately, pulled out of being a provider of content altogether.
"The focus groups are just an excuse," says Kricfalusi. "We've been to some of those focus groups, and what they tell us is that they are a bunch of frustrated, non-creative people who want to use your hands," he says about the industry that neutered Ren & Stimpy for being too raunchy. "It's not their company, its the stockholders' company," says Kricfalusi, explaining how little companies with intelligent people at the helm are more able to move quickly than the big guys.
The migration of cartoonists from traditional media to the Web has generated a mixed bag of results, but one recurring element in the new wave of animation is a conscious knowledge of its roots.
"Nobody's as good as the old guys," Kricfalusi muses. "The standards were much higher then." Like his friend, veteran cartoonist Ed Benedict, who animated at Disney and Hanna-Barbera, he defines the golden age of cartoons as the mid-1930s to the early-1940s, claiming that animation began a downward spiral into mediocrity by the time television came around.
| A Cartoon Legend Sketches His Roots Nearly 50 years have passed since the last "new media" venue arrived to shower entire populations with its glow. Television gave cartoonists a massive audience and created a whole new, multidimensional industry ...
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"[Creating cartoons for the Web] is a natural, creative process, whereas television, is completely unnatural," says Kricfalusi. He feels that the Web has allowed a rebirth of creative freedom for today's animators, similar to that of old-school cartoonists before the censors moved in and whitewashed Toon Town. Kricfalusi's favorite animators include Benedict, the Fleichers, who created the original Popeye, Tex Avery of Hanna-Barbera and Bob Clampett of Looney Tunes fame.
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