John Kricfaluci created Ren and Stimpy, then Viacom took control of his creations. Now John K is back with George Liquor, cutting out distribution channels by airing his breakthrough quality cartoon directly using Shockwave Flash technology. Finally there’s something great – but not yet quite prefect – to look at on the web @ www.spumco.com.
JK: So, did you like it?
JG: I like it. A real cartoon on the web, amazing, finally, but are you satisfied?
JK: Well, you know, there’s always things you want to improve. Technology and, you know, our own drawings. We can always draw a better-looking dump. I’d like to put more corn in it.
JG: More corn? Walt Disney once said something like, “We sell corn.” He meant corniness. What do you mean by corn?
JK: Well, in a dump. Corn, you know, like tomato skins, corn, peanuts, things you just don’t digest.
JG: [LAUGHS] Ah, like sesame seeds.
JK: Yes. Sesame seeds.
JG: And do you think that’s what made your reputation?
JK: Corn? Well, this is the first time that we’ve even attempted something like this. I think our reputation will probably be known for that now. That’s all I’m reading about in the press. Every journalist I’ve been talking to, the only thing they write about is the dumps.
JG: I think an animated poop pushing a baby carriage with a smaller baby poop in it might be less interesting than the fact that people finally have something cool to just watch on their computer screens. That blows my mind.
JK: And they watch it over and over again. I get tons of email just on this. We even got a breakdown from our server of which corporations are watching the most on company time.
JG: Who’s watching it the most?
JK: Disney employees. I love that.
JG: That’s brilliant. So, do you think it took people so long to do this? Flash technology has been around for a while. Are you the first to do an actual 2-D cartoon?
JK: We’ve seen some animation here and there. But I guess what you’d consider a cartoon – something with characters and continuing stories – I think we’re the first.
JG: There was Protozoa with their VRML episodics at www.protozoa.com or at mediadome.com.
JK: Right. I saw that.
JG: What did you think?
JK: Well, I didn’t see the whole episode. We saw some clips, but I didn’t really see it as a story. Everybody’s used to Quicktime and RealVideo and RealAudio…. and they’ve come to expect grainy or pixel-ly images. So they’re surprised when they see Flash. They’re kind of taken aback. A lot of people didn’t see it, they just say, “What do you think about the limitations of the technology and having to have a really small picture, postage stamp picture?” And I have to say “Go and see the cartoon. It’s not a postage stamp. [But] it’s not quite up to TV yet.”
JG: So what’s in the future? You’re going to keep doing episodes of this?
JK: Yeah. Hopefully every week. It’s kind of a struggle right now because we’re just doing it on our own funds and I’m really looking for a sponsor to be able to at least pay for it. I’m not looking to make a giant profit right off the bat. We want to make the characters popular and then hopefully support ourselves with the merchandise. And then basically just be able to do whatever we want creatively. That’s been my struggle the whole time I’ve been in animation, to just make something that I find amusing and that the audience finds amusing. That’s all I want to do.
JG: I know. I heard you’ve had a few problems with that.
JK: Everybody in animation does. The whole problem is distribution. Distribution has been, up till now, a necessary evil. There are people who are producers or creators and then there are people who are consumers or audience and there really shouldn’t be anything in between those two. But unfortunately, you know, if you have chickens and they lay eggs, you’ve got to hire a truck, somebody to take the eggs to the store and get the store to approve the eggs and there’s just fifty steps between the chicken and the person who’s going to eat the egg.
JG: It’s true that right now the Web allows you to approach the consumer directly, but don’t you think that five or ten years from now there’ll be branding on the Web the same way there is on TV and people will keep going to the same channels over and over?
JK: I don’t know if I’m totally against branding. I like to know I’m watching a Hanna-Barbara cartoon or a Warner Brothers cartoon. I don’t see anything wrong with that. It’s not so much that, but I don’t think the big corporations will be able to compete on the net with smaller, more sincere, honest companies who really are just trying to make a better product. And the big corporations are going to bring all their bad habits from whatever they’re producing right now. And their hugely complicated distribution system full of managers and broadcast standards people and executives and all kinds of people who have their fingers in the creative process, basically take out the creative elements.
JG: And make it more….
JK: Just water it down. Make it homogenous. Try to imitate something that somebody else did before.
JG: I don’t know whether I should ask, but are you bitter about what happened with Ren and Stimpy. Viacom had the rights, but are you bitter about having that snatched away from you?
JK: Not at this point. If you asked me six years ago, you know… Right when somebody kidnaps your kids, what are you going to do? How are you going to feel?
JG: Yeah. I feel for you, man.
JK: As soon as I discovered the Internet. It was over. All of a sudden I just realized “Hey, you know, everybody can do this now.”
JG: So what does someone who’s reading Heavy Metal magazine need to do this?
JK: Depends how complicated you want to make it. If you want to do a black and white cartoon with a little bit of motion, you can probably do it by yourself, if you draw it and write it, get somebody else to ink it, if you’ve got a scanner, if you have Flash.
JG: Flash costs $300 or so.
JK: That’s not too bad. Just put it up on your website. It’s not that complicated. If you want to do a more full-blown production, like what we’re doing, full color and, you know, music soundtrack….
JG: How do you do the lip-synch anyway? It’s not perfect but….
JK: It’s trial and error. The problem with Flash is that you can’t do perfect synching because everybody’s computer runs at a different speed. So you can’t count on synching your picture with the sound. So we have to figure out ways to trick the computer into doing it, into simulating synch sound. We figured out some ways to do it so at least we can have some dialogue.
JG: I’m happy you’ve done this.
JK: I’ll be real happy when we can get a sponsor.
JG: Yeah. It’ll probably happen by the time this magazine article comes out. Do you have any desire to work for TV again or to do a feature or any of those kinds of things?
JK: No. Creatively and theoretically, I would love to make a movie but with the situation the way it is today. I think it’s impossible. I just don’t know how you could pull it off. First of all, you have to get somebody to distribute it and pay for it. And as soon as that happens, they want to ruin it; they want to stick you with some hack Hollywood writer.
JG: Unfortunately, they wouldn’t stick you with me.
JK: Do you write movies?
JG: I write my own strange little fictions. I didn’t pursue Hollywood for the exact reasons that you’re outlining. The business aspects suck.
JK: Even if you had everything you wanted financially with creative support, you still would have a nightmare trying to find animators who could pull this stuff off. Who could do a funny style of animation? Most animators, most American animators do Disney-style. I’ve actually worked with Disney animators before, some really good ones who have trouble just drawing characters like Ren and Stimpy. They are so used to doing that one style that adapting is really hard and it takes time. It’s as if you had a superhero artist all of a sudden trying to do a Warner Brothers cartoon. People probably think it’s harder to draw Superman than it is to draw Bugs Bunny. Well, there’s more lines in Superman and maybe you have to know something about anatomy, but it’s just different.
JG: Are you looking for animators?
JK: Not at the moment because we don’t have that much stuff to do. But, you know, we’re always interested in seeing who’s out there. We will be when we put more comics, more cartoons out. We’re publishing our comics right now through Dark Horse. And it’s another problem, you know. We have real trouble keeping up. You know how fast you have to do comics?
JG: Yep.
JK: And the kind of artwork we’re doing is sort of new to comics. It’s just hard. It’s really hard to keep up and keep yourself in business doing comic books with the low circulation they have now for most comics.
JG: There’s low circulation because there’re too many titles out there.
JK: Too many superhero comics. They’re just all the same. So anything that’s unique just doesn’t get distributed. And things that should be selling to a mainstream audience don’t make it. You don’t see them anywhere where you can buy them. Or they’re ashamed because you tend to think of comics as being for kids.
JG: There’s a shelf space issue which is the same in the CD-ROM business, not enough slots.
JK: You can’t charge little enough for them either to get a big audience. I’m of the opinion that I would rather make a smaller profit margin on something and get it to a wider audience, make your money that way. Like go back to selling comics for 50 cents or something. I don’t see how you couldn’t do it if you were selling in the millions. Surely, you’d be able to make a profit. In the old days, comics did sell by the million. Now you’re lucky to get 25 thousand.
JG: I don’t know the economics, but Peter Bagge, the creator of Hate, told me his circulation is 20 thousand. That works for him and his publisher, Fantigraphics.
JK: He’s a guy I would think could be much more popular even than he is. His stuff to me is practically mainstream. It’s something that most kids can identify with. His characters are totally believable. I’m sure those would be really popular if they could get distributed through mainstream outlets. There’s a guy who could really profit by being on-line.
JG: Hate’s going to be animated eventually, though, I think.
JK: Oh, one more thing. You might want to mention that we will be having sexy girls in our animation cartoons, something you rarely get in cartoons these days. There will be plenty of sexist material. Not allowed to do that on TV. So you can be happy about that.
