“We now return to ‘Two for Tunisia’ on Colorization Theater.” – TV Announcer Happy Birthday Gabor Csupo! (He did a lot of the early animation and character models.)
Tag: Bart the Lover
Storyboarding the Simpsons Way
“Don’t worry, I just drew up a little blueprint, now, lemme walk you through it. This is the door, he goes through that. This is the roof. And this happy character here is the sun. He shines down on the house, see?” – Homer Simpson This post of storyboarding resources from Dakota State University contains a link to a sweet PDF from AnimationMeat.com that shows various animation layout techniques and shots with examples from the Simpsons. Here’s a sample (click to embiggen): If you’re at all interested in how the show gets animated or presented, this is a really interesting resource. Even better, most of the example images appear to be from Seasons 7-9, before the show became the stale, digital waste we know today. I saw sketches from “Summer of 4 Ft. 2”, “A Milhouse Divided”, “The Cartridge Family”, “Grade School Confidential”, “Homer’s Phobia”, and “The Old Man and the Lisa”, among others.
Quote of the Day
“Those guys must be millionaires…” – Bart Simpson “I’ll bet they get all kinds of girls…” – Nelson Muntz “I question the educational value of this assembly” – Ms. Hoover “Hey, it’ll be one their few pleasant memories when they’re pumping gas for a living.” – Mrs. Krabappel
Tell Me Again About How the Characters Don’t Age
We’re getting kinda done around here with “Bart Gets a Z”. (Not a moment too soon, as far as I’m concerned.) But there was one final thing I wanted to point out: you cannot keep these characters from aging. Biology won’t let you. “Bart Gets a Z” had a lot of Mrs. Krabappel, who is voiced by Marcia Wallace. But the 2009 version of Mrs. Krabappel’s voice is very different from the one we all grew to love in the 1990s. It’s gotten noticeably deeper and a tad raspier. I noticed a similar thing last year with Lenny (voiced by Harry Shearer) in “Double, Double, Boy in Trouble”. The beginning of that episode is very Lenny heavy and his voice, like Krabappel’s, has gotten significantly lower and less crisp in its pronunciation. It’s getting to a point with both of them where they sound like imitations of themselves, good imitations, to be sure, but not the genuine article. Why is this? Well, Wallace is 66; Shearer is 65; there are very few people whose voices don’t appreciably change between their mid-40s and their mid-60s. That’s not a knock on their work, it’s just the way of the world. Maybe this is more apparent to me on account of I rarely watch Zombie Simpsons and I watch the old ones all the time. But going from one to another, from, say, the Krabappel of “Bart the Lover” (1992) to “Bart Gets a Z” (2009), or the Lenny of “The Last Temptation of Homer” (1993) to “Double, Double, Boy in Trouble” (2008), is really jarring. Remember to bring this up the next time someone tells you they don’t like the first two seasons because the voices don’t sound right. Many of them are further off the mark now than they were then.
Quote of the Day
“Wow, thanks Sparkle. Wait, this isn’t you.” – Lisa Simpson “That’s the old Sparkle.” – Sparkle
How to Hurt Homer
“Oh fudge, that’s broken. Fiddle de dee, that will require a tetanus shot.” – Homer Simpson Let’s face it, watching Homer Simpson suffer is a lot of fun, whether his kids are fighting over who loves him more (You do! No, You do!), his wife’s getting promoted ahead of him, or he’s getting hit in the head with softballs, circular saws or nightsticks. Or, at least, it used to be a lot of fun. Somewhere along the way Zombie Simpsons forgot that Homer’s supposed to be a regular guy. Instead, they turned him into one of those cheap, inflatable punching bags that always bounces back up. The trouble is, it’s just a lot less fun to watch when the guy taking the hits is invincible. For a montage of genuinely inventive ways to hurt Homer, we turn to Season 3’s “Bart the Lover”. After agreeing to pay money to the Swear Jar whenever he curses, we see Homer: 1) Accidentally put a $20 in the church collection plate 2) Narrowly miss one pin at the bowling alley 3) Find out that Flanders is making money as a commercial actor after Homer got him to shave his moustache 4) Have his eight year old daughter point out that the dog house he’s been working on has no door 5) Have a hive of bees fall on him while he’s napping in the hammock That’s a healthy range of suffering, from monetary losses to the emotional frustration of seeing his neighbor pull ever farther ahead of him in the game of life. Only one of them involves him getting physically hurt, and we don’t even need to see it. The hive falls down, Homer prepares to swear and it cuts immediately to his bee sting covered hand dropping change into the jar. He doesn’t run around getting chased by a swarm of cartoon bees, or say anything “clever” while he’s getting stung. It just happens, it’s really funny, and it’s over. Mmmmm, Simpsons.
Useless Sanctimony
“You’ve got a date with the Xerox machine.” – Bart Simpson I didn’t want to do this, but I think I have to so . . . fuck it. While I was looking for links this week, I came across new blog dedicated to funny cartoon quotes. I thought it was a neat idea so I clicked around a little. Unfortunately, while I was reading the page of Troy McClure movies, something jumped out at me:* ….such educational films as “Lead Paint: Delicious But Deadly,” and “Here Comes the Metric System!” ….such fishing films as ‘Cast Out’ or ‘The Reel Deal.’ ….such films as “The Erotic Adventures of Hercules” and “Dial ‘M’ for Murderousness”. The first one is from “Bart’s Friend Falls in Love”; it’s his introduction to the sex-ed video “Fuzzy Bunny’s Guide to You-Know-What”. The third one is from the beginning of “Mr. Plow”, when he’s introducing ‘Carnival of the Stars’: “Live, from Hawaii’s beautiful Molokai Island, ‘We’re not just for lepers any more!’.” However, I couldn’t place the second one. It’s possible that it’s lost on some weird syndication cut but as near as I can tell from Google, SNPP and recollection (Dave’s, Jon’s and mine) it was never in an episode. Instead, the most likely origin I found for it was someone impersonating Troy McClure. It’s on the “impersonations page” of both nohomers and The Simpsons Folder. It’s also on this old geocities page (mirrored here, though I’m not sure which is the original). In fact, that geocities list is literally the exact same as the one at Favourite Cartoon Quotes. It’s just copied and pasted, right down to the phantom quote about fishing shows. This isn’t even the first time it’s been copied. I found it on three different message boards, here, here and here. (For whatever it’s worth, the third one has the oldest date on it, May 2004.) It seems very likely that Favourite Cartoon Quotes, in only its second day of existence, violated what is perhaps the only real rule of blogging: always link back. Now, like I said above, I think posting random cartoon quotes is a pretty neat idea (I’d better, it’s literally half of what we post around here), and it’s already broadened to include Futurama so there’s lots of potential. But even if you’re just going to grab quotes from wikiquote, SNPP or somewhere else, you’ve got to link back. (NBC’s “The More You Know” image taken from Kissing Suzy Kolber. See? It’s easy.) * The fact that McClure is spelled “Maclure” in the post title was also a bit of a giveaway.
Filling the Jar
“Oh, fudge, that’s broken. Fiddle-dee-dee, that will require a tetanus shot.” – Homer Simpson Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
John Updike Didn’t Watch Zombie Simpsons
Noted author John Updike died last week. In 2000 he was a guest star in that excruciatingly bad episode where Krusty finds out he has a daughter and proceeds to get into a mob war over her violin. (It didn’t make any sense then, either.) In April of 2001 Updike discussed his guest spot at a “meet the author” type event in Cincinnati; he also said this: I used to watch The Simpsons faithfully until they changed the hour when it was shown, and it suddenly no longer fit with my domestic rhythm. So I can’t claim to be a morbidly avid fan, but I’m basically well disposed towards The Simpsons, (Found via The New York Observer) In case you were wondering, The Simpsons “changed the hour” (i.e. went from being on Thursdays to being back on Sundays) in 1994, between the fifth and sixth seasons. So he bailed out a tad early, but not by much. From this very limited evidence it is obvious that Updike never liked Zombie Simpsons, and would like to see it taken off the air. If that is alright with him, please give us absolutely no sign.