if cereal companies sponsored cartoons again?
Showing posts with label Direct Sponsorship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Direct Sponsorship. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Simple Ad Layouts That Feature The Product
I'm nostalgic for old time simple generic product ad layout. I love these ads because the layout is completely functional. It's designed to show off the product. The products themselves are so much fun to look at that they don't need fancy layouts to distract from them.
http://neatocoolville.blogspot.com/2008/07/1960s-hanna-barbera-tv-guide-ads.html
Man, wouldn't you kill for this Howdy Doody skullless floating facial parts mobile??! What a great idea. I'd love to do this with some of my characters. Or my friends.
I sent away for this very ad and ordered all these breakfast eating accessories. You can't imagine the thrill I got when the package actually arrived in the mail. From then on I refused to eat breakfast in anything but my Huckleberry Hound Bowl and Yogi Bear mug.
Compare to today's layouts:
Chaos Theory Layout
a lot of modern layout has no layout at all. Look how much harder it is to tell what you are looking at in this cluttered thoughtless box art. This sends a message that the food will taste like landfill.
Who is it that forces every box artist to put that crappy airbrush dirt all over the characters on every product? Is there some sort of Airbrush God that won't allow any variety in rendering cartoon characters? This style has to be the absolute worst way to render cartoons - ever. And it's all there is anymore! It takes all the cartooniness out of the image and makes the characters hard to make out. Somebody pleeeease explain this to me.
There's another theory of modern layout that drives me crazy - "book design". Ever buy a book about some vintage art, cartoons or toys because you actually like those cartoons and toys only to find out that the book has been designed so you never get a full image of any of the things you bought the book for? Or the images of the most intricately detailed toys are really small, and a tiny simple image is blown up far beyond what you need? Or there are acres of blank white space around tiny images and then 4 tons of text explaining to you why you should love these images that you can barely see?
That's layout that purposely competes for attention with the subject of the book or product , which is considered very stylish these days. I don't have any examples handy, but I'm sure if you are a collector, you've had this same frustrating experience.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Cartoon Ads could save animated entertainment - leave out the boring parts
http://allthingsger.blogspot.com/search/label/Dennis%20the%20Menace
It's hard to beat cartoons (good ones)for getting the audience to at least watch/read the ad.
I don't mean just "animated" or stylized animation like some commercials today; I mean pure professional entertainment character based cartoons, like what top entertainers do: Al Capp/ Hanna Barbera/ Disney and others used to do.
Boy, cartoon characters sure love their cream of wheat!
And you can't beat using a hillbilly to sell laundry detergent to keep your filthy rags smelling sweet!
In an era where it's getting harder than ever for a sponsor to get someone to read or watch his ad, it's a good time to bring back the concept of using cartoons to sell your products.
I stress cartoon again versus "animation".
CARTOON INGREDIENTS:
INSTANT VISUAL FUN APPEAL:
Cartoons have a natural appeal to almost everyone (except those in charge). Here's my theory why: Cartoons are the people's art. It is art that distills the most fun things about life and cuts out all the boring parts. It focuses on the parts first that are fun to look at and humans are an extremely visual species.
For example: The shapes of girls are very fun to look at, but untended bikini lines are not as much fun, so cartoonists generally leave that part out when they draw pretty girls.
CHARISMA - Unique fun personality traits
We are also very social and are attracted to people (or characters) with charisma- strong unique entertaining personalities.
The most successful old cartoons combined these two traits and distilled them into their purest essences. They left out the bland, ugly and boring parts: they didn't need to show us every pore, mole and hair follicle, or every blade of grass, or every leaf on every tree.
FANTASTIC IMAGINATION:
They also observed life and gave us their unique comments on it, but didn't take it too literally. They just presented us with the fun parts and added a liberal amount of creative fantasy to it. They had imagination, which seems sorely lacking in cartoons today.
The extraneous details that aren't the fun parts of life are what many animation producers today dwell on, while getting positively outraged when you try to inject the essential parts of cartoons- distilled fun, appealing characters (appealing to the eyes, ears and emotions) and imagination.
The boring parts are what feature animation producers in particular think are what constitute "quality". They call it "believability". The audience will believe in a lumpy pile of millions of hairy pores with a bland movie star voice, rather than a simple well designed instantly recognizable personality with a clearly defined fun expert cartoon voice.
Or they go the opposite direction and make things so graphic, flat and stylized that they leave out the humanity and unique humor of cartoons and funny personalities. Cartoons for art directors instead of for the dirty unwashed masses whose ignorant tastes demand funny characters that look and act alive.
I had a meeting at a major studio a couple weeks ago with a very nice and polite executive who asked me to go lecture at their animation studio about how to create enduring iconic characters. "We've had some successful movies, but our characters don't seem to outlive their movie appearances. We want to know the secret to creating characters like Looney Tunes and Hanna Barbera."
I take that as a good sign. An executive actually recognized the difference between a character who is instantly recognizable as a charismatic star and a modern shapeless blob of pores and hairs with a bland voice who just fulfills his role in a stock cartoon plot and then dies after the movie does its obscenely marketed blockbuster first weekend. But then you never see anyone with a t-shirt of the characters, it's impossible to write new stories for the characters.
Real cartoon characters are so powerful, that in the hands or real professional creators the stories write themselves and it's easy to keep the characters alive for decades past their initial debut.
I'm getting a sense that everyone in the business is starting to be shaken into some kind of reality lately, and they are understanding that real cartoon characters are needed again, but they struggling to figure out what they are, where they come from and why there have been so few icons in the last couple decades.
I do know the secret(s) to creating real cartoon characters and it's not hard to understand conceptually but it's also not something that can be taught to anybody. Maybe I'll do a post about it later.
I'm personally lucky to be able to finally participate in the concept of "direct sponsorship" or what they have now renamed "Branded entertainment". I've only been pushing it for 20 years!
Anyway I got off on a tangent about other stuff, but the main point of this post was to show how powerful classic cartoon ads were when they used iconic well-loved cartoon characters and their creators to pitch products. It's an idea that is so obviously simple and sensible that I'm astounded how long it has taken for me to try and bring it back.
Another great way for advertisers to go is to get cartoon creators to create new characters as mascots for their products:
It's not as good as having characters that are real characters who can exist in stories, but it's still much better than having commercials that everyone fast forwards through and swears at.
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/10/ipana.html
Monday, July 28, 2008
some storyboard and layout images from our commercials
You can see how rough our boards are. Their purpose is mainly to tell the story, not be finished cleaned up layouts.
I draw my boards at EAT on Magnolia during breakfast, while I don't have to think about anything else and no one bothers me. I scribble them out as fast as I can, just trying to get the gags, continuity and story to flow.
I use crappy cheap lined writing pads and BIC medium ballpoint pens, so I don't worry about wasting good paper. I want to draw fast, not worry about construction too much and not worry about clean lines at all.
This below is a pencil storyboard sketch on fancy paper and is less lively than my crappier scribbly ball point pen sketches on wood pulp.
Here's a couple of Jim's setup idea sketches...
Jim has his own theories and techniques and they make his style unique and fun.
More of my continuity scribbles...(not in continuity though)
If you don't have to draw perfectly clean and on-model while you do storyboards, then you can access the part of your brain that thinks about STORY, rather than clean up.
A lot of studios today have a department that's called "storyboard" but they don't use storyboards in the same way that they were originally intended. They use them instead as mini-layouts, that are supposed to be blown up larger and used as keys for the Asian animators.
"Storyboarders" don't usually get to do story anymore which is a shame and an irony. Writing with pictures is a blast and brings so much more to your stories, than merely trying to describe everything with words.
It's also hard to draw good detailed layout drawings small, so the end result of storyboarding from scripts, is both bad storytelling and bad layouts. The poor storyboarders don't get to have much fun in this system. I'm sure somewhere there are a couple exceptions.
A lot of lucky accidents happen while doing rough storyboards, and the trick is to preserve them in the layouts. When taking the idea sketches and blowing them up to animation size, tightening them up and flipping them from pose to pose, there is a great tendency to tone everything down and lose the humor and spontaneity.
In fact, every step of the animation process has a dangerous tendency to lose some of the life of the previous step. I have been working on a science to combat that for my whole 30 years in the business.
Finding good layout people who can draw with life is a blessing from above!
A side note:
Many times in a cartoon, I have tried to get funny layout drawings inspired by the storyboard to flip right and lost the humor in the process. In those cases, I would just use the funny poses, even if they didn't animate right. Lucky for me and the rest of the industry, Bob Jaques and Kelly Armstrong developed techniques to smooth the connection between 2 not very well connected poses. This technique (in simplified form) amazingly has become the standard for most Flash animation today. Carbunkle's animation used a wide assortment of techniques and they customized many scenes, but a couple of their tricks (without the custom tailored thought) became the standard style for whole studios down to today.
That's why you see so much "snapping" from pose to pose today, where you antic and go past the next pose and settle back into it. (You are in effect, avoiding the inbetweens) It's one good technique that's useful in some cases, but it gives me a headache when I see whole features use it to connect every single pose. No variety in timing or emotion. Every emotion using the same timing trick - or handful of tricks.
If you watch an old 40s Warner Bros. cartoon, you will find all kinds of custom timing and posing that is designed to fit the story and emotions. They didn't use a handful of tricks. They really thought about every scene and its context. Of course we can't afford to do that with today's TV and internet budgets, but they could easily afford it in today's animated features, if people in charge had the will to do it.
I draw my boards at EAT on Magnolia during breakfast, while I don't have to think about anything else and no one bothers me. I scribble them out as fast as I can, just trying to get the gags, continuity and story to flow.
This below is a pencil storyboard sketch on fancy paper and is less lively than my crappier scribbly ball point pen sketches on wood pulp.
Here's a couple of Jim's setup idea sketches...
Jim has his own theories and techniques and they make his style unique and fun.
More of my continuity scribbles...(not in continuity though)
If you don't have to draw perfectly clean and on-model while you do storyboards, then you can access the part of your brain that thinks about STORY, rather than clean up.
A lot of studios today have a department that's called "storyboard" but they don't use storyboards in the same way that they were originally intended. They use them instead as mini-layouts, that are supposed to be blown up larger and used as keys for the Asian animators.
"Storyboarders" don't usually get to do story anymore which is a shame and an irony. Writing with pictures is a blast and brings so much more to your stories, than merely trying to describe everything with words.
It's also hard to draw good detailed layout drawings small, so the end result of storyboarding from scripts, is both bad storytelling and bad layouts. The poor storyboarders don't get to have much fun in this system. I'm sure somewhere there are a couple exceptions.
A lot of lucky accidents happen while doing rough storyboards, and the trick is to preserve them in the layouts. When taking the idea sketches and blowing them up to animation size, tightening them up and flipping them from pose to pose, there is a great tendency to tone everything down and lose the humor and spontaneity.
In fact, every step of the animation process has a dangerous tendency to lose some of the life of the previous step. I have been working on a science to combat that for my whole 30 years in the business.
Finding good layout people who can draw with life is a blessing from above!
A side note:
Many times in a cartoon, I have tried to get funny layout drawings inspired by the storyboard to flip right and lost the humor in the process. In those cases, I would just use the funny poses, even if they didn't animate right. Lucky for me and the rest of the industry, Bob Jaques and Kelly Armstrong developed techniques to smooth the connection between 2 not very well connected poses. This technique (in simplified form) amazingly has become the standard for most Flash animation today. Carbunkle's animation used a wide assortment of techniques and they customized many scenes, but a couple of their tricks (without the custom tailored thought) became the standard style for whole studios down to today.
That's why you see so much "snapping" from pose to pose today, where you antic and go past the next pose and settle back into it. (You are in effect, avoiding the inbetweens) It's one good technique that's useful in some cases, but it gives me a headache when I see whole features use it to connect every single pose. No variety in timing or emotion. Every emotion using the same timing trick - or handful of tricks.
If you watch an old 40s Warner Bros. cartoon, you will find all kinds of custom timing and posing that is designed to fit the story and emotions. They didn't use a handful of tricks. They really thought about every scene and its context. Of course we can't afford to do that with today's TV and internet budgets, but they could easily afford it in today's animated features, if people in charge had the will to do it.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
My Dad Discovers The Big Boys Following Spumco
sent by my Dad
"Here are some comments from viewers on Seth MacFarlain's entry into animated commercials, You have a head start, hope your show gets a lot of attention, looks like Google is interested in animated commercials. I sent this to you in case you have not heard about it, I saw the article in the Ottawa Citizen to-day."
ReadWriteWeb
Google to Make History with Exclusive Animated Internet Series?
Written by Corvida / June 30, 2008 9:15 AM / 13 Comments
The Distribution Plan
Apparently, the plan is going to involve a lot of of work will use Google's Adsense advertising system and the Google Content Network to run the series.
"Google will syndicate the program using its AdSense advertising system to thousands of Web sites that are predetermined to be gathering spots for Mr. MacFarlane's target audience, typically young men. Instead of placing a static ad on a Web page, Google will place a "Cavalcade" video clip. "
There will be numerous strategies used for incorporating the advertisements into the clips including "preroll" ads, which will remind viewers of a commercial, banners at the bottom of the video clip, or a "brought to you by" note at the beginning.
The Animated Series
The series will be exclusive to the internet alone. The series will also include a new line-up of characters and will be 50 episodes that are two-minutes each. MacFarlane describes the episodes as, "animated versions of the one-frame cartoons you might see in The New Yorker, only edgier." MacFarlane will receive a percentage of the advertising revenues and will also work with advertisers to provide original animated commercials to run with "Cavalcade" for a hefty fee. There's no word yet on who's signed-up for the deal.
Why is This a Big Deal?
If Google succeeds, this could become the premier internet business model for Hollywood to look into. With a multimillion-dollar production price tag and a high-profile Hollywood celeb, Google could make history, while making Hollywood's dreams come true. This pay day could be huge for both sides of this fence if Google succeeds.
_____________________________________
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/12/creativity-magazine.html
Monday, December 03, 2007
Creativity Magazine
Here's an article about my association with Hoytyboy, and they included my ideas about Direct Sponsorship.
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/12/direct-sponsorship-1.html
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/12/direct-sponsorship-2.html
How The Web Will Be Advertisers' Best Friend
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/12/direct-sponsorship-2.html
Thursday, September 13, 2007
THE MIGHTY MOUSE SHOW episode 2 MIGHTY'S BENEFIT PLAN
MIGHTY'S BENEFIT PLAN - FURRY HEAVEN
If was a programming exec, I would make shows formatted something like this:
MUSICAL BUMPER - TWIST AGAINST THE WILL OF THE MAN
COMMERCIAL FOR TOYS OF THE STARS TO GET NAKED WITH
CARTOON _ MIGHTY'S BENEFIT PLAN
This was my favorite of all the Bakshi Mighty Mouse episodes. It came out the closest to what I envisioned. There are many episodes that make me cringe. BTW, I have restored some scenes in this cartoon that were cut out way back when. They aren't in this copy, but you can see the cartoon uncut wherever I do a retrospective.
OHOORIDS CEREAL COMMERCIAL
PREVIEW OF FEATURE MUSICAL - GIRLS OF ROCK 'N' ROLL
Here's some really great animation of Alvin and the Chipettes. (Steve, who did it? Glen Keane did some didn't he? Dan Haskett? Rebecca Reese?) And how weird are the human character designs? It's like 2 different movies!
FINAL BUMPER - RELIGION IS PRACTICED BY EVEN PRIMITIVE CULTURES - GREAT SONG!
http://classiccartoons.blogspot.com/2007/07/mightys-benefit-plan.html
If you wanna know back stories, let me know and I'll do another post with lots of details.
Friday, September 07, 2007
The Bakshi Mighty Mouse Show IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY...
Ralph Bakshi started the "creator-driven" rebirth of cartoons with his NEW ADVENTURES OF MIGHTY MOUSE that came out on CBS in 1987. Many new-style cartoons flourished in the early 90s following Ralph's lead. My work on Mighty Mouse led straight to my own Ren and Stimpy Show a couple years later.
LYNNE NAYLOR
BRUCE TIMM
KEN BOYER
JIM SMITH
BOB JAQUES
EDDIE?
VICKY JENSEN
LIBBY SIMON
ISTVAN
JIM GOMEZ
MIKE KAZALEH
ANDREW STANTON
JEFF PIGEON
DAVE MARSHALL
BIN
MIKE PATAKI (AS the Cow)
PATRICK PINNEY (MIGHTY MOUSE)
CHARLIE ADLER (BAT BAT)
If I left anyone out, let me know and I'll add you! It was a long time ago and I don't remember every detail of who did what.
WHO WOULD PAY HARD CASH FOR A SHOW LIKE THIS TODAY?
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/09/mighty-mouse-show-episode-2-mightys.html
HOW TO FORMAT CARTOONS AND WORK WITH SPONSORS
If I had total control over not only my cartoons, but also the business and packaging, here is how I would air them.Ralph hired me as the supervising director on Mighty Mouse and then I hired most of crew. It all came together really fast, but Ralph was the one who made sure that we were basically left alone by the network people to do our thing. It was the first cartoon series in at least 20 years that was actually made by cartoonists. We wrote, designed and directed it. I even changed the whole production system. I brought back the old "Unit- system" to replace the horrible anti-creative assembly line process that the other studios had been using on TV.
Everyone worked really hard because it was the first chance any of us had to actually have fun making cartoons. It launched many careers and revolutionized cartoons for awhile.
This system and process should come back. If it doesn't, talented cartoonists in animation are doomed to be replaced by computer geeks who can't draw but can use programs.
I always thought Superheroes were funny, because the whole concept is so preposterous. Especially Batman and Robin who don't even have superpowers. They just have fancy underwear. This was my first spoof of the Dark Knight. I did another in the Ripping Friends, years later.
The story was forged in a funny way. I had the concept and the rough plot basically worked out. I had just hired Jim Reardon out of the infamous Cal Arts. He was a funny cartoonist so I said, "you'll be a writer." The kinds of gags he specialized in were "one-liners", gags that at the time seemed dated to me but funny none the less. Bob Hope style throwaway lines. Jim came up with so many that I actually got sort of mad at one point. I said "Can't you come up with more action or personality gags? This is a cartoon for Christ's sake - not a @#%*@#** sitcom! "
Then it dawned on me that I could make the one liners part of the plot and Jim and I reworked the story to make fun of Bob Hope type gags. Little did I expect that in a couple years one-liner cartoons would become all the rage in prime time, and here I was thinking they were dated!
I think this is also the first male cow who stands on 2 legs that ever appeared in cartoons. I wanted to have his teats sticking out,
but that was too risque for Saturday Morning cartoons at the time so I kept them stuffed in his shorts.
SOME STARS WHO WORKED ON THIS EPISODE:
RALPHEveryone worked really hard because it was the first chance any of us had to actually have fun making cartoons. It launched many careers and revolutionized cartoons for awhile.
This system and process should come back. If it doesn't, talented cartoonists in animation are doomed to be replaced by computer geeks who can't draw but can use programs.
NIGHT OF THE BAT BAT
STORY BY JOHN K. AND JIM REARDON
DIRECTED BY JOHN K.
DIRECTED BY JOHN K.
I always thought Superheroes were funny, because the whole concept is so preposterous. Especially Batman and Robin who don't even have superpowers. They just have fancy underwear. This was my first spoof of the Dark Knight. I did another in the Ripping Friends, years later.
The story was forged in a funny way. I had the concept and the rough plot basically worked out. I had just hired Jim Reardon out of the infamous Cal Arts. He was a funny cartoonist so I said, "you'll be a writer." The kinds of gags he specialized in were "one-liners", gags that at the time seemed dated to me but funny none the less. Bob Hope style throwaway lines. Jim came up with so many that I actually got sort of mad at one point. I said "Can't you come up with more action or personality gags? This is a cartoon for Christ's sake - not a @#%*@#** sitcom! "
Then it dawned on me that I could make the one liners part of the plot and Jim and I reworked the story to make fun of Bob Hope type gags. Little did I expect that in a couple years one-liner cartoons would become all the rage in prime time, and here I was thinking they were dated!
I think this is also the first male cow who stands on 2 legs that ever appeared in cartoons. I wanted to have his teats sticking out,
SOME STARS WHO WORKED ON THIS EPISODE:
LYNNE NAYLOR
BRUCE TIMM
KEN BOYER
JIM SMITH
BOB JAQUES
EDDIE?
VICKY JENSEN
LIBBY SIMON
ISTVAN
JIM GOMEZ
MIKE KAZALEH
ANDREW STANTON
JEFF PIGEON
DAVE MARSHALL
BIN
MIKE PATAKI (AS the Cow)
PATRICK PINNEY (MIGHTY MOUSE)
CHARLIE ADLER (BAT BAT)
If I left anyone out, let me know and I'll add you! It was a long time ago and I don't remember every detail of who did what.
WHO WOULD PAY HARD CASH FOR A SHOW LIKE THIS TODAY?
GO SEE MY FAVORITE EPISODE!
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/09/mighty-mouse-show-episode-2-mightys.html
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