5 become 1

Today's post discusses one of the most prominent contributors to the 1980's hardcore straight-edge scene - SSD, or Society System Decontrol.

I'll jump right in and show you a photo from the rightfully legendary Glen E. Friedman (while his friends were busy inventing skateboarding, he got to work inventing skate photography aged 12 - Seriously though the guy has shot more of the album covers in your collection and posters on your wall than you're likely aware) profiling the band's singer, David 'Springa' Spring and leader/guitarist Al Barille. I always found the expression and pose of Barille to be just about as intense as it comes, I'd easily go so far as to say this is one of my favourite photos of all time, if not the favourite.

© Glen E. Friedman

I really don't want to write too much about this photo, because I think there's only so much you can say, either it hits you or it doesn't. Also because it's late and I'm lazy.

I would say I am a fan of this band, but they don't neccessarily shine out musically by any significant amount to my mind.

I enjoy the guitars and the overall sound of the band but I think my main gripe is the lack of variation present. They have some GREAT songs ('Eighteen' being my favourite by quite a way, redefining the word "angst" in roughly 41/2 minutes), the only problem being that, while all bands obviously posess a defining sound, in the case of SSD this sound seems to be applied far to rigidly to each song, resulting in a lack of distinction from track to track.

This could be stating the obvious but I have always found vocals to be important in the way I recieve a band, I find on the whole a singer's voice either gels or it just plain doesn't. I can't give too many evidenced reasons as to why I am not so hot on Springa's vocal work. The same reason I don't like olives or films featuring Laura Linney I guess - I just plain don't like it that much. I will say however that the vocal section of SSD has always struck me as somewhat murky and difficult to absorb. This observation is not to be misplaced as a dislike of the often pragmatically incomprehensible vocal delivery, as just a quick glance over to Bad Brains' throat-maestro H.R. shows you don't neccesarily need to hand-deliver every word to successfully communicate.

Interestingly, just recently some controversy has kicked off about a possible reunion show, which apparently only Springa has associated himself with, along with a backing section of random hired goons. Barille has denounced the idea and disassociated himself and the remainder of the members from the show with the following response. It's long and I wasn't intending on posting it here but I really do recommend you read it, there's some class lines in it.

"There is absolutely no truth to any speculation that SSD will be performing this summer. The fact is original vocalist David Spring "Springa" is assembling a band of hired guns to tour and rip off the public playing under the name SSD. Due to his selfish actions David Spring has officially been terminated from ALL association with the band SSD. His attempt to recreate SSD in 2008 will utterly fail and I hope the public will not attend his performances and if they do they make it as miserable as possible for him to remain on stage safely. I know I personally will make every attempt to make him pay for his corrupt, cheating selfish actions. SSD will always be a team with integrity. It's unfortunate that a fat overweight "has been" and "nobody" will try to fool the public under the mighty moniker SSD.

His overall contribution to what made SSD such a special band is so far under the radar and almost next to zero. Anybody intimately involved and close to the band understands his contribution. The real fact is that the band had to go out of its way to compensate for his talent, work ethic and criminal behavior.

I feel bad for those fans who have been waiting for a chance to see the band but attending this Dave Springa performance is a travesty and borderline criminal. He is a terrible human being and I'm not just saying this now. He is basically the reason the band dissolved. Our relationship has been civil since we stopped playing but clearly after then band dissolved his musical and organizational ability pretty much guaranteed his ability to get to get zero accomplished. He couldn't write a song if it fell in his lap. Having said that, I have been monitoring this potential SSD ripoff roadshow for sometime and I have done my best to discourage it through various legal and illegal tactics. I have actually held off some royalties and payments to hold over his head and help him make the right decision.

He is basically following the business model laid out by Cliff from the Freeze, Chris Doherty from Gang Green, Choke from Slapshot. I can only speculate but I believe their motives are clear. I hate to throw anybody under the bus but I'm sure this support system of 40 year olds living in the past has helped David Spring organize the tour.

Motives

1) Rip off the public as 40 plus year-olds playing music made by kids and capitalize on American Hardcore Movie.

2) Make enough money to buy their alcohol, drugs and coke and whatever else.

3) Pounce on as many foreign chicks who think these American punk rock stars are special and give them 20 year old pussies. Hopefully they will give them something else as well.

4) Escape their miserable lives and US wifes and girlfriends to pursue their sexual fantisies.

5) Hopefully come back to US with enough money so they can collect unemployment and continue their life avoiding a disciplined work schedule in which you wake up and go to work. They will repeat the cycle every two years.

If it wasn't for my efforts, Springa would have justified this plan and pulled this shit sooner. It seems like he might pull it off this time but I am a fucking fighter and I don't take well to people ripping me off and tarnishing the name of my band. I am assemblng a network of supporters who will help do everything possible to make him uncomfortable and fearful for his safety at each show. If he gets close to the Boston or New York area then I will execute the plan. My goal is to make the tour fall apart due to poor attendance, hopefully get the promotors to back off after my legal representative serve papers. I would also appeal to the general public to understand when they are getting ripped off and for them to NOT BELIEVE that this lineup is SSD. It's just a fat overweight scumbag breaking ranks from the band. He must be stopped.

Please share this letter to anybody or any punk rock news outlet. It's time to put a stop to these rogue motherfuckers who have no integrity. Anyone who can help make David Spring's life miserable will be on my list of close friends who I will be entirely indebted to and hopefully I can repay the favor somehow.

Thanks

Alan Barile
Leader SSD"

I think there are some pretty erstwhile statements in that letter, many of which, as I read them, reminded me of why I keep coming back to SSD despite not being entirely blown-away by every facet of their music. It has a certain youthful intensity to it I find entertaining to read for the same reasons I enjoy listening to this guy's music.

My concluding topic is the reason I decided to use SSD as the focus of today's post. While going through the motions of your usual Friday night Wikipedia triva-felch last night, I clicked through to the article about SSD's drummer, Chris Foley. I won't detail the article here, go check it out for yourself. One thing I will say though is... Hardcore...
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While writing this post I clicked the ever-useless 'Random Page' link on Wikipedia, and got this as a result, which made me probably a little happier than it should have.

My Corona

Short post today, pointing anyone who stumbles across this in the direction of my favourite San Pedro hardcore punk triplet of the moment, The Minutemen.



The ability to turn even ignorant narrow-minded schlumburgers like me who think acoustic music 'is for chumps' onto such oft distortion-free licks is certainly no small deal. Personally, I normally deplore punk bands who present acoustic variations of their work, but (aside from the fact the two styles are presented in parallel anyway, there's no repackaging going on here) due to the level of musicianship so ingrained in these guys' work there is no bridge to be crossed in the first place. This being an opposition to the norm of the excercise just being a novel way of presenting songs that really weren't designed for guitars that you don't have to plug in, as is often the case.

I'll spare you my usual "all the kids with their fancy modern spangle bands don't know what they owe these guys" rant but I will say anyone who dares question these guys' Hardcore credentials gets a mouthful of fist.



I heartily recommend you go YouTube stalk 'em.
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"I'D LIKE A PIECE OF MEAT!"

If you haven't seen any updates to this blog for a while, try pressing F5 to refresh the page, or maybe try deleting your temporary internet files. If neither of those methods work then it's probably because I haven't made a new post in months. Or your F5 key is broken.

Anyhow today's (gargantuan) post takes a look at the new Mr. Men animated series 'The Mr. Men Show', the existence of which I was made aware of by spotting a stranger carrying a themed bag at a train station a few days ago.

For those of you not in the know (I don't know how big the series of books is outside the UK), the show is based on the Mr Men and (lets face it, lame) Little Miss books, an extensive series of young children's books created and illustrated by Roger Hargreaves from 1971 up to Hargreaves' death in 1988. A few posthumous additions were made to the series by Hargreaves' son, Adam. Each book carried a title such as “Mr Lazy” or “Mr Small” and would then detail the daily exploits of its primarily coloured, geometrically shaped eponymous character and the related situations their prevalent personality trait or physical characteristic would bring about;

Mr. Small lives under a daisy and regularly ends up falling into jam jars and suchlike, Mr. Strong eats loads of eggs for breakfast then helps people out by carrying heavy stuff etc. and Mr. Tickle runs around joyously terrorising the other Mr. Men, making good of his god-given gift of bright orange super-long wiggly arms, etc. etc. so on and so forth.

In short, it's the kind of astoundingly simple yet at the same time beautifully cohesive and proficient brand of children's fiction that make everyone a little sad to ever have to resign to reading books with more words than pictures.

The series and its associated properties have always been marketed fairly thoroughly (Whether such decisions are a good or bad thing isn't something I'll discuss for now [See Calvin & Hobbes Vs. Garfield].), and there have been a few incarnations of an animated Mr. Men show in the past, but I'd like to focus on this most recent one; 'The Mr. Men Show', created by Renegade Animation in 2006.

The first thing that jumped out at me when I spotted a few characters from the show plastered on this bag a few days ago was the fact that the Mr. Men now have eyebrows, or at least eyelids, a small black line extending from their previously eyes. See the comparison below, with the original Mr. Tickle on the left, and the redux version on the right.

This sparks off an argument in my mind that, speaking as a cartoonist (not wanting to sound like a dick though), I encounter often. Cartoons are often met with disdain by many of the surrounding artistic communities, the most prevalent reason for this being the misconception that it is easy, or simple (and followingly a waste of time) to draw them. I originally saw the decision to throw in this eyelid line as a manifestation of this trivialisation. In short, I saw it as a downgrading of the intently precise and heavily-developed and worked-on, yet seemingly simple illustrative quality of Hargreaves' work.

I would like to underscore the above baiting with a look at Mr. Noisy's shoes, shown in their original form below. The sumptuous grain of his shoes are to me a prime example of the distinctive, important and era-defining details that can so easily be glossed over in Hargreaves' 'simple' illustrative work. I remember being impressed by his shoes as a kid, and the feeling still carries over now. As a result, I was glad to see that the grain lives on (albeit tweaked slightly) in his 2006 reincarnation.

It is one example of the well-placed compromising consideration the show's creators have given to character redesign and implementation, contrary to my initial reaction and reception of the work. Another example would be the decision to use lines to provide shading on many characters' noses (See Mr. Grumpy for instance) rather than the more seemingly obvious choice of block shading. After coming to the conclusion through observations such as this that the designers were in fact not out to piss all over the original designs, instead attempting to incorporate them into a more contemporary aesthetic, I think that they have done well in updating the characters and making them workable and pragmatically animate-able within the context of a contemporary animated children's T.V. show.

A quick look on the Renegade Animation website reveals they look for qualities in their potential employees such as a solid grounding in drawing, design and classical animation techniques, an admirable set of criteria I see as having paid dividends. Aside from the various already-discussed successful design choices made by the show's creative team, the animation is pretty impressive too.

The Mr. Men, with their distinctive design realised through heavy-set outlines and lack of detailed tonal information are a good choice for the assigned brand of somewhat limited (movement-wise) episodic digital animation. The show's teaser trailer (which I now can't find) displays a comical sequence of Mr. Tickle falling off a roof, with a pleasing amount of comedy drawn purely from the timing of the fall. This is an example of a quality (being the preciseness of considered and correctly timed/spaced movement for varying desired effect) that is so often missing from a lot of animation, yet remains, for me at least, one of the (if not the most) alluring qualities of the medium. Either I'm going soft or digital animation is getting better but either way The Mr. Men Show is a great example of top quality animators making the best of a limited palette of movement and expression.

The show has hit a little bit of controversy over the observation that most of the Mr. Men with negative characteristics seem to have foreign accents. Some might label assigning Mr. Rude a French accent well researched, others would call it offensive. One man (or Mr. Man)'s freedom fighter is another's casual racist I guess. Ultimately I think it's a harmless decision and one made for successful comic effect.

Getting back to the topic at hand, modernisation and redesign is an unavoidable aspect of any serialisation such as this. For the most part, I think the production is absolutely stunning. I think the music, though simple, is well placed and appropriate, the voice artistry is tangible and well-applied and the backgrounds follow a (albeit somewhat fashionable at the moment) 50's-style Hanna-Barbera (Yogi Bear, The Flintstones etc. etc.) throwback moulding, employing textured mattes and pastel colours applied to blocky, basic shapes. The show is essentially the latest aesthetic follow-on from the ball put into motion by Gennedy Tartakovsky (Dexter's Lab), Craig McKracken (The Powerpuff Girls) and co., which I see as no bad thing, being a fan of this whole 'Cartoon Modern' movement.

As you may have gathered from my earlier discussion of character redesign, I was initially going to totally slam the show for some of its aesthetic choosings, due to the inevitable knee-jerk fanboy response anyone feels when they see someone “messin' with the classics”.

However after spending a while thinking about the show and considering it through the writing of a post like this, I think it has actually been quite cleverly, carefully and successfully pieced together. My main gripe was the lack of cohesion between the throwback-style UPA (UPA are a ye olde worlde American animation studio) backgrounds and the very distinctive already-discussed Mr. Men themselves, but as this article from the show's associated blog (More shows need blogs like this, it makes for fantastically interesting reading.) points out, the contrasting styles actually cause the Mr. Men to 'really pop' and stand out from the image, as oppose to simply standing apart.

While I have an immoveable soft spot for the series' original backgrounds (seen below [kinda]) with their blissfully thick black outlines and primary colours (almost looking like the kind of background a child would draw), I also think that to have remained consistently over-loyal towards the series' 70's stylings could have possibly had a detrimental, dating effect on the end product. Looking at the original composite image presented in the books, I think that an entirely faithfully reproduced animated version would indeed be somewhat murky and overwhelming on the eye and wind up difficult for the eye to read.

I see The Mr. Men Show as a collation of the classic UPA style design aesthetic, independent late 70's British cartooning and contemporary digital US animation. While I would have liked to have seen a slightly heavier influence from the 70's Brit aspect of the mix, perhaps influencing the UPA stylings to give it an added unique little twist, I think that ultimately this cohesive effort is pretty damn successful and provides a rejuvenating, fresh glance at a classic series of kids books.

People need to make more shows like this one.
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Primus suck

Well it's that time again where I write some half-assed post with either a prefix or suffix explaining why I never post on here and how I certainly intend to, to keep my readers from leaving altogehter (both of them), then disappear until the next month. Honestly though, I do mean to post on here more, so stick with it!

I'll keep this short because I think perhaps over-long posts are the reason I post so infrequently, and I can't see them being that much fun to read. Also I am strill trying to nail down a voice here. Anyhow, on with the half-assery:

If you put the Red Hot Chilli Peppers in some sort of machine that stops bands being shit, Primus would come out the other end. They follow a similar style; Primus are basically jam band with a heavy reliance on bass, which gives their output an entirely unique bend. They're the underdog nerdlinger to RHCP's meathead fashionista; they do the job better but draw too much fun out of acting like dorks, so get snubbed by the cool kids. Primus are obviously a big band, but relatively unknown and underrated, however anyone who's sat through South Park's intro sequence has had a listen of 'em. Any band who's bass-domineering frontman names his house by means of a Simpsons reference has got to be alright in my book.



With the kind of thought process that drives them to wear long-johns on stage, assign themselves the slogan 'Primus Suck' and record videos and pen lyrics so nonsensical they go all the way round and start making sense again, Primus are the kind of stupid band that make you realise it's kind of a shame to see so many musicians today taking themselves so seriously again. I know "they don't make 'em like that any more" is an annoyingly ignorant and defeatist, old-man kind of thing to say, but they really don't. Which reminds me, stay the fuck off my lawn.

There's another layer to my adulation of Primus which I can't quite verbalise, a sort of misplaced nostalgia, misplaced because I obviously wasn't around to get nostalgic about them in the first place.
Bands like Primus make me want to travel back in time to an early 90's middle-America just to sit in a car park and throw rocks at cars. They make me jealous of the people for whom having friends like Bill & Ted isn't just a wonderful fantasy, but a blissful reality. They make me want to buy a pair of shorts so garish they'd give even the most Japanese of children a seisure.

If I was Bill Murray and got perpetually stuck in any given day in a 1994 America, I would be pretty happy. Actually that goes for any situation in which I am Bill Murray.

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Clover Dangerfield

Today's post takes a look at the hot film of the moment, Cloverfield, produced by everyone's current favourite filmmaking pinup, Lost creator J.J. Abrams; which I see as a little unfair towards its director, Matt Reeves. Nobody thinks of Schindler's List as Schindler's List produced by Branko Lustig do they? I'll jump right into it, cause I just spent 3 hours writing the below and can't be bothered to give any fluidity to the addition of this post-written introduction and I'm starting to not be able to think of any words over 4 letters in length without the use of a thesaurus.

One observation I couldn't shake from my thoughts whilst watching the film was how heavily it smelt like Valve's Half-Life (the first one - more on that later) which I see as no bad thing, due to the biting impact and top-notch level of craftsmanship exuberated within the game, so I'm all for ripping stuff off if it results in even just a handful of more palatable productions at the end of the day. I guess if nobody ever ripped anything off, everyone would still be running around in leopard-skin loincloths, painting bison on cave walls with blood from their spouse's newly-caved in skull. I suppose 'drawing influence from' would be the more amiable term in such a situation as this.

The one key ingredient in Half-Life's trademark technique of using a direct, unfaltering first-person to frame the narrative which Cloverfield fails to take note of as it 'draws inspiration from' the method is to never, ever show the face of this aforementioned first person. Not to disregard the array of selling points present within the series such as the general haunting aesthetic, the atmospheric (- possibly the laziest word ever?), claustrophobic level design and the bravely appropriate colour pallete; it is arguably the immersive, insular feeling envoked by the use of this 'first-person only' trick that is responsible for so much of the game's weight and magnitude.

Half-Life itself sets down the rules for using this technique, displaying that you can push it just about as far as showing a single image of the protaganist's face on the loading screen and that's pretty much it. To take it any further, for instance to have the character turn the camera round and deliver an address, face clearly shown, as Cloverfield does a few times, shatters any effect assimilated by the technique.

The success of the method lies in the assumed ambiguity of the protaganist, allowing the viewer to slot themselves neatly into this person's boots; any over-abuse of this ambiguity can have only negative effects. I believe Half-Life 2 also proves testament to this, with its over-characterisation (meant in terms of both frequency and humanisation of characters) resulting in far less an insular experience.

This failing doesn't however seem to detract too considerably from the film, it still remains an extremely agreeable and interesting filmic event to partake in. I think the fact that you leave feeling that you have indeed partaken in something, a cinematic experience, rather than just watched a film, is proof of the areas in which the film succeeds. Noticeably, the most enjoyable sections of this film are when our wise-cracking cameraman shuts up for a few seconds and just takes in the carnage surrounding not only him, but also us. I find the grounding asides excuseable due to the success of these sections of the film.

The only other major shortfall for me was that the cast were way too good-looking. Now this could just be some bitterness drawn from my own lifelong chiselled-jaw and designer-stubble impairments but I think the glut of beautiful people in this film wrecks a lot of the ground gained through the successes on other fronts.

I hear a lot of people shouting about how the film is ruined by the showing of the monster; that it's not a terrifying enough beast, the CGI is crap, even that it sucks you receive no closure in terms of where it came from or what happens to it after the bomb drops. This moaning is why Alfred Hitchcock never lets you read his top secret plans in The 39 Steps. It doesn't matter what the plans are, the only thing that matters is their presence as a driving force within the narrative. To reveal them, just as to reveal the origins of the Cthulu-esque behemoth in Cloverfield would, aside from a slight sense of satisfaction at the given closeure, ultimately bring nothing but disappointment. This technique is called a 'MacGuffin'. See also Pulp Fiction's much sought-after briefcase.

If anything I think the 'bad' monster actually allows you to appreciate and revel in the fun you had with the mystery and hype of the build up; to go in to the cinema knowing as little as possible about a film can actually be quite nice sometimes, it makes you realise,as soon as your hopes are dashed by some shoddy CGI that for a brief time, you believed again that you really could be terrified by a filmmakers vision and I think the anticipative moments of the film are pretty damn tense, if not genuinely scary. I would almost go as far to say the anticipation and concept behind the film actually turn out to be more fun than the event itself. Kind of like your 14th birthday.

There is a little bit of cheating going on with the much advertised Cinéma vérité shaky handheld Blair Witch-esque camerawork, being the use of unnaturally steady establishing shots, used in contrast and accompaniment to the uneasy shaking image shot by our real-world cameraman. They are of course still from the perspective of our associate and luckily, are sparingly enough used to go nigh-unnoticed. I actually think they are 100% neccesary in the fabrication of the environment and readability of the film, to leave them out would result in far less of a grounding within the world put forward.

Basically, I found this film to be a very interesting experiment. It's in no way original and I don't think it professes itself as such, openly advertising its loaning of long-forgotten techniques (such as trailers that don't show you every single worth-watching bit of the film for instance) with a view to bundling them up along with a few new ideas and presenting them to a fresh audience.

The film clocks in I think at just over an hour; a prime example of the many convention-busting quirks that show that this really is a film with no fear of boldly-going-where-lots-of-films-have-gone-before-
-but-no-films-have-gone-recently and taking risks with a view to creating an experience significantly more intriguing and beguiling than most you'd find on the market at the moment.

If you laid out all my posts end-to-end, not only would they fail to reach the moon but I still wouldn't even have a post for every day of the month, not even the charade of a month that is February with its poxy 28/29 days, which is just embarassing. Though not as embarassing as the fact I had to look up how many days there are in February. I am working towards changing this recent drop-off in activity; I'm not going anywhere or doing anything until about Marchish it looks like, so we should have a steady flow of questionable content 'till then.

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Don't get your hopes up...

...Just one of those annoying posts making excuses for my absence again...deadlines and whatnot.

Lots of good ideas for posts though, keep your eyes peeled!

The embiggening effect of cromulent voice acting

I have always considered The Simpsons to be the most successful show, or in fact the most successful media product altogether, ever made, not in a Guardian T.V. critic 'huh-huh-look-everyone-it-appeals
-to-adults-and-children-and-even-twatty-Guardian-readers' kind of way, but in the way I am completely sold on the universe it puts forward, which seems to be deeper and more tactile than any other artificial world I have ever been faced with. This of course might be due to sheer volume of episodes consumed and the luxury of limitless development this brings with it, also the fact I pretty much grew up on nightly Simpsons double bills (thanks BBC2) - but I've also (unwillingly) watched a lot of the new Doctor Who and I still think that's utter shit, so there must be some other factors involved aside from volume.

One of the major factors in the show's success in the realisation of this world is, to my eyes, the superb voice acting talent it employs; not so much in the cases of the Simpsons themselves but the supporting cast, mostly voiced by Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer. The actors behind the family are of course equally prominent in fleshing out the Simpson's world, though more for their unique identifiableness and intense characterisation, as opposed to their versatility, as with Azaria and Shearer's work.

Having the same people voice such a number of characters often backfires, resulting in a listless, 2-dimensional end product, as is evident in examples such as Family Guy, or anything with UK 'impersonators' John Culshaw or Alistair McGowan in it, all shining examples of blandly predictable, repetitive and generic voice artistry. Having everyone sound the same shatters any suspension of reality, and grounds the viewer firmly back into consciousness. I find it interesting that it is often shows with blandly predictable, repetitive and generic design and aesthetic qualities that tend to utilise these actors.

There are two types of voice acting, being caricature, exaggerating a voice or vocal style to make a point, or facsimile, a flawless reproduction of a familiar vocal. Another problem within the vocal work, aside from a lack of variety, in the aforementioned and other similar examples, is that often they either unsuccessfully take the caricature too far, or don't reach a necessary level of accuracy in terms of facsimile impersonation.

Observing The Simpsons, we are presented with a solution; the only time a cast member is called on to perform a celebrity voice is to outright satirize, so vocal caricature is needed for comedic effect; or to depict a character such as McBain, who is a caricature anyway. The rest of the time, the actual celebrity provides his or her own voice, assigning much more credence and validity to the depiction, regardless of whether within a serious or comical context. The Simpsons recognises the need for appropriation within voice acting and as a result succeeds where others fail. Having two actors with inhumanly versatile and consistent voices, who are able to combine caricature with realism in just the right measure (look at Kent Brockman for example - humorous vocal caricature of a newsreader, yet at the same time grounded enough to remain believable) so seamlessly can't hurt much either.

Anyhow the spark for this post was in the episode 'Sideshow Bob Roberts', a pastiche of political debates and election campaigns within America, which features a caricature of the classic politics pundit, a character called 'Birch Barlow'.


Birch is a bright example of how The Simpsons and Shearer and Azaria accomodate the shortfalls of the medium such as time and monetary constraints; the animation here implementing only the most necessary movements and nuances to communicate the joke, almost like an animated sketch, with highly proficient and appropriate voice acting stitched in over the top to flesh out the image.

I couldn't find a video of Birch moving or talking anywhere on the Internet, which is a shame as it would make a good study of animating for comedic effect, so to make up for it, here is a clip from the Ren & Stimpy episode "Space Madness".

It is a prime example of how powerful, varied and dynamic voice work can bring so much to an animation, in this case turning a sequence that is essentially comprised of stills with a little limited animation layered on top into a dramatic, energetic and tense comic scene.



Voiced by John Kricfalusi himself (also the show's creator), Ren's delivery of the line "It's the history eraser button, you fool!" is in my mind the greatest single piece of cartoon-based voice acting there is; an almost criminal level of caricature, characterisation, passion and madness, which just bleeds a quality and depth so rarely found within animation voice acting.

John K.'s voice work is executed in such a way so as to make up for the shortcomings of the medium (in this case time and budget), building on the possible strengths of one aspect to account for the unavoidable weaknesses of another; like adding speed lines to a static drawing to communicate movement. His voice work is vocal cartooning at its best.

For an extra example of making the most of limited capabilities, look at Stimpy's leap right after pressing the button (1:29). Just one drawing, but assigned to motion timed and spaced so perfectly as to read and communicate just as well if not better than more seemingly substantial animation might do.

A lot of the time, particularly with a considerable amount of graduate films I have seen, the voice work seems to have been left until the very end and seen as wholly insignificant. Often it is performed by the student themselves, which is fine - where appropriate - but often it isn't appropriate at all and ends up missing the mark by a long shot. I feel there is a great deal of weight and force vacant from the vast majority of student film voice acting, which often totally undermines any other strengths of the film. People need to recognise the strengths and weaknesses of their own voices, and the effect of having all your characters sound like a 21-year old animation student can have on the credibility of your film.

A good mainstream example of this can be seen in Brad Bird's Edna Mode character in The Incredibles; considering the rest of the voice talent is so brilliantly cast and cohesive, it seems a shame to have the torment that is E's chronically undeveloped voice stick out so sorely from the film. Ace film though. It's hard to stay mad at Brad Bird for too long an amount of time.

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