I like short shorts

Here is a short film (I love the classy connotations that phrase assigns to things) by an animator/cartoonist called Danny Antonucci, probably more widely known for creating the T.V. series 'Ed Edd and Eddy', which airs on Nickelodeon, amongst other things.

This short is called 'Lupo the Butcher', was made in the mid 1980's and is pretty much responsible for launching Antonucci's career, making him a household name (so long as your household is full of delinquent animation nerdlingers) and cementing his place in the 'alternative animation' circuit.



Films like this are the reason God invented animation. No other medium can convey whatever the hell it is that this film manages to convey. Grotesque characters (visually and personality-wise), absurd situations, juvenile throwback humour and unadulterated insanity are what animation should be all about. There's a certain charm to films such as these, it always conjours up this somewhat romanticised view in my mind of some mid-1990's slightly-overweight Hawaiian-shirt-wearing married-with-kids type animator pouring his nervous breakdown into existence frame by frame.

The film was entered/showcased in the now iconic short animated film festival 'Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation', the institution which also funded and brought to people's attention a ridiculous amount of alternative (and as a result, now mainstream) animation and animators, most notably Mike Judge (Beavis & Butthead), Craig McCracken (The Powerpuff Girls) and John Lasseter (Pixar), to name but a few. Even South Park got its first taste of exposure at the festival.

If you have even a fleeting interest in puerile humour, truly alternative craftsmanship and cartoon animation for cartoon animation's sake; then Google Spike & Mike, pump whatever names you come back with into YouTube and laugh out loud (or snigger embarrassedly) like the retard you are.