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If our favorite toon people were allowed to age, which of course they’re NOT, we might not like how they turn out. Head to the link and witness a gallery of adult versions of cartoon children that is cute, funny and somewhat disturbing.
This gallery made me think the following:
How did Spongebob grow up to be so creepy? Did Mike from Monsters Inc. take steroids? Are Lilo and Stitch more than just friends?
Will we be able to look at these characters in the same way ever again?
Designer Yoni Alter made this adorable print featuring the eyes of a variety of famous cartoon characters? Can you name them all? If not, don’t worry, she also released a cheat sheet for the poster.
Link Via BoingBoing
Even funnier than the punchline for this pic of corporate Prince Adam (He-Man) giving a powerpoint presentation is the fact that furry briefs are appropriate attire for their office! I guess it comes as no surprise that He-Man’s power bar is so much bigger than everyone elses.
This wouldn’t be nearly as sad if everyone who ever used YouTube couldn’t attest to the fact that it’s totally true.
Link Via Laughing Squid
This cartoon, that Geeks Are Sexy rightfully titled “You’re A Skywalker, Not A Street Walker,” just goes to show how everyone’s adolescent years are pretty much the same -even Princesses.
Link Via Geeks Are Sexy
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If you’re like me and miss the old Batman animated series, then the new feature length film Batman: Year One, based on the comic by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli, is going to get your bat fever burning again.
Featuring that Warner Brothers look that made the original series so iconic, and actors like Bryan Cranston and Eliza Dushku lending their voices to the production, this is one tale of the Batman not to be missed!
-via ComicsAlliance
This is what Finn from Adventure Time would look like if Frank Miller drew up the character design. Drawn in stark comic style by John Suarez, this battle scarred and bloody Finn is not to be f@%#d with.
Link -via ComicsAlliance
As a shepherd, you normally don’t have to worry about much more than a stray sheep or wolf attack. But in this animated short by Junaid Chundrigar we see what happens when UFOs take interest in the wool industry, and the lengths a good shepherd will go to in order to reclaim his precious flock. Let the hilarity ensue!
(VimeoLink) -via GeeksAreSexy
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These fun, comical and totally cartoony character redesigns are from Thomas Perkins, an artist who really knows how to capture attention with dynamic poses and visual appeal. All of the designs found on his DeviantArt page and blog would make awesome cartoons, and the humorous nature of his redesigns (Captain America as luchador, for example) breathe new life into these iconic superfolks.
DeviantArt link; Blog Link -via ComicsAlliance
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You may think you know Scooby-Doo, but unless you’re a die-hard fan, there’s a good chance you haven’t even heard of half of the movies and you probably haven’t seen most of the TV shows. That’s nothing to be ashamed of –after all, the series has been running for almost 42 years straight. So for those of you who haven’t caught up on decades worth of episodes and movies, here’s a run down on the different incarnations of the franchise in honor of Scooby’s September 13th birthday.
Image via abibrooks [Flickr]
I know a lot of our readers take issue with how overprotective many parents have become in the last few decades, but if you like Scooby-Doo, then this is one time you might be able to forgive them. As it turns out, the idea for the show arose after parent organizations, particularly Action for Children’s Television, began protesting the violence of Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pressure was so high that many of the most popular Hanna-Barbera shows, including Johnny Quest, were cancelled due to the protests.
As a result, CBS was scrambling to come up with a Saturday morning cartoon line up that parents would be able to get behind. The first successful new show was The Archie Show, which was based upon the Archie comic book. One of the most popular parts of the show was the musical numbers performed by The Archies during each episode. To capitalize on this idea, Hanna-Barbera was hired to come up with a show that would feature a teenage rock group that solved mysteries between gigs.
Image via informatique [Flickr]
The first version of the show was called Mysteries Five and it featured five teens, Geoff, Mike, Kelly Linda, W.W., and their dog Too Much –who played the bongos in their band. Eventually it was decided that Too Much should be a Great Dane. The character designer, Iwao Takamoto, then consulted a Great Dane breeder to learn more about the breed’s distinguishing characteristics. He then promptly ignored almost everything he learned, designing Too Much with overly bowed legs, a sloped back and a double chin, making him look much more humorous than the real dog breed.
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Have you ever wondered why certain superheroes don’t get as much attention, or as many fans, as the big name spandex superstars? Well, these audition videos from College Humor should help clear that up for you, and proves that even D-list superfolks have star power!
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So maybe “mercury in the Arctic” doesn’t make you think of the ghost of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury hovering around an igloo. But someone over at F*ck Yeah Headlines has a weird sense of humor, and turns normal-seeming article titles into these silly cartoons. There are lots more (this is my favorite) over on Tumbler. Link | via Flavorwire
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While those of you with kids might have gone to see the Smurfs movie, I’m assuming the rest of you haven’t. From what I’ve heard, you aren’t missing much if you haven’t seen it, but I can’t talk from first-hand experience because I haven’t gone either. Regardless of what you think of the new movie, it’s always nice to look back at the things that made The Smurfs so great in the first place.
Image via It’s Meng! [Flickr]
You may have wondered where the heck the word “smurf” came from and why the characters use it so often in the show, but as it turns out, the original characters weren’t “smurfs,” they were “schtroumpfs.” The whole thing started when the creator of the comics, Peyo, was at lunch with a fellow Belgian comic artist named André Franquin. If you’ve ever had a moment where you forgot the name of something, then you’ll understand Peyo’s frustration when he couldn’t remember the word “salt.” Being a goofy guy, he instead pointed at the salt and asked his friend to pass the schtroumpf. Franquin responded, “Here’s the schtroumpf — when you are done schtroumpfing, schtroumpf it back.” The rest of the meal, the two joked around using the word “schtroumpf” periodically throughout their conversation.
Now you know why the characters use their name so much in conversation, but suddenly, the question of how the comics became The Smurfs instead of The Schtroumpfs. Well, as I said, this all happened in Belgium, where the native language is French. The first language the comic was translated to was Dutch and while the name could have stayed the same (do you really need to translate an imaginary word?), Schtroumpfs didn’t quite sound right to Dutch speakers, so the name was instead changed to smurfen. When the comic was translated to English, the word “smurf” sounded good, so it was based on the Dutch version.
Image via Stephen and Claire Farnsworth [Flickr]
The first introduction of the Smurf characters started in Peyo’s earlier comic, Johan and Pirlouit. This strip took place in the Middle Ages and incorporated elements of sorcery and sword fights. In 1958, Peyo started a new series of the strip, which revolved around the characters searching for a magic flute. At one point in the story, the characters run into a number of schtroumpfs, small creatures with blue skin and human-like features. The smurf characters were a smashing success, so Peyo wrote them their own strip that first appeared in 1959. Although the smurfs would periodically interact with Johan and Pirlouit, the spin off was largely based on their own stories.
Technically there are two girls, Smurfette, who everyone is familiar with, and Sassette, who first appeared in the fifth season of the cartoon. According to the smurf back story though, there are actually no smurf females. Smurfette was actually created by Gargamel in part of an evil plan to cause jealousy amongst the smurfs and Sassette was created by the smurfs using the same magic formula they stole from Gargamel. Sassette was intended to provide Smurfette with a female friend, but because Sassette was a pretty big tom boy, the two didn’t get along at first. If you’re wondering why Sassette is so much smaller than the adult smurfs if she’s not supposed to be a baby, it’s because all adult smurfs stand 3 crab apples tall, but they only had two crab apples worth of clay when they created her.
Strangely, after making sure the two female characters were both made from clay and magic spells, season 8 featured another female, Nanny Smurf, with no background story explaining her creation. Nanny Smurf was Grandpa Smurf’s gal, but she disappeared in a haunted house for 500 years before the smurfs rescued her. She only lasted one season and appeared in one episode in season 9 before disappearing forever again.
If you’ve been itching for more female characters in the comic, Peyo’s son who is the current writer of the French comics has promised that he will be introducing more females in upcoming years.
Image via Scottobear [Flickr]
Most people seem to think that smurf berries aren’t real, but as it turns out, they are really supposed to be the berries from the sarsaparilla tree. Interestingly, in the comics, the smurfs don’t eat smurf berries, but instead gorge on the leaves of the plant.
If you’ve ever watched the cartoon and thought that Papa Smurf or Gargamel’s voices sounded familiar, you’re right, you probably have heard them somewhere else. Papa Smurf was voiced by legendary cartoon voice actor Don Messick who also did the voices of Boo Boob Bear, Ranger Smith, Astro, Muttley, Scooby Doo, Scrappy Doo and Droopy. As for Gargamel, his voice was performed by Paul Winchell, a professional ventriloquist who became a voice actor later in life. Some of Winchell’s more famous roles included Dick Dastardly (that’s right, he and Mesick worked together before) and everyone’s favorite spring-tailed predator, Tigger.
Image via DNNYA17 [Flickr]
Do you guys dig The Smurfs? What about the movie, if you’ve seen it, what did you think?
Sources: Wikipedia #1, #2, #3, Smurfs Wiki #1, #2, #3
Unless you are an ultimate Nintendo fan, and know every game that came out on the console in 1988, you’re going to have a hard time identifying all of these great games. But really, who’s keeping score? These awesomely adorable illustrations are by Campbell Whyte, and have a quirky cute style all their own. See if you can figure them all out, and be sure to follow the link over to Destructoid if you want to see all 65 of these adorable illustrations!
Link -via Destructoid
Sure you might love Ariel, Belle, Glinda, Scarlet and Sherlock, but did you know they all have serious mental disorders? Cracked takes a look at the character’s questionable mental states with this great article. I think their assessments seem pretty spot on for the most part. What about you?
When you think about it, Winnie the Pooh makes a lot more sense when you consider all of the characters simply live inside of a mental institution. Dan Meth hit the nail on the head with this great medication chart.
Link via Laughing Squid
After considering the new Smurfs movie, the folks at Slate compiled an interactive color wheel to show the spectrum of colors by which we know our favorite cartoon characters. At the site, you can mouseover to enlarge and identify each character. Link -via Buzzfeed
If you like the show Adventure Time, then you’ll get a kick out of this gender-swapped version Cartoon Network showed at Comic Con. The rest of the episode will be premiered on September 5 during the show’s regular time slot.
Link Via The Mary Sue
Comments Off In honor of Pixar’s 25th anniversary, YouTube member NkMcDonalds put together a video montage of twelve feature films and 20 short subjects you know and love. -via Slashfilm
Previously: The Beauty of Pixar
I recently posted a ton of awesome videogame cross stitches, but these are by no means the full extent of geeky cross stitches. This set may not appeal to gamers as much, but the projects are equally nerdy and just as intricate. Whether you prefer Star Wars, Keyboard Cat or Twitter, there’s certain to be something here to tickle your geeky side.
Fans of the British series The IT Crowd will instantly recognize Flickr user a440’s depiction of the the characters from the show’s intro, as well as Roy’s catchphrase, “Have you tried turning it on and off again?”
Craftster’s forums are always filled with excellent examples of geeky crafting, but when user Jessii shared two years of projects, it was hard to choose the best of all of her works. While her pieces featuring characters from Rocko’s Modern Life, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Futurama and Cowboy Beebop are my favorite, but I highly recommend clicking on the link to check out the whole post.
Over on the Sprite Stitch forums, user Liquid Karma (aka Deviant Art user Karma Pudding) shared a huge collection of her past projects which include the Megaman project seen in the videogame stitching post, along with these depicting characters from Futurama, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Full Metal Alchemist and the Star Wars inspired “Come To The Darkside We Have Cookies” (if you like that one, be sure to check out the similar shirt in the Neatoshop).
Sprite Stitch user Bamiyan is yet another Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fan and his Donatello cross stitch is yet another great take on the characters.
While this piece by The Autumn Society looks like it might belong in the videogames post, Rainbow Brite and Strawberry Shortcake are most certainly cartoon characters. There’s also a similar piece on the post with two Care Bears fighting it out.
If you like Pokemon, you’re sure to enjoy the cross stitching works of Deviant Art user Skyregabbro. There are plenty more at the link, but I chose Pikachu to display since he’s my favorite character.
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Please allow me to introduce you to team PROBLEM SOLVERZ, created by artist Ben Jones and Eric Kaplan, one of The Big Bang Theory writers. If this doesn’t blow your mind, nothing will. (Hat tip to Dave Goetsch!)
Science Service was a nonprofit news organization that decided to “jazz up” their information releases by adding humorous pictures in the 1920s. Some of these “cartoonographs” are preserved in the Smithsonian Institution. Many of the early cartoonographs were drawn by Elizabeth Sabin Goodwin; see more examples at The Bigger Picture. Link -via Nag on the Lake
I always liked Fantasia, but since I’ve been watching it as a kid, I had no idea just how significant the movie was to both Disney and the history of motion pictures in general. Did you know that it was the first movie ever made featuring stereoscopic sound? Or that the original showings were supposed to be more like a symphony performance than a movie and that the audience was expected to wear formal wear and sit in assigned seats? It’s also the only Disney movie to extend over two hours in length.
While many of us may fondly remember Fantasia as an interesting movie, the behind the scenes of this breakthrough animation are equally fascinating. So throw on your favorite classical album and enjoy this detailed look at one of Disney’s most inspired creations.
Image via Lauren Javier [Flickr]
The inception of Fantasia started with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Disney wanted to do a special Silly Symphonies episode based on Goethe’s poem Der Zauberlehrling. The animation would be completely voiceless and set to the music of Paul Dukas’ L’apprenti sorcier. He wanted it to star Mickey Mouse, who was losing popularity against many other cartoon characters of the time, even Donald Duck was proving to be more profitable. Disney saw this as an opportunity for a Mickey comeback.
The studio immediately set about making this a notably high budget version of Silly Symphonies. Mickey was updated with a more modern look with more weight and this is the first time he was seen to have pupils (because the creation of Fantasia took so long, four new cartoons featuring this new version of Mickey were released in the meantime). The animation was slated to run two minutes longer than most of the cartoon shorts seen at the time, running a full nine minutes.
As animators started working in the studio (basing the unnamed wizard on Walt himself and nicknaming him “Yen Sid” –Disney backwards), Disney happened to run into the second most famous conductor in America at the time, Leopold Stokowski (above), at a restaurant. He talked to Stokowski about the project and was shocked when the composer said he loved the idea and offered to conduct the music for no charge. Stokowski quickly collected over 100 musicians in Los Angeles to record the score for the animation, making it the only section of Fantasia to not feature the Philadelphia Orchestra.
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The following is an article from The Best of the Best of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.
Who’s your favorite cartoon character? Ears ours.
IMPRESSIVE STATS
Bug Bunny is the world’s most popular rabbit:
* Since 1939, he has starred in more than 175 films.
* He’s been nominated for three Oscars, and won one -in 1958, for “Knighty Knight, Bugs” (with Yosemite Sam).
* Every year from 1945 to 1961, he was voted “top animated character” by movie theater owners (when they still showed cartoons in theaters).
* In 1985 he became only the 2nd cartoon character to be given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (Mickey Mouse was the first).
* For almost 30 years, starting in 1960, he had one of the top-rated shows in Saturday morning TV.
* In 1976, when researchers polled Americans on their favorite characters, real and imaginary, Bugs came in second …behind Abraham Lincoln.
THE INSPIRATIONS
Bugs was born in the 1930s, but cartoon historians say his ancestry goes further back. A few direct antecedents:
* Zomo. You may not have heard of this African folk-rabbit. but he’s world famous. Joe Adamson writes in Bugs Bunny: Fifty Years and Only One Grey Hare:
Like jazz and rock’n'roll, Bugs has at least some of his roots in black culture. Zomo is the trickster rabbit from Central and Eastern Africa who gained audience sympathy by being smaller than his oppressors and turning the tables on them through cleverness -thousands of years before Eastman invented film. A con artist, a masquerader, ruthless and suave, in control of the situation. Specialized in impersonating women.
I don’t know about you guys, but I love The Simpsons and I must say that getting to watch The Simpsons while writing about the show was a dream come true for me. Getting to learn about the stories behind many of my favorite characters made this one of the most fun articles I’ve written for Neatorama so far. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Barney was based on a drunkard character named “Crazy” Guggenheim that was in the “Joe the Bartender” sketches of The Jackie Gleason Show. Matt Groening wanted him to be the most pathetic sitcom sidekick ever and he always wanted to break the unspoken rules of television that made it taboo to have alcohol serve as the source of comedy. As for his name, it was based on another popular comedy character, Barney Rubble of The Flintstones.
Video link.
While Bart’s name is just an anagram of “brat”, the character was largely based on Matt Groening’s older brother. On top of that, the character is an extreme version of a bratty child, and Groening incorporated all of the bad traits from Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and Dennis the Menace.
Image via Hans Reitzema [Wikipedia]
Bleeding Gums’ character design is loosely based on the now deceased saxophone player LeRoi Moore, who played for the Dave Matthews band. His character is believed to be a homage to saxophone player Sonny Rollins, who quit his jazz career to play by himself on a bridge.
Bumblebee Man is the Simpson’s version of a popular Mexican television character known as El Chapulin Colorado (The Red Grasshopper). The show’s producers said that whenever they watched Telemundo, the character seemed to always be on the screen, which served as inspiration for Bumblebee Man to always be on TV as well.
Video link.
We have a nice treat today! An interview with Lev Yilmaz, the man behind Tales of Mere Existence. If you don’t know his brilliant cartoons, check out the vids below. Then read the interview for a chance to win an autographed copy his book “Sunny Side Down” (plus a DVD!), which you can also buy over on his site.
DI: Songwriters are often asked, which comes first, the music or the lyrics. How about you? Do you first come up with the story and then draw it, or does a doodle sometimes give you the idea for a story?
LY: A little of both. The series began like this: I had just moved to San Francisco, and I knew almost no one there. If you move from the East coast to the West, it takes a little time to adjust to how people relate to each other differently. I usually say, it takes forever to make a friend in Boston, but you will have that friend for a long time. You can meet your soul mate every fifteen minutes in San Francisco, but you’ll never see them again. Anyway, I was keeping these journals with me at all times, drawing and writing, just to keep myself company, just to have something to do. After a while, I started keeping track of what I was doing by drawing very crude, very mundane cartoons. I woke up one day with a hangover, and did a video version of one of the entries in my journal. It was basically verbatim, exactly what I had written & drawn. That one was called “Party”, about the party I had been to the night before.
Now that I think of it, I should try doing it that way again.
(Read on for your chance to score the book + DVD!)
Today is the official opening of the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity in Orange, California. In honor of the occasion, Baierman listed some of the many things he (and the rest of us) learned from watching the cartoon characters Jones created (including Bugs Bunny, the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, Daffy Duck, and others).
1. Never stick a body part, or your gun, in to a hole.
2. When your life is on the line, it’s okay to dress like a girl and seduce your captor.
3. Even a Grinch can be lovable.
4. Control your anger at all costs. Otherwise you will end up repeatedly falling off a 500-foot tall diving platform.
There are 25 things in this list; maybe you could think of more! Link
We’re in the process of pimping our YouTube page. It would be really awesome if someone had the time to upload a video comment to the below video directly on our YouTube page so we can test that functionality. If it’s a good video, we’ll post it on our Facebook page (how’s that for incentive?!).
Ask Otis was animated by neatoramanaut kalapusa who you got to know last week when Alex posted his awesome Super Mario Bros. Piranha Plant Sculpture. We hope you enjoy the pilot episode. Leave comments below telling us what question you’d like to see Otis answer next, or, again, as already requested, leave video comments on our YouTube page. If we pick your question, you’ll win your pick of any neato-tee in our shop! So make sure you tell us which tee you want when you leave that comment, okay?
Got a tweet you think deserves a Twaggin’? Send it to Twaggies.com, because who doesn’t like a visual?
Yes, we know Phillip is spelled wrong… but that’s how it was written in the original Tweet and so we wanted to be true to the author…
Recognize the artist? That’s because I discovered her right here on Neatorama through a user-submitted post: He-Man on His Day Off (artwork by the awesome Kiersten Essenpreis).
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If you’re a fan of the longest-running comedy in television history, you probably already know Bill Morrison’s name. Guess what? We’ve got an exclusive interview with him and will be giving away more copies of the new hardcover book The Simpsons Futurama Crossover Crisis. More details on the giveaway contest soon, but first we want to know if you’ve got a question to put to Bill.
Anything you’ve ever wondered about Simpson’s Comics, Radioactive Man, Bartman, Bart Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror, Roswell – Little Green Man, or Futurama, etc. etc, etc.? Now’s your chance to ask the main principal writer and artist/editor. (Also the editor of this new book!)
So go ahead and leave your question in the comments below and we’ll select some to put in front of Bill!
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