Archive for category Animation
CHILDHOOD REVISITED – DOG CITY
Posted by kjohnson1585 in Animation, Childhood Revisited, Television, Uncategorized on November 27, 2012
Finding simplicity in complexity was Jim Henson’s Dog City’s surprising gift. Here’s an example of how other studios handled meta-commentary in their animated format.
I began watching Jim Henson’s Dog City as a joke. I remember the program being really goofy; and as such, the idea was to watch this silly-little Dog City show, then the ultra-semi serious Swat Kats, and compare the two in some elaborate “dog vs. cats” anthropomorphic utilization in early 90s animation, like some over-wrought college dissertation.
My mistake, of course, was discounting the name Jim Henson, someone who would rarely put his name on something that wasn’t good quality. The craftsman more or less behind The Muppets, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, and a host of other pieces of entertainment had a knack for delivering entertainment that went well above and beyond the basic and simplistic necessities required for young viewers. He brought heart and a love for the characters in his creations, qualities that were increasingly rare and discounted in children’s entertainment.
Dog City, the show, was derived in part from an all-puppet, 39-minute movie of the same name, which was part of the The Jim Henson Hour. It was a comically gritty vision containing murderous, kidnapping canine thugs, and dog puns. Whether or not this holds up I cannot say – but what I can say is that the puppets were re-purposed for the live-action segments for the half-live, half-animated 31-episode run on FOX. It tells the story of Eliot Shag, an animator who uses the various influences in his life to tell the animated story of Ace Hart, a private-eye who solves crimes in the canine world of Dog City (“Curb Yourself!”).
Self-awareness and meta-jokes were becoming a big thing in 90s animation. Tiny Toons, Sam & Max, and especially Animaniacs were representative of a knowing, winking, comic take on the very medium that viewers were watching. This was all well and good, especially for older viewers, but younger viewers weren’t often given a strong incentive to engage in the world that was created – mainly because the world really wasn’t meant to be taken seriously. Peter Sauder and J.D. Smith, the show’s story editors, seemed completely wrong for the direction Dog City would take . Sauder primarily wrote for Rupert, Babar, and Care Bears; Smith wrote mostly for Babar and Care Bears specifically. (Smith opened up his body of work after Dog City, with credits on Beetlejuice and Tintin. He would eventually go to do Sam and Max as well.)
In other words, could the blend of their ultra-young sensibilities mesh well the goofier, crazier, self-aware humor? Could the idea of an fake, animated dog world in the 1940s that exists in a puppet-based dog world in the 1990s work without confusing its audience? Surprisingly, yes.
Dog City – (1993)
Director: John van Bruggen
Starring: Ron White, Elizabeth Hanna, Kevin Clash
Screenplay(s) by: Pater Sauder, J.D. Smith, David Finley
To its credit, at least for the first two seasons, Dog City is relatively sincere with its premise, despite the groaner canine gags from the animated segments and the suspension of disbelief required from the puppet segments. Ace Hart is a private eye, hired by various citizens of Dog City for various jobs, but he’s a good, gruff-voiced guy that works in tandem with chief of police Rosie O’Gravy (Rosie, I’d argue, is really one of the best designed characters of 90s animation) and more or less tolerates paperboy/youthful sidekick Eddie. At the same time, Eliot clashes with his building supervisor and his boss while he tries to animate the Dog City show on time – which, well, you kinda have to swallow; the idea of one animator working on an entire show by himself is rather ludicrous, even by kids TV standards.
Still, the show does a great job balancing the two sides, having a lot of fun using the events and characters from the real world and pulling them into the animated one. Paralleling Eddie and Artie, Bugsy and Bruno, and Rosie and Colleen/Terri works quite well, and even in the first season, the show hits hard at its meta trappings – the constant talks between Eliot and Ace; pulling Eliot into the animated world during a surreal dream sequence; creating a violent character that “Eliot can’t control”. It works to be both entertaining and somewhat critical of the animation field at the time, and what’s particularly clever about this is that instead of excessively breaking the fourth wall like its WB counterparts, Dog City critiqued the field through the secondary world of canine puppetry.
I also have to give props to some excellent dialogue and voice work. Ron White as the voice of Ace has an appropriate monotone sound, Humphrey Bogart-esque in his narration and regular speaking voice; yet can bring the energy when doing crazier scenes without loosing the character. Rosie is also perfectly voiced by Elizabeth Hanna; strong and quick with the tongue. The first season in fact is filled with quite wonderful back-and-forth dialogue between Rosie and Ace, and lines like “That was my collar, fleas and all” are read well enough to sound authentic.
The stories are silly but coherent, balancing the puppet-world developments with the animated-world ones. A lot of the exposition is done through the banter between Eliot and Ace which helps to avoid the shoe-horned exposition that often plague kids shows. It works better than expected, with Ace acting as Eliot’s muse (of sorts), gleefully keeping Eliot’s sanity in tact. The show enjoys playing around with how nearly unhinged Eliot is, with characters commenting on the behavior in comical fashion, or when Eliot’s desperation filters into the cartoons he creates. In “You Gotta Have Hart,” Eliot is fired and is forced to insert Ace into fake commercials to make ends meet. Despite the oddness behind using Ace in EVERYTHING, he goes over the top towards the end as things get more and more desperate. It’s amusing, clever, and sad, all at the same time.
Each season can be delineated by specific themes. The first season was more surreal and meta, playing around with different tropes relating to detective-story tropes, pulp entertainment, dreams and inspiration, cartoon logic, the animation industry, pandering to demographics, violence, and the effect of violence on impressionable minds. Season Two is much more character focused, developing the puppets (Eliot, Terri, Bruno, Artie, Bowser) and the animated characters (Ace, Eddie, Rosie, Bugsy, Bruno). The first season is slightly stronger, mainly because it seems like the second season had trouble focusing on how best to develop everyone. “Farewell, My Rosie” is a great episode that develops Rosie’s backstory…. without actually INVOLVING Rosie in the action. “Of Mutts and Mayors” leave Rosie and Ace on the run from the law, but there’s little there to strengthen the already awesome interplay between them, which is particularly disappointing, since S2’s Rosie is a tougher, more hard-nosed detective than she is in S1. Still, seeing them try and improve the characters is always a nice touch, and every so often they succeed, like in “Old Dogs, New Tricks,” which has Ace and Eliot going up against their respective mentors.
Season Three is… well, different. It seems like the network heads forced Dog City into an animated-variety show format. Artie now has “his own animated show” staring his squeaky toy, Rosie is given a niece named Dot in random one-offs, Bugsy tells odd stories while in prison, and there’s a subpar-Tex Avery cartoon called “Yves ‘N Steven.” The episodes are less noir and everything is a bit wackier and unhinged. While tonally off from the first two seasons, the writers somehow prevent it from completely off the rails, even managing to mind some funny moments through the chaos. And it even ends with a sweet moment in the finale, “Dog Days of Summer Vacation,” where Eliot is reassured by his “real” and animated friends that they’ll always be there for him – if not for us, as the show never did come back from cancellation.
Dog City struggled to balance a mix among elements of straight-forward narrative, absurd comedy, parody, meta-commentary, and, later, variety. While not everything worked, it still managed to be quite entertaining. Woe be it from me to ever doubt Henson again, god rest his soul; Dog City managed to pack more bite than its bark.
Godspeed, Sly Cooper and mascot gaming
Posted by kjohnson1585 in Animation, Uncategorized, Video Games, Writing on September 4, 2012
Sly 4: Thieves in Time essentially the last of a dying breed – the high-profile mascot platformer. Can Sanzaru Games resurrect a promising gaming model, or is the genre dead in the water?
It might not seem like it, but there’s a lot of pressure on Sanzaru Games and the upcoming Sly 4: Thieves in Time. For one, Sanzaru took over from Sucker Punch as game developer, so it’ll have a different look, feel, and gaming sensibility. It’s up in the air whether this is a good thing or a bad thing – we’ll see come October. But my bigger concern is that, in this day and age of super soldiers fighting in futuristic wars, alien invasions, or zombie apocalypses, of explosions and shootouts and humans involved in the fray (if we’re lucky, we’ll see some robots or sophisticated AI), Sly Cooper is essentially the last of smart, well-characterized “mascots” – non-human characters involved in a silly yet complex situation, all within a silly yet complex world.
The 3D mascot platformer took off in the wake of Mario 64. Developers and designers followed a very simply template – cute character, items to collect, bad guys to fight – and unloaded a sheer number of them onto us. We went through this before in the wake of Sonic the Hedgehog, substituting 3D for 2D, and very few of them survived or lived on in the collective conscious – Rocket Knight may be the only exception. Likewise, of the sheer number of 3D knockoffs we got, only a handful of them really survived: Jak and Daxter, Sly Cooper, Ratchet and Clank, Spyro the Dragon.
Naughty Dog essentially stopped with Jak and Daxter, especially since their Uncharted property took off. Ratchet and Clank was going strong right up until All-4-One, an ill-advised multiplayer game that sacrificed the wonder of a single-player, expansive adventure for an insular, complicated, too-many-players experience (it also surprisingly narrowed down the expansive cast and focused on a few key character who, while fine, were way overexposed). Insomniac Games claims to return back to basics with the upcoming new game Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault, although emphasis on “tower defense” doesn’t bode well. Spyro had a complex go of it, starting off as one of the many 3D platformer clones (yet still a good game), only to revamp into a questionably dark series of games that many considered okay, but lacked the whimsy fun of the first series. Then there was attaching the name to the Skylander games, and his awful, awful redesign. It was a classic case of burying someone alive.
Sly Cooper wasn’t immune from diminishing returns. The third game of the series was fun but way too wild, although it had a meekly satisfying end. Still, it was a strong series of games, and it’s nice that the fourth game will be a direct sequel, not a revamp or reboot or some way-off-the-mark followup, all things that tainted the franchises mentioned earlier.
Beyond that, Sly Cooper’s success will determine whether the mascot era is ultimately dead and buried, or if there’s still life and energy in the concept. Personally, I think there is: it’s simply a matter of taking those types of characters and settings and building them up to be larger and more detailed, similar to a mascot version of something like Uncharted, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, or even Gears of War. Focusing mascot games on stylized-yet-straight-forward platforming, or as the occasional outlandish RPG, is limiting already, and given the rarity for developers and designers to find inspiration in well-trodded ground, there’s little hope for that road to be in any way interesting. I even over-explained an idea I had here.
So here’s hoping Sly 4: Thieves in Time get the critical and commercial plaudits needed to resurrect a dying breed of games with immense potential. If it fails, I guess I’ll have to learn how to curse like a twelve-year old. Again.
CHILDHOOD REVISITED/DID WE MISS OUT: The Wuzzles
Posted by kjohnson1585 in Animation, Childhood Revisited, Television, Uncategorized, Writing on August 13, 2012
The Wuzzles was somehow brilliantly before its time and yet hopelessly outdated. What went right, and what went wrong?
In the mid-80s, Disney was feeling itself in the TV animation game. It was aiming to bridge a gap between young and tween audiences, something that could essentially market stuffed animals and toys, yet also capture the eyeballs, interest and respect of a growing, after school/early Saturday market. It was aiming to be for both boys and girls, and even for adults watching with their kids. It wanted to do something very ambitious, but animation at this point had only geared itself around cutesy, toy-based shows – obvious attempts to market solely the stuffed animals and action figures that manifested from them. That mentality influenced the style of the animation, the easy and simplistic storylines, the useless-sounding soundtracks, and the flat voice over work. Everything was slow, deliberate, and adorable.
So Disney had an opportunity to change things. But it couldn’t come out and just do it, what with market forces and advertisers set in their old ways. So to test the waters, Disney produced two shows – Gummi Bears and The Wuzzles, which aired competitively on two different networks at the same time. On the surface, both shows are clear attempts to infect toy stores with new, cuddly creations for massive profits. Unlike previous cartoon ventures, Disney allowed the creators to open up the stories and characters a lot more. Gummi Bears went with the medieval/swords-and-sorcery theme, which was much stronger and popular (at the time) than the sitcom-esque goofiness that was The Wuzzles. (The larger irony, in fact, is that “sitcom-esque” was exactly what cartoons would become.) That, among other things, made The Wuzzles incredibly ahead of its time. And yet, because of its cutesy, simplistic trappings, it simultaneously remained a cheesy 80s construct. It had insanely grand ideas, ideas we even find today in Adult Swim shows, My Little Pony, and The Looney Tunes Show, but couldn’t let go of emphasizing its adorableness, to its ultimate detriment.
In a rare Childhood Revisited/Did We Miss Out crossover, I re-examine The Wuzzles, both as a piece of nostalgia and an exploration of what could have been.
The Wuzzles – (1985)
Director: Fred Wolf, Carole Beers
Starring: Brian Cummings, Jo Ann Worley, Bill Scott
Screenplay(s) by: Ken Koonce, David Weimers, Mark Evanier
Let’s get this out of the way first – The Wuzzles is not that great of a show. It’s inconsistent and poorly paced, a bit eccentric and tonally all over the place. This is usually on par for most early 80s cartoons; the only thing The Wuzzles had going for it was the beautiful animation. But as I delved into all thirteen episodes, which are easily searchable on Youtube, I wondered how many of the show’s problems were amateurish, and how many were actually intentional.
Pushing past The Wuzzles‘ premise, which is simply combining two animals into one (which in itself always happens to make aesthetically-pleasing hybrids, despite most animal combinations most likely being hideous), there’s actually a gem of a great show here. It’s hard to determine which episodes aired first, and which episodes were produced first, but in a way you can kinda tell, as certain episodes are better than others, in terms of story, characters, and pacing, as if the show was finally getting into a groove. (Also, there’s a small amount of continuity: Bumblelion’s admiration with paragon pirate Buck Swashler; a towel Butterbear gives Eleroo is visible in a followup episode.) In fact, a few episodes use the poor pacing to its advantage.
The show’s egregious issue is a basic TV fundamental of editing: its lack of crossfades when cutting from scene to scene. This makes it nigh impossible to note any changes in time and space. In the episode below, “Hooray for Hollywuz,” we jump from Hollywuz to the main town, and back again, via regular scene edits. It’s quite disruptive, especially since it involves air travel and sending postcards, both of which takes quite a bit of time:
Later, The Wuzzles realize that the only way this can work is to keep the time and space jumps consistent, and to make sure every scene counts. This is how Archer does it, and most Adult Swim shows manage their comedic timing so well. This is showcased best in “Class Dismissed,” arguably the best episode of the show’s brief run:
The Wuzzles is at its best when the story opens up the characters and the world around Wuz; when we get to see the various interactions among the townspeople and some of the more interesting events that occur in this mythical land. “Class Dismissed” has all of these strong points, along with three separate story lines that come together in the end. Butterbear is invited to a classy party, but is too embarrassed to bring her classless friends (Hoppopotamous, Rhinokey, Bumblelion, Eleroo, and Moosel), forcing them to learn how to be more sophisticated so they can attend. Meanwhile, Butterbear somehow gets into a My Fair Lady scenario, teaching Crock’s sidekick Brat how to act like a gentleman. MEANWHILE STILL, Crock ends up missing said sidekick, and begins to scheme on how to get him back. It’s a multi-layered plot that’s almost Arrested Development-like in its development, and even has a climax sequence that could be taken from Hurwitz’s titular show.
What’s interesting about The Wuzzles is that the characters, although cute, are kind of terrible people. This is okay – most sitcoms portray characters that are inherently terrible people you’d never really want to be around. Hoppopotamous is loud, brash, and annoying; Rhinokey is mean and corny; Butterbear is naggy and bitchy; Bumblelion is arrogant and borderline bro-douchey; Eleroo and Moosel are hypocritical cowards and kind of willingly dumb. Crock and his cronies are portrayed as the “villains,” but in actuality, they’re only lazy sleezeballs, and not that far off from the worse elements of the main six (Crock has a few endearing moments himself!). I actually love all of this. Watching old Disney Afternoon shows made me realize that most of them star terrible people, which is strangely a lot more relateable than people realize.
A prime example of this is the second best episode, “In The Money,” in which a broke Bumblelion stumbles upon stolen money. Upon finding these bags of gold coins with Eleroo, he immediately – and I mean, IMMEDIATELY – becomes a jerk, taking the bags all to himself with shifty eyes and throwing Eleroo a mere pittance of coins. His attitude escalates from there: buying suits, insulting the owner of the corner store and his friends (I personally loves how he carries the moneybags everywhere he goes) and involving himself in this absolutely hilarious sequence involving a new car. (Seriously, the linked scene is fantastic.)
It’s the little things that we’ve come to appreciate now in shows like The Looney Tunes Show and MLP that are present in The Wuzzles. A fully realized world opens up, almost as detailed as Equestria. There’s electricity and damns and corner stores and diners and hair salons – but also scary castles and pirate (Pi-RATS, parrot/rat hybrids) and mysterious islands. There are no main villains that want to destroy the world; just really annoying Wuz citizens and shitty things that happen that they have to deal with. There are cars and car dealerships – car dealerships, people! – and in fact, one of the best things about this show are the car chases; they look phenomenal, and tend to make even the most boringly ludicrous and ridiculous plots into something exciting. (It’s a skill that will reach its peak when animating the airplanes in TaleSpin.)
But as implied, the show has pretty terrible stories for the most part, and a ton of groaner jokes. But the stories are really animated versions of typical sitcom plots. The thuddingly banal “Shock Around the Clock” takes the cliche story of Crock faking an injury to garner Butterbear’s sympathy and service:
Beyond being a lame plot, the bigger issue is that most of the episode takes place in Butterbear’s house. There’s little going on outside of that setting, which kills the imaginative entertainment. The worst example is when the main six seem to be the only ones concerned when they damn protecting their town is about to break (“Moosel’s Monster”). It’s disappointing and frankly illogical that there’s no one else in Wuz worried about this crisis. Perhaps it was for budget reasons that they couldn’t create a crowd scene; in that case, they were better off forgoing the entire plotline.
The other issue that the show has is its awful, awful soundtrack. The music is mostly discordant synths and other electronic noises, with little to no reflection on the show itself. Which is a shame, because the theme song is so much more ambitious and technically sound; listening to the various music cues sound like some student’s attempt at making “Art” music. Even with the well-done car chases, the audio almost single-handedly kills the mood.
The last episode, unfortunately titled “What’s up, Stox,” introduces a potential new character, Ticoon (part tiger, part raccoon), an ambitious businessman working to be a zillionaire. He’s a pretty solid character: confident, clever, and confrontational; it would have been great to see him developed more in future episodes, especially going toe-to-toe with Bumblelion or Crock. But Gummi Bears won the era, and The Wuzzles was forced into cancellation, in the back of that mysterious Disney vault that they swear they have.
It’s a shame; The Wuzzles, with another season, could have worked out the kinks and been something more remarkable. (Most likely, however, it would have been given more fantastical elements, considering the time). I honestly think, like MLP, a reboot could really give this show a modern sheen that would work wonders. The flaws keep the The Wuzzles captive in 1985, but rich animation and some inspired moments make the show pretty unique. In their own way, the Wuzzles themselves personify the show’s own aesthetic – split between two species of animated thought.
Also if you’re reading this – checkout fellow blogger Trish’s take on the show: http://babbletrish.blogspot.com/2013/08/some-thoughts-after-watching-all.html