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John K's Cans Without Labels

Started by Weeping Prophet, June 23, 2019, 03:16:18 PM

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Replies From View

Quote from: alan nagsworth on June 24, 2019, 08:05:58 AM
But he is a huge nonce though, so really good art or not he is someone who should not be celebrated for this and subsequently deserves to be forgotten about forever.

Is he actually a nonce?  Or is this one of those jokes they have now.


lazarou

Quote from: Delete Delete Delete on June 24, 2019, 10:23:11 AM
On its own in isolation its ok, funny in places. The problem is the John K element, the realization that its not just a warped fantasy world, but a warped fantasy world from a man with a damaged warped mind, with this in mind the part when the dads trousers falls down and he grabs his crotch was too much. Why would you animated a grown male exposing himself to children, it didn't eed to be there, but it is.

I was expecting a total nosedive into creepy fetish territory and was genuinely surprised at the lack of nubile young girls. Anyway curiosity got the better of me and I checked his blog and yeah there it is.

fucking Crimes Without Labels more like

Blumf

They basically open just the one can (well two technically, but the second one is right at the end). Surely the idea was to have a series of cans opened with a mini adventure following each.

What a jip!

Quote from: Blumf on June 24, 2019, 01:48:39 PM
They basically open just the one can (well two technically, but the second one is right at the end). Surely the idea was to have a series of cans opened with a mini adventure following each.

What a jip!

That's what I figured. But nope. Just one can with a face we barely see, and a deus ex machina with a face eating duck. It's not a bad premise for a throwaway Ren & Stimpy cartoon but hardly a 136k investment. I remember John K's pitch that this was a cartoon he was "dying to make".


Twed

Quote from: Blumf on June 24, 2019, 01:48:39 PM
They basically open just the one can (well two technically, but the second one is right at the end). Surely the idea was to have a series of cans opened with a mini adventure following each.

What a jip!
The original Kickstarter pitch with John K speaking to the camera about his real-life experiences with unlabeled cans was really good. It did seem like it would be more cans, with more meaning behind it all, where the face one would be the silly random one in the set and not the main event. The face idea requires no effort to write, you have no restrictions and all bets are off.

John K with no restrictions is a bad thing.

St_Eddie

#38
Quote from: alan nagsworth on June 24, 2019, 08:05:58 AM
But he is a huge nonce though, so really good art or not he is someone who should not be celebrated for this and subsequently deserves to be forgotten about forever.

I consider John K to be an utter scumbag but I dig his art style.  I'm capable of separating the art from the artist.  Your mileage may vary of course, but personally speaking, I don't feel guilty for enjoying his animations, just as I don't feel guilty for enjoying the films of Roman Polanski.

Quote from: Delete Delete Delete on June 24, 2019, 10:23:11 AM
On its own in isolation its ok, funny in places. The problem is the John K element, the realization that its not just a warped fantasy world, but a warped fantasy world from a man with a damaged warped mind, with this in mind the part when the dads trousers falls down and he grabs his crotch was too much. Why would you animated a grown male exposing himself to children, it didn't eed to be there, but it is.

The kickstarter page for this seemed to hint that the concept and the Dad were based upon John K's own childhood and Father.  Given John K's horrible predilection for child abuse, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if he himself was sexually abused as a child.  Viewing the animation within that context, as an semi-autobiographical stream of consciousness, makes it all the more fascinating, from a psychoanalytical standpoint.

Quote from: Replies From View on June 24, 2019, 10:26:49 AM
Was an earlier, unfinished version of this online a while back?  I seem to remember it was, but I can't remember if it was as awful as this.

Indeed there was.  There's a few comments online from backers, saying that the earlier version was superior to the finished piece, in spite of its rough form, as it didn't have any of the half-arsed CGI elements and was less busy overall.

Twed

Quote from: St_Eddie on June 24, 2019, 06:38:30 PM
I consider John K to be an utter scumbag but I dig his art style.
I do too, but by fuck it is limited. And when you trade off doing the one thing that you do, you've got to at least do it really well.

buntyman

Some of the expressive animation in this is still really good but the cartoon is rubbish and yes, bewildering that this has taken so much time and money. I really enjoyed George Liquor and other loose canon characters' building of rage in Ren and Stimpy but it doesn't work at all here as he's angry for no particular reason. Even the can contents reveal is an unoriginal rehash of an old Ren and Stimpy episode (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Yids3W86M). Not sure where John K will go from here but I can't imagine he's particular proud of the finished product but felt he had to release it due to the Kickstarter obligation so just decided 'fuck it, this'll do'. The sequence at the end is laughably bad, I bet thousand of dollars were donated by some poor sap for that.

John K is clearly quite a creepy and egotistical person which comes through in that blog of his. I used to read it quite intently about 10 years ago though because in spite of that, his obsession and dissection of classic cartoon styles and designs made for a great resource. He'd present frames and sequences from old Popeye, Disney, Looney Tunes, Tex Avery etc which gave me a much greater appreciation of the golden age of cartoons. He'd show how he works a lot of these techniques into his work which makes it all the stranger that he'd produce Cans Without Labels, especially after going to great lengths to highlight how much of an eyesore modern 3D animation can be. If he'd gone with 2D drawings of the cans in questions with a still frame oil painting of the open can a la Ren and Stimpy it would have been immeasurably better.

Anyway, thanks for posting the link, saved me from wasting any money on it!

Edit - jeez that bit at the end cost someone $10,000! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1056985656/john-ks-cans-without-labels


buzby

Blimey that's ropey. The attempts to match the 2D animation perspective shifts to the bad 3D background zoom animations are just terrible. There's one shot in particular that stands out, where George Liquor slides into shot though the table top - https://youtu.be/9WzzMe5d1BM?t=191
As well as the rubbish animation it's just not particularly funny and as other have said relies too heavily on rehashed ideas.

His adventures with shit CGI started with the video for Bjork's I Miss You, didn't it? Given the subsequent outing as a nonce I can't help but think he took on that project as 'elfin pixie girl' Bjork could become a real-life version of his Sody Pop underage wank fantasy character.

a duncandisorderly

Quote from: buzby on June 24, 2019, 11:55:12 PM
Blimey that's ropey. The attempts to match the 2D animation perspective shifts to the bad 3D background zoom animations are just terrible. There's one shot in particular that stands out, where George Liquor slides into shot though the table top - https://youtu.be/9WzzMe5d1BM?t=191
As well as the rubbish animation it's just not particularly funny and as other have said relies too heavily on rehashed ideas.

His adventures with shit CGI started with the video for Bjork's I Miss You, didn't it? Given the subsequent outing as a nonce I can't help but think he took on that project as 'elfin pixie girl' Bjork could become a real-life version of his Sody Pop underage wank fantasy character.

yep. that was the shot that ended any hope I might've had for it. R&S peaked slightly after he left, imho. this... just poor. the music's the best bit, & nowt to do with him.

Phil_A

Quote from: buzby on June 24, 2019, 11:55:12 PM
Blimey that's ropey. The attempts to match the 2D animation perspective shifts to the bad 3D background zoom animations are just terrible. There's one shot in particular that stands out, where George Liquor slides into shot though the table top - https://youtu.be/9WzzMe5d1BM?t=191
As well as the rubbish animation it's just not particularly funny and as other have said relies too heavily on rehashed ideas.

His adventures with shit CGI started with the video for Bjork's I Miss You, didn't it? Given the subsequent outing as a nonce I can't help but think he took on that project as 'elfin pixie girl' Bjork could become a real-life version of his Sody Pop underage wank fantasy character.

The bit that stood out to me is the movement at 8.45-47 - he didn't even bother to animate George's lower body so he just sort of glides along into shot as if he's being dragged by an invisible mouse pointer. It looks like the kind of thing you'd highlight to demonstrate bad flash animation techniques.

The other weird thing I've noticed from the clip above is the characters change colour as if they're moving in and out of shadows, but there are no shadows, no lighting effects of any kind. So George periodically changes blue and green for no reason, and it looks fucking shit.

It's a 137,000 dollar tutorial in how not to make cartoons.

Twed

What is the editing just after that bit?

https://youtu.be/9WzzMe5d1BM?t=564

What the fuck is going on there?

buzby

#45
Quote from: Chairman Yang on June 23, 2019, 10:41:53 PM
He didn't put in the joke! The one joke where it goes all close up and a eyeball or a mouth does a bad shape and you can see a stink line maybe. You never see the face in the can!?!
Most of those 'Gross Up' paintings and the detailed background paintings were were done by the storyboard artists like Bob Camp, Bill Wray and Vincent Waller, hence why they don't feature here - I don't think Kricfalusi is the type of artist who can paint them.

Quote from: Phil_A on June 25, 2019, 01:49:33 AM
The bit that stood out to me is the movement at 8.45-47 - he didn't even bother to animate George's lower body so he just sort of glides along into shot as if he's being dragged by an invisible mouse pointer. It looks like the kind of thing you'd highlight to demonstrate bad flash animation techniques.
Yeah, that's really poor, like a half-assed pre-vis animatic or something. A professional animator would be too embarrased to try and get away with that even at the pencil test stage. At least he doesn't actually slide through a background element though.

Another thing that struck me while I was watching this - the dialogue has been recorded and edited really badly, like they read it in someone's office with the aircon on. You can hear the backgound noise behind the voices being hard-gated at the start and end of each line. Some of George's lines sound like they have been cut and pasted together too - presumably becuase he wanted to change the dialogue or pacing of it but couldn't re-record it with Pataki having passed away.

ajsmith2

#46
What's the music at around 4.15 when Liquor says he's going to take a crap? it was also used as the intro music to season 4 of the BBC's sci fi anthology series Out Of The Unknown in 1971: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXMuZ5iGTqk

ajsmith2

Have to admit when I first saw the title of this thread I thought it was gonna be about archivists trawling through John K's unlabelled film can collection.

Avril Lavigne

Quote from: ajsmith2 on June 25, 2019, 10:08:43 AM
Have to admit when I first saw the title of this thread I thought it was gonna be about archivists trawling through John K's unlabelled film can collection.

I thought it was gonna be about police investigators trawling through John K's unlabelled film can collection.

PinkNoise

Quote from: ajsmith2 on June 25, 2019, 09:12:08 AM
What's the music at around 4.15 when Liquor says he's going to take a crap? it was also used as the intro music to season 4 of the BBC's sci fi anthology series Out Of The Unknown in 1971: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXMuZ5iGTqk
Ha, I noticed that - that was the last thing I expected to hear in this wretched cartoon. It's called Profondeurs (Lunar Landscape) by Roger Roger, from 1963
https://youtu.be/k7rxzz8dgHk

St_Eddie

Quote from: buzby on June 25, 2019, 08:24:52 AM
Most of those 'Gross Up' paintings and the detailed background paintings were were done by the storyboard artists like Bob Camp, Bill Wray and Vincent Waller, hence why they don't feature here - I don't think Kricfalusi is the type of artist who can paint them.

You'd have thought that with the amount of money raised on kickstarter, John K could have commissioned someone with the relevant skills to paint a single closeup shot of the face-in-a-can.

Replies From View

It is staggering to think of the colossal waste of money here.  $10,000 to give the film a shitty ending?  How?? 


Meanwhile The Thief and the Cobbler will probably forever languish as a bundle of substandard fan edits at best.

Replies From View

QuoteWhere Is Your Money Going?

We still need to animate, clean up, inbetween and color the cartoon. We will paint the backgrounds and build a cg set and some props. Then we need to pay for music, sound effects and final editing.  The whole process will take about 7 months.  It will be 8-10 minutes long, which is about the same length as a Ren and Stimpy episode, but for HALF the price!

Can anyone verify that a Ren and Stimpy episode would cost twice this amount?

Also who the hell still adds "colouring" to the list of things that costs money in an animation that isn't painted by hand?

Phil_A

Quote from: Replies From View on June 25, 2019, 03:52:36 PM
Can anyone verify that a Ren and Stimpy episode would cost twice this amount?

Also who the hell still adds "colouring" to the list of things that costs money in an animation that isn't painted by hand?

Also as we've established there were no painted backgrounds, or any music or sfx not lifted straight off a library music CD.

Mister Six

Oh Christ, is that why there's a 3D set? So he doesn't have to pay for painted backgrounds?

Replies From View

And I'm willing to bet there was no final editing either...

a duncandisorderly

Quote from: St_Eddie on June 25, 2019, 01:22:43 PM
You'd have thought that with the amount of money raised on kickstarter, John K could have commissioned someone with the relevant skills to paint a single closeup shot of the face-in-a-can.

or persuaded some impressionable schoolgirl to do it. & the painting.

Quote from: St_Eddie on June 25, 2019, 01:22:43 PM
You'd have thought that with the amount of money raised on kickstarter, John K could have commissioned someone with the relevant skills to paint a single closeup shot of the face-in-a-can.

You'd think, but it's clear he pissed away most of the Kickstarter money and would mostly work with young animators, out of college or younger. Even if he had made better use of the money, he's burned far too many bridges. The only people working with him don't know any better.

St_Eddie

Quote from: Weeping Prophet on June 26, 2019, 01:13:39 AM
You'd think, but it's clear he pissed away most of the Kickstarter money and would mostly work with young animators, out of college or younger. Even if he had made better use of the money, he's burned far too many bridges. The only people working with him don't know any better.

I guess.  I'd almost feel sorry for him, if he weren't such a sexually abusive, albeit talented, cunt.  Luckily he is, so I don't.

Replies From View

Why couldn't he have tried to draw a close-up of a face himself?


I mean yes it is possible he tried and failed, I grant you.  But you can have a few more goes at such things as well.