Sell me on John K. (creator of REN & STIMPY)

[TMC]

http://officialfan.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=offtopic&action=display&thread=462483

Let me start out by saying I was a huge Ren & Stimpy fan. The first,
maybe dozen or so episodes were great. Then the quality tailed off,
and John K left or was fired, depending on who tells the story. Since
then, in my opinion, almost everything John K has done has been
garbage, and ended up showing that without some type of creative
control, the original Ren & Stimpy probably would've failed too. The
revival was maybe the worst thing I ever saw. He also seems very
bitter and very dismissive of almost everything, and blames others
when things fail. Am I being hard on him? Is he a genius or overrated,
or somewhere in the middle?

« Reply #1 Yesterday at 12:48am »
John does know his stuff as far as proper cartoon development, but his
style is an acquired taste even when he is reigned in. I love flowing,
active animation as much as the next person, but sometimes he tends to
abuse squashing and stretching to where a lot of his characters just
have no structure. I think I'm one of the few people that didn't care
for his Simpsons couch segment.

And I agree, despite his Spumco-way-or-bust attitude on his projects,
he's at his best when his ideas are filtered down by other people, or
when he's part of a group of creative people like the 80's Mighty
Mouse show.

Like for example, his version of Ren (the APC incarnation) is a lot
meaner, and he fought Nick on their decision to give him a hidden
softer side in the original R&S. When he lost, it wound up giving the
show a much-needed element of heart admist all of the gross-out gags.

« Reply #4 Yesterday at 3:25am »
He is a tremendously talented guy who, unfortunately, has an ego and
lack of caring about meeting deadlines that often goes with that.

« Reply #5 Yesterday at 4:03am »
Far as I read, he wasn't too pleased with APC. I recall that it was
SpikeTV that wanted it to be more raunchy. Reminds me of how his
vignettes on the DVD were far more interesting and entertaining than
the actual episodes.

He is certainly opinionated and egotistical, but I think he has talent
and a knowledge and love for cartoons that is second to none.
Sometimes the good comes with bad.

I loved Ren & Stimpy as a kid. Upon watching it as an adult, a lot of
the humor is naturally too juvenile to amuse me, but I am fascinated
by the animation and how a bit of the subject matter had to fly right
over my head back then. In this day and age of Adult Swim animation, I
think cartoons could use another Ren & Stimpy. That is, another
cartoon that is brimming with energy, madness, and innovative
animation.

« Reply #10 Yesterday at 1:32pm »

Yesterday at 12:53pm, markd4mountie wrote:
I don't know much about him personally. But from what I hear, I get
the feeling he's largely just jealous of modern animators who are more
successful than he is.


I don't know if he's jealous as he is an egomaniac. He believes the
animation should be art based, not writing based, and s***s on
anything that doesn't hit that standard, which is 99% of the medium.
But, if you look at APC, it's so art driven in his style, and so
poorly written, it's a mess. Maybe after the fact he blames Spike, but
there was zero about that show that was good.