Friday 12 February 2010

Animation Influences!

Like most kids, I grew up with a plethora of cartoons. In fact, most of my childhood memories are of certain cartoons and video games although my mum says me and my brother used to play outside a fair bit too. My brain has obvious filtered out the important stuff! I can say without a shadow of a doubt that my artwork would not be what it is today without my imagination having been saturated with the animation I grew up with. Even at the time when watching a lot of cartoons, I was very aware of what was good and what was crap (Does anyone else remember an absolutely TERRIBLE cartoon called The Stone Protectors? I want to know I'm not alone on this one!).

Anyway, I thought I'd share some of the animation that had a major impact on my life and artwork. Hope you enjoy!



The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show was a real favourite of mine; the voices were spot on, the animation was simple and the music by Vince Guaraldi is still genius. This clip from the Easter Special of Snoopy having a manic dance with some non-existent rabbits never fails to make me laugh.



Back when MTV was MTV Europe in the early '90's, they had a series of animation called Oddities which I watched obsessively. These were so different to anything I'd ever seen; I was just getting into anime about this time thanks to the Sci-Fi Channel but MTV's Oddities were mind-blowing. Aeon Flux still remains one of the oddest and visually stunning "adult" cartoons I've ever seen.



Also featured in MTV's Oddities was The Maxx, based on Sam keith's amazing and weird comic of the same name. Again, I'd never seen anything like The Maxx and it remains one of my favourites.



I don't know what it was about The Raccoons but I was pretty much obsessed with Burt raccoon when I was younger. I even sent a picture of him into Hart Beat in the hopes of being featured in The Gallery. Needless to say, my picture didn't make it.



To this day, I still think the concept for BraveStarr is genius. The '80's and '90's were full of toy-vehicle cartoons like this but I still this this one of the better ones!



Still one of my favourite cartoons. Along with Mum-Ra and Skeletor, Venger remains one of the all-time greatest animation villains!



When I was younger, Ulysses 31 had a major impact on me. I was terrified by this cartoon and I still find it very creepy and atmospheric to this day. And setting the Odyssey in space shouldn't work but it does. I highly recommend the episode "The Seat of Forgetfulness".

These are just a few pieces of animation I'd site as influences. Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, Samurai Jack, The Powerpuff Girls, Spongebob Squarepants, She-Ra, Galaxy High, Galaxy Rangers, Visionaries, The Tick, Ren & Stimpy, Rocko's Modern Life, The Head, Daria, Beavis and Butthead - my list goes on! The fact that these are all being released on DVD makes me weep for the future of my artwork. Mostly because I'll spend all my drawing time watching these again.

4 comments:

  1. The only one I've seen is Snoopy...evidently I have missed out big time! I used to really like the Smurfs...does that make me sad? hehe

    No but seriously I love finding out where artists get their inspiration, cos it gives me a new perspective on their work.

    I would quite happily watch some of your creations come to life as a TV series :-) Don't buy too many dvds!

    Sarah x

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  2. It doesn't make you sad; if anything it means you didn't watch as much junk as I did! XD

    I managed to come across a lot of unconventional stuff growing up and the more I found, the more I looked for. We also got Sky TV in about 1989 so I found a lot of stuff I wouldn't have known about otherwise. MTV was something else back then; full of really weird animations from Germany and Spain. It's crap now!

    Luckily, my parents were quite liberal in letting my brother and I watch most things. As long as we did our homework and wasn't too influenced by things, they let us make up our own minds about what we watched!

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  3. Ulysess 31 and The Maxx were indeed awesome. :)

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  4. Hardly anyone has heard of The Maxx!

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