John Kricfalusi

Caption	John Kricfalusi at San Francisco's Castro Theatre in July 2006
Name	John Kricfalusi
Birth place	Chicoutimi, Quebec, Canada
Birth date	September 09, 1955
Birth name	Michael John Kricfalusi
Other names	Raymond SpumJohn K.
Occupation	Animator/Voice actor
Years active	1979–present
Website	http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/

John Kricfalusi (pronounced Kris-falusi, born Michael John Kricfalusi), better known as John K, is a Canadian animator. He is creator of The Ren & Stimpy Show, The Ripping Friends animated series, and Weekend Pussy Hunt, which was billed as "the world's first interactive web-based cartoon," as well as the founder of animation studio Spümcø.

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Early years

Born in Canada, John Kricfalusi spent his early childhood in Germany and Belgium as a military brat, his father serving in the air force. At age seven he returned with his family to Canada, though having moved in the middle of a school season, he spent much of his time that year at home, watching Hanna-Barbera cartoons and drawing them. Kricfalusi's interest in Golden Age animation cemented during his stay at Sheridan College, where an acquaintance of his held weekly screenings of old films and cartoons, among them the cartoons of Bob Clampett and Tex Avery, which left a deep impression on Kricfalusi. He soon left Sheridan College and moved to Los Angeles, intending to become an animator.

Career

Entering the animation industry

After moving to Los Angeles, Kricfalusi was introduced to Milt Gray by Bob Clampett, suggesting he should join Gray's classical animation class. Gray was working for Filmation at the time, and soon Kricfalusi found work there as well. His first independent cartoon was a short called Ted Bakes One, which he produced with Bill Wray in 1979 for a cable channel. They began working on the designs for the film Bobby's Girl, which was sold to Tri-Star but later cancelled. Under Bakshi, Kricfalusi directed the animation for The Rolling Stones’ 1986 music video Harlem Shuffle.

Mighty Mouse

The team's most successful project was for CBS, based on the classic Terrytoons character. The series was well-received, and it is considered the forerunner of creator-driven cartoons. Kricfalusi directed eight of the twenty-six episodes and supervised the series. At the beginning of the second season, Kricfalusi and Bakshi had a falling out, prompting Kricfalusi to leave the show. The production of Mighty Mouse was very different from other cartoons at the time, gaining creative and artistic leeway thanks to the success of the irreverent Pee-wee's Playhouse on CBS a year before. The animators had much more creative input, driven by Kricfalusi's production system that emphasizes artistic contribution in every step of the process, from outline to storyboard to layout to the animation.

Mighty Mouse was eventually canceled after it experienced some controversy for allegedly depicting the main character snorting cocaine. Ralph Bakshi maintained that neither he nor Kricfalusi had the character sniffing cocaine, and that the character was sniffing the crushed petals of a flower, which was handed to him in a previous scene in the cartoon.

Beany and Cecil

Kricfalusi left Baksi's studio to work on The New Adventures of Beany and Cecil for ABC, where he teamed up with many of the people who would later work with him on The Ren & Stimpy Show. ABC had been negotiating for the production of the show with the Clampett family, who insisted that Kricfalusi would be part of the production. The long negotiations delayed the start of production to mid-July, causing much of the animation to be rushed in order to meet the September deadline. Tensions rose between Kricfalusi and ABC over the tone of the show, leading to an uncomfortable atmosphere for the show's crew. The more ABC strove to soften the show, the more Kricfalusi pushed for shocking and offensive material. The Clampett family were ultimately not very happy with the cartoon, but remained supportive of Kricfalusi. The show came to garner high ratings for Nickelodeon, Kricfalusi points specifically to the episode "Man's Best Friend", which features a violent climax where Ren brutally assaults the character George Liquor with an oar, as being the turning point in his relationship with Nickelodeon. One of the episodes, "Nurse Stimpy", did not meet Kricfalusi's approval, leading him to use the alias Raymond Spum in its credits. Nickelodeon fired Kricfalusi from production of the series in late September 1992, leaving it in the hands of Nickelodeon's Games Animation studio, which continued producing it for three more seasons before its cancellation.

Post-Nickelodeon

Music videos, web-cartoons, Hanna-Barbera cartoons, and The Ripping Friends

From 1993 to 1994, Kricfalusi contributed several articles for the magazines Film Threat and Wild Cartoon Kingdom under various aliases. During 1995 and 1996, he directed singer Björk's animated music video for the song I Miss You, and created Weekend Pussy Hunt for MSN, which was billed as "the world's first interactive web-based cartoon." Production under MSN stopped before the cartoon was finished, and later resumed under Icebox.com, after the release of Spümcø's own web-based Flash cartoon, The Goddamn George Liquor Program. Between 1998 and 2001 he directed and animated several Hanna-Barbera cartoons for Cartoon Network: three Yogi Bear cartoons, Boo Boo and the Man, A Day in the Life of Ranger Smith and Boo Boo Runs Wild, and two Jetsons cartoons, and . From 2001 to 2002, FOX Kids aired the TV series The Ripping Friends, created by Kricfalusi and Jim Smith. Kricfalusi felt the show's supervisors were doing away with the Spümcø style, and was displeased with the direction of the show.

The return of Ren & Stimpy

In 2003, Spike TV produced a new show featuring Ren & Stimpy, which was written and directed by Kricfalusi. The first three episodes were based on fan ideas and scripts that were rejected by Nickelodeon during the original show's run. Only three episodes aired on Spike before the show was officially cancelled in 2004, and the complete series was ultimately released on DVD in 2006, which includes three additional episodes that never aired.

Post-Spike

Cartoon commentaries, music videos, George Liquor, and Spümcø and the Art of John K.

Kricfalusi appears in several bonus featurettes and provides audio commentaries for the Looney Tunes Golden Collection volumes , and , for cartoons directed by Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones. On February 13, 2006, Kricfalusi started his own web log, John K Stuff, posting about cartoons and the animation industry. The site was originally intended for other artists and entertainers, and specifically other cartoonists. That year, Kricfalusi directed two music videos, and served as art director for an animated musical segment. The first music video, for Close But No Cigar by “Weird Al” Yankovic, was released in September, on the DVD side of the DualDisc album Straight Outta Lynwood, which features Kricfalusi's character Cigarettes the Cat. The second music video was for Classico by Tenacious D, starring the band members as cartoon characters. He animated them again in a THX logo parody for the band's feature film, The Pick of Destiny. Kricfalusi served as art director for a musical segment in the show Class of 3000 entitled Life Without Music, which first aired on November 3, 2006. In 2008, Kricfalusi was developing a series of cartoon commercials for Pontiac Vibe starring George Liquor and Jimmy The Idiot Boy. The series remained unreleased after General Motors discontinued the Pontiac Vibe auto line in 2009.

An art book, Spümcø and the Art of John K., is being edited by Dan Nadel of PictureBox and scheduled to be published in "spring 2011" by Abrams ComicArts.

Influences

Kricfalusi says he is mostly self-taught, having only spent a year in Sheridan College, barely attending class. He acquired his skills largely by copying cartoons from newspapers and comic books as a child, and by studying cartoons and their production systems from the 1940s and 1950s. Milt Gross, Tex Avery, Peter Lorre, the Three Stooges, Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, Elvis Presley, Don Martin and Robert Ryan. Michael Barrier, an animation historian, said that Kricfalusi's works "testify to his intense admiration for Bob Clampett's Warner Bros. cartoons" and that no cartoonist since Clampett created cartoons in which the emotions of the characters "distort their bodies so powerfully."

References

External links

John K Stuff - John K's blog that discusses mostly cartoons (formerly titled "All Kinds of Stuff")

John K's blogger profile listing his curriculum for cartoonists, show pitches, and several other blogs.

Category:1955 births Category:Anglophone Quebec people Category:Animation historians Category:Canadian animators Category:Canadian bloggers Category:Canadian humorists Category:Canadian voice actors Category:Canadian people of Hungarian descent Category:Living people Category:The Ren & Stimpy Show Category:Spümcø Category:People from Saguenay, Quebec