Touch'n innit. The real life human kids love this song. They make several covers, on the ukulele, piano, guitar, comically poorly performed duets, serious remixes, various languages the song is even sung in Chinese. If you care to, check out the comments left here. Commenters say they cry every time they see this.
Full 12 minute episode here. Some very amusing touches throughout.
Finn is voiced by this young man, Jeremy Shada.
Jake by John DiMaggio.
Tree Trunks by Polly Lou Livingston.
Mr. Pig voiced by Ron Lynch.
In its sixth season, and signed for a seventh, Adventure Time has been a ratings success for Cartoon Network from the beginning. The cartoon is created by Pendleton Ward who explains he tries to include beautiful moments along with subversive sometimes dark humor.
The cartoons are developed through the use of storyboards rather than by scripts pitched to network executives. This allows teams that work visually for artists and writers to grow together. And, Man, do I ever understand that.
Anecdote:
My own work team in Purchasing at the FRB wanted to do something together as a group for Halloween. I suggested Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but none of my team had heard of them. That suggestion fell flat. They wanted more suggestions. I provided more group-related suggestions that I knew would work, because I've seen them work, Pirates, "No!" Cave men, "No!" Disney characters, "No!" Mer people, "No!" Characters in horror movies. "No!"
"Look, I'm not going to keep generating ideas run them up a flagpole just to have you shoot them down with a word. I'm stopping unless you discuss the pros and cons with me."
"Fine. What do you want to discuss?"
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."
Their shoulders slumped. They did discuss the idea with me but I got nowhere. The cartoon was new at the time, They were out in video game form and in cartoon form but not yet widely popularized. So I drew a picture of what a character looks like. The simple elements of their costumes. Their individual weapons. Their masks. Their shell. On another memo paper and drew an oval, drew the shell design of blocks, cut out wedges then taped it back to form a simple shell from paper and showed how the shell can be held into place by a simple cloth band run through slashes in the cardboard that matches the achingly simple mask, a swath of cloth of the same color with eyes cut out. Each turtle a different color belt and mask.
It was those two things that conveyed the possibility. Until I showed them in paper form it was all impossible idea that they could not grasp. They're bankers. They do not think in visual terms. And they are overly impressed with people who do. As if that is all visual people can do.
Although not visually-oriented, they are research-oriented and they all got right on their phones. Within minutes they confirmed the idea is a good one and became quite excited with the idea. They could see it. They knew the names of the characters, their favorite food, the weapons and personalities of each turtle. They are impressive researchers when they set their minds to a specific task.
I was assigned the job of converting raw pre-formed cardboard boxes used to transfer checks between banks into shells using their box sealing tape. Not the plastic kind, The brown paper kind of box tape. I sealed the punch holes used for handles, created a template, cut the boxes, taped them into shape exactly the same as the paper example. Painted them green and brown, outlined the shell segments to look like a shell. Produced enough for our team with extras. In one half day I produced a stack of cardboard turtle shells. All right there in the FRB garage. All on bank time. I did the shopping for spray paint right there downtown and took as long as I needed to make the shells while my team picked up my portion of real work, and they were happy to do it, and so was I.
They loved their turtle shell costumes. The next day they all dressed in green and wore their cardboard turtle shells all day long. It was quite funny. The whole bank was amused. Serious work being done by turtles. Hilarious. We marched up and down the 16th St. Mall together yelling "Cowabunga!" We won the internal bank costume contest. I won the admiration of my peers. They took their shells home and gave them to their kids. One woman reported the shell was too big for her son who fell backwards off a porch step during trick or treat into his shell and could not get back on his feet. She was laughing too hard to pick him back up. She had the whole office cracking up laughing describing her son struggling as an actual turtle turned over. It's still funny when I think about it because the kid is a little terror. I kept three or so of the shells and passed them along. They were used in other costume contests as well. We got a lot of mileage out of those cardboard turtle shells. They were wonderful costumes and they would never have happened had I not shown my team the idea by cutting paper first. The same thing as a storyboard.
End anecdote.
Per Wikipedia, Ward says the stories begin with team members relating something that happened to them during the week and building upon that. When they get stuck they brainstorm and toss things out, whatever comes to mind. They produce a two or three page outline with a few important beats. Then passed on to storyboard artists given a week for a thumbnail storyboard and to fill in with details, action, dialogue and jokes. Reviewed by Ward who makes notes and returned for the notes to be incorporated. The revision can take a month. Voices recorded, animatic compiled to get the the cartoon down to 11 minutes. Character and background designers then clean up the designs. Then the animation process begins. Coloring in Burbank, animation in Korea. Animation takes three to five months during which retakes, music scores, and sound are completed. Sent back to the US for review, mistakes noted, returned to Korea for corrections.
Ward describes dark comedy as being scared and happy at the same time. It is his favorite way to feel so there is a lot of that in the show.
4 comments:
Fine story in a turtle shell, along with fascinating pics, particularly so in comparison and contrast with the fresh, newly arrived Oh Sprout below, as quirkiness that cannot be imagined at birth is made real and lived out in adult bodies. As for the song, I'm not finding the draw, other than to hear it as an untutored song of the heart, the kind someone might make up on the spur of the moment and sing to another, which could account for the fan club.
Fun post.
I enjoy to read you, Chip Ahoy, as I have for years.
I would not now, however, recommend that my 14-year-old son follow you (give it a couple-so years).
Your current online path is not one broad enough to accommodate either dissent or selective agreement, much less some sort of mentoring of (how shocking a notion!) someone whose starting point is different from yours but whose goals might be remarkably similar.
That really does sadden me. It really does, make no mistake.
Really liked this post. I hope there's more of these to come.
Today's reading in, "Paint Your Way Out of a Corner", brought this quote, story and insight:
It is sometimes thought that in improvisation we can do just anything. But lack of a conscious plan does not mean our work is random or arbitrary. Improvisation has its own rules...when we are totally faithful to our own individuality, we are following an intricate design. This kind of freedom is the opposite of "just anything". Stephen Nachmanovitch, violinist.
Picture two four-year old girls painting side by side. The conversation goes like this:
Girl 1: This is the big dirty river [She points to a mass of blue strokes running up and down her paper]
Girl 2: I'm making a dirty river too. [She waver her brush of brown furiously around.]
Girl 1: There's a giant crab in the river. You have to watch out!
Girl 2: I'm going to make a bridge to get over that dirty river.
Girl 1: Me too! [As she puts the finishing touches on her bridge a new danger presents itself]
Girl 1: But what if you were walking on the bridge and it broke? You would fall in the water.
Girl 2: Then the giant crab would eat you up!
The girls paint quietly for a while, considering this new possibility. Soon several strokes appear, twisting away from the river and then...
Girl 1: But if you take the Joy Path every day, you can break the spell.
Girl 2 Or you'll stay in the crab's tummy forever!
Every Friday these girls would paint some version of the big dirty river story--jumping from paint pot to paper. None of their parents knew where the story came from--it didn't resemble any picture book the girls had read nor relate to a family trip. This was pure imagination. They talked through the entire process, excitedly sharing ideas, keeping the story going between them, adding, changing, inventing. For me, as I watched, it was the very essence of what I had come to trust and teach. The two girls, without any instruction, were enacting a natural process of improvisation. Barbara Diane Barry
Over time this natural spontaneity gets compromised by the fear of being wrong. In order for a group or individual to engage in an improvisational form, the following agreements provide form:
1. Agree to say yes. During a performance, as actors ad-lib their lines, there is an underlying agreement that everyone in the cast will accept what happens...Refusing to play with an idea offered by another actor stops all forward movement.
2. Add something to what just occurred.
3. View mistakes as opportunities
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