Trivia / John K. Stuff

• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer:
  • In "Subtle Animation Acting-Bugs Bunny by McKimson and Harris", John unfavorably compares the direction Chuck Jones gives to his animators like Ken Harris to that of Bob Clampett directing animators like Robert McKimson, basically saying that in contrast, Jones' animators were basically "glorified inbetweeners" who were stuck doing menial, uncreative work for Jones in contrast. Former colleague Bob Jaques (who, mind you, set up an entire animation studio in Canada specifically for Ren and Stimpy) went into great detail on his own blog^note See the comment section.about just how completely wrong John was about it, and by using his work on Ren and Stimpy to prove the point that the art of inbetweening layout poses is anything but a mindless act, while also highlighting that John is basically throwing stones in glass houses, considering John felt that the soul of Ren and Stimpy was the layouts and not the animation and inbetweens, and is guilty of the very thing he accuses Jones of doing.^note On an interesting note, a follower fervently arguing with Bob in John's favor (possibly sarcastically) on this tread is one Thad Komorowski, who would later not only go on to write an incriminating tell-all about him but also start a podcast with Bob about their own thoughts on classic animation.
  • In "Walt Craves Respect", he argues that Walt making films like Fantasia was a shrewd attempt to pander to critics. He also argues that the poor reception and box office results for it was due to the film trying to play to high-class expectations while keeping Disney's cutesy elements. What he doesn't factor in was that Fantasia came out at a very bad time when Disney was completely cut off from most foreign markets due to World War II, which had helped make films like Snow White a big box office hit^note this factor was also why films like Pinocchio and Bambi underperformed in their initial releases, along with the film's unique and expensive Fantasound equipment being difficult to install. Due to these factors, Fantasia only received limited distribution and wasn't accessible to the general public. John also doesn't factor in that the film did eventually turn a profit in re-releases and was recognized as a masterpiece by critics. Of course, he's not very subtle about his dislike for Disney animation, so it's entirely possible that he knew, but cherrypicked to get his points across.
  • In "The Gay Arabic Villain", he uses Anton Ego as an example of a villain with a long pointy nose... even though the movie makes it very clear that, while Anton is definitely a cause of the conflict and isn't exactly pleasant company, he's just someone who takes his job as a food critic very seriously and isn't actually a villain (or even evil), with the real conflict just coming from Remy trying to prove himself as a chef despite adversity.
• Missing Episode:
  • "Happy Birthday Katie" was a post from 2006 that was deleted permanently and not backed up on the Internet Archive.
  • "No More 'Tude!" is another post that was deleted for unknown reasons.
  • A post called "Spumco Toys and Comics - Barbie Has Them For You!" was also deleted for unknown reasons.
  • "Heartaches Color" is another minor post that got deleted.
  • There was also a post that took snipes at Tangled, "Is It Possible To Make A Whole Animated Feature Out Of Stock?", that was quickly deleted due to backlash in the comments for remarks that most readers interpreted as homophobic. Thanks to the internet archive, it can be read here.
  • His infamous post about the "Cal Arts Style" was also been deleted from his blog, though the Internet Archive likewise has it backed up.
  • While there's no way to confirm this, a lot of readers have claimed that some older posts were retroactively edited to remove certain elements that would derail discussions in the comments away from the main topic of the post (for example, a mention of Batman and Superman from the DC Animated Universe was edited out of one of his educational posts to keep the comments from derailing into a discussion about superhero cartoons). It's unknown if the Internet Archive has preserved any of the original posts.

---