Web Animation / A Black And White Cartoon

"This is where the magic happens."

"I'm glad you're here. Rooftop activity may keep you out of trouble."
"I've taken a liking to this area. It's correcting my karma."
"But you see...the tiles are in desperate need of replacement."
"Are you sure?"
"Sure as buttons, chief, sure as buttons."

A Black and White Cartoon is a series of two Flash animated shorts by David Firth. The first installment, A Black and White Cartoon about Roof Tiling was released on March 4, 2005 and centers around a man named Jonathan and his everyday life, a hallmark of which is his apparent obsession with fixing the roof of his house. A month later, a prequel called A Black and White Cartoon about Berries was released.

Though not as well-known as Firth's other works, such as Salad Fingers, the series is regarded as some of his best work, and despite no further installments being released in nearly 20 years, it maintains a small cult following.

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This series provides examples of:

• Ambiguous Situation: In Berries, Jonathan murders a man he has bound and gagged, and later on the aftermath of a second murder is shown, which Jonathan does not remember committing. His fear of getting caught fuels his paranoia and serves to further deteriorate his already fragile mental state. However, Jonathan also stabs his mother only for her to be completely fine in the next shot. Though she later finds a severed foot in the garden and asks Jonathan about it, she also doesn't appear to have a very firm grasp on reality as mentioned below, which calls into question whether or not any of the murders really happened or if they were just in Jonathan's imagination.
• Annoyingly Repetitive Child: A little girl asks Jonathan for a cigarette for herself and her friend. Jonathan complies but then imagines the child continuing to pester him in an annoying sing-song way, and he scares them off by yelling at them.
• Back to Front: Similar to Spoilsbury Toast Boy before it, this series starts at the end, and ends with the death of the protagonist, with the follow-up cartoon showing what led to that point.
• Darker and Edgier: While Firth's other works such as Salad Fingers and Spoilsbury Toast Boy have elements of Horror Comedy to them, this is arguably the darkest thing he has ever done, as there is almost no element of comedy whatsoever here.
• Deliberately Monochrome: As expected of "a black and white cartoon." Fans theorize that it's meant to tie into the depression metaphor.
• Driven to Suicide: The first cartoon ends as Jonathan shoots himself and his lifeless body tumbles off the roof and crashes to the ground below.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: It doesn't take much to set Jonathan off. Sometimes it doesn't take anything to, he'll just flip out on you for something he imagined you doing.
• His Own Worst Enemy: Jonathan is very strongly indicated to have severe self-loathing issues. His own inner monologue wishes cancer upon him, his hallucinations call him a "liar" and a "fucking cocksucker," and when the crow no longer speaks to him, he immediately wonders if he'd offended it with his accent or "slow-paced droolings."
• Inner Monologue: As mentioned above, Jonathan's demonstrates his self-loathing.
  I wish you had cancer. I'll watch you rot.
• Matricide: Jonathan stabs his mother to death as she is taking a bath. Subverted, as this turns out to have been nothing more than an Imagine Spot.
• The Mentally Disturbed: Something is terribly, terribly wrong with Jonathan. His moods are unpredictable, he has hallucinations on a regular basis, and evidently has gaps in his memory during which he becomes violently psychotic.
• Mind Screw: It is a David Firth cartoon, after all.
• Mood-Swinger: Jonathan's moods are incredibly volatile and he often goes from a Creepy Monotone to angrily shouting at people.
• Never Trust a Title: Both shorts. While Jonathan does obsess over fixing his roof, "a black and white cartoon about roof tiling" actually contains very little about roof tiling and is more about the protagonist's worsening mental state. The second one, despite being "about berries," features only a single passing mention of berries.
• The Paranoiac: Jonathan, again. When the postman starts laughing after "thinking of an ambulance voice," Jonathan assumes that he's actually laughing at him and screams at the man to leave. In the second cartoon, Jonathan murders a man (possibly in his own imagination), and becomes increasingly paranoid about getting caught.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Despite Jonathan's obsession with fixing his roof, he is never actually seen performing any kind of maintenance on it.
• Scatterbrained Senior: Jonathan's mother doesn't seem to be all there, such as noting that Jonathan "hasn't been on his swings recently" when no swings are present anywhere in the cartoons setting, as well as not realizing that their dog has been dead for a decade. At one point she is also seen running an iron across an ironing board with nothing on it.
• Talking Animal: In Berries, a crow shows up and speaks to Jonathan. It isn't actually clear, however, if the crow is really talking or if Jonathan is just imagining it. During their last meeting, the crow stops speaking to Jonathan.
• Troubled Abuser: Jonathan is one of the verbally abusive variety. He never speaks to his mother, he only ever shouts angrily at her and calls her names.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Jonathan's mother finds a severed foot in the garden, nonchalantly mentions it to him once, and then the subject is dropped and never brought up again.