August 22, 2004
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A day in the life…
Eddie’s new desktop picThe note we received from Standards and Practices was to replace the Spanish word, pulpo, with it’s English translation: octopus. Why? Because they thought pulpo sounded like (ahem) a kid-inappropriate word …
*UPDATE: Amid @ Cartoon Brew has linked to us on the subject of BS&P.
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Speaking of kid-inappropriate things, we have been re-watching some of those censored cartoons - eg, Coal Black and the Sebben Dwarves, Tin Pan Alley Cats, and some other titles we’d never seen before. One that really blew us away was Harman & Ising’s Swing Wedding aka Hot Frogs (1937) with frenetically animated caricatures of black jazzy musicians. The animated ‘Cab Calloway’ was AMAZING. Really really awesome.
(Just found out that some of these cartoons are available on DVD at the Video Beat)
My friend in Sydney, Ravi occasionally sends me funny little stories about his work and what he’s up to. I feel compelled to share this one.
… On Wednesday, the agency shot one of my TV commercials for NINE MSN Messenger. The script I wrote featured the NINE MSN Butterfly Man and a whole bunch of sheep. In the ad, one of Butterfly Man’s friends can’t sleep and is counting sheep. These sheep appear in Butterfly Man’s world as real sheep. Well, that’s the basic idea of the script. Anyway, the client loved it so we had to make it.
Now, sheep are pretty dumb. Some think they are profoundly stupid. One thing is sure – they cannot act. Imagine trying to get a sheep to look into a camera when you want it to? It’s one of the challenges we had to meet on the day.
The way you do it is to put a sheep dog in front of the camera, because the sheep will look at the dog so it looks like they’re looking at the camera.
So here we are on set, with sheep and sheep dogs and sheep handlers. There’s all this baaa- ing and barking and animals surging around. There’s also the crew, the stylist (the sheep had their own stylist, but that’s a long story in itself. how do you get to be sheep stylist?)
It was so funny. There I was surrounded by all these hard-core ad types, a dozen sheep, a film crew and a man in a blue butterfly costume.
What was I thinking.
Just another day at the office for me..
Coming Soon
from Mucha Lucha - ‘Meet The Muertos’ (Day of the Dead episode)- The Imagen Awards! This will be our first time ever at a Hollywood award ceremony, with ML’s Meet the Muertos episode nominated in the Best Children’s Animated Programming category.
- Trip to Atlanta! Is there anything else we need to know before we go?
- Eddie’s birthday! (September seems to be the most birthday-intensive month on my calendar)
- Kaiju Big Battel in L.A.! Buy your tickets now!
Comments (22)
Sounds like pulpo!?! Mulpo? Gulpo? Supercalifragalisticexpialidulpo?
Hahahaha… the sheep story is hilarious.
pulpo doesn’t really sound like any existing inappropriate word…. yeesh!
hey, i wrote an e-mail~through the link on the side(xanga service) and i think the computer just ate it. I got an error page. Could you let me know if it went through or not. Or e-mail me at crop_circle_zone@yahoo.com so I can resend from there without it dropping again. thanks.
Thank you Dramamine Boy and TSM…you’ve proved our point. BS&P obviously thought “Pulpo” sounded rude. A check through their Spanish dictionary should have shown them that it means ‘Octopus’, but oh no…they were determined that Pulpo was something bad.
So they banned us using it, because they thought it sounded too much like – wait for it – PUTO!
The fight continues. – Eddie
not even close to sounding the same… maybe just all “P” words are bad? hey, that would make S&P’s bad…. lol!!
I like it when occasionally Eddie(Ed,Edd & Eddie) will look at the screen and mention he can’t say ‘something’ because of standards… now, when he does it, i think of you guys!
T_S_M…I’m currently finding solace in 1940′s Warner Bros. cartoons, where Tweety Pie could pull out a gun, and everyone thought it was funny…
-Eddie
pfft. some people have to earn a living being a censor. they’re just doing their job… and all it takes is one crazy parent calling an affiliate station to throw a spanner in the works.of course, that’s why they get paid the medicore bucks. to deal with all this flack on the creative end, plus the stress from the network hierarchy.
Yeah, maybe we should stop being creative.
I’ll remember that next time I have to round the edges when I draw broken glass. -Eddie
oh no! don’t ever stop being creative. that’s exactly how “the rules” get pushed and broken. you can look at the cartoon landscape and see how far some networks have come. there are a couple of stragglers, but i don’t think cartoon fans have ever had it this good. then again, i don’t have to worry about glass shattering.
There’s a few other jazz/frog cartoons that MGM did at the time, and while they’re all very similar, all of them are mighty entertaining. Like LITTLE OL’ BOSKO AND THE PIRATES and LITTLE OL’ BOSKO IN BAGDAD. Hey, maybe you guys should send the Mucha Lucha characters to Baghdad. I doubt they’d see jazz-singing frogs nowadays. More but it might be a fun episode of them dodging RPGs.
The Cab Calloway frog in ‘Swing Wedding’ is one of the most jaw-dropping pieces of animation I’ve seen. It’s as if the character is made of rubber, and has absolutely nothing to do with creating the illusion of life. Most of the cartoon is pretty standard Harmon-Ising, but these sequences are amazing – I would love to know who animated them. -Eddie
äçáøä äéðä îäçáøåú äîåáéìåú áàøõ áúçåí ôúøåðåú äòõ åääöììåú. áçáøúðå îåòñ÷éí îéèá äîåîçéí áòìé ðéñéåï áúëðåï åáéöåò ùì øöôåú òõ îåøëáåú ã÷éí , ôøâåìåú òõ îéåçãåú åôúøåðåú äöììä ëãåâîú ñåëëé æøåòåú, ñåëëéí ÷áåòéí, ñåëëé çìåï, ñâéøåú ìáúé òñ÷ åôúøåðåú äöììä ééçåãééí îîéèá äéöøðéí áòåìí.äéãò ùðöáø áçáøä îúåê ùðåú òáåãä øáåú áàøõ åáçå”ì îàôùø ìðå ìäôåê àú äçìåí ùìëí ìîöéàåú
כאשר טיילתי באיטליה ראיתי את הוילונות הכי יפים שראיתי בחיים שלי
קמילה עיצוב מטבחים
very good שליחויות
פוליש I liked the dog vs. sheep photo XD
מטבחים מטבחים Lol!! Dog Vs. Sheep!!!
dude its just a dog and some sheep dont get to happy about it…הוצאה לפועל הרחקת יונים
I agree, dog vs sheep is awesomely awesome!הפסקת עישון
גם אתכם היונים מחרפנות? גם אתם רוצים שהן יפסיקו לקונן אצלכם על עדן החלון? יופי, יש לי בדיוק מה שאתם צריכים! אתם צריכיםסילוק יונים, <span lang=”HE” style=”font-family: Arial”תאמינו לי אני הייתי צריךהרחקת יונים במרכז כי זה מקום מגוריי אבל נניח והייתי גר במודיעין? יש גם שםהרחקת יונים במודיעין… ואם גם תושבי חיפה סובלים ממקרים של קינון יונים, אני יכול להמליץ לכם על הרחקת יונים בצפון
כיהרחקת יונים לצמיתות זה אכן דבר שיסלק את היונים שלכם..
>שלום רב, רציתי להמליץ לכם על חברת שליחויות מאוד מאוד טובה שנעזרתי בה בשביל לשלוח מספר פריטים ממקום למקום. הם עבדו כמו שצריך, אספו את הסחורה בזמן ושלחו אותה ליעדה בזמן הנדרש ואף מהר יותר. אם תצטרכו, היא תעזור גם לכם. יום טוב.<span lang=”HE” style=”font-family: Arial”
>לכל בעלי המשרדים הגדולים, יצא לכם לחשוב כמה טובה יותר יכולה להיות העבודה;רהיטי משרד,עלכסאות מזכירה וכמובןכסא מחשב בעיקר אם יש לכם הרבה עובדים שפועלים מול המסך…
>שלום רב, אני צריכה עזרה במשפחה שלי וחלק מהעזרה כוללתמטפלים סיעודיים,סיעוד אוסיעודי אני לא בטוחה, וקיבלתי מספר קישורים שחשבתי שיכולים לעזור, אתם יכולים להסתכל עליהם ולהגיד לי אם הם טובים? תודה.הקישורים הנוספים שאני מביאה אליכם הם בנושאמשפחות אומנה וגםמטפל סיעודי. אני באמת צריכה את דעתכם… בהמשך יהיו עוד שני אתרים שמצאתי בחיפוש אחר העזרה למשפחה שלי.והנה שני הקישורים האחרונים, הם גם קשורים לאותם נושאים כמואומנה ,חברות עובדים זרים ועוד… (דודה חורגת שלי נחשבת עובדת זרה ואני צריכה עזרה בשבילה אז בבקשה תעזרו אם תוכלו)