George’s Second Term
Jerry Beck, one half of Cartoonbrew.com, posted an 8-minute clip from G4’s show The Lab with Leo Laporte which features an interview with Kevin Gamble and Jayson Thiessen, two of the creative minds behind the new George of the Jungle series. The series is animated in Flash by Studio B Productions in Canada, where Gamble is producing and Thiessen is directing.
Beck went easy on the show this time around, whereas back in the summer of ‘06 the concept got drilled. 
But today, Beck need not sharpen his quill – the comments are shrill and filled with disdain over this retread of this classic Jay Ward series from 1967 – and particularly over the show’s use of Flash animation.
I find this all rather amusing. When Jay Ward first debuted Crusader Rabbit, a defining ‘limited animation’ series, I can only imagine the hubbub about how he was ruining animation. Almost two decades later, Ward had perfected his signature style, and he was onto George of the Jungle. The layouts, poses, color palette and overall humor of the original George of the Jungle series are all things I can appreciate, but I wouldn’t call this a beautifully animated show. It’s closer to an animatic – jumping pose to pose.
Don’t we all see the irony here? Flash is helping usher in a new era of limited animation, something Jay Ward helped instigate. Beyond that, the animation in these new series is far better than what Ward and his team could manage on those smaller budgets. Technology has advanced, but it appears that our standards have as well.
Crusader Rabbit
George of the Jungle
June 21st, 2007 at 5:10 pm
aaron i hear ya. i dont know what any of those commentors over at the brew are talking about. i think the show looks and moves really good. its not THE BEST show ever to grace TV, but it certainly like a quality piece of work, and im looking forward to it.
June 21st, 2007 at 5:23 pm
I think it’s great that Flash helps to keep another show production in the States!
Not to mention employing the artists.
Kudos!
June 21st, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Couldn’t agree more, feel the Flash Hate!
The dumb thing is that Flash actually lets you make much better animation on a limited budget. You try doing a ‘traditionally’ animated show on a modern TV budget and it will be ‘animated’ in some sweatshop in the orient and look aweful. You animate it in Flash and you can hit all the right buttons for entertaining, limited animation, plus it’s probably animated by someone in the same building as the guys who wrote it and did the storyboard.
Seems like a bit of a no-brainer to me.
These guys are living in a fantasy world.
June 21st, 2007 at 6:20 pm
I was trying to define what ‘Conservative’ meant to me to somebody the other day. What I said was that there are some people out there who see change and just automatically say ‘No’ and constantly hark back to some supposed Golden Age.
There are some really conservative people hanging around that site.
June 21st, 2007 at 7:46 pm
I’ve noticed that the Brew readers just don’t like Flash in general. They are animation purists or so they would like to think. Reading some of their comments you can see that a lot of them don’t understand the Flash pipeline and how it is cost effective.
I also think that a lot of the disgust over there comes from emotional attachment to the original series. Any changes would obviously not be welcome. The funny thing is, is that even if you used the exact same character designs and backgrounds as the original show, they would still be dissatisfied and complain that the new series has no new creativity or innovation and is clearly just re-using the old designs to churn out more show to earn more money.
June 21st, 2007 at 9:19 pm
I am not sure if the disdain for this show is really coming from the use of Flash as much as taking a classic cartoon, that people love and turning it into something different that what it was. The new trend of taking old classics and turning them into new and hip properites is annoying. Its like saying I hate 3d cause I think the new Underdog movie looks horrible, I think it looks horrible cause thats not Underdog.
I have been working in flash for years now and I love it. It keeps work here (even though this show is made in Canada) and the only limitations of it are the ones we put on it ourselves. Flash can look really good given the effort. But I am also an animation purist too, I gotta admit I am not excitied about this show, I like the old George, and I am tired of seeing old shows get rehashed into new ones cause the studios are too lazy and cheap to develop new cartoons.
How about we stop coasting off things like George of the Jungle, Gerald McBoing Boing, Speed Racer, etc and make some new classics?
June 21st, 2007 at 10:38 pm
Well…I’m looking forward to this show. Glad to see my recommendation to post it made the page. Thanks Aaron!
June 22nd, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Flash is brilliant, maybe one day the rest of the world will realize that too. Great post Aaron!
June 22nd, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Well we need to do things in our productions like having mouth charts pop on and off, discolored arms, turntable BGs, cells that hold too long and animate on 4’s and then maybe we can compete with the awesomeness of early TV animation.
Personally I love the ugly old school Jay Ward type of animation. The bad animation was part of what was funny about it. But it isn’t superior animation by far.
The only people that hate flash animation are animators. I haven’t run into a kid that didn’t like a show because it was flash or an adult “civilian” that knows that the Simpsons, Southpark and Lil Bush are all produced differently.
We just need to keep doing what we’re doing and to hell with all the haters.
June 22nd, 2007 at 10:17 pm
I think most of those posts were more upset over the new designs/characterizations than the show being done in Flash.
I wouldn’t mind a Flash animated Jay Ward style George…
June 23rd, 2007 at 8:13 am
The new George is great. It’s one of a handfull of contemporary kids shows that I’ve actually laughed out loud at.
Congrats to everyone at Studio B for their great work on it!
June 23rd, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Bah! Those new character designs have none of the charm of the old George.