History Blog / JohnKStuff

** In "Whats Not To Love About Insanity?", John talks about how his cartoons are exaggerations of real life events hes experienced, and is surprised when his cartoons get called "unrealistic" as a result.

* QuantityVsQuality: Discussed in "By What Criteria Do We Judge Quality", specifically referring to heavily detailed, super high budgeted aesthetics of features like WesternAnimation/{{Shrek}}, giving the analogy that a layman audience member or critic would believe excessive quantity of details gives the impression of a better product, as opposed to a more economical approach to animation. In contrast, John's own criteria (discussed in "Soupy Sales - Pookie sings "I'd like to know") is that a film should rely on pure skill and entertainment, regardless of budget. In a humorous analogy, he contrasted the multi million CGI Shrek to the approach of an [[NoBudget ultra low budget]] vintage tv show (namely, a SoupySales puppet skit) which relied on pure talent and skill alone.

* PragmaticAdaptation: State to be a virtue of the B&W ''WesternAnimation/{{Popeye}}'' cartoons in "Popeye Rules", pointing out that directly adapting the story lines from the comics (which ran for weeks to months at a time) would have impractical or flat out impossible to do in a six-minute short cartoon, so they built custom situations centered around the characters personalities instead (which they not only kept intact from the comics, but built on them by adding unique voices, mannerisms and touches that were never in the source material).
* PropagandaPiece:[[invoked]] John dismisses ''[[Literature/TheIllusionOfLife The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation]]'' as largely being Disney propaganda that claimed everything that was ever done with any quality or worth in animation only came from Disney, and said that the only good chapter in the book was the section on The Twelve Principles of Animation. Which is rather ironic and [[{{Hypocrite}} hypocritical]] in hindsight considering his entire blog is a giant propaganda piece in of itself, being a misanthropic and [[NostalgiaFilter nostalgia fueled]] political rant disguised as a serious commentary on stifled freedom of political incorrectness and cartoonier animation, where the instructional posts are often considered the only bearable parts of it.

* PlayingTheVictimCard: The main thrust of the blog is portraying hard edged cartoonists and cartoonier animators and proprietors of politically incorrect humor (which includes John himself) as an abused minority that is being unfairly silenced by stifling tyrannical executives and that getting ''any'' kind of creativity into contemporary animation is an endless uphill battle that requires a complete rejection of societal norms. Whether you buy into that argument is up to you.

* MickeyMousing: "Timing Story To Melody" discusses how vintage cartoon directors structured their animation around music, sometimes in a straightforward way before the music was even composed (but planned to a tempo), planned directly around a specific piece of music, and sometimes in a more creative, intuitive way. He points out how cartoons like Creator/BobClampett play out more like visual music than as a straight narrative.

* MagicAIsMagicA: The blog has a ''very'' clear cut definition of what it considers to be a cartoon, and it deliberately ties in animations roots with newspaper cartooning. To John, it isn't enough to just look like a cartoon, the whole tone and ideas behind the cartoon have to be a caricature of real life to make their point, hence why he's not a fan of animation attempting to create what he considers a "contrived reality" by copying live action in aesthetic or tone (unless its done satirically) or pull off stories without irony. He also doesn't consider cartoonists and animators to be mutually the same thing (though they can definitely overlap), as he sees cartooning as a specific mindset that strives to use caricature to make an opinion on life (mostly by making fun of it), whereas he considers stuff like Disney and its imitators to be mostly anti-cartoon because of their escapist fantasy tone and avoiding having anything beyond platitude opinions of reality (i.e. the BeYourself aesop, which he considers an insincere animation cliche).

* LittlestCancerPatient: In "Is It A Cartoon? Chapter 1", John points to this trope as a red flag that you're watching a "fake" cartoon, using a character from ''WesternAnimation/{{Franklin}}'' (who clearly needs crutches to walk, but is playing on his friends soccer team) as an example of an insincere message being put in to make the cartoon to tripwire fake emotion.
-->"A real sign of fake cartoons. Cartoons that teach you something that [[{{Hypocrite}} the creators themselves don't believe]]. Like-just because you are crippled, doesn't mean you can't be a great athlete just like all the other kids. And just because you are retarded and evil, doesn't mean you can't make up cartoons."

* LetsSeeYouDoBetter: "Comment Rules" says he won't post comments about amateurs or non artists who can't draw talking smack about pro artists.

** He is likewise critical of many animation history books, since he thinks that many of them who wrote them don't practice the art form and only have a surface understanding of it at best, have never set foot inside of an animation studio, and tend to blatantly misrepresent animation history and what it's actually like to work in animation (which is a view also shared by older animators, such as the Disney and Looney Tunes artist Rob Givens). The books he praises tend to either be ones actually written by animators (I.e. John Canemaker's books) books that champion the merits of other classic cartoon studios and don't show favoritism to Disney's view of animation history (i.e. Leslie Cabarga's "The Fleischer Story") or books that focus on the entertainment value of the films rather than editorializing about them (I.e. Leonard Maltin's "Of Mice and Magic").
* LazyArtist: Strongly discouraged as he teaches that poor artistry is a serious handicap to not only being a functional artist, but using animation to its full creative potential, and he has numerous posts dedicated to sharing foundation skills of drawing.

* InternalConsistency: In "Tex Avery's Rational Story Structure", the cartoon ''WesternAnimation/BadLuckBlackie'' is cited as an example of building on a basic premise with a well built gag structure (a kitten blows a whistle that summons a black cat to protect him from a bulldog, and every time the cat crosses the bulldogs path, something falls on it), while throwing in some twists here and there. He also acknowledges that the ending sensibly breaks the cartoon's own rules (namely, the bulldog gets things dropped on his head without having the black cat cross his path, all because he swallowed the whistle and keeps blowing it against his will) [[RuleOfFunny for the sake of pacing and humor]].

* HardWorkFallacy: "Do All Bland Movies Make Profits?" and "By What Criteria Do We Judge Quality?" criticizes the mindset behind making animated features as having them mindlessly follow Disney's example by being huge money sinks and having lots of hard animation to do for the sake of doing hard work (i.e. lots of realistic details, non-cartoony designs that are harder to animate, crowd shots, spectacle, millions of smooth inbetweens, the sheer amount of money and effort sunk into the projects in general, etc.) or trying to impress the audience, arguing that its a complete waste of time because the audience really doesnt know about, care about or notice the effort or detail put into them, and that they should instead find intelligent, more creative ways of using their resources for far less time and money. "My Quality Criteria" acts as a counterpoint by listing John's own criteria for "quality".[[note]]Charistmatic fun characters, Cartoony, Humanity, Creativity, Skill, Fun, Funny, Did It Blow My Mind?, and "Does It Swing?"[[/note]] In general, one message the blog constantly hammers in is [[HardWorkHardlyWorks "Work smarter, not harder."]]

* {{Gonk}}: PlayedForLaughs in "The Most Beautiful Girl in Cartoons", taking pics of Olive Oyl from "For Better Or Worser", where she is deliberately drawn unattractively to setup the cartoons punchline, out of context.

** In "Writing for Cartoons 3", he criticizes the Creator/{{MGM}} Creator/MarxBrothers movies for having [[RomanticPlotTumor romantic filler centered around boring characters]] at the expensive of the brothers comedy.

** In "Rock N Rule - Mok, Robin Budd and dog noses on humans", John praises parts of WesternAnimation/RockAndRule for moments of really good animation and the unique design of Mok, but also points out some of the films flaws, such as the weird and unappealing designs that are basically realistic humans with dog noses slapped onto their faces. He especially points out how strange it looks on Mok, because he's [[NoCelebritiesWereHarmed specifically designed to look like]] Music/MickJagger and not [[WesternAnimation/PlutoThePup Pluto the dog.]]

* DigitalDestruction: TropeNamer; his blog he has [[http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/search/label/digital%20destruction done several posts]] addressing issues with restoration issues of classic cartoon dvds, with particular regards to DVNR line erasing and tampering with the original colors.
* DisneySchoolOfActingAndMime: Discussed and discouraged in several posts as formulaic and insincere acting, once making an analogy that if anyone acted like a Disney character in real life without a hint of irony, it would come off as extremely embarrassing and juvenile. He does agree with the point Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston made in their book "Literature/TheIllusionOfLife" that it is impossible for animation to reach the same subtle acting as live action, but that real life acting should be caricatured to make its point instead of using stagey mime like acting. There are several posts that reference ''Series/TheHoneymooners'' as a good reference point for getting anti-formulaic acting into animation. He also cites Bob Clampett and sometimes Creator/ChuckJones and Creator/RobertMcKimson cartoons, and occasionally even Creator/FleischerStudios cartoons like ''[[WesternAnimation/{{Popeye}} Popeye the Sailor]]'' for examples of non-Disney style animation acting. He even praises a [[WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones Flintstones episode]], "The Flintstone Flyer", for Carlo Vinci's animation having natural, believable acting without following the Disney template.

* CausticCritic: Lets put it this way; John's critiques makes the scribes of ''Creator/HarlanEllison'', himself being infamous for his at times tactless and strongly opinionated critiques, [[UpToEleven come off as a downright generous guy by comparison]]. John K pulls absolutely '''no''' punches when it comes to [[BrutalHonesty calling something on the carpet, or ripping into the flaws of other works or taking potshots at other studios]] for not living up to his extremely high and rigid (and often arbitrary) standards--and what ''does'' live up to his standards usually consists of a very small and narrow pool of animation and comics, otherwise consisting of classic movies and TV shows. He isn't afraid of criticizing sacred cows either, such as animators like Creator/DonBluth and Creator/RichardWilliams. Ironically, he will also rip into something he likes just as hard--for example, he is a diehard fan of early Hanna-Barbera for elements such as their great design, colors and characters, but he feels the cartoons were too conservative to live up to their full potential, and he also rips into them for their terrible stories and slow as molasses pacing, and he absolutely rips into their works from the late 60s and on for throwing out what he felt were the good elements of their earlier cartoons. To make a long story short; virtually ''nothing'' from the 1970's and on lives up to these rigid standards. Not even his own productions are safe from this, with him constantly advising people not to look at ''Mighty Mouse'' or ''Ren & Stimpy'' as inspiration and looks at ''The Ripping Friends'' and ''The New Adventures of Beany and Cecil'' with almost as much contempt as he does his stint at Filmation.

* BrokeTheRatingScale: In his review of ''Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs'', he gives the film an even zero rating, also noting that [[DamnedByFaintPraise it's a higher rating than he'll give to other contemporary animated features]], which he would give thousands of points in the negative towards.

** In "Is It A Cartoon? Chapter 1", he uses a scene from episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Franklin}}'' as an example of the LittlestCancerPatient (a kid who needs crutches to walk but is playing on his friends soccer team) being a red flag that you're watching a "Fake Cartoon", and seeing it as putting forth a message that is not only shrewdly manipulative and cynical, but also inapplicable to reality.

* BaitAndSwitch: "Happy Father's Day" has John talking about how his relationship with his dad inspired the Ren and Stimpy cartoon "A Visit to Anthony", and how showed it to his dad and his friends. The next day, his dad told him he hated it. John assumed it was because he portrayed his dad as too rough in the cartoon, only for his dad to reveal that he hated it for the exact opposite reason--he made him look too ''soft''.

* BadassNormal: In "Wayne Boring's Superman", John talks about how ComicBook/{{Batman}}--a costumed superhero with no powers at all--is almost as ridiculous as that of Superman (who he considers a very preposterous character as is) because we're expected to believe we can't kill someone like him, and pointing out how the character is beloved ''[[NecessaryWeasel because]]'' [[NecessaryWeasel of this preposterous element]].

* AnimationAgeGhetto:[[invoked]] In "Walt Craves Respect", John speculates that Creator/WaltDisney pushing so hard for his movies to have more serious content and realistic art in movies like ''WesternAnimation/{{Fantasia}}'' was a shrewd attempt to pander to critics and convince them that his studio was a real arthouse and not just a fun lowbrow cartoon studio. John is quick to point out how this backfired in ''Fantasia'''s initial release because Walt ''also'' tried to pander to general audiences at the same time with the films cutesy elements and [[BlackAndWhiteMorality clear cut morality]], keeping critics from taking the film seriously.

* AccentuateTheNegative: The blog has more screeds and posts about things John dislikes and doesn't want people to do than it does things he ''does'' like or approve of. Even when discussing something he likes, it's undercut with an aside about how someone or something is doing it wrong.

* CausticCritic: Lets put it this way; John's critiques makes the scribes of ''Creator/HarlanEllison'', himself being infamous for his at times tactless and strongly opinionated critiques, [[UpToEleven come off as a downright generous guy by comparison]]. John K pulls absolutely '''no''' punches when it comes to [[BrutalHonesty calling something on the carpet, or ripping into the flaws of other works or taking potshots at other studios]] for not living up to his extremely high and rigid (and often arbitrary) standards--and what ''does'' live up to his standards usually consists of a very small and narrow pool of animation and comics, otherwise consisting of classic movies and TV shows. He isn't afraid of criticizing sacred cows either, such as animators like Creator/DonBluth and Creator/RichardWilliams. Ironically, he will also rip into something he likes just as hard--for example, he is a diehard fan of early Hanna-Barbera for elements such as their great design, colors and characters, but he feels the cartoons were too conservative to live up to their full potential, and he also rips into them for their terrible stories and slow as molasses pacing, and he absolutely rips into their works from the late 60s and on for throwing out what he felt were the good elements of their earlier cartoons. To make a long story short; virtually ''nothing'' from the 1970's and on lives up to these rigid standards. Not even his own productions are safe from this, with him constantly advising people not to look at ''Mighty Mouse'' or ''Ren & Stimpy'' as inspiration and looks at ''The Ripping Friends'' with as much content as he does his stint at Filmation.

* AccentuateTheNegative: The blog has more screeds and posts about things John dislikes and doesn't want people to do than it does thing he ''does'' like or approve of. Even when discussing something he likes, it's undercut with an aside about how someone or something is doing it wrong.

The blog can be found [[http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/ here.]] A companion version of it, [[http://johnkcurriculum.blogspot.com/ John K Cirriculum]], exists alongside it and focuses more on the instructional posts.

** Invoked this during his time on the 1985 season of ''The Jetsons'', where he encuraged the animators working under him at Creator/WangFilmProductions to be expressive and break the guidlines given to them.

** In "Stock Disney Characters - The bland lead", he discourages using characters whose role or personality is entirely defined by their archetype or a single defining trait, in favor of caricaturing real life people, who tend to have more shaded motives or odd quirks in their personalities. He does acknowledge some well defined characters can fit in a general archetype, but still have unique personalities in spite of that. In "When Cartoons Evolved 2- Bugs Bunny prototypes", he uses WesternAnimation/BugsBunny as an example of an archetypical heckler character given three-dimensional personality traits.

* BlackComedyRape: In "2 Types of Cartoonists: Origin of styles 2 -Rubber Hose animation part B", he contrasts [[Creator/WaltDisney Disney]] and [[Creator/FleischerStudios Fleischer's]] approaches to cartooning, highlighting how the Fleischers humor was very raunchy compared to what Disney did, even using rape jokes in cartoons like [[WesternAnimation/BettyBoop "Boop-Oop-A-Doop"]] (1932).

* DisneySchoolOfActingAndMime: Discussed and discouraged in several posts as formulaic and insincere acting, once making an analogy that if anyone acted like a Disney character in real life without a hint of irony, it would come off as extremely embarrasing and juvenile. He does agree with the point Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston made in their book "Literature/TheIllusionOfLife" that it is impossible for animation to reach the same subtle acting as live action, but that real life acting should be caricatured to make its point instead of using stagey mime like acting. There are several posts that reference ''Series/TheHoneymooners'' as a good reference point for getting anti-formulaic acting into animation. He also cites Bob Clampett and sometimes Creator/ChuckJones and Creator/RobertMcKimson cartoons, and occasionally even Creator/FleischerStudios cartoons like ''[[WesternAnimation/{{Popeye}} Popeye the Sailor]]'' for examples of non-Disney style animation acting. He even praises a [[WesternAnimation/TheFlintstones Flintstones episode]], "The Flintstone Flyer", for Carlo Vinci's animation having natural, believable acting without following the Disney template.

* ExcusePlot: A point brought up in his posts about writing for cartoons, such as "Writing for Cartoons 1", is that many cartoons very rarely have anything resembling a real story, and that most of the entertainment value comes from the emotional sensations and other ingredients of visual filmmaking. While his blog and Cirriculum does have many posts dedicated to story and writing, he stresses that story is just one of the many creative ingredients that can be used to make a good cartoon, and that it isnt particularly necessary. He also says that a straightforward premise that can be described on one or two pages is more convienient for a cartoon, using such an approach for episodes like [[http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/05/writing-for-cartoons-stimpys-invention.html "Stimpy's Invention"]] and [[http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/12/yogi-bear-pie-pirates-1958-frank.html "A Yard Too Far".]]

* LetsSeeYouDoBetter: "Comment Rules" says he won't post comments about amatuers or non artists who can't draw talking smack about pro artists.

* LostInImitation: Criticized late in "Observation, Creativity, Influence, Stealing, Blind Absorbtion of Styles", claiming that just copying influences without analyzing can lead to this.
* MagicAIsMagicA: The blog has a ''very'' clear cut definition of what it considers to be a cartoon, and it deliberately ties in animations roots with newspaper cartooning. To John, it isn't enough to just look like a cartoon, the whole tone and ideas behind the cartoon have to be a caricature of real life to make their point, hence why he's not a fan of animation attempting to create what he considers a "contrived reality" by copying live action in aesthetic or tone (unless its done satirically) or pull off stories without irony. He also doesn't consider cartoonists and animators to be mutually the same thing (though they can definetely overlap), as he sees cartooning as a specific mindset that strives to use caricature to make an opinion on life (mostly by making fun of it), wheras he considers stuff like Disney and its imitators to be mostly anti-cartoon because of their escapist fantasy tone and avoiding having anything beyond platitude opinions of reality (i.e. the BeYourself aesop, which he considers an insincere animation cliche).

* OutsideJoke: Some of the humor of the blog depends on readers either not having knowledge possessed by geek culture or cynical indifference to said knowledge. For example, "Pizzatime Doodle--The Phantom" talks about how ridiculous it is for superheroes to go around in their underwear and rhetorically asks where it came from, and it resultes in a barrage of comments explaining its origins (which John felt ruined the joke by missing the point of the whole post).

* PlayingTheVictimCard: The main thrust of the blog is portraying hard edged cartoonists and cartoonier animators and propieters of politically incorrect humor (which includes John himself) as an abused minority that is being unfairly silenced by stiffling tyrannical executives and that getting ''any'' kind of creativity into contemporary animation is an endless uphill battle that requires a complete rejection of societal norms. Whether you buy into that argument is up to you.
* PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad: The blog has a ''very'' liberatian slant to it, as John believes modern cartoons suffer badly from political correctness, also pointing out the double standard of these kind of people having a HolierThanThou mindset towards the people they consider offensive. In "I'll Leave This to Mike to Answer--and Anyone Else", hs wrote a lengthy response to someone accusing a vintage "Injun Orange" drink of having racist intentions.

** In "We Heard From My Indian Pal, Joe", John responds to comments about people considering an innocous "Injun Orange" drink package racist by getting an ''actual'' Native American to look at it, who considers it totally innocent and abstract, and in the same breath decries Hollywoods stereotypical depiction of Indians as being either very stoic or of the CryingIndian variety.

* StoryBreakerPower: In "Wayne Boring's Superman", he talks about how superhero comics were ruined in the 70's when writers tried taking the prepostrous stories seriously, claiming the appeal of superheroes is in the fact that they're nonsensical in the first place, using the [[PhysicalGod unstoppable nature of Silver Age Superman]] as an example.

* VulgarHumor: John K is very much in favor of anti-politically correct comedy and considers vulgarity to be the most human form of humor, so the blog has many examples of it--but also adds that its not being nasty for its own sake that makes it funny, but ''how'' the vulgarity is presented is what makes it funny. He cites an example from the Bob Clampett cartoon "The Wise Quacking Duck", where Daffy Duck tricks Mr. Meek into thinking his head was lopped off by his axe, hamming up his death throes by screaming like crazy and spraying ketchip in lieu of blood everywhere, and then walking out headless (his head is actually hidden inside of his neck), flailing around like a headless chicken and collapsing right in front of Mr. Meek, to the latters horror. He points out that the scene is presented in such a ludicrous way, that it takes what could've been just a morbid or mean spirited gag in the wrong hands, and makes it outrageously funny to watch instead.

* CausticCritic: Lets put it this way; John's critiques makes the scribes of ''Creator/HarlanEllison'', himself being infamous for his at times tactless and strongly opinionated critiques, [[UpToEleven come off as a downright generous guy by comparison]]. John K pulls absolutely '''no''' punches when it comes to [[BrutalHonesty calling something on the carpet, or ripping into the flaws of other works or taking potshots at other studios]] for not living up to his extremely high and rigid (and often arbitrary) standards--and what ''does'' live up to his standards usually consists of a very small and narrow pool of animation and comics, otherwise consisting of classic movies and TV shows. He isn't afraid of criticizing sacred cows either, such as animators like Creator/DonBluth and Creator/RichardWilliams. Ironically, he will also rip into something he likes just as hard--for example, he is a diehard fan of early Hanna-Barbera for elements such as their great design, colors and characters, but he feels the cartoons were too conservative to live up to their full potential, and he also rips into them for their terrible stories and slow as molasses pacing, and he absolutely rips into their works from the late 60s and on for throwing out what he felt were the good elements of their earlier cartoons. To make a long story short; virtually ''nothing'' from the 1970's and on lives up to these rigid standards. Not even his own productions are safe from this, with him constantly advising people ot to look at ''Ren & Stimpy'' for inspiration.

* CausticCritic: Lets put it this way; John's critiques makes the scribes of ''Creator/HarlanEllison'', himself being infamous for his at times tactless and strongly opinionated critiques, [[UpToEleven come off as a downright generous guy by comparison]]. John K pulls absolutely '''no''' punches when it comes to [[BrutalHonesty calling something on the carpet, or ripping into the flaws of other works or taking potshots at other studios]] for not living up to his extremely high and rigid (and often arbitrary) standards--and what ''does'' live up to his standards usually consists of a very small and narrow pool of animation and comics, otherwise consisting of classic movies and TV shows. He isn't afraid of criticizing sacred cows either, such as animators like Creator/DonBluth and Creator/RichardWilliams. Ironically, he will also rip into something he likes just as hard--for example, he is a diehard fan of early Hanna-Barbera for elements such as their great design, colors and characters, but he feels the cartoons were too conservative to live up to their full potential, and he also rips into them for their terrible stories and slow as molasses pacing, and he absolutely rips into their works from the late 60s and on for throwing out what he felt were the good elements of their earlier cartoons. To make a long story short; virtually ''nothing'' from the 1970's and on lives up to these rigid standards.

-->"No, to me the art and stories and concepts have to be as [[RRefugeInAudacity nsensible as possible]] to make Superhero comics work. Like I said, everything about Superman is unbelievably illogical and the writers in the 50s and 60s had their tasks cut out for them. They had to keep coming up with ways to get around the fact that [[InvincibleHero you can't hurt Superman]], [[StoryBreakerPower because he can do everything]]. How do you find conflicts for that? They had to contradict all their own premises to be able to continue writing millions of stories about God and his friends. And they did it!"

* TastesLikeDiabetes:[[invoked]] A big factor in why he's so alienated by Disney and their followers. He finds their films so unmasculine, sentimental and sappy that he says there isn't any Disney film that doesn't make him want to reach for the fast forward button.

** He isn't a fan of live action movies doing this either. In "Funny Pathos vs Cheap Trick Pathos- Ralph Has Remorse", he singles out ''Film/ETTheExtraTerrestrial'' as an example of a film using trick pathos to elicit an audience response. In general, he loathes Creator/StevenSpielberg and Creator/GeorgeLucas for similar reasons as he does Disney, mainly for what he sees as their cynical and insincere "Take my cake and eat it too" attitude towards [[OscarBait eliciting serious audience emotion with emotional trip-wiring and pandering]] in films with [[TastesLikeDiabetes trite or]] [[SophisticatedAsHell lowbrow content.]]

** Several posts address them in detail, and he believes the first five (Solid Drawing, Appeal, Exaggeration, Staging and Timing) are all the basic needs for a cartoon, with the rest being accessory principles. In "The Essential Principals VS The Extras - Will Finn", he uses Roger Ramjet as an example of using those five principles alone and still being skilled and fun, while arguing in other posts like "Dizzy Red Riding Hood" that Disneys insistence on following the principles to the letter handicapped creativity in animation by imposing "arbitrary rules" on how animated characters can or cant move. In the same post, he recommends adding "Funny", "Clever ideas", "Imagination" and "Interesting or entertaining characters" as principles.

* DesignatedHero:[[invoked]] In "The Best Bugs -- Pre 'Tude", he argues that Creator/ChuckJones' later interpretation of WesternAnimation/BugsBunny turned Bugs into an unlikable and boring protagonist who only won because he was supposed to, as opposed to his 1940's cartoons where he earned his victories.