Sara introduced me to a great cartoon on Cartoon Network called Chowder. It is a bit like Sid and Marty Croft re-imagined with a bit of kid-friendly Adult Swim anarchy and maybe a little Food Network thrown in.
I have linked to a highlights YouTube video below, but it fails to show two of my favorite things: the occasional use of claymation, and Schnitzel, a character who expresses himself by varying the tone of a single nonsense word, "Radda." You can see those things, and get introduced to what it is basically about, in this Cartoon Network commercial:
This YouTube video, 5 minutes of highlights, captures quite a bit of what makes it great.
The colors for one thing -- the show has surely one of the best color palates since Courage the Cowardly Dog. And though you cannot see as much of this as I would like in the clip, notice how Chowder's outfit has a pattern on it that stays stationary, like part of of the background, when he moves -- as if his shirt was an empty space moving over a pattern behind it. It is hard to appreciate in clips, but it is kind of mesmerizing on TV.
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3 comments:
I've seen the pepper spray part in commercials, and laugh my ass off every time.
I would say it's less like sid and marty croft, and more in line with cartoons of the 70's, particularly of this one illustrative cartooning style I remember from reading my sister's old Cricket Magazines. I will go now to to try and find examples of what I mean for what the visuals remind me of.
But, the humor of this show. The timing. It's just wonderful. A really really really great show. Can you tell I'm writing this after having my brain smushed in by stupid stupid MFA classes tonight.
Radda, radda radda radda. RADDA!
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