Originially the topic of my essay was semiotics in The Simpsons, but I've since rewritten this as it was utterly appalling, so following on from the initial essay I started planning this project around The Simpsons, which proved problematic.
This was the most logical starting point, Simpsons creator Matt Groening. This angle was quickly exhausted though
I played around with the characters and some type but quickly realised that doing a visual satirical project on an already visual and satirical show was quite fruitless. There seemed to be no way of making work based on an existing cartoon that wasn't just fan art.
I started playing around with the characters, in this image seeing at what level of abstraction Homer becomes unrecognisable. The answer is a very high level.
Here I drew characters in incorrect colours to counteract the rigid colouring in the show, these images make me uncomfortable.
For inspiration I made a map of Matt Groenings main influences. These included corny American family comedies from the 50's, suggesting this is where he learnt the codes of such television shows which are humorously contradicted in The Simpsons
I remembered Jack Teagle's project, the Simpsons Drawing Club, and thought about doing something similar. I made this sketch of a comic exploring a brutally realistic portrayal of Marge's repressed character, driven mad by loutish, almost sociopathic post-season-10 Homer (it's an opinion widely held that post season 10 Homer's character stopped being as relatable and human as previous and he turned into 'Jerk Homer', wreckless and hurtful with little to no consideration for others, even less so than before)
I started to do another similar strip exploring Lisa's misery but I abandoned it because there was no story to tell, its already pretty well explored in the show itself
Here I struggled to find direction with this project, which is probably the point where it started to go wrong. I couldn't see a purpose to anything I'd done for this brief so far and it seemed there was just nothing left to draw on the topic. So I considered other topics; other cartoons, other creators, semiotics etc.
Some research into semiotics, did little to help the project but was useful when it came to rewriting my essay.
These are the notes from my pecha kucha. At this point I had been putting off the project because I was so stuck with it so I still had no idea what to do with it. I presented mostly research and some sketches and was told in feedback to possibly explore the comics idea further.
Here I am thinking what else can go into a series of comics.
Some ideas I had and abandonned:
-developing characters and making a short comic in the format of a Simpsons episode and using all of their codes and existing structure, but this seemed far too time consuming and complex for the time available.
- playing with scenes from the Simpsons in order to flout their assumed conventions, rewriting them into something that would never happen
-taking codes of Simpson and cartoons and making work that plays with or subverts it (this is the most similar to what I ended up making)
-realistic parodies of cartoons (again, similar to final outcome)
-making a small lo-fi zine with loads of comics parodying cartoons and cartoon rules. a la 100% Unofficial Simpsons Comix
At this point I was finally coming towards something but there was only a week left and another deadline to complete in the meantime. I thought of famous cartoons with rigid structures, such as Disney princess movies, Tom and Jerry, Wile E Coyote and Roadrunner and so on. In the mind map I circled ones I knew had been parodied famously before and from the rest I picked the ones with most potential.. Coyote giving up on capture roadrunner, Tom finally killing Jerry in a ruthless feline bloodbath and the simpsons comic I wrote initially. Obviously I wish I'd left A LOT more time because then I wouldn't have to be ashamed of the lack of work produced for this project, and the comics could have been better, but at this stage I was happy to have a plan.
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