John Kricfalusi on Ren & Stimpy
With the recent release of Jerry Beck’s “Not Just Cartoons: Nicktoons!” book, I thought it would be a good idea to go back and revisit some of the most popular Nicktoons.
John Kricfalusi is one of the most driven creators of a creator driven cartoon. His series, “The Ren and Stimpy Show”, first aired in August of 1991. John K’s studio Spümcø was responsible for the first two years of the show. Nickelodeon was very concerned over the show’s content, which often featured a lot of violence and innuendo. While the content might be considered tame by today’s standards, the show was airing on the same network alongside “Doug” and “Rugrats”.
The show was taken from John K and Spümcø and given to Bob Camp and Games Animations. Bob was a part of Spümcø until September 21, 1992, when he left to work for Games Animations, a studio that Nickelodeon created to work on “The Ren and Stimpy Show”. The series continued until 1996 when it was canceled.
John K returned to Ren & Stimpy when the “Ren and Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon” show premiered on TNN/Spike TV in 2003. The new series was rated TV-MA. The shows had a much different feel to them than the Nickelodeon series did. The new series didn’t last too long. The entire block of animated shows (including “Gary the Rat” and “Stripperella”) was taken off the air, with several episodes never even making it to television.
The entire run of cartoons was released in July 2006 as “Ren and Stimpy: The Lost Episodes”.
You can (and should) check out John K’s Blog “All Kinds of Stuff”. John is as opinionated as he is talented, but his blog has more diamonds than rough spots. The blog covers all kinds of topics, including how to do a shorts program, really great analysis of animated sequences, and lots of stuff about backgounds, layouts, character design, etc.
This undated photo of Fred appears on John’s blog.
John Kricfalusi is repped by hoytyboy Pictures.
-Floyd Bishop
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On November 25th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Always thought it was a pity that John K and Nick didn’t work out their differences. Despite the battles, they were actually quite good for each other - the early episodes of Ren & Stimpy have never been topped by either party.
On December 5th, 2007 at 12:00 am
As a Canadian I really enjoyed the humor, It’s too bad we can’t see more of John’s work. What happened to freedom of exspression