Summer’s almost gone.

WOW! What happened to the

month of July? Rainy rainy

rainy. And its my favorite

month especially becoz its

my birthday on the 28th.

And now its August and sum-

mer is almost gone. And I

have been waitin’ for this

glorious season since the

3rd of November.Man. One

more year.Of waiting.

The 11th issue of the Blaz-ing Squids is, well, blazing!We hope you like the con-tent ang give us your feedback.Check out also the sister comics magazine Octopulp, with a rare di-versity of inter-esting sequential art. The Squids and the Pulps are also on the Face-books. Send your drawings and feed-back toblazingsquids@gmail.com

- Igor

VORWORT

BLAZING SQUI

DS ARE

Laura Büch

ert Schjød

t, Steffen

Hansson,

Jim Smith

Matt Trave

rs, Sarah

Giacomina,

Mano Kapa

zoglu,

nas Mølgaa

rd Jensen,

Morten Jæ

ger, Anne

Over

Igor Noron

ha and Chr

istyan Lun

dblad.

Edited by

Christyan

Lundblad a

nd Igor No

Supported

by the Ope

n Workshop

.

More info:_

_blazingsdquids.

blogspot.com

_animwork.dk

_facebook.com/bl

azingsquids

No way! I am not having it.

Personaly I am going to save

up some money and go on va-

cation in the fall. Takin’

some revenge.

The band and I, the Can-

non Birds went to France to

pick up some hot weather.

The heat was wonderful and

the food was glorious and

the hospitality was memo-

rable. The grass was dry

as a bone though. I prefer

Danish grass.And the girls

were .....somewhere else.

So now I am still lookin’

for them. I think it was

Phil

Collins

who

sang:

“Dont look for love, dont

look for love, coz love

will look for you”.

And then there were this

other

song

saying:

“you

can’t hurry love, no, you

just gotta wait.” Those are

the words I try to live by.

It keeps me from getting

frustrated about it.

- CHRISTYAN

h,

Jo-

rgård,

oronha.

oms

Anne Overgård_TDA

Anne Overgård_TDA

Morten Jæger_OW11

Christyan _ KAU03, OW

Steffen Hansson_KAU07

OctopulpMagazine

A new sister magazine has emerged from the original Blazing Squids concept...

Available for

download and

in print.

More info at

- Lars Kram(Arch Enemy)

- Igor Noronha (Light Apprentice)

- Martin B. Peders-

en (Necrosis)- Tom Kristensen (Dead Boy)

and more!

Issue 1

Issue 2

Issue 3 coming soon!

octopulp.dk

Featuring

Issue 2

Laura BüchertSchjødt_KAU05

Jonas Mølgaard Jensen_KAU07

Anonymous

Pretty 90’s, huh?

Christyan_KAU03, OW

On his fi rst

time in Vi-

borg, Jim es

capes from

the concrete

jungle to

fi nd a quiet place

to

play his guitar

and

teach young,

talented

students.In

this inter-

view, Jim te

lls us a bit

about his ca

rreer.

A chat

with

Co-creat

or of th

e

Ren a

nd Stimp

y show

Jim Smit

h

How did

Ren and

Stimpy c

ome

to life?

Did Nic

kelodeon

ask

you to d

o a TV s

how or w

as it

you guys

who tri

ed to se

ll the

idea to

them?

It is ve

ry rare

tha they

come to

you.

In arou

nd

1991,

Nickelod

eon had

a program

where youn

g

cartooni

sts woul

d pitch

ideas to

them an

d if the

people

in char

ge like

d

it, they

’d make

a pi-

lot out

of them.

Among

them th

ere were

Doug,

Rugrats

and some

other

shows t

hat were

made

into pilo

ts and

if

they li

ked the

pilot

they’d m

ake the

whole

series.

How do you

feel abou

t the

big broa

dcasters

taking

control

of your

charac-

ters whe

never yo

u sell

a TV sho

w? >>>>

Was it an epicbudget?Our budget was small-er than the ones for some reason. They said “we’re not crazy about your idea but it might be funny” and they gave more money to the Doug crew and the Rugrats crew, but by the time we finished it had gone up 300 thousand dollars per half an hour or something. But it was still lower

With Ren and Stimpy,

the deal was

that we

would sell t

he show

to Nickelodeon

in

exchange to having

something we wrote

and created on TV.

That’s pretty

much

the standa

rd deal

with broadc

asters.

It’s kind of

a shitty

deal. We don

’t like it

but we will

take it –

we spent yea

rs trying

to sell our i

dea and we

finally found

someone

that would b

uy it.

than other sta

ndards,

like Warner

Bros. or

Disney. The new Ren

and Stimpy w

ere real-

ly low budge

ts, they

were made fo

r Spike/

TNN, less ce

nsorship.

How much censors

hip

would there be in the

old episodes?

We weren’t d

oing animat-

ic in those

days, there

were no comput

ers. We

would submit

our story

outlines and

they would

approve that

or not, wit

h

a lot of reservations

,

because our ideas

were

kind of crazy.

They’d

say, “Let’s see how it looks on the storyboards”. Most of the stuff was so weird they didn’t know what to think. But when they saw the storyboards they had a little more of an idea. I don’t know if you remember Mr. Horse and his walrus, or RubberNi-ple Salesman. These were second season – on first season they were a little more reserved. Sometimes when they saw the finished cartoon they were like “Oh my God, that’s what they meant?” Storyboard is one thing, a finished cartoon is another… But also, on the other hand, at the

same time they’d see

stuff that they d

idn’t

understand and the

y’d go

“Ok, we wanted to

censor

that, but now that

we see

what you meant.” C

ensor-

ship is like a min

efield.

There’s things you know

you can’t do, lik

e nudi-

ty, kill character

s… they

think we’re trying

to sub-

vert or corrupt k

ids, but

we are only trying

to enter-

tain them.

How about the disgusting

close-ups – where doe

s that

idea come from? We can

see it

echoing in shows like

Sponge

Bob.It was th

ere on Sponge Bob

be-

cause a lot of peopl

e that worked

on that show also

worked on Ren

and Stimpy – story

board people,

designers, etc. Bu

t the idea of

the “gross close-u

p” started on

Ren & Stimpy. We got

the idea from

Mad Magazine from

the 50s, and oc-

casionally you woul

d see on a Loon-

ey Tunes of Bugs B

unny cartoon a

close-up painting

of something that

would me different

ly rendered than

the rest, not necessarily gross.

When Bugs Bunny wo

uld read something

and the camera clo

sed in, you’d see

there was a thumb

but it be a human

thumb, not a Bugs

Bunny thumb. That

was no explanation

for that - that wa

s

the gag. Kids like

gross stuff, fart

jokes are funny ev

en when you are ol

d.

Everybody loves a

fart.

Can you tell us a bit

about you work in

the show as co-directo

r?

I co-directed the

episode they go to

the

Galapagos Islands (U

ntamed

World), in which the

y make

a documentary Discov-

ery Channel-style

and see

that all the animal

s look

like them; and Spac

e Mad-

ness was my concept

. Star

Trek was a huge infl

uence

on that one – Captai

n Kirk

got crazy in one e

pisode

and there was the evil

Kirk and good Kirk…

What about your relation

-

ship with John K., whe

n

did it start?

It was in 1986, maki

ng the

Rolling Stone’s

Harlem

Shuffle music vide

o (di-

rected by Ralph Ba

kshi).

I designed some

backgrounds and did

some

layouts. I was worki

ng at

Marvel at the time,

doing

superhero kinda stu

ff. A

friend of mine from

Texas

introduced me to Joh

n, I

showed him my port

folio

and he liked my st

uff,

we became friends

fast

and worked together

from

then on. The whole

time

we were drawing ideas

trying to sell.

What is your relation-

ship with comic books?

Because I see that in

your sketchbook you

did some Chestaclese

comics already…

I got into comic boo

ks

back in

high school

in the

60’s and I wante

d to draw

comics really ba

d. I used

to buy them reli

giously

every month and copied

them. As years w

ent by,

I lost interest i

n them.

I became a music

ian for

most of the 70’s,

trave-

ling around. Rig

ht be-

fore I met John,

Heavy

Metal came to t

he US,

Star Wars came out,

Fantasia came ba

ck to

the theaters and

that

just killed me,

it was

perfect for me.

That

was music and draw-

ings together. But

later on we did

some

comic books at Sp

umco

published by Mar

vel.

How did you control the designs on Ren and Stimpy? Theyir bodies distort a lot from scene to scene.The process was story out-line to storyboard to lay-out, and the layout artist would take the storyboard and make a finished design of the character. In the old days, they’d just put the character on the background without any pose, just to show where he stood. Warner Bros., Disney, everyone did it like that. And somewhere in the 70’s, because the sched-ules were so tight, layout be-came almost like animation, with all the key poses of the characters. And then the ani-mator would take these poses. Mighty Mouse was done that way.How big a team were you when in production?There were five of us. We start-ed the company and we did the pilot episode. We were 5 in LA and when it became a series a lot of the keys were sent to Vancou-ver, Canada. Bob Jaques, a friend of ours from the Mighty Mouse and Harlem Shuffle times, had a com-pany there, and he did the most important scenes. Both Bill Wray and Scott Wills (background art-ists) worked from LA. By the end of Ren and Stimpy, the studio grew to about 50 people.What do you think about the tech-nological changes in the animation industry?In the old days, there was no inter-net. The fact that you can >>

Google somethin

g and find

reference instantl

y is a

huge thing. You

can draw on

a Cintiq, you do

n’t have to

go to a Xerox ma

chine any-

more… even thoug

h I loved

the machine beca

use I got

used to it. To m

e that was

hi-tech. Everythi

ng was

done in cells. They are

very hard to ha

ndle, you

can’t leave fingerprints

on them, gotta s

tore them

on the shelves a

nd stuff.

At around 1992,

when >>

everything start

ed to be

done on computer

, it put

a lot of people outta

work. Progress is part

of life, you kno

w. When

TV came in, radi

o died.

When sound came

into the

movies, a lot of

people

lost their jobs

includ-

ing a lot

of movie stars, because their voices were not good enough. If you don’t believe in evolution, just look at the entertainment business history.Do you have any advice for young artists?It seems that the young artists are taking ad-vantage of technology. I would tell them the same as Ralph Bakshi: just do your film. Just keep mak-ing films. Even if they are not great, you get better. You have all this power now at your hands, you can do anything. One person can do a whole film by him/herself. So imagine what three or four people together can do.

ISSN: 1904-6561