Seth McFarlane’s intermittently amusing Family Guy is a bit of a controversy around the offices here. On one hand, it constantly uses repetitious non sequitur shock gags to fool semi-stoned brains into thinking they are watching something funny. On the other hand, it is terribly, lazily animated. A Manichean dilemma!
Via Cartoon Brew, we found this nicely thorough piece by Kyle Evans analyzing the style and content of Family Guy, with extra emphasis towards Mr. McFarlane’s Cavalcade of Comedy’s Super Mario Bros. parody. It’s like Mr. Evans was able to extract a beautiful geode of pure reason from our collective consciousness. (i.e. we agree with everything he says) Here’s a vivisection:
Also exactly the same is the character designs, with Mario looking like a cross between Brian and Peter, while Princess Peach looks like Lois in a pink dress. Apparently Seth never learned to draw from any other perspective than a three quarter front on. This insistence on keeping all characters at this angle creates an offputting effect when you have characters conversing – which is the majority of Seth’s work; endless, mind numbing conversations. Having two characters side by side on a slight angle talking to one another creates this bizarre effect as though they’re staring just past one another - there’s absolutely no sense that these characters are truly engaged in conversation. It doesn’t help that you hardly ever see a non-talking character animated or that these conversations are carried entirely by the moving of the lips.
The full article has diagrams and audio-visual aids. Interesting, even if you disagree.
The “Art” of Seth McFarlane > Catena Ex Situ
Tags: Manichean, Princess Peach, Seth McFarlane, Stewie
