The rest of the Greendale Babies story (with more pictures)…

So you didn’t “get” that this was an homage to Muppet Babies, eh?… I think I know partly why that is.  Let me try to explain as well as I can with my feeble, old caveman mind.

The title card/logo you saw was this atrocity…

which reminded you of well… NOTHING you have ever seen before, right?

You can thank the ivy-league lawyers that work for NBC’s legal department who have an alarming lack of common sense and are totally gun-shy when it comes to a little thing called PARODY and HOMAGE for that one. cause you see that first image in my post… the one that looks like an actual title card and reminds you of a popular cartoon from the 80’s… Hmmm hmmm. I wonder?

Anyway, in their infinite wisdom of the legal system, they pulled the plug on that artwork citing that it was too close to the original and was going to get them sued. And smarter heads with better taste prevailed, so you ended up with that beautiful thing you saw on the screen last night. ;)

The other three images above were all backgrounds for those quick cut-away fantasy shots.  The basic idea here was to pay more homage within homage (a’la the whole inception thing they were hinting at with this whole animated segment in the first place).

All three of these are my own attempt to pay homage to some of the background painter/designers I admire most.

The Space/Moon one is my attempt to thank Bill Wray & Scott Wills for being probably my two favorite BG Artists of all time.

The Cowboy/Desert one is as close as I could nail down something akin to the legendary Maurice Noble Roadrunner & Coyote style. Deceptively simple and harder to nail than it looks. Sorry Maurice :(

And last isn’t really a nod to anyone in particular or something I necessarily admire or view with great respect.  I just figured an 80’s Anime/Heavy Metal style look would work best to support the gag.

Enough typing already… Jesus!

-Clarke

Here’s the two main shots I did of the Community Study Room for last night’s animated segments from History 101.

For those of you who didn’t “get” the reference this may seem a little confusing… or not.

Anyway, the “joke” here is that these animated segments are an homage to or mashup with the 80’s cartoon Muppet Babies.  Therefore, we used similar colors and elements found in the main play room from that show but skewing it to fit the study room from community.  Astute viewers with a keen mind will see quite a few nods to the design of the study room.

Well… if I did my job correctly that is.

The tie-in to Muppet Babies is also a big part of why some things perhaps look a little “bad” or “poorly designed/painted.”  it is a purposeful decision in order to properly pay homage to the incredibly RAD 80’s source material we were riffing off of.  It wouldn’t have felt “right” if we just made it look 100% beautiful and amazing ;) Kind of like how in the foosball animated bit… & how it looked like bad anime.  It’s all part of the gag.

That being said… I think Alison, the director, character designer and lead animator did an AMAZING job and was a pleasure to work with.  She is super talented and was a one woman wrecking machine on this project that had a WHOPPING crew of 3 people (including myself as the one man background design/paint department).  check out her blog HERE to see a post where she shares some more insight and artwork of her own from this project.

One thing I added that wasn’t in the original boards or reference material is the idea to put Pierce inside a hamster cage.  Originally it was just a normal, run of the mill playpen-which I thought was kinda boring.  So… I changed it to a hamster cage thinking that Pierce is kind of like this weird outcast, an animal or class pet if you will that everyone kinda tolerates, tosses a few crackers at, but doesn’t have any real attachment to.  Maybe I don’t “get it” or missed the mark on that one though? Regardless… I thought it was a funny idea.

The other thing that wasn’t in the original boards that I added was the stuffed animal version of the Greendale Human.  Originally, I just drew a cute stuffed bear with the Greendale logo on its chest.  But then I started thinking about if Greendale had a school mascot, and how I could tie that in.  After a quick talk with our awesome producer, who is much more well-versed in Community than I…  Stuffed Greendale Human was born.  I kinda figured it was too weird/creepy at first, but the people at NBC seemed to like the idea, so it stayed in.

Another post with more details and some more of the background artwork coming up after these messages.

-Clarke