Zeeky Boogy Doog

November 22, 2011 5:57 PM

Possibly you remember Albino Black Sheep, home to a vast collection of puerile, amusing Flash animations. And if you do, perhaps you remember The Demented Cartoon Movie (warning: flashing, strobing stuff), the longest and the puerilest, or its shorter, less popular sequel, The Greatest Present Ever.

Unlike other old-timers like Neil Cicierega or Andrew Kepple or Weebl, the guy who made the DCM, Brian Kendall, stopped making Internet animations, and is in fact somewhat ashamed of this one:

Understand that I have kind of a love/hate relationship with it. I like it because it's basically my sense of humor in a nutshell (at least while I was in high school), and I made the movie for myself. There was never really any intent to please anyone else; I really only made it to please me. I still find this movie funny to this day. The hate part of the relationship comes in because this thing is horridly animated. There's no artistic integrity whatsoever.

posted by Rory Marinich (19 comments total)

Occupy Flash!

Oh, wait.
posted by monospace at 6:12 PM on November 22, 2011 [1 favorite]

I recall watching the Demented Cartoon Movie on a computer that only had a 56kbps modem. It took 15-20 minutes just to download the flash data. Well worth it, frankly. Kendall has no reason to be embarrassed.
posted by spoobnooble at 6:16 PM on November 22, 2011

Always my favorite, badgers!
posted by sarae at 6:28 PM on November 22, 2011 [1 favorite]

Well yeah, dude. We're all embarrassed of the shit we made in high school. That's how it works. I mean, this particular thing isn't something I was familiar with before, but it seems to have brought people some laughs over the years. More than most of us can say.
posted by penduluum at 6:32 PM on November 22, 2011 [2 favorites]

I had not seen The Demented Cartoon Movie before, and it is almost something I could really get into, except that is so incredibly derivative of Monty Python. There are good jokes in there, and they were all written by Terry Gilliam. I mean, "I apologize for the preceding scene" ?!? Let me guess , were the writers sacked? Oh look a big boot coming down, squashing everything.
posted by bitslayer at 6:39 PM on November 22, 2011 [3 favorites]

Badgers were great, badgers playing soccer were better.

And I'm sorry, but this guy has nothing on the stuff I put on the internet when I was in high school. My gosh, talk about a lack of artistic integrity.
posted by SMPA at 6:42 PM on November 22, 2011 [1 favorite]

HOUSE GET!
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:04 PM on November 22, 2011 [3 favorites]

it is almost something I could really get into, except that is so incredibly derivative of Monty Python.

Well, if you're going to be derivative, be derivative of the best.
posted by Joey Michaels at 7:12 PM on November 22, 2011

Three cheers for Colin Mcrae!

(animutationist4lyfe)

really glad yr back rory
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:33 PM on November 22, 2011 [1 favorite]

My goodness, Slap*Happy, thank you for reminding me of Arfenhouse. I couldn't get into it as a kid, but it was huge with my friends.

I had not seen The Demented Cartoon Movie before, and it is almost something I could really get into, except that is so incredibly derivative of Monty Python.

This was one of the interesting things about the juvenile Flash scene, which was made up half of animators with some talent and half of high school kids messing with Flash for the first time. Lots of the younger ones would make a few blatant rip-offs of either specific jokes or styles of joke-telling. They were rarely competent rip-offs, though, so that the style would change and turn into something more amateur and interesting.

Demented Cartoon Movie was especially cool because of its length, which means that it starts with its most rip-offiest jokes, and then repeats its ideas over and over until something else starts happening. It's kind of hypnotic. And some of the jokes stumble upon excellent timing, and some good ideas, and then all of a sudden this high school kid's figured out how to make some things work.

Past all the ripping off, I do think there's something interesting happening, and it's fascinating watching the guy behind it develop over the course of putting the movie together. It's always saddened me that he gave up Flash videos. Something about the medium led to a lot of young talent developing incredibly quickly, shedding the unoriginal bits and developing unique voices in their teens. I'm compiling notes on a few right now for future posts. But I noticed this one had somehow never even been mentioned on MetaFilter, and I thought it was culturally big enough and stylistically good enough to be worth its own post.

That said, it's still amateur work through-and-though, which is an instant turnoff for some that I completely understand. And its length makes it frustrating. Flash was what my friends were into in middle school, and even then with our idiocy and lack of prior knowledge this one gave a lot of us trouble. (Oh, to be young again...)
posted by Rory Marinich at 7:33 PM on November 22, 2011 [4 favorites]

Oh hey, Brian Kendall! The first time I met him he was writing "http://www.goat.se" on the announcements whiteboard of the Hampshire College dining hall. I asked him what that was a link to and armed with that information I managed to avoid seeing that distended sphincter for another five years. So I owe him for that. Also, for reasons too long to explain, I thought for months his name was Geoffrey. His name is Geoffrey, but it's also not Geoffrey. Anyway, he's a good guy, Brian Kendall.
posted by Kattullus at 7:35 PM on November 22, 2011 [2 favorites]

X Gon Give It To Ya
posted by eddydamascene at 9:32 PM on November 22, 2011

If you watch this, heads will roll.
posted by PueExMachina at 10:32 PM on November 22, 2011

I make all sorts of things, which includes but is not limited to computer software, video games, music, animations, and minor internet memes.

I'm not sure what's to be ashamed of here. Plus, he got the best of both worlds: he made something solely to humor himself, and ended up humoring the masses.

I think he does a good job of bringing it up and acknowledging it though, and it is refreshing to see someone who honestly cares about the quality of their work and the name they want to make for themselves going forward without completely sweeping it under the rug. The internet will find you anyway.

Fret not amateur Flash animator of yesteryear, there are far more shameful and integrity-compromising situations that arise through job candidate Google combing than your 12 frames per second.
posted by june made him a gemini at 11:11 PM on November 22, 2011

Oh god, Albino Blacksheep. I remember visiting there many years ago and happened upon one of the few disgusting things that it hosted at the time and chalked it up as another Stile Project horror-show. It seems so banal now.
posted by charred husk at 5:53 AM on November 23, 2011

I still play Curveball every now and then, even though I die on Level 7 90% of the time, and I don't think I've ever gotten past Level 8.
posted by mrgrimm at 9:10 AM on November 23, 2011

oh god I spent like two hours on weebl's recent stuff because of this.
posted by egypturnash at 9:38 AM on November 23, 2011

ABS was pretty big about let's say, oh, eight to ten years ago. Does this mean in 2021 MeFi will allow front page articles about memes from 4chan or Reddit?
posted by Apocryphon at 1:55 PM on November 23, 2011

Japanese Penis Kittens.
posted by gdav at 5:59 AM on November 24, 2011