DON'T DRAW PEGGY TOO SHAPELY

July 8, 2020 1:01 PM

Humor/pop culture website Cracked has gotten their hands on the animation guidelines for King of the Hill, which are mix of practical advice, character observations, and snark. (SLCracked)
posted by NoxAeternum (36 comments total)

Previously, with a link to the full list instead of just an excerpt. (Seven years is beyond the statute of limitations for double posts, right?)
posted by teraflop at 1:12 PM on July 8, 2020 [6 favorites]

This guide has been going around since the early 2010s, I think. I seem to remember a more detailed account with input from someone involved with the production, although I could be wrong.

There's probably a ton of interesting stuff to be found in the King of the Hill Archives, part of the Wittliff's Southwestern Writers Collection at Texas State University. As a huge fan of the show, I'd love to rummage through it.
posted by pipeski at 1:13 PM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

On reflection, it was probably teraflop's link that I remember.
posted by pipeski at 1:14 PM on July 8, 2020

I have a show bible for The Tick (the animated one) that I got somewhere and it's similarly interesting. I love stuff like this.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 1:30 PM on July 8, 2020 [7 favorites]

Yup.
posted by MrJM at 1:56 PM on July 8, 2020 [3 favorites]

When I first read, “NO Paw hands,” my first thought was, “Wait, who’s Paw? I don’t remember a character called Paw.” Random capitalization sucks.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:58 PM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Aw man, I'd love to see a The Tick bible - you're right, those things are fascinating! I have one for an old Cartoon Network show and it's so interesting to see the thought put into things that you never really think about as a viewer. I'm not even that into King of the Hill and yet it's fun to get a peek at what the artists had to keep in mind - thanks for posting!
posted by DingoMutt at 2:00 PM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

This is great! Though I do think Bobby and Peggy are high-fivers, no?

Also, I never noticed before how much Hank resembles Roger Kaputnik from Mad's Lighter Side Of....
posted by queensissy at 2:22 PM on July 8, 2020 [12 favorites]

Tell you what, dang ol' animation directors, man, they say like, animate all them fingers, man, make it look like you're eating, man, I tell 'em you try animating this at thirty frames per second, man dang ol' sweat shop man.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 2:43 PM on July 8, 2020 [53 favorites]

I think about "no paw hands" all the time when I draw.
posted by tofu_crouton at 2:59 PM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

(pours one out for LuAnne) - miss ya, Brittany.
posted by lon_star at 3:02 PM on July 8, 2020 [15 favorites]

I was thinking that Peggy’s father in Montana was a Paw, but, no. Doc.
posted by box at 3:30 PM on July 8, 2020

Makes one wonder what the guide for Family Guy is like.
posted by y2karl at 3:39 PM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Maybe I'm a curmudgeon (I am a curmudgeon) but I never see the point in animating things like this that just depict everyday realism. This show never clicked with me, partially because of that.
posted by SoberHighland at 4:16 PM on July 8, 2020

It took some doing because "tick guide" kept giving me results for the bug, which I feel like is a very The Tick joke and one those writers would appreciate, but I found where I grabbed it from. There's lots of neat stuff on that site, as one would expect from a slighty-shady looking Blogspot site.

I also found this, which is a neat roundup of 21 TV show bibles, including Adventure Time and Battlestar Galactica, that folks in this thread might find interesting.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 4:25 PM on July 8, 2020 [39 favorites]

but I never see the point in animating things like this that just depict everyday realism

Like The Simpsons and Home Movies and many other animated greats: one reason is that there’s no other way to have a large rich cast and lots of indoor/outdoor locations/sets without it costing a fortune. King of the Hill would never have been pitched or done with live actors in real places or sets.

Animation is freedom to do stuff they could have never done otherwise; even if it’s just boring old pedestrian reality being depicted.

It’s ok if you don’t like it, but now you know why.
posted by SaltySalticid at 4:39 PM on July 8, 2020 [21 favorites]

Simpsons got much crazier with characters, effects and such. KotH was really just everyday folks in very realistic, common situations and locations.
posted by SoberHighland at 4:48 PM on July 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

I think you missed my point. Compare the number of characters, number of locations of KoTH to a live action show with similar numbers and you’ll find that show cost a bunch more to make.

Maybe they did it for no good reason, or maybe, just maybe, people who successfully make tv and movies for a living, over decades, in a variety of formats... maybe they pick animation because it allows them to do make the show they want.

It’s fine not to like it but “why is this even animated?!” is kind of a weird and fairly ignorant -sounding criticism in my book.
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:06 PM on July 8, 2020 [12 favorites]

Ghostride the Whip, I cannot favorite your most recent comment enough - bibles for The Tick AND He-Man AND Adventure Time (not to mention Freaks and Geeks and so many Stars Trek)!! The cartoon and general-purpose nerd in me is utterly delighted. Thank you for sharing!
posted by DingoMutt at 5:27 PM on July 8, 2020

Also, the fact that KotH is animated relatively realistically is part of the deadpan humor. Given how cartoon characters usually act, it’s funny to see them do things in an understated, realistic way, in a way that wouldn’t be funny if they were real actors doing exactly the same thing.
posted by No-sword at 5:42 PM on July 8, 2020 [14 favorites]

This has been “SaltySalticid Tells You Whut.”
posted by Huffy Puffy at 5:55 PM on July 8, 2020 [5 favorites]

"Maybe they did it for no good reason, or maybe, just maybe, people who successfully make tv and movies for a living, over decades, in a variety of formats... maybe they pick animation because it allows them to do make the show they want."

I imagine it's much simpler than that -- Mike Judge, the show creator, was an animator. That's what he did for a living. He later went on to do live action stuff, but at this point of his career, his entertainment work was all animation.
posted by Bugbread at 6:12 PM on July 8, 2020 [6 favorites]

Animation also let's you get away with things you couldn't get away with in a live action show. I dont think Cotton would work at all in a live action format and KotH manages a gentle sort of absurdity in its humor that I think would be lost in a classic sitcom setup-punchline format.

I'm so glad everyone enjoyed the various show bibles. I enjoy world building but I also enjoy sort of meta construction, like how they work with the format they're in to tell the stories they want to tell.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 6:51 PM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Animation also let them bring the show back like two separate times after canceling it. No sets to rebuild!
posted by Huffy Puffy at 7:52 PM on July 8, 2020 [3 favorites]

Also kids get more air time and don't age out.
posted by Mitheral at 11:05 PM on July 8, 2020 [6 favorites]

NO Desert CACTI TUMBLEWEED Shots

Thank God, yes. It's like the assumption that all California is LA, or all Florida is Miamilando.
posted by pykrete jungle at 11:10 PM on July 8, 2020 [4 favorites]

The Star Trek - Next Generation bible is funny. It carefully explains how the 24th century society is more enlightened than our current society, but describes the show's own female characters like

> With fire in her eyes and a muscularly well-developed and very female body, she is capable of pinning most crewmen to the mat

> The romantic Picard can not help noticing that Beverly's natural walk resembles that of a striptease queen

Not so surprising for the era, but the rest of it could have been written for a "thoughtful" sci-fi show today, so it's kind of startling when those lines pop up.
posted by scose at 12:27 AM on July 9, 2020 [4 favorites]

Not so surprising for the era, but the rest of it could have been written for a "thoughtful" sci-fi show today, so it's kind of startling when those lines pop up.

Gotta say it's not out of line with how I think of Gene Roddenberry.
posted by atoxyl at 4:07 AM on July 9, 2020 [6 favorites]

Yeah, all that stuff is pretty much 100% Gene. I'm not sure if Roddenberry would have qualified for his own #MeToo moment, but there's a lot of stuff there (and even more in some of the equivalent material for TOS) that would not fly today.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:46 AM on July 9, 2020

Off the top of my head, KotH had episodes set at the Texas State Fair, a country music festival, a hippie festival, a water park, Japan, Mexico, Montana, and multiple stadium sporting events. They had an episode with a skydiving accident, one where a firehouse burns down, one where a McMansion collapses, and lots of episodes with extensive WWII-era flashback scenes. In non-animated form, all of this would have all been very, very expensive, especially for a mid-level Fox show.
posted by box at 7:40 AM on July 9, 2020 [5 favorites]

Even staying at home think of all the house interiors and exteriors. I think we see the inside and outside of all the major characters homes, Lou Ann's trailer, The Khans, and some minor characters like Redcorn and Buckland. Most of them front and back. The Hill's have several environmental disasters strike their lawn which means single episode landscaping. Most of the residences we see multiple rooms within. We know what all three bedrooms in the Hank's place look like, the kitchen/dining room, and bathroom.

We see Hank's work place inside, his bosses office, and exterior front and back. We see Peggy at work at the school in multiple locations. We see Bobby at school in classes, at the gym, in the office and in the principle's office.

They have shots of multiple vehicles including interiors while driving.

The show visits multiple playgrounds, several different wilderness areas, other local businesses like the bait shop, car dealer, Mega Mart all inside and out. The VFW inside and out.

Looking at pictures on IMDB there are scenes in multiple restaurants, a book store, a theatre, multiple doctor's offices, generic offices, Dale's bunker, outdoor stadium, roller rink, random alleys, fitness centre, multiple churches, multiple veterinarians, multiple private garages, shots in a fishing boat, cosmetician school, Airport in and out, Pharmacy, renaissance fair, video store, shooting range, football stadiums, locker rooms, pool hall, caves, state fair, motels, and music store (more but I got bored looking).

That would have been pretty unusual for a sitcom at the time. You see more variety now due to CGI.
posted by Mitheral at 9:02 AM on July 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

Yeah, I used to wonder why it would even need to be animated, but the previously is when I started to appreciate it may help it be more accurate.

If you were shooting live action, you'd need to work out the logistics of how to get every possible location, but in animation you just have to draw it. Like, if they want a scene to take place in a massive grocery store, they can do that, where a lot of live-action sitcoms would have to set it in a little corner grocery store but it might feel less accurate to where these characters would be shopping. Things like that.
posted by RobotHero at 10:22 AM on July 9, 2020

KOTH would have lost a lot of charm if it hadn't been animated. Think of all the places KOTH (13 seasons) went, versus how few places Friends (10 seasons) went.

Mitheral's list of locations gives me all the feels, but I wanted to give a special shout out to Clarissa's Closet, the shoe stores for drag queens. In particular with its contrast to Peggy's usual store, Lubbocks Very Big Shoes ("Fashions For the Large-Footed Lady").

I also always appreciate the beautiful artwork. A lot of the backgrounds feature gorgeous, and delightfully understated, watercolor work. It gives the show a particular quality that makes it very "itself."
posted by ErikaB at 12:09 PM on July 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

I only watched smatterings of the first season of KotH, but I didn't get the impression that there were a lot of wacky locations and situations that necessitated animation at first. Maybe I just caught the wrong episodes, but the impression I got isn't so much "they chose to animate this because locations and such would be too expensive in real life" but more "they chose to animate because an animator came up with the show, but as it went on they started to take advantage of the freedom that animation provided."

Which, you know, ultimately circles back to the original statement, "I never see the point in animating things like this that just depict everyday realism. " I think a lot of people (including myself) are focusing on whether KotH was animated because it had to be animated to do what it did, but the comment isn't actually about the reason for animating it, but whether or not the show did things that would have been difficult if it were not animated. It doesn't matter if animation was the cause of the desire to use extensive characters, locations, etc., or if it was the result of that desire, given that ultimately the animation was used in that way.
posted by Bugbread at 5:20 PM on July 9, 2020

As is so often the case the answer to Why did they? is money. The point was it was cheap. Sure Judge was an animator but Fox maybe wouldn't have approved a live action version of KotH. The fact that it was cheap had to have been a plus in it's favour.

See also The Clone Wars, Clerks the series, and The Animatrix.
posted by Mitheral at 5:28 PM on July 9, 2020

Sure. The question, of course, is who we are talking about when we say "they."

Maybe "they" (Mike Judge) animated it because that's his deal.

Perhaps "they" (person X in the TV network) wanted it animated because they were personally a big fan of Beavis & Butthead (and their viewership ratings).

Then perhaps "they" (person Y in the TV network) wanted it animated because it would be cheaper than live casting and location work.

There are a bunch of possible "theys," and they could all have wildly different reasons. That's why I don't think the reason part is really that important. The contention was that KotH had the expressive potential of animation but didn't use it, so the use of animation was pointless. People are pointing out that while they may not have used it to do stuff like this, ultimately there were various budgetary benefits, so it wasn't actually pointless.
posted by Bugbread at 5:42 PM on July 9, 2020