Assignment 8: Fuzzwich Animation

I loved cartoons when I was a kid.  I didn't just enjoy them.  I didn't just like to watch them. I loved them! My parents couldn't pry me out of bed with a crow bar on school days but come Saturday I was up before sunrise.  I would be on the couch with a bowl of hyper sugared cereal on my lap before the Farm Report ended.

My childhood was filled with Manta and Moray, the Super Friends, Web Woman, Super Stretch and Micro Woman, the Mighty Orbots and Spiderman and His Amazing Friends.  (I think I just showed my age with those choices.) Sure there were other cartoons-Smurfs, Punky Brewster and the occasional Kid Video, but those were just the filler you settled for until something better came on.  I was pretty hardcore from an early age and saw through the networks’ clever ruse.  I knew if I waited through Pac Man and The Littles they would come off the good stuff-Dungeons and Dragons, Blackstar and Thundar the Barbarian.  Oh yeah, I was into the hard stuff and there was no going back.        

Soon Saturday morning wasn’t enough for me.  It started with a little Tom and Jerry after school, but then someone slipped a little Battle of the Planets (aka G Force, aka Science Ninja Team Gatachaman) into my afternoon lineup. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before.  It had complex storylines, real character development and semi-realistic violence. I was hooked instantly.  Before I knew what hit me I had become a sad little eight-year-old strung out on Manga.  But it didn’t stop there.  Long after my friends moved on to ‘more important things’ like puberty, hair ribbons and boyfriends I was at home catching episodes of The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, GI Joe, Silverhawks and Transformers.  I moved into drawing characters, comic books and even-gasp-fanfiction. I was the only teenage girl I knew that had a poster of the Thundercats on her wall.   Sure there were boys in my life, but if they couldn’t hold their own in a three hour conversation about the merits of Lion Force Voltron vs Vehicle Voltron then I didn’t need them.  (No actually, I didn’t date that much in high school.  Why do you ask?)

Then one day I ‘grew up.’  I’m not sure when it happened.  It was somewhere after my hardcore gamer days and my unlimited access to Manga phase (And by gamer I mean role playing games, not video games.  Remember, I’m old school.)  Somehow the thrill of animation was lost to me.  I got a ‘real job,’ paid my bills on time, had the house and the cars and the zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…………

Oh, sorry I dozed off for a decade.  Now that I am older and wiser it occurs to me that one can be an adult and enjoy animation.  I can just as easily apply for a job at Cartoon Network as I can an ad agency.  I can choose to continue my education in Orlando-home of Disney & Universal Studios or Boulder-home of a lot of hippies.  I was never able to develop my artistic talent, but I am a kick-ass writer and a creative force.  I think I’ll go polish up my resume now. 

Oh almost forget the critique.  Fuzzwich is a good basic program, but lacks choice.  I would rather create my own characters with Flash or Toon Boom.

PS

Zombies rule!