After a long day of proving to Stimpy that life is full of misery, Stimpy has had enough of reality. Ren is on him like a blood-starved leech.Stimpy steels himself to talk back to the bug-eyed polyp that is Ren.
"Ok, maybe life DOES suck outside the window, but at least here on my TVland box everything is happy! I'm gonna sit down and watch my favorite program, Floyd of Mayberry!"

Stimpy plops himself down in front of his happy box to watch his show. Every time Floyd mumbles anything or snips another lock of Andy's hair, he giggles and guffaws, rocking back and forth holding his tickly toes. Floyd makes him forget the ugly realities of life. The joy of Floyd wipes his befouled brain clean.Ren waits for the program to end, so he can torment his best friend again. "You believe all that crap, Steempy? Dere's no place like Mayberry. Dat's all seely make-believe poopoo stuffs!"
During the commercial, Ren tries to lecture Stimpy and points his finger at him. Stimpy eats.
CRUNCH!!! "Take that, Ren! How do you like when life sucks?"
After the show is finished, Stimpy turns off the set and wipes his teary eyes from laughing so hard. He gets up and tells Ren, "I don't care if some of life does suck! At least the world has Floyd!!"

Ren approaches Stimpy slowly, with pity in his eyes. He grasps a couple fist fulls of cat fur and leans towards him...

Stimpy clutches his one rapidly pulsing nerve ending.
"No! No! No! You're lying! Liar Liar!!" says Stimpy! Ren tells him. "Eediot! Dun't you know what reruns are??! Dees show is from 1962!""Face up to eet Stimpy....Heeeee's........

I'm curious but does anyone do pure cartoon gags anymore? Mighty B maybe?
I know there are still a couple cartoony designed shows, but are they allowed to do some ridiculous impossible stuff just for visual fun?
This is a scene drawn by me and Nick Cross for Life Sucks.
It's from the beginning of the cartoon. Stimpy is in his garden enjoying the beauty of nature and life forms, when Ren wakes up with a hangover and comes over to see what kind of idiocy he is up to.
I can't remember exactly why Stimpy blows his nose up here- maybe it's just a sign of extreme happiness.
Anyway, I like when cartoons are cartoons. Almost all early cartoons did this sort of thing as a matter of course. Why? Because you could. What other reason is needed?
Disney and later generations of animators frowned on this type of cartoon silliness for silliness sake, as if it was beneath them to use the medium in a way that no other medium could imitate.
Personally, I have never been able to follow this logic. My favorite cartoons are probably from the mid 1940s - but even then, outside of Clampett and Avery, most animated cartoons had abandoned pure visual nuttiness.
The 20s and early 30s cartoons might be cruder in execution than the 1940s, but they are full of pure cartoon gags and that makes them rare treasures.It gives them an appeal that you can't get anywhere else. They celebrate the fact that they are cartoons and anything is possible. They took advantage of the creativity of the cartoonists themselves, instead of squashing their natural instincts as has become standard practice.
I wish that there could be cartoons that retain the best elements of all the eras, rather than constantly abandoning good traditions just because something legitimately new or merely trendy has come about. Why not do everything that's fun if you can?

What do directors do in cartoons, again?
Well, one thing they do is draw energy sketches for the artists they hand out scenes to. That's how we get some of our own style into the pictures.
These are some "energy sketches" - coined by Milt Gray for the kind of quick sketches directors give to their artists. These are from a sequence of Life Sucks called "Ren Cuts Stimpy". Ren is trying to make Stimpy realize that life is full of ugly, not happy, so he keeps flinging hurt words from his evil sharp lips at him. Each time he tosses a word like "famine" or "genocide" at Stimpy, it slices a little piece of blessed innocence out of him.



The better the artist I'm handing out to, the rougher my sketches can be. Below is a Nick Cross drawing more finished after he and I would talk out a scene and each do rough energy sketches. Then he would take them and do tighter versions like this.
I'm gonna put up more of Nick's drawing from this sequence later.

This is the section as written in the premise from "Life Sucks":
Later at home, Stimpy prays to Cat Jesus (a cat crucifix on the bedroom wall). “Dear Cat Jesus, I don’t understand. I thought all the life you created was happy and wonderful, but underneath it all, there’s nothing but pain and suffering!” Cat Jesus speaks: “Well, at least I don’t feel any of it!”

Stimpy mopes around the house, depressed. Ren follows him, talking about history and war, pestilence, famine, genocide and disease. Stimpy refuses to listen any more. He shoves Ren aside and plops down in front of the TV to watch his favorite show: Andy Griffith. He whistles the theme song and starts to cheer up. He especially loves Floyd the Barber and rocks back and forth with glee during all the Floyd scenes.


Stimpy gets Ren back by telling him what his favorite cartoon is, and the word slices his nipple in 2. The detail at the right is where I try to figure out how to draw a convincing nipple split.

You won't find "energy sketches" in the Filmation work flow chart.