The artwork that I’ve created for my SMP is titled “Gipetto”, and it is a 30-minute animated cartoon featuring anthromorphic characters and the topsy-turvy world that they inhabit. Four high school friends show up at a diner after attending a house party. They begin to recount their night via a series of flashbacks. Then, unbeknownst to the kids, two of their high school teachers walk into the same diner after having a story-worthy night themselves. They, too, retell their tale through flashbacks. The two stories end up converging at the end of the episode.

My friends and I came up with the idea for “Gipetto” in high school. It was originally based around a neutral character named Gipetto, who acts as a fly-on-the-wall to the world of idiots that surrounds him. He and his friends’ exploits are based on experiences that my friends and I have had and people who we’ve known in real life, as well as experiences and characters forged in our imaginations. These inspirations can be retold most accurately using the humor device of stereotypes. We knew the certain type of people who we were trying to characterize, and the form of the cartoon afforded us the license to make those characters even funnier and more exaggerated. In fact, we went as far as to make them animals.

The type of stereotypes and content that we were aiming for are best portrayed through the use of dry and vulgar humor. This fit the style of animation that I was working with- Flash animation, which is a low-budget software program used to make shows like South Park. Consequently, not only were the stereotypes made more digestible through the animation, but the type of humor was as well.

My main goal in this project is to make people laugh. We took into account our intended audience, the format and setting of the story, and the aesthetic nature when writing the script. I understand that many of these choices may alienate some potential viewers. Some of the audience might even be offended at first. To them I would say this: the characters in the show are animals. I used animals on purpose to be stand-ins for the human deficiencies that are trumpeted in the raunchy humor. Not only am I poking fun at specific stereotypes and situations with which I am familiar, but I am also poking fun at stereotyping and cartoons in general. Again, the low-budget animation at my disposal came in handy when dealing with this objective. Had the quality of animation been more advanced, the level of humor would have needed to follow suit. However, the nonexistent budget ended up working in my favor when making the art, because I wasn’t able to rely on technology to do the work for me. I had to rely on my own artistic abilities and imagination, and I think that made for a better product. 

This project also benefited from a massive amount of collaboration. I did many phases of the project- conceptualizing, writing, audio, and music- with the help of multiple people. The only parts that I completed entirely on my own were the two most time-consuming: drawing and animating, and video editing.