Artcow Michael John Kricfalusi / John Kricfalusi / John K. / John K. Stuff / Raymond Spum - scammer animator who pissed away his own career, salty blogger, CONFIRMED predator and child rapist

Tragi-Chan said:
25 years ago, he was the Great White Hope for animation. Now there are amateur hobbyists turning out John K-tier animation in their spare time. So what is he? Some creepy pedo who takes the best part of a decade to turn out a 5-minute, dated, mediocre cartoon.
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I wouldn't have used that exact analogy, but that's kind of what people were saying about John K. in the 90s. He was the guy who was going to make animation great again. He was going to bring funny cartoons back.

In a way, you could say he did, but that was due to the work of everybody else who worked on the show. They all went on to other shows that changed animation as well, and brought the skills they developed to those shows. But, needless to say, they went out and started something. John barely did anything during the 90s and the animation world eventually left him behind.
 
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Tragi-Chan said:
25 years ago, he was the Great White Hope for animation. Now there are amateur hobbyists turning out John K-tier animation in their spare time. So what is he? Some creepy pedo who takes the best part of a decade to turn out a 5-minute, dated, mediocre cartoon.
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Steamboat_Bill said:
In a way, you could say he did, but that was due to the work of everybody else who worked on the show. They all went on to other shows that changed animation as well, and brought the skills they developed to those shows. But, needless to say, they went out and started something. John barely did anything during the 90s and the animation world eventually left him behind.
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What's funny is that there is at least a little bit of evidence that John K was a big inspiration for a few animators. Look at the way Spongebob turned out after Stephen Hillenburg left, its animation style and sense of humor started to change pretty dramatically as seasons went by.

If he wanted to try and actually, seriously dedicate himself to a project and make it decent enough to sit through, he would still have a shot at being succcessful again.

But we know he won't actually put his big boy pants back on, otherwise we wouldn't be here.
 
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Steamboat_Bill said:
I can tell you that Genndy Tartakovsky and Craig McCracken were both big fans of Ren and Stimpy and it was a big influence on their work.

But when you see Ren and Stimpy's influence somewhere, look at the credits and chances are there's someone who once worked on R&S providing it.
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I wonder if Craig's wife knew about John K or was out of the dark like the rest of us?

Gotta be painful for both the creators of Dexter's Lab and Powerpuff Girls to be cringing right now.
 
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LMR365 said:
I wonder if Craig's wife knew about John K or was out of the dark like the rest of us?

Gotta be painful for both the creators of Dexter's Lab and Powerpuff Girls to be cringing right now.
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I assume everybody knew. There were a lot of R&S veterans on their shows, and I doubt none of them let them in on the truth.
 
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Steamboat_Bill said:
I assume everybody knew. There were a lot of R&S veterans on their shows, and I doubt none of them let them in on the truth.
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Yeah. It's like that one cool uncle you know until you find out he sent a jimmy to underage sally and everyone ran like the purge. So many heroes of animation are probably burning their copies of Ren & Stimpy right now. I know one ex fan when she found out about John K's kiddy porn? She put her fanart drawing of herself drawn by John K in the paper shredder. Do you have the video of that from Twitter?
 
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This guy raised a pretty big skeleton army in his closet. This is some skill, considering he wasn't doing any big work in the last 20 years.

I remember reading his blog a long time ago. He was complaining how nobody but him can make cartoons, yet. his style was anything but appealing.

I like he low key blamed thr industry for him not being able to work... Klasky Csupo and their super weird style got work, but not you John K because you were a pain to work with. And this was even before people openly knew you were a creep and a scammer.

This guy...
 
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The Big Vivs said:
What's funny is that there is at least a little bit of evidence that John K was a big inspiration for a few animators. Look at the way Spongebob turned out after Stephen Hillenburg left, its animation style and sense of humor started to change pretty dramatically as seasons went by.
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That, I still wholly believe was due to the changing in garb from Hillenburg to Vincent Waller as showrunner/creative director/most of the creative positions on the show, albeit that explanation is very oversimplified given animation is a collaborative process.
Though they don't have the creative director position anymore, due to the fact that there are two showruners by that point (Paul Tibbit and Vincent Waller, and for a brief time Stephen Hillenburg before his passing), there was still this weird amalgamation of the creative team of Seasons 1-3 and newer writers during Season 4's production that warranted, nay required, them to still use these older postions, despite the fact that the show had lost its showrunner, and that they basically had less than a years' time when they were brought back to figure out who was doing what. Like trying to fit a circular peg into a square hole.

However once Waller got promoted into those positions in Season 5, that was when the gigantic shift into R&S-style humor happened, not helped by the fact many other people whom worked on APC went to work on SpongeBob during its later seasons - and that up until that point, APC was the last big project Waller had worked on. Waller did slowly improve over time, and he does seem like a nice guy on his Twitter, but that transition was ugly. Admittedly ever since they brought some of the old writers/creative staff such as Kaz, Sherm Cohen, and the like back, the episodes have shown improvement in quality. But by that same token, Vincent's been reintroducing some old APC/Season 5-8 of SpongeBob staff like Luke Brookshier back after Stephen's death, and more and more the episodes are starting to show this.
That said, Nickelodeon's always been so super secretive about the productions of their shows, a lot of this you just sorta have to feel out, going by staff credits and past productions some of the staff have worked on in order to piece this shit together. The only exception to that was with Ren & Stimpy with Spumco/John K. and we all know by now how that turned out.
 
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OmnipotentStupidity said:
That, I still wholly believe was due to the changing in garb from Hillenburg to Vincent Waller as showrunner/creative director/most of the creative positions on the show, albeit that explanation is very oversimplified given animation is a collaborative process.
Though they don't have the creative director position anymore, due to the fact that there are two showruners by that point (Paul Tibbit and Vincent Waller, and for a brief time Stephen Hillenburg before his passing), there was still this weird amalgamation of the creative team of Seasons 1-3 and newer writers during Season 4's production that warranted, nay required, them to still use these older postions, despite the fact that the show had lost its showrunner, and that they basically had less than a years' time when they were brought back to figure out who was doing what. Like trying to fit a circular peg into a square hole.

However once Waller got promoted into those positions in Season 5, that was when the gigantic shift into R&S-style humor happened, not helped by the fact many other people whom worked on APC went to work on SpongeBob during its later seasons - and that up until that point, APC was the last big project Waller had worked on. Waller did slowly improve over time, and he does seem like a nice guy on his Twitter, but that transition was ugly. Admittedly ever since they brought some of the old writers/creative staff such as Kaz, Sherm Cohen, and the like back, the episodes have shown improvement in quality. But by that same token, Vincent's been reintroducing some old APC/Season 5-8 of SpongeBob staff like Luke Brookshier back after Stephen's death, and more and more the episodes are starting to show this.
That said, Nickelodeon's always been so super secretive about the productions of their shows, a lot of this you just sorta have to feel out, going by staff credits and past productions some of the staff have worked on in order to piece this shit together. The only exception to that was with Ren & Stimpy with Spumco/John K. and we all know by now how that turned out.
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Vincent Waller was a Ren and Stimpy veteran, yeah, and that's why it took on the R&S flavor, including having ex-R&S people on the show - by now, I think everyone on R&S has contributed to SpongeBob - but he was there in the first few seasons as well.

The explanation, perhaps, is that he hired old friends and colleagues of his to work on the show and they simply drew the way they always did.

(Incidentally, do keep in mind that the episodes take a while to make, so what's coming out lately was probably in production before Hillenburg died.)
 
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OmnipotentStupidity said:
That, I still wholly believe was due to the changing in garb from Hillenburg to Vincent Waller as showrunner/creative director/most of the creative positions on the show, albeit that explanation is very oversimplified given animation is a collaborative process.
Though they don't have the creative director position anymore, due to the fact that there are two showruners by that point (Paul Tibbit and Vincent Waller, and for a brief time Stephen Hillenburg before his passing), there was still this weird amalgamation of the creative team of Seasons 1-3 and newer writers during Season 4's production that warranted, nay required, them to still use these older postions, despite the fact that the show had lost its showrunner, and that they basically had less than a years' time when they were brought back to figure out who was doing what. Like trying to fit a circular peg into a square hole.

However once Waller got promoted into those positions in Season 5, that was when the gigantic shift into R&S-style humor happened, not helped by the fact many other people whom worked on APC went to work on SpongeBob during its later seasons - and that up until that point, APC was the last big project Waller had worked on. Waller did slowly improve over time, and he does seem like a nice guy on his Twitter, but that transition was ugly. Admittedly ever since they brought some of the old writers/creative staff such as Kaz, Sherm Cohen, and the like back, the episodes have shown improvement in quality. But by that same token, Vincent's been reintroducing some old APC/Season 5-8 of SpongeBob staff like Luke Brookshier back after Stephen's death, and more and more the episodes are starting to show this.
That said, Nickelodeon's always been so super secretive about the productions of their shows, a lot of this you just sorta have to feel out, going by staff credits and past productions some of the staff have worked on in order to piece this shit together. The only exception to that was with Ren & Stimpy with Spumco/John K. and we all know by now how that turned out.
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Yeah, although I feel that the style would be a lot better now that they’ve taken time to breath and revitalize. Keep in mind that Nick’s deadlines for episodes were extremely strict in the season 5-8 period which I’d imagine would cause writer’s fatigue after awhile. I also don’t think that Tibit was a very strong leader starting out, perhaps the original creative director would’ve been better. The second movie was most definitely a Godsend for them because it gave them a chance to breathe, and I think they’ll chug on fine in the future, in spite of the more R&S styling. At the very least to our knowledge Waller, Tibit, and the new guys aren’t raping pre-teens, although with Johnny K and Dave “Hold Her Tighter She’s a Fighter” Schneider being at Nick who the hell knows.
 
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Steamboat_Bill said:
Vincent Waller was a Ren and Stimpy veteran, yeah, and that's why it took on the R&S flavor, including having ex-R&S people on the show - by now, I think everyone on R&S has contributed to SpongeBob - but he was there in the first few seasons as well.
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Right he did work on earlier seasons, but he didn't have too much of a creative influence on the show pre-Season 5. Up until Season 4, the highest poition he held up until that point was when he got promoted to be a technical producer. Incidentally, Season 4 was the sole time he ever held that title until his promotion to creative director when he replaced Derek Drymon.
IMac2000 said:
Yeah, although I feel that the style would be a lot better now that they’ve taken time to breath and revitalize. Keep in mind that Nick’s deadlines for episodes were extremely strict in the season 5-8 period which I’d imagine would cause writer’s fatigue after awhile. I also don’t think that Tibit was a very strong leader starting out, perhaps the original creative director would’ve been better. The second movie was most definitely a Godsend for them because it gave them a chance to breathe, and I think they’ll chug on fine in the future, in spite of the more R&S styling. At the very least to our knowledge Waller, Tibit, and the new guys aren’t raping pre-teens, although with Johnny K and Dave “Hold Her Tighter She’s a Fighter” Schneider being at Nick who the hell knows.
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I imagine that was because they probably sat down the team and told them essentially: "We know what happened with R&S, and that that was mostly John's fault, but we just want to make sure we don't make the same mistake here, especially now that SpongeBob's our biggest brand. So stick to the schedule, or it's your collective heads".

EDIT: Again all of this is massive speculation on my part.
 
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IMac2000 said:
Yeah, although I feel that the style would be a lot better now that they’ve taken time to breath and revitalize. Keep in mind that Nick’s deadlines for episodes were extremely strict in the season 5-8 period which I’d imagine would cause writer’s fatigue after awhile. I also don’t think that Tibit was a very strong leader starting out, perhaps the original creative director would’ve been better. The second movie was most definitely a Godsend for them because it gave them a chance to breathe, and I think they’ll chug on fine in the future, in spite of the more R&S styling. At the very least to our knowledge Waller, Tibit, and the new guys aren’t raping pre-teens, although with Johnny K and Dave “Hold Her Tighter She’s a Fighter” Schneider being at Nick who the hell knows.
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I can tell you they aren't. Far as I know, they're all pretty much normal.

OmnipotentStupidity said:
I imagine that was because they probably sat down the team and told them essentially: "We know what happened with R&S, and that that was mostly John's fault, but we just want to make sure we don't make the same mistake here, especially now that SpongeBob's our biggest brand. So stick the schedule, or it's your collective heads".
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Nick hasn't had another incident like the one it had with John K. since he got fired, but then, Nick is infinitely more savvy about how to make animation than it was in 1991.
 
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