Smiling Friends - did u smile

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did u smile

  • yes

    Votes: 1,793 93.3%

  • no

    Votes: 218 11.3%
  • Total voters
    1,922
Story editor and NG/OP alumni Hans Van Harken had a Q&A session with Cartoon Base.


CB: What is your role on Smiling Friends?

Hans Van Harken: Roles are season 1 Staff Writer season 2-3 Story Editor. At the earliest story and concept phase zach and michael have tons of ideas per episode and i help find the story’s beats to learn what it needs and what it doesn’t and help solve structure and flow problems. I was especially involved in season 1 when we were figuring out how this show was gonna work. each season was less puzzling as these characters took a life of their own. The only gag i can remember directly coming up with off the top of my head was in season 1 where the witch steals Charlie’s hat, does the whitch-hand riddle, and blows the Brazilian zombie powder in their faces. but even that I just came up with impulsively to solve bridging one scene into another.

-Question 2
CB: What do you find the most difficult when making an episode and how much time is required to make one?

Hans Van Harken: Keeping track of the character names. Hypothetical Example: squiblybibbly shakes gwombo violently fast in two key frames. shmorzu watches in stunned shock, mouth agape (realistically). squiblybibbly releases gwombo. gwombo pukes (rotoscoped) like the parking lot vomit guy gif

.- Question 3
CB: Are there any notable scrapped/deleted characters or moments?

Hans Van Harken: The Jimmy Fallon scene i voiced was a last minute change. originally it was gonna be mr frog on the joe rogan podcast but zach urgently called me and said “can you do that impression you do at the bar of jimmy cackling and slapping the table?” so i plugged in my cool microphone and did it.

- Question 4
CB: What was your reaction seeing the announcement that Smiling Friends has been renewed for Seasons 4 and 5.

Hans Van Harken: season 1: can we follow up the pilot?season 2: how do we make this not too different or too samey?season 3: this can go anywhere nowseason 4-5: TWO more?!

- Question 5

CB: Are you confident you and the team have the ideas to make the next two seasons just as special as the first three?

Hans Van Harken: Since we were teenagers zach and i talked about closure in shows, like really paying attention to its pulse and ending it appropriately if we ever got one. (now he does!). we think about resolution and stories feeling like complete packages. each season’s last episode is a good hypothetical last episode for example, if for whatever reason the show got canceled. you dont want to leave an audience feeling empty. don’t chefs see jail time for serving undercooked chicken? I dunno, but that feels like a crime. Anyways, my point is, if zach and michael think they got two more seasons worth in them, i believe them.

- Question 6

CB: What crossover would you like to do if budget and effort weren't in the question?

Hans Van Harken: That’s a zach and michael choice, but hypothetical? could they make bojack smile? Or would that just stress him out more by simply entering their universe.

- Question 7

CB: Any existing project or IP you'd like to create/work on?

Hans Van Harken: A Madness Combat action movie based on the Newgrounds series made by Krinkels. I at least got to be in charge of creating a live action trailer for its Steam game! you can watch it on my Skel Studio YouTube channel. A treatment for that movie has been ready for a while.

- Question 8

CB: Out of the Season 3 episodes that are yet to release which one is your favorite?

Hans Van Harken: it’s hard to pick a favorite, but I’m very excited to see what people think of the final one.

- Question 9

CB. Describe the season finale using 3 emojis.

Hans Van Harken:
🤐
🤐
🤐


- Question 10

CB: Any info you can add that will hype the fans?

Hans Van Harken: Zach fans should know, he and I are gonna write scripts for movie ideas we been tinkering with for a while. He’s wonderful to explore new frontiers with, he’s a truly special and long lasting friend. 15 years now.

- Bonus Question

CB: What’s your favorite Smiling Friends character?

Hans Van Harken: Favorite smiling friends character is hard to say, but there’s something special to me about mr frog. i remember when zach and michael first pitched the idea to me on a bar napkin almost 8 years ago i think.

He also answered fan questions in this thread and the quoted thread:

Haven't really dug through the answers so don't know any interesting ones so far. I guess this confirmation that the Brazil episode was a special and not part of the original Season 1 production.

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Brenda Holiday said:
Writers don't know how to write women in these types of shows. They always end up being the voice of reason which doesn't work and makes them the annoying know it all nag that ruins the fun. You have to make the woman flawed and writers seem to not know how to do that. Sweet Dee is a good example of a well written female character, because she's just as flawed as all the male characters and makes stupid decisions.
All of this is irrelevant anyways because the show doesn't need a forced character.
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Christopher Hitchens once famously said something to the effect of: "Women aren't funny, and when they are funny it's because they're acting like men."

He was definitely trolling a bit there, but there's some truth to that. Sweet Dee more or less just acts like one of the boys with a vagina. Same for Edi Patterson in Vice Principals/Righteous Gemstones. They can either go that route or do a psychotic unrequited love bit like Kristen Schaal in Flight of the Chonchords.

Probably some others I'm not thinking of, but there are just fewer funny female archetypes to do comedy with I guess. More often they're an accessory to a funny man. Probably some reason for that originating in differences between the sexes, but that's a tangent.

Faestus said:
This season was kinda meh. E1 was kind of good, the rest was meh or lackluster.
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I think its the best one so far.
 
sneedem&feedem said:
CB: Any existing project or IP you'd like to create/work on?

Hans Van Harken: A Madness Combat action movie based on the Newgrounds series made by Krinkels. I at least got to be in charge of creating a live action trailer for its Steam game! you can watch it on my Skel Studio YouTube channel. A treatment for that movie has been ready for a while.
Click to expand...
So fucking based
 
Okay so I have an idea for a girl character for Smiling Friends. Her name is Janice and she appears in exactly two episodes, but the first time she's just a six second background gag character, then the next time she has a scene where she's sad because the news station hasn't had bad news for a week but then a Pim accidentally commits a felony with a truck or something and she smiles, but then the felony's collateral damage kills her and she looks like this

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Djinni Djohn said:
Okay so I have an idea for a girl character for Smiling Friends. Her name is Janice and she appears in exactly two episodes, but the first time she's just a six second background gag character, then the next time she has a scene where she's sad because the news station hasn't had bad news for a week but then a Pim accidentally commits a felony with a truck or something and she smiles, but then the felony's collateral damage kills her and she looks like this

View attachment 8178701
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I actually like that idea. A character sad because everyone else is too happy would be a good premise.
 
Man, I love the different animations styles they use in every episode. Between Squim and Charlie’s hallucinations, it was some great animation.
 
The newest episode was my favourite of the season so far, I love the little details like charlie's phone background being a mr frog trump assassination parody, the little easter eggs really do elevate the comedy.

I love zach's voice it's iconic but does he really need to voice every other character? In a podcast a while back zach and michael explained that they couldn't get chris chan on the show due to budget restrictions regarding va's so maybe that has something to do with it. In any case I'd rather the money go towards the animation and all the guest studios they get to do one off characters like squim or mother nature in the last episode.
 
SteelPlatedHeart said:
Man, I love the different animations styles they use in every episode. Between Squim and Charlie’s hallucinations, it was some great animation.
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I think because the main style is basic they get to really flex the art direction this season. I'm almost positive that they were using cel animation for Squim.
 
The Blue Morpho said:
Christopher Hitchens once famously said something to the effect of: "Women aren't funny, and when they are funny it's because they're acting like men."

He was definitely trolling a bit there, but there's some truth to that. Sweet Dee more or less just acts like one of the boys with a vagina. Same for Edi Patterson in Vice Principals/Righteous Gemstones. They can either go that route or do a psychotic unrequited love bit like Kristen Schaal in Flight of the Chonchords.

Probably some others I'm not thinking of, but there are just fewer funny female archetypes to do comedy with I guess. More often they're an accessory to a funny man. Probably some reason for that originating in differences between the sexes, but that's a tangent.


I think its the best one so far.
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The ultimate quote about writing women:
Not only funny because true (for the majority) but absolutely pisses off people.
 
Honestly, I thought this season was the worst one so far, but now I realize it's because I wasn't POSITIVE enough. So far the best episode of S3 and the post-credits scene was also well executed.
 
At this point I'm almost sure "what the devil are you doing on that confounded computer tablet device" was an actual line from a Simpsons episode.
 
I can't believe I saw a bifurcated gunt on Smiling Friends. Overall the episode was good; they nailed that feeling of coming down with something real bad but being forced to live within a society. I half-expected Squim's whole deal to be drug related or on the verge of a crash-out, but I think they one-upped it with the police standoff. Bonus points for the fact that Squim shows clear signs of brain damage at the hospital with half his face sagging and sounding like Fetterman after his first big stroke. Pretty damn good, my only complaint is that I wish there was more of that game Charlie was playing, if only because I'm an autist that enjoys them types of games.
 
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I think that topped the Halloween episode for my favourite so far this season. Squim's animation was incredible, and even though I knew he was gonna get brutally shot to death by the police and it still made me laugh. Also menacingly placing your army right outside someone's base in an RTS game and telling them "don't worry about it" before performing the elaborate "attack move murder blob" manoeuvre is literally something I've done to my friends before.
 
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