I want to live in Jefferton. Background art by Sebastian Caceres.
The first time I saw Tom Goes to the Mayor, the animation pissed me off. It seemed almost contemptious, like some asshole had graffiti’d my television. It’s as choppy as a slide show. There is no eye or mouth animation, let alone jointed arms and legs. I stopped watching in disgust.
But that was back when I had cable TV and depended on the networks to put something watchable on during those tube-dozing hours before I fell asleep. So a bit of insomnia would keep me up after John Stewart and find me reluctantly flipping over to Adult Swim to endure Tim and Eric’s pre-awesome show. I started to like it, and eventually watched every episode at least three times. Apparently, the show is the most controversial thing Adult Swim ever aired–people love it or hate it.
It’s easy to criticize the cheesy style, but it definitely contributes to the humor. Tim and Eric casted the show with talented actors and comedians, shot footage of them, picked key expressions and poses, and then used these shots like animated characters. They were working from great source material–people like Bob Odenkirk, Fred Willard, Brian Posehn, and Sarah Silverman. And choosing the most extreme frames of the footage made the characters extra ridiculous and surreal.
Comparing the processed stills approach to more traditional animation, you can see how it would be possible to accumulate a very large and varied library of expressions and poses with a relatively small amount of work. If you have one bucket of money to spend, and you can either have hand-drawn animation for 5 character expressions or cheapy photos for 50 character expressions, which is the right choice?
The static nature of the animation is cheated over by using a lot of cuts between views. This works pretty well, and it’s hard to be visually bored with so much going on. But the choppiness gives a feeling of roadsickness after a bit. Maybe it’s a good thing that the episodes are eleven minutes long rather than twenty-two!
There are quite a few full episodes of TGttM on Youtube. Have fun! Also, much thanks to Walker Evans for his tutorial on how to make your own TGttM character artwork.