"I find it very hard to sit down and create an idea or especially a new character on command. Usually my characters evolve by accident out of some story context"
About this Quote
Creativity, in John Kricfalusi's telling, isn’t a faucet you turn on for a deadline; it’s a weird creature that crawls out of the plumbing when you’re busy doing something else. That posture is more than an artist’s complaint about “the muse.” It’s a quiet defense of process in an industry that treats imagination like a vending machine: insert time, receive novelty.
The key move is how he demotes the “idea” and elevates “story context.” He’s implying that character isn’t a standalone invention - not a silhouette, catchphrase, or marketable quirk - but an emergent property of situation. The subtext is almost anti-brand: if you can “create a new character on command,” you’re probably designing a product, not discovering a personality. Kricfalusi’s work (and the broader animation ecosystem he came up in) thrives on elastic, hyper-expressive behavior; the characters feel alive because they’re allowed to surprise even their maker.
“Evolve by accident” sounds casual, but it’s also strategic. Accident here means permission to iterate, to follow the joke, the gesture, the grotesque detail that appears mid-scene and suddenly has a pulse. He’s smuggling in a critique of creative management: committees love pitches, but pitches flatten the messy chain of cause-and-effect that produces something actually funny, unsettling, or new. The intent is to reframe authorship from control to cultivation - less architect, more lab tech watching something mutate.
The key move is how he demotes the “idea” and elevates “story context.” He’s implying that character isn’t a standalone invention - not a silhouette, catchphrase, or marketable quirk - but an emergent property of situation. The subtext is almost anti-brand: if you can “create a new character on command,” you’re probably designing a product, not discovering a personality. Kricfalusi’s work (and the broader animation ecosystem he came up in) thrives on elastic, hyper-expressive behavior; the characters feel alive because they’re allowed to surprise even their maker.
“Evolve by accident” sounds casual, but it’s also strategic. Accident here means permission to iterate, to follow the joke, the gesture, the grotesque detail that appears mid-scene and suddenly has a pulse. He’s smuggling in a critique of creative management: committees love pitches, but pitches flatten the messy chain of cause-and-effect that produces something actually funny, unsettling, or new. The intent is to reframe authorship from control to cultivation - less architect, more lab tech watching something mutate.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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