"Most cartoons are those colors. They have been for 35 years"
About this Quote
There’s a deadpan bite to John Kricfalusi’s line: a complaint disguised as a shrug. “Most cartoons are those colors” isn’t a neutral observation so much as a verdict on visual complacency. The follow-up - “They have been for 35 years” - turns it into an accusation with a timestamp, implying an industry stuck in a loop, recycling the same palette until it becomes invisible.
Kricfalusi comes out of a tradition that treats color as attitude, not decoration. In TV animation, “those colors” often means the standardized, broadcast-safe brights: candy primaries designed to pop on cheap screens, reproduce consistently, and keep characters on-model across outsourced pipelines. The subtext is economic as much as aesthetic: sameness is a production strategy. When budgets shrink and schedules tighten, experimentation is the first thing cut, and color becomes a preset rather than a choice.
The sentence also reads like a provocation aimed at taste-makers and younger animators. It’s not nostalgia for a golden age; it’s a dare to notice what you’ve stopped noticing. Kricfalusi’s own work built a brand on violating the house style - sickly pastels, abrasive contrasts, painterly grime - using color to make comedy feel slightly dangerous and bodily. His impatience here is with an entire medium’s tendency to sand off its weirdness for the sake of consistency.
The real sting: if “those colors” have dominated for 35 years, then “cartoon” stops meaning a form and starts meaning a look. And that’s the kind of creative narrowing he’s allergic to.
Kricfalusi comes out of a tradition that treats color as attitude, not decoration. In TV animation, “those colors” often means the standardized, broadcast-safe brights: candy primaries designed to pop on cheap screens, reproduce consistently, and keep characters on-model across outsourced pipelines. The subtext is economic as much as aesthetic: sameness is a production strategy. When budgets shrink and schedules tighten, experimentation is the first thing cut, and color becomes a preset rather than a choice.
The sentence also reads like a provocation aimed at taste-makers and younger animators. It’s not nostalgia for a golden age; it’s a dare to notice what you’ve stopped noticing. Kricfalusi’s own work built a brand on violating the house style - sickly pastels, abrasive contrasts, painterly grime - using color to make comedy feel slightly dangerous and bodily. His impatience here is with an entire medium’s tendency to sand off its weirdness for the sake of consistency.
The real sting: if “those colors” have dominated for 35 years, then “cartoon” stops meaning a form and starts meaning a look. And that’s the kind of creative narrowing he’s allergic to.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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