South Park First Episode

South Park, the third longest running animated television program will be entering its 19th season this fall. The show has come a long way with it's animation and graphics. Interestingly, the first episode entitled, "Cartman Gets An Anal Probe", was created using stop motion cut out animation. The budget Trey Parker and Matt Stone (the creators) were given was $300,000 and it was an incredibly labor intensive process. In fact, the first episode took roughly 3 months to make, where as episodes of today are made in less than a week. It's amazing to see how far this show has come in regards to animation. Technology continues to allow us to push our ideas even further, and South Park continues to take advantage of it.

Below is a short clip from the first episode.

South Park - From Construction Paper to The Emmys

Ever since I was young I remember watching South Park with my big brother.  We would laugh until our sides hurt over the quick, witty lines mixed in throughout the toilet humor.  But the thing that stands out to me looking back over the years is the evolution of the animation involved in South Park.  The creators of the animated series, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, started with pieces of construction paper cut out to look like the characters they had in their heads.  One of the first episodes, entitled "The Spirit Of Christmas (Jesus vs. Santa)", never actually hit the airwaves.  It was actually just a short film that Trey and Matt made together.  Here is 5 minutes of that video.

From there, South Park changed drastically - using state-of-the-art animation software and having a team of writers work on episodes nearly 24/7 until they are complete.  Today, South Park is one of the only shows in existence to write, animate, and air an episode within a week.  The team doesn't start writing until the last episode they created has aired, then they sit and brainstorm ideas for episodes until something comes to fruition.  From there, it is a scramble to animate the episode and finalize changes with the network until the air time - which is only 7 days from when they started the writing process.  Here is a short example of a modern episode.

So as you can see, the animation is far superior now to what it used to be.  The team of animators on the show keeps all of the character object files so they can be quickly added to episodes for editing.  I think this show, despite the style of humor, is one of the most sophisticated animated tv series today.

The Art of South Park

Despite your opinion on the writing and overall content of Comedy Central's longstanding comedy South Park, you have to admit that it looks unlike anything else on television. Inspired by the paper cut-outs that Terry Gilliam made for Monty Python's Flying Circus, the creators of South Park - Trey Parker and Matt Stone - have made a show so distinct that almost anyone can identify it from the animation style alone.

Personally, I had no idea how the show was made. Part of me (not a smart part, I'll admit) still thought that the animation was stop motion, and actually used paper cutouts for each week's episode. Having come to appreciate how long it takes to film something using stop motion, however, I now realize that it's impossible to shoot a full, 22 minute episode in the span of six days. Again, I'm not proud that it took me so long to figure this out.

After the first episode was done entirely using stop motion, the creators switched over to a program called PowerAnimator. After the original cardboard cutouts were scanned and imported, they were animated using a mix of PowerAnimator and SGI workstations. Starting with season 5, the animators actually starting using Maya in lieu of the somewhat outdated PowerAnimator, and they continue to use it to this day. Even though the technology - and, consequently, the animation - has improved from the first few years, they utilize multiple techniques to keep the show looking the like the cheap cutout version that it used to be.

Yes, it's raunchy and super controversial, but you have to praise Stone and Parker for their ability to put together a cohesive, well-animated, and often hilarious show in six days or less. It's amazing to think that we're using the same programs that a professional studio is using to produce TV shows, and it really makes me want to create something cool.

Meet some friends of mine

One of my favorite animated shows of all time is South Park. I mean, who doesn't love South Park? And ever since I've been watching it, I wondered how they were able to create an episode in such a short amount of time. They always keep up to date on current issues and always satirize them in their most recent episode. Take this week's episode for example where they poked fun at the election results and Disney buying the rights to Star Wars. I found a video that explains how they are able to do it. The job is "easier" due to advances in technology, but the way they go about their business has been relatively unchanged over the last 15 years.

This is the link. The video is part of an article

Paper Cut-Out Animation

This weekend I was watching an episode of South Park (which I never actually watched until college and begrudgingly admit that I enjoy) and instantly knew that I wanted to blog about it. In A Very Crappy Christmas, Butters creates paper cut outs of Kyle, Stan, Cartman, and Kenny so the boys can create their own movie to spread the spirit of Christmas to all of South Park. While they're working on the animation, we see the boys looking for each specific shaped mouths ("E" mouth, "woo" mouth, etc;) for their cut out selves to sing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." In 3 hours, the boys have made it to "We wish you a merry" which I thought was funny looking at how much time it usually takes to put into a project, considering all the pre production, production, and post.

Personally, I've never worked with paper cut-outs for a project, so I wanted to see what the process was really like. I found a tutorial on stop motion using paper cut-outs and wanted to share that with all of you.

The estimated time for this piece of animation is an hour and a half (including the time it takes to shoot your actor running in front of the green screen). To me, that didn't seem like much time for an effect I wouldn't have known how to begin without the tutorial.

The creators of South Park started the same way as their characters did. Creating a pilot (that was never aired), Matt Stone and Trey Parker spent about 70 days on the 22 minute episode. Today, the episodes are created utilizing computer technology such as Maya.

South Park in the Beginning

After what I posted last week about Terry Gilliam and his love for cut out animation I was talking to my roommates about what other shows/films have used that technique in the past. My friend mentioned that she thought that South Park did a couple episodes in the beginning in the cut-out style-so I looked into it. It turns out South Park did use Cut-out style animation on their pilot episode.

South Park is a satirical comedy show that began airing on Comedy Central in 1997. It was created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone who used a paper cut-out style animation based on the styles of one of their animation idols Terry Gilliam of Monty Python. A few years before the show was picked up, Trey and Matt created the very first episode of South Park using lots and lots of construction paper and typical stop motion animation techniques. This pilot was 22 minutes long and took a painstaking 3 months to complete. Luckily all that hard work paid off and the pilot got the attention of Comedy Central. In order to increase speed and efficiency of the creation of episodes, South Park began using computer animation techniques for all episodes that were shown on TV. At the beginning of its seasons South Park used scanned images with CorelDRAW and PowerAnimator but as new programs were developed they began using the powerful program Maya and the new program called Motion to create episodes. Today South Park can turn out an episode in about one weeks time!

Below I posted two videos. The first is a clip from the original unaired pilot that used the cut-out technique and the second is a clip from an episode made last year with the shows updated techniques. What differences and similarities do you see? It seems to me like the general look/style is the same, it just looks a little more polished and was less time consuming to make. Oh the power of technology! I think it is interesting to see how shows change and develop their styles as the seasons pass. South Park is now in its 15^th season!