I liked many of the Games episodes. I didn’t even know about the whole John K. drama until years after the show ended.
Benjamin Martin
So there are no reports about this.
Henry Rogers
Some Games episodes were written by John K, such as "a yard too far", "Ren's brain" and "Stimpy's cartoon show" so he still deserves some credit even if most people hate him here.
His personal style is way closer to his work on Modifyers and My Life As A Teenage Robot than R&S, he was a big part of designing original PPG, Samurai Jack, and Foster's Home too, people definitely know who he is beyond working at Spumco
If I remember correctly he was in the audio commentary for the last season of Ren & Stimpy and he said the background and character designs of the later seasons wasn't on par with the earlier ones (I might be mistaken him for another member of the Games crew)
Alexander Cruz
Oh so it was indeed him, that Haggis episode is not bad but he's right the backgrounds suck on that one.
Nolan Sanders
I would like to see a Haggis and George Liquor crossover.
Ethan Taylor
F. Too bad Modifyers never became a full series, it was pretty good.
shop.reccardi.com/ Only a few affordable things that they'll actually ship out here, but I'm sure everyone in Burbank will be snatching the nice ones up soon. He was a super nice dude and had a hand in pretty much all of the most nicely designed western shows of the last 20 years, it's a real shame he never got to make his own. Zone better do a proper, nice tribute
don't forget he was creative director on Secret Mountain Fort Awesome
Bentley Parker
Phil Lord out here with a tribute too Never know Lord & Miller were buds with him but given the 60s UPA inspiration on Clone High I could absolutely see why they’d be fans of his aesthetic
This means that the last TV work Chris did was serving as a storyboard layout artist and character designer on Samurai Jack season 5, and doing freelance boards for a single Billy Dilley episode (Jared)
>We'd be remiss if we didn't talk about Chris Reccardi's greatest accomplishment in drawing Haggis MacHaggis' extremely detailed genitals in his model sheet. RIP.
This is very upsetting to me. Hermit Ren, despite its poor animation, was as intense as any of the episodes that Chris did at Spumco. Same with Hard Times for Haggis, even if the story was a bit meandering. I always hoped he'd be given his own show someday, and now it will never happen.
Josiah Morgan
Thanks for the heads up, made an order for Sunshower print.
RIP to a artistic designer and pretty cool dude. Would have loved to see him and Lynne Naylor turn The Modifyers into a full show, but that's life for you.
Damn, he was one of the few TV people who had a ton of technical skill still working.
F.
Lucas Robinson
>Co-wrote/storyboarded the best Samurai Jack ep >Helped make some of the best Ren and Stimpy eps
Jayden Martinez
Bill Wray and Scott Wills were the only (jumped from Spumco) Games artists on the commentary track. John was trying to somewhat make peace with these guys, ultimately pushing them away for good.
I remember reading Facebook comments years ago that Bill was 'uncomfortable' during the recordings. I can kinda sense John being a bit condescending during those sessions - especially in 'My Shiny Friend'.
Xavier Turner
That's really sad.
Julian Miller
Are you implying John touched them? Haha.
Hunter Reed
>John was trying to somewhat make peace with these guys, ultimately pushing them away for good. Actually, he was using the commentary tracks AGAINST Wray and Wills, since said tracks were for the more rushed episodes they worked on. John wasn't looking for any kind of reconciliation.
John K. actually fired Chris Reccardi from Spumco a month before Nickelodeon fired him... because he was dating Lynne Naylor. That's why he worked on the Games episodes.
William Watson
BRING HIM BACK!
Josiah Reed
IT IS THE FUTURE
John Torres
I was gonna say nice, Lynn Naylor's back on the market but she kinda hit the wall hard. Oh well, kudos to this guy for nailing prime Naylor and working on some stuff, shame he had to go so early.
>no sticky at all Typical Yea Forums jannies/. Jokes aside I'm actually surprised he died at such a young age even though this was a heart attack. Makes me woried that Bumpass is next.
Xavier King
F
Bentley Rogers
Just eat right, exercise and take care of yourself I guess. I'm almost in my 40s and i'm surprised that i'm not dead yet.
Gabriel Perry
Heh. She kinda looks like Molly Ringwald there. > she kinda hit the wall hard. She's 65, what did you expect?
But still, sincere condolences to Lynne. She and Chris were married for 25 years. That's remarkable.
So this is the guy who created Modifyers? Talk about burying the lede. Well fuck, I was still hoping it would get a sequel at some point.
RIP and mods sticky this.
Grayson Sanchez
>as intense as any of the episodes that Chris did at Spumco Chris also boarded Ren Needs Help, which is honestly one of my favorite episodes, Games or otherwise. "Intense" is certainly the word.
Eli Wright
I know, I just can't help but think of her as the cute spunky girl everyone seemed to have a crush on in animator interviews in the 90's Again, good for him for winning the Naylorbowl, though.
Anthony Nelson
the porn is what got the pilot rejected
Lincoln Ramirez
>Ren Needs Help It's amazing they got away with this...
Can’t possibly be true, the porn happened years after the pilot was leaked on the internet (which wouldn’t have happened had it not been dead in the water anyway)
It was rejected long before the porn was ever a thing. To my memory, even that didn't deter him as he was still trying to pitch the concept in other places.
Caleb Williams
F. At least it was fast
Lincoln Ortiz
It could still have been pitched again at a later time. Even if it was a decade later. The parody just ensured that it would never get picked up ever.
Gabriel Gonzalez
from the Sick Little Monkeys FB page: >One memorable day in my travels was going through Stephen DeStefano's archives and coming across these xeroxes of layouts by Chris Reccardi from "Stimpy's Cartoon Show". Most cite Ren and Stimpy's meeting with Wilbur Cobb as one of the shining moments of the series, and a lot of its success is down to Reccardi's drawings (he also boarded the sequence). Enjoy a sampling of them. Sorry for the low quality, but it am what it am.
>He never got to see Modifyers be anything more than a popular ZONE Flash
I don't know, it's kind of sad. If the dude was 70, I wouldn't feel so bad, but part of me feels like he was still trying to get a show off the ground and unexpectedly died before he could.
Nathan Johnson
Would've been awesome to see him run with the concept unfiltered like that. I thought it was just a passing show idea that he entertained for a while, but it sounds like he was pretty attached to the concept. That makes it much more of a downer.
Adrian Brown
These were awesome, thanks for posting em.
Samuel Perry
F I remember seeing that name all over the shows I watched back when. Good man.
Alexander Morgan
Lots of his personal work is very heavily rooted in the mix of 60s aesthetic and tone with steampunk setting and technology that the Modifyers used, it was his adaptation of the style that most interested him into cartoon form and I guess he believed firmly enough in the basic premise that he never tried to pitch something else in the same kind of world.
How would John know that? He didn't work on the episodes. I think you're reading more into it than there is.
Which is crazy, because Chris storyboarded Man's Best Friend, which is one of the show's best episodes. I'd actually give Chris more credit for what went right with the show that Bob Camp.
Juan Wright
Layout drawing by Chris Reccardi for “A Visit to Anthony.”
He may have made an outline but I reeeeeeeally doubt you can attribute anything in the finished Stimpy's Cartoon Show to John given how it openly shits on John.
Sad to hear about Reccardi. May he rest in peace.
Carter Cook
whenever a family member, colleague, or person who inspired me indirectly passes away i always have a hard time saying anything because i'm afraid people will think i'm trying to make it about me. being modest and knowing when it's okay to talk is hard enough as it is. society does this, they beat you down over and over again. i don't do death well and i'm not sure anyone does. one of my heroes passed away today. this is one of the only places i can say this without my anxiety weighing in on everything. chris, you were my fucking hero. i never got to meet you, talk to you, or even shake hands. you are the glue of the television animation industry. if i saw you credited on a storyboard i was always cheering for you the whole way through even if i couldn't recognize it immediately. you could draw circles around anyone, and you worked on everything important to me. you did the angular style so well and i always loved those little freakouts you would make characters do when they went mental. your guitar skills were fuckin sweet too. i even bought elliot easton's tiki gods so i could hear you play. it was good but i kept my fingers crossed hoping you would drop a solo album. did selling your art go well? didn't you even design buildings or visual planning for events a few times? the people who knew you in person seem to be taking it well. the people who knew you in person are taking it well. you've done more than most people ever will and you got them beat even in death. love you
>Stimpy's Cartoon Show to John given how it openly shits on John The original episode was shitting on Walt Disney all the Games crew did was switch Walt for John.
David Hernandez
Layout drawing by Chris Reccardi for “The Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen.”
>The original episode was shitting on Walt Disney Not quite...
>Kricfalusi also discovered that meta-humor was forbidden if it made fun of the Nickelodeon brass. When the outline for “Stimpy’s Cartoon Show” portrayed Ren as an animation executive who couldn’t draw, McRobb and Vanessa Coffey became livid over the lambasting. McRobb tersely wrote, “Maybe you thought we had a sense of humor about ourselves — we don’t.” Kricfalusi was able to deceive them, saying that the untalented non-artist Ren was a parody of himself — not Coffey or anyone else at the network. The cartoon was subsequently approved for production.
tl;dr the original episode was shitting on execs (or "hippies" as John calls them) like Vanessa Coffey.
>I never stopped being awed & inspired by Chris’ talent. An intimidating giant in the industry, a master draftsman, an incomparable designer, a hilarious filmmaker, an amazing musician, and a friend. Love to Lynne & his family.
You'd think one of the brains behind KaBlam WOULD have more of a humor about himself considering how self-deprecation driven that show was.
One thing is Ren's characterization as Stimpy's boss, another what Willbur ended up as. The former was meant to shit on Nickelodeon executives, the latter on Walt Disney. The Games rendition made the former shit on John instead and the latter...Well, I still see some Walt there, but it's more open now.
Evan James
I didn't know he was brothers-in-laws with The Tick animator Chuck Harvey. cartoonbrew.com/rip/chris-reccardi-leading-animation-industry-artist-dies-at-54-173590.html >I came to L.A. because I was hoping that my sister’s husband (Disney animator Chuck Harvey) could help me get into the business. I was never an animation geek (outside of early Fleischer Popeye, which were just cool to watch stoned) and didn’t go to art school, so even with Chuck’s leads, I couldn’t get hired anywhere. But I persisted, because anything is better than a $4.50 an hour stock room or warehouse job. My first real in-house animation job was when John Kricfalusi, who was producing The New Beany and Cecil show at D.I.C. decided to give me a chance as a layout artist. My drawings were pretty lousy, but they needed new people badly. Roger Rabbit came out that summer and a sort of renaissance in the animation biz happened after that. Mostly because some execs figured that you can make real money off of the shit.
>I'm beside myself hearing of the loss of animation legend, Chris Reccardi. He was an unbelievable talent, and the definition of cool. To say I admired him is an understatement. All my love to dear Lynne and his family.
Also, the "lead voice actor can only do one lead character in a show at a time" rule applied to Modifyers since Xero had the same voice as Katara.
Michael Lewis
>passed away before he could get his series made man this is a harsh reminder that I need to stop sitting on my series and get the writing done.
Samuel Perry
I've heard that cited in regards to Richard Horvitz and Invader Zim in reference to why Billy West voiced him in the pilot given Angry Beavers was still running, but Billy West himself was three MCs simultaneously in the early 90s, Tom Kenny was in CatDog and SpongeBob at the same time, and E. G. Daily did ChalkZone while the Rugrats franchise was still running. If it is a rule, it's a very loosely enforced one, and I honestly think it's just an excuse the execs liked to give people
Alexander Evans
>RIP and mods sticky this. Spoilers for a shitty movie out weigh an industry death
>have an history of working on the biggest and most successful cartons >yet never get to make your own cartoon This is truly sad and he died quite young, what a shame.