IDD Week 1

For IDD this week, we were assigned to watch a selection of animations and pick one to write about. Out of the ten animations I was given, I’ve watched two of them years before this assignment. One is “This Land,” and the one I picked was “Strong Bad Email #58- Dragon.”

The “Strong Bad Email” is a feature on the website homestarrunner.com. It stars Strong Bad who is a man with a Mexican wrestling mask for a face and boxing gloves for hands. In each episode he checks an email sent by an actual fan asking him something which he responds to while mocking the spelling errors of the sender. In this email, he was asked to draw a dragon. We then see him draw an s-shaped dragon with tiny wings and a big bulky arm and named it, “Trogdor the Burninator.” Then we cut to some of the other characters of the website making their own dragons. First was Coach Z, a tall skinny green man who wears a baseball cap sideways, who is drawing his dragon, which frankly looked more like a snake with a large head as apposed to a dragon. Next was Strong Mad, Strong Bad’s older brother who looked like a rectangular pro wrestler (sorry, that’s the only way I can describe him). Instead of drawing a dragon, we see him carving the word “DAGRON” into the table with an x-acto knife. Then we cut to Strong Sad, Strong Bad’s younger brother who has elephant feet (or hippo feet. No one knows for sure). We see him draw a much better-looking dragon than Strong Bad’s cartoony looking Trogdor. Strong Bad then burns it (hence the name Strong Bad) and walks away saying, “Trogdor strikes again!” Then we see a Trogdor theme song music video, which has become an Internet phenomenon.

When it comes to the artwork and animation, the creators make good use of it, especially when they move Strong Bad’s head when he’s in front of his computer to imply that he’s talking. Although the background for most of the cartoon is a dull blue wall, the designs for the characters more than make up for it, giving them a very cartoony feel to them. I also loved in the end when they showed a Trogdor music video where everything was presented like it was on a scroll from the medieval times giving it a good atmosphere. This was done better than in some of the other animations such as “Laid Off: A Day in the Life,” where the characters had very (and I mean Very) little animation and coloring which I found to be very boring. Back in the days of early animation, the creators of some cartoons such as Tom and Jerry or Looney Tunes were more focused more on how fluid the animation was rather than the design of the characters, which is why I admire this animation so much.

I picked this animation because it was what introduced me to a great website. What got me had me hooked was the funny and cartoony looking characters and very funny writing. Strong Bad is hilarious in every email and this one is no exception. Since watching this show, homestarruner.com has always been one of my favorite websites of all time. (Even though they haven’t updated in almost a year.)