Today is a short post, because I spent all day yesterday putting together some new furniture (hence no post) and this morning, I have to get a craigslist ad out for the piece they replace. Seriously, if you live in Baltimore and want a TV entertainment centre, check out the ad and get in touch, mention this blog and get it for free!
Below, is something that caught my eye last week and this seems like as good a time as any to post it. The dense layers of artistic skills in Adventure Time continue to stun the mind of viewers and fans alike, and the title cards are no exception.
So much so, that Fred Seibert has put out a whole book on the art of the title card (from his own series’ of course) and brings to attention how they have been criminally overlooked by historians over the years. It is available on Amazon and there is a preview available on Fred’s blog.
It is therefore satisfying to see that the title card I am sharing today is also a Frederator production. It’s a mysterious piece and a bit of a play on the usual situation. Instead of Finn hiding in the background, it is Princess Bubblegum that is the one in the dark. There’s a great sense of foreboding about the whole thing, and one can’t help but wonder what terrors await Finn and Jake when they take up the scissors for the job at hand.
The episode premieres, uh, tonight (January 10th), at sometime in the evening on Cartoon Network. Check it out and report back please, I still have to re-arrange all the furniture I messed up yesterday!
Thanks for sharing this. I’ve really been enjoying “Adventure Time” and its lovely title cards, so its great to get a chance to admire one of those title cards for more than a few seconds.
I feel like title cards have been making a comeback in recent years, partly due to the boom in animated preschool shows. While it’s not the case for every show, a lot of the preschools shows that do use episode titles have title cards so that there’s time for the title to be read aloud to the pre-literate members of the audience. I’ve noticed a few such shows that take the opportunity to create some fun artwork to accompany the title.
I did enjoy the new episode, though the ending kind of left me feeling like something outside the norm of the show had happened without much buildup or comment afterwards. I don’t know if you’ve had the chance to watch the episode yourself yet, so I’ll just leave it at that.
Thanks for the comment Sara!
I think there were a few years where the title card got a bit lost. If you look at almost any Hanna-Barbera or Ruby-Spears production, they had a stock title card that they used for every episode. Compare those with the likes of any Warner Bros. short or Tom & Jerry and the difference is astounding. In a way, the title card was a way to set the audience for what was to follow (which is extremely important), so that the title itself didn’t have to do all the heavy lifting.
It’s great that we have these amazing title cards again, and I think we have the likes of John K. and Joe Murray (of Rocko’s Modern Life) to thank for bringing them to the fore in creator-driven shows that proved to be so successful, and for re-establishing a practice that had fallen by the wayside.