Has Anyone Seen the New Season of Bojack?

I have been waiting for this for almost a year. The new season of Bojack Horseman!! This is one of the first (if not the first) animated Netflix original series. It takes a while to develop depth, but towards the second or third season Bojack Horseman really grabs the bull by the horns and begins playing not only with more sincere philosophical concepts but also with different styles of animation.

In our readings William Kentridge reflects how the act of repeating and drawing the same image over and over again can contribute to the creation of the film itself. Discovering new elements and ideas as you create. It got me thinking about something I have always wondered. How do artists in collaborative settings undergo this same process? Specifically I'm thinking of montages, flashbacks, and drug-trip sequences where one image can morph into another or when the show adopts a totally new animation style to represent the inner thoughts or memories of a character. In Season 4 the show explores Bojack's family history. Throughout sequences the present was permeated with flashbacks of the past. The past and present together in the same scene and sometimes the same shot, showing parallels and contrasts of their experiences of loss and tragedy.



How do collaborative animators do this? With a team of writers, storyboard artists, and animators does the project go under the same sort of repetition process? Is it through the process of drawing and animating that these ideas come to light or is style chosen in the writers room? So I did a bit of googling. Turns out BoJack Horseman also uses the working process to invent and develop the animation of the show, much like Kentridge. Even with a big team of people, the show still has processes of repetition and creating through doing. From my understanding most of the image development occurs during storyboarding. The show is first sketched, then storyboarded with precise detail, then sent to animators. Often times scenes are reanimated again and again until they are considered right. This is a little different then how William Kentridge repeats a process but then again he is a one-man team. 

Perhaps with a collaborative team it is easier to brainstorm ways to perfect an image or feel but maybe it's more challenging to keep it consistent with so many hands on the image. I personally cannot image how much goes into one season of an animated show. How much energy it must take to produce 13 episodes in one year! Anyways I basically just wanted to talk about my favorite animated show so there you have it. If you haven't seen it I would totally recommend it! 

Article interviewing a storyboard artist of Bojack: https://dotandline.net/james-bowman-bojack-horseman-season-4-interview-32e22ebccb6f 


Comments

  1. Em ZarabetOctober 1, 2018 at 2:03 PM

    I love the new season of Bojack so far!! (I haven't finished it yet...). I just really love the world they've created and what we accept as normal while watching it. I think it's really cool how they incorporate different styles of animation, like what you said about showing crazy drug trips for example, and also how they use flashbacks to the past in really powerful ways. I think the parallels drawn between past and present scenes help to make it really strong.

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  2. maddieloweOctober 2, 2018 at 7:36 AM

    I love Bojack and I have a huge amount of respect for the animators and the people who write the story. It's so dark, twisted and one of the more unique mainstream cartoons out there (I also feel like I have a "mid"life crisis after each season). Here's a link to an interview with the creators of Bojack. It's kind of long, but super interesting and worth the watch.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KofIRvAr0M

    ReplyDelete
  3. Madison ZaccagninoOctober 5, 2018 at 10:12 AM

    I love this show. Even though the show covers very dark and serious subject matter, I think that it works so well as an animated show and the animation actually allows it to go deeper. The times when it switches styles of animation or things morph into each other is what really makes me think about whats happening, because the animation allows how messed up everything in the characters lives are to be shown visually rather than just being explained in the dialogue.

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