Looney Tunes Cartoons is a great way to de-stress with its off-the-wall fun for all ages. I still watch it from time to time because animation is smart comedy that forces me to think outside the box. The other day, I caught Brave New Home from Teletoon, which starred a rather contemporized Porky Pig trying to cope with this AI-managed home. So, I thought I’d use it to demonstrate what we mean by creativity in the context of a short animation cartoon. Read on. It may not be what you think and you’ll also have a better idea what creativity really is!
So here’s all of the creativity that went into Brave New Home. Try to guess why these elements, are in fact, creativity because these examples build up to the point I’m making on what is creativity and what isn’t.
The AI unit, called C.H.A.M.P. – Computerized Home Assistant Machine Program – looks just like H.A.L. 9000 from 2001 A Space Odyssey.
C.H.A.M.P. waters the plant with a bottle of Perrier with some lemon juice squeezed in and a straw for the plant to drink out of.
C.H.A.M.P., for a quick sandwich, lays the bread and other ingredients down like a dealer at a blackjack table.
When the agents eats it, she growls like an animal in contrast to the sweet-talking woman she is.
The kitchen island is replaced by quicksand because Porky’s stutter turns into a misunderstanding for sandwich.
Two tomatoes covers Porky’s eyes like sunglasses and the lettuce serves as a kind of blanket while resting between two slices of bread because Porky wanted the AI to make him a sandwich.
C.H.A.M.P. grows feet and leaves with an old time stick and bag for hobo’s in the early 1900’s after the little boy tells his dog to get lost.
Porky’s teeth shatters like glass after the dog snatches his sandwich.
Other fun parts weren’t necessarily creative. In other words, they didn’t depart from reality like Porky’s teeth shattering. Like the boy with his dog called Champ inadvertently gave commands to Porky’s AI to mishandle the sandwich. Or, the fireplace turning into a TV with realistic program that showed real footage of a pig in contrast to the cartoonish Porky Pig.
In this cartoon, creativity occurred where two unrelated items coincided to be applicable to the given situation. For instance, when the two slices of tomatoes cover Porky’s eyes like sunglasses, they’re not actual sunglasses, but they did make Porky look more foolish in the moment. Him looking foolish is the applicability in the situation because it’s a comedy and we want Porky to look funny.
The same is true for the growling sounds from the sales agent when she ate the sandwich. She isn’t a real monster but she sounds like one when she’s eating. This made her look foolish because she sounds sweet and the growling wasn’t just out of character, it was foolish and funny. It was applicable. It works.
Take a look at the other items and you can see how the creativity works to make the cartoon look chaotic and funny. Then take a look at the other elements in the short. They’re funny, but don’t part from reality all that much. Creativity is always going outside the box to bring two disparate elements into a new meaningful context.
Creativity needs to be applicable. You borrow from another aspect of life and re-apply into another one so that it works towards a new purpose. Just like borrowing want you see in nature and turning it into a new vacuum part. Creativity in cartoons is the same thing.