Matt Groening on Internet and Cartoons

prostoalex writes "Online Journalism Review posted an interview with Matt Groening, the mastermind behind The Simpsons and Futurama. Matt lists his favorite comic sites, talks about how Internet changed the cartoons, shares his view on Fox Network's idea to put Simpsons on cell phones, as well as his own plans for Web cartoons."

Comments

Mozilla-unfriendly

[Jugalator]

That site seem to have been made for IE's poor understanding of CSS rules. :-(

Readable on Phoenix, but it looks awful, and it would be surprising if Mozilla was wrong here, with IE being the browser that hasn't had any major improvements to the parser for years.

Re:Mozilla-unfriendly

[blufive]

That site seem to have been made for IE's poor understanding of CSS rules. :-(

Nope, just dumb webmasters. As far as I can tell, they're using a server-side browser-sniff to send different code to different web browsers. Thing is, they're mis-identifying mozilla (and presumably other mozilla-based browsers) as Netscape. Then, it looks like they still subscribe to the theory that there'e only one Netscape, and are using one tailored for NN4.x, hence it looks crappy. Opera gets given the IE style sheet, and renders everything just fine. I suspect Moz-based browsers would similarly work fine if they got given that CSS.

Re:Groening just became an ennemy of the MPAA...

[tempmpi]

Region-free DVDs. They do exist. Why don't they make more in Europe & Asia?

They are quite common in Europe, in some countries in Europe more than 50% of all DVD players are codefree. On the other hand the movie industry is fighting against it. Codefree brandname players are often much more expensive than the regioncoded ones, they are also harder to get than their regioncoded counterparts.

The movie industry is also using minor protection laws to fight against imported DVDs. Imported DVDs don't got the local ratings marks. Many european countries got heavy restrictions on selling unrated videos and DVD. For example in UK selling DVDs not rated by the BBFC isn't permitted and in Germany mail-order of DVDs not rated by the FSK (and stuff rated 18) isn't allowed.

Actually, pay attention to the show...

[Jerf]

Actually, if you pay attention to the show, the websites they mention frequently really exist.

The one that leaps to mind is WhatBadgersEat.com used in the episode where the town is split in half and Homer is the mayor of the sucky half.

The TV show Alias set up a Followers of Rambaldi fake site, which I've seen but may not be working now. (Much info is on this fan site.) Also in alias they once mentioned an IP address directly, and while I couldn't determine what that computer was (legally ;-) ) because it wasn't running any obvious services, it did exist, which makes me wonder if it was deliberate or if the show's author's didn't consider that a randomly selected IP address stands a pretty good chance of existing now-a-days.

And I once located the source information for a quick display on the Egyptian god Seth used on Daniel Jackson's screen in Stargate: SG-1. It was actually from a wierd site that I assume is info for a role-playing game, though it gave no hint that the site didn't really believe it and it's sometimes hard to tell... I often wonder if the web site was told what use their text was put to.

Re:Groening just became an ennemy of the MPAA...

[Warin]

Actually, you are wrong.

The DVD itself has no direct coding in NTSC or PAL. A Region 1 DVD and a Region 2 DVD are identical, save for the region code. It is the PLAYER that controls the output. Thus, if you have an NTSC region free DVD player hooked to an NTSC television and you stick a Region 2 DVD into it, it will display perfectly.

Re:Groening just became an ennemy of the MPAA...

[isaac]

The problem is the NTSC and PAL standards, which are a completely different on how the colour component of the picture works. If you don't sort this out, you'll be watching black and white. To fix it, you need either a multi-standard television, capable of using PAL and NTSC, or a DVD player and TV that has component video (e.g. RGB) which doesn't use PAL/NTSC to encode the colour information.

No.

The important difference between PAL and NTSC discs is the frame (really, field) rate of the encoded MPEG2 stream: ~59.9 fps for NTSC, 50 for PAL.

Also, the type of component outputs available differ depending on region - US component outputs are explicitly NTSC (Luma [y], and two Chroma channels [Cr, Cb]), not RGB. This is a requirement of DVDCCA licensing, actually. Why? RGB signals can't carry macrovision! Seriously, that's why no US (non-computer) DVD player has an RGB output. RGB output exists on just about every DVD player in the UK, though, through the SCART output. Why? Got me. I guess most or all UK VCRs can't record the RGB signal. Neither can US VCRs, so who knows what logic's at work here.

Anyhow, all region-free DVD players I've seen in the US will perform the necessary frame rate conversion for you - my cheap Apex player certainly does.

Appropriately enough, I use the region-free capabilities of my DVD player for watching... Futurama, which is only available on DVD in Region 2.

-Isaac

Re:Changes in Simpsons Animations?

[Gorphrim]

supporting evidence courtesy of Google:

from http://bit.sit.ac.nz/olsen/kenny/Season14.html:

The Simpsons style of animation is changing from episode The Great Louse Detective (EABF01) onwards, as the show will now being using computer digitised animation from then on. The reason: Because it's hard to find professionals who still use the old medium. The show will still keep the same consistant look, and will hopefully be improved slightly. There will also be a piece of digital animation in the "Send in the Clones" segment in the upcoming Treehouse of Horror XIII (DABF19).