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W-P-S
Waldemar Schuur @W-P-S

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Rotterdam

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FURBABY LOVES YOU: the beginning

Posted by W-P-S - June 2nd, 2017


I have never really blogged properly. The only textwalls that are on my tumblr right now are either april fools jokes or answers to questions. I thought I'd give it a go.
I'm gonna try to occasionally write a blog entry about whatever I feel like or whatever you guys wanna read about. I'm thinking about posts about my own work, my theories on art, stuff from my life, and I guess things from history and mythology that fascinate me.
Let me know if you guys dig it.

I decided to make my first proper blog entry is going to be about a project of mine that's very close to my heart
FURBABY LOVES YOU

1562541_149642781862_meditatjpg.jpg

In case ya haven't seen it,
here's part A http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/554386
and here's part B http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/554389

I guess I'll start about how I came up with the idea of the format for Furbaby Loves You.
Just like the war in Bosnia, it started somewhere in the 90s.
I was the first kid with internet in my school, so I still experienced the magic of the world wide wild west.
One of the things I really digged on that old school internet was the early flash and shockwave toons and games! As a kid I always wanted to make cartoons, and seeing these crude and vulgar cartoons made by people in their own bedroom really fascinated me. I knew back then it would make my dream of becoming an animator far more accessible.

1562541_149642784362_Marshall_Applewhite.jpg
Only true 90s kids remember Marshall Herff Applewhite

One popular thing on the old net was the “click-to-torture” type game. I don't know the official name for these types of games, but they were everywhere.
Joe Cartoon with things like “Gerbil in a Microwave” and “Frog in a Blender”, Tom Fulp's “Assassin” series. Basically, you click on something and you hurt something (usually a cartoon animal or a celebrity)
There was one specific type of click-to-torture game that formed the main inspiration for “Furbaby Loves You”.
You see, back when the Pokémon hype all started kids were spending their allowance like crazy on those damn cards. However, over time, some kids began to realize what a waste of money all of that was. They didn't blame their own stupid asses though No, they blamed Pokémon.
As such, they made websites and forums dedicated to hating the little pocket mongrels.
They made shitty ms-paint edits of Pokémon pictures in which they give them bloody gunshot wounds and what not.
I was one of those kids, absolutely pissed off that I wasted my allowance on those fucking cards.
While browsing anti-pokémon websites I found a .exe game someone made which was a Pikachu tamagotchi, but instead of taking care of Pikachu, you ended up kicking his ass.
Food would be poison, if you played with him you just kicked him around, things like that. I don't remember the details it was quite a while.
So the idea of doing a click-to-torture type game disguised as a virtual pet came from there.

1562541_149642787953_doom2.gif
The 90s were dangerous times

I wanted to make my own click-to-torture game ever since I first played em.
However, I kept animating cartoon shorts, and over time I became better and better at animation.
For some reason, making a simple click to torture simply didn't seem challenging anymore.
I wanted to make a click-to-torture game that went over the fucking limit! A giant within its genre!
I wanted to make one in which every choice you make is a short cartoon.
So that's what I did!

1562541_149642797783_SLEEPTITELILFAGGIT.png

The reason I chose the idea of a creature half furby, half human baby, was because I liked the idea of crossing two things that were cute and making it into a horrid hybrid.
Also, me and my friend would joke about furbies a lot, and make silly drawings about em.

Some early sketches of Furbaby:
1562541_149642792522_FURBABBYSKETCH1.png

1562541_149642794661_FURBABBYSKETCH2.png

So that's where the roots of “Furbaby Loves You” lie.
I might go in depth on the actual cartoon itself, the scenes, artistic choices, inspirations, in another blog entry, but for now this textwall is big enough for me.
I can animate a lot better now than I could in 2010, and if I would've made it today I probably would've done things differently here and there. Despite that, I think the end result is a little gem, and of all the finished flash projects it's probably my favorite.

Lemme know if you like blog entries like this, then I'll write more in the future.


Comments

That's very interesting, very interesting indeed! I've always been very intrigued about the meaning behind Furbaby Loves You, and that goes a significant way into explaining it! Watching it has always felt like watching a satire of something... but just quite of what, and why, has always eluded me.

I mean, it <feels> like there's some greater depth bubbling beneath the surface, just referencing things that I'm not familiar with! I will say one thing, you both kind of did and did not achieve the 'ultimate' click to torture! Certainly in the sheer originality, creativity and excellent animation, you achieved, or at the very least came as close as possible to achieving that goal. The tortures themselves, I will say, aren't that horrifying... so if that was the target it doesn't really get there. But I hope it wasn't, because what you have achieved is just something else...

I certainly hope you feel the need to share more of the insights into Furbaby Loves You, I would love to know more!

(Also, I've had a sneaky suspicion for a while that the sacrificed artist is somehow a self-depreciating reference... am I correct in this? ;) )

Oh yeah, the goal wasn't to make the "tortures" particularly gruesome. It wanted to make it the "ultimate" click-to-torture thing based on scale and effort.

I'll probably make more blogposts on the making of and meaning of furbaby, maybe the next blogpost will be about furbaby, maybe it'll be about something else, we'll see!

I'm not quite sure who you mean by the sacrificed artist? Could you be more specific?

Also, the design of Furbaby itself is pretty horrific, you really hit the nail on that respect.

Thank ye!

Whoa, really interesting. I found your works recently and damn, that shit fascinate me. All your animations are pieces of art! Keep it up. Also I'd like to see more of this kind of posts, understand the mind behind these animation will be cool.

Aight, I'll try to make more of them then!

Thanks for the replies, always very nice to have a chance to interact with a artist like this. :)

I look forward to more information, as I said, I really do admire it a lot, you realized your ambition on scale and effort, and probably exceeded it on originality and creativity, as per above.

And apologies, my reference was very cryptic and slightly mangled! On Furbaby part B, in the Produce Food segment, the job interview candidate is sacrificed to make food... and he lists amongst his hobbies as 'movies', hence my reference to him being an artist. What I meant by my comment above was that I suspected that he might be self-depreciating self reference in a sneaky way...

Oh no, he's not an artist.
I made his hobbies (watching) movies and going out because most people like watching movies and going out. It's something that says nothing about himself, he's kind of supposed to be an expendable human being.

Ah, ok! Guess my speculation was pretty off the mark then. Look forward to reading more about it, when you have the time! :)