South Park's creators on how the series has evolved
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He talks about how he got good at standup after 15 years of doing the same thing. He threw away all his material (material he'd been working on for 15 years) and just started trying different things. Then he started throwing away his material every year and creating new material. He noticed that he got better and better by doing this.
This also reminded me of another anecdote I'd heard somewhere where you have a pottery class with 20 students.
The class was split: 10 students would make a new sculpture every day while the other 10 would have to produce only 1 sculpture for the class (which of course would represent all the extra planning and execution that went into the solo sculpture). At the end of the quarter, the 10 people who made something new every day and then threw it away were far better at sculpting, while everyone in the other group made something kind of shitty and spent a lot of time doing it.
So maybe it's not "lack of planning" quite so much as willingness to kill your darlings, again and again.
1. Spend some tiny amount of time building the simplest thing that represents your idea on an artboard. The focus here is to function as a first step, not to strive for perfection.
2. Identify one thing to change (shapes, colours, font, etc).
3. Duplicate the whole artboard, and tweak that one thing on the copy.
4. GOTO 2. Keep looking back at previous artboards and don't be afraid to revert if you notice that you've been off course for the past few iterations. Never delete an artboard, just go back and fork.
5. Stop when there's nothing immediately obvious to tweak.
It's a simple workflow that produces much better results than endlessly tweaking a single artboard, and you can see your evolution over time, so it's easier to identify the things that work / don't work to improve your skills the next time around.
FWIW though, Github's image diff is quite useful in this regard. They have a number of useful comparison interfaces for image files that may fit your needs.
>I think our biggest strength is that we have a show that we completely make in one building in six days, and then we’re on to the next one.
It's a particular approach for something creative, and also in the spirit of innovation. I like how they just flat-out seem to admit they get bored easily, are confident in their past work (e.g. "We already did that episode"), but still never count on the future.
>“O.K., well, this isn’t gonna last. Any minute now we’re gonna get run out of town.”
In the entertainment industry, I have no doubt this is the proper mentality to have, because when successful, it simply means that it doesn't happen. Lose the audience/ad revenue, lose the network/label/studio support, lose the parking spot!
And here I am rewriting my frontend for the 7th time.
But in software development, the most valuable skills you learn are not those you pick up when throwing a quick CRUD app together, but those you learn when debugging, refactoring and optimising legacy code.
I see too many junior devs get frustrated with something, throw it away, only to rebuild it with very similar problems because they didn't really understand the root cause in the first place.
If you are saying you can (and should) fix code but cannot fix, for example, a joke. I disagree.
Only once you know what the problem is can you decide if it makes more sense to start over.
This alone has made me way better at structuring databases for queries, planning properly, etc. My day job is more of a data science role and it's helped a ton to know how to build the whole stack.
This is actually standard practice in the UK comedy scene. A lot of people are focused on creating a new show for the Edinburgh Festival every year, and spend 9 months a year workshopping their new material in standup clubs aiming towards having a polished hour every August.
Previous generations of comedians would do the same material over years...Cosby was the last of that generation.
Probably more because they didn't know how preposterous that was than as a desire to create a new paradigm.
And so, when their first album came out, they already had most of the songs for the next three albums written.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6_Days_to_Air
One of the keys for South Park is that it can quickly address really current topics because of its production schedule.
A video file (below) was circulating on my brother's network at college. It is still strange to me to have witnessed the birth of such a huge hit.
I was working at an investment bank in Europe and my boss/colleague got a call from his brother during a serious meeting. Execs and everything.
His brother worked at a television studio and they had just bought rights to South Park.
He said he you have to listen to this.
Investment banker begs off but TV brother insists and after a bit of back and forth he stops mid meeting to listen to South Park and of course could barely contain himself.
It was probably S1E1 - Cartman gets an anal probe; but may have been S2E13 "Cow Days" where Cartman gets amnesia and thinks he is a Vietnamese prostitute. Way off the wall stuff.
There is nothing there that someone else can learn from. Some people simply have a talent at doing certain things.
I watched plenty of South Park when it came out, but hadn't watched it in many many years. I checked out Season 19 after I saw it mentioned as one of the best South Park seasons yet--and I have to agree. Most seasons have a few brilliant episodes and many average ones. Season 19 is great throughout--its foray into serialization means more thorough criticism of big topics and is able to weave several issues together over the course of the season that would seem forced within a single episode.
At first, I just thought it was funny to hear "motherfucker" and "asshole" on TV. Then I understood that SP is actually much deeper than that.
I'm not sure what the best way to judge that is. https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=South%20par...
Compare "South Park" to shows that have really jumped the shark like "The Simpsons".
I don't think South Park meets either of these criteria anymore. It's not a pop culture locus like it used to be, and even their controversial episodes are ignored. Part of this isn't their fault- it's probably the continued fractalization of culture where we have ever-fewer shared experiences- but I also think it's hard to keep anything fresh for 20 years, especially something trying to be "edgy".
Note that that doesn't make it "bad", and it doesn't mean you can't still like it. But I think "coolness" can only be defined in terms of broad opinion.
It's also turning into a pretty good IP to mine. I'm really looking forward to the sequel to The Stick of Truth this Christmas.
Which made South Park better. Fart jokes or making fun of Canadians was never funny. They still do that but putting the finger where it hurts and calling out a political camp that is not used to be challenged is refreshing. Of course there are things they won't do, for their own safety... because some would resort to violence and directly attack South Park creators.
There was toilet/uncouth humor then along side political/social commentary, and there is basically the same product now.
My favourite seasons have to be 4-9 for this reason,
Is that what makes big companies fail? They plan too much?
Edit: I just remembered that Matt and Trey made Team America World Police back in 2004--back when even Democrats like Clinton were gung ho about Iraq.
In it, they did a thorough job mocking the neocons, their enablers across the aisle, and their shared appetite for "preemptive" war.
One recurring theme was gratuitous collateral damage whenever Team America found themselves in a foreign locale, followed up with complete indifference or ignorance on Team America's behalf.
To suggest the film was pushing an agenda is ludicrous when it's pretty clear the goal was to make fun of pretty much everyone and everything.
"Everyone is stupid and wrong and probably I am too" is not a revolutionary statement anymore.
Not taking a side is no more honorable, admirable, or enlightening than taking one.
I don't dislike the show because it's conservative - King of the Hill is an example of a good, funny and politically conservative series - but because it's moved away from having character-driven plots, and become low-effort and predictable in who it satirizes.
It is really is a walk down memory lane.
> On South Park, nothing is off limits.
IIRC they chose not to really fight because the whole "we might literally get bombed or shot at for this" was a pretty solid argument at the time.
Just watch the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-zJL9JuOLQ
That's possibly the least charitable summary of the show I've heard since I had the misfortune of discussing it with a Scientologist.
Libertarians are generally pretty strongly opposed to neo-cons and were even moreso when neo-cons were in power 15 years ago. As for neo-reactionary bit, since when has that been a term to describe those supporting criminal justice / police reform, liberal drug laws and gay marriage since at least a decade before it was the popular position?
Clearly you have come across some issues where you disagree with the creators but simply labeling the show as a "neo-reactionary shitfest" isn't very intellectually honest or conducive to a productive discussion.
But how in the world are they neo-conservative? Or worse, neo-reactionary? The show has never come across as trying to push neo-con or neo-reactionary ideals. Libertarian, yes, but neo-reaction directly contradicts libertarianism and neo-conservatism (many reactionaries actually see themselves as reacting against what they perceive as lukewarm conservatism). Libertarianism is compatible with some facets of neo-conservatism, but not most of it.
It sounds like you're just haphazardly listing the names of political philosophies you don't like.