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New cartoon series are truly interactive By Patti Hartigan, Globe Staff, 03/05/99 See the kitty with the goo-goo eyes. So precious. So cuddly. So annoying. Are you tired of the kitty-cat's peepers? No problem. Just click a button and they disappear. Click again and replace them with snake eyes or Picasso-like, cubist orbs. This is a cartoon lover's dream, an animated feature where the viewer actually gets to change the characters' features and to determine the plot. It's genuine interactivity, the future of animated entertainment, and it's happening now at a few sites on the Internet. The cute kitty, for instance, is in a new series of experimental 'toons launched by Cartoon Network Online, the Web site of Ted Turner's cable network. The network, which is at http://cartoonnetwork.com, didn't go for the obvious by retooling old classics. Instead, it recruited two underground artists -- Gary Panter, the maestro of punk and designer of ''Pee-Wee's Playhouse,'' and Mark Newgarden, creator of the notorious Garbage Pail Kids trading cards. Panter came up with a series called ''The Pink Donkey and the Fly,'' a surprisingly sweet 'toon about a braying animal who gets into trouble like Eve in the Garden of Eden. Newgarden's creation, on the other hand, is deliciously warped. It's called ''B. Happy,'' a series about a foul fowl who is anything but joyous. This blue bird of unhappiness encounters that cute little kitty and crazy things happen. Newgarden introduces the fabulous Click-a-Rama feature, where viewers get to make all sorts of amusing choices. There are plenty of on-line jokes built into the feature; without spoiling the fun, let's just say there are times when the program seems to malfunction, sort of like real life. The cantankerous bird also does a high-tech version of what theater folks call tearing down the fourth wall: The big blue bird bangs on the screen, mouthing off at all those computer geeks on the other side. ''I've been told that 'B. Happy' is similar to me in my fouler moods,'' Newgarden says quite cheerfully during a telephone chat. ''Let's say I'm going for a satiric bent.'' Newgarden is just like all the rest of us when it comes to ''interactivity'' on the Net. He knows that 9 times out of 10, when you are urged to click a button on the Internet, you're offered a ''hot'' opportunity to buy some unique (read: useless) product or subscribe to some innovative (read: expensive) service. He parodies that in his on-line 'toon. Interactivity, of course, is the buzzword of the moment in the constantly morphing Internet entertainment industry. Newgarden has big dreams for the future: ''I see a time when shows are implanted in everyone's brain on a small chip; do away with television, do away with the computer and go directly to the middle of the head.'' For now, though, animation is clearly way ahead of video when it comes to entertainment on the Net. Streaming video -- which might better be called screaming video -- is an overhyped technology. It takes forever to download, and then you have to squint at grainy images on a tiny screen about 2 1/2 inches wide. Thanks to a technology called Macromedia Flash, animation is fast, and the resolution is crisp. ''What bothers me about streaming video is that it's trying to hammer one medium into the other, trying to make the computer look like television,'' says Peter Girardi, creative director of Funny Garbage, the Web design firm that produced the Cartoon Network series. These Web features aren't like your typical Saturday morning 'toons. That doesn't mean the folks at the Cartoon Network wouldn't like to spin one of the new characters off in television land. ''The Internet is like the Nielsen ratings on steroids,'' says Sam Register, vice president of Cartoon Network Online. ''People respond quickly, and you get really great feedback. It would be great if we found our next new hit character on line.'' Cartoon Network isn't the only outfit experimenting in interactive animation: In 1997, John Kricfalusi, the creator of the ''Ren and Stimpy Show'' who was booted by Nickelodeon honchos for being too outrageous, launched his own animated Web series at spumco.com. It features George Liquor, a red-blooded American who swears a blue streak while he's taking care of his nitwit nephew. It's like ''South Park'' fueled by grain alcohol -- crude, lewd, and bitingly funny. It's also honest about its commercial ventures: Its advertisements are built into the content of the show, a technique that is shamelessly refreshing. Hey, everybody wants to make money out of the Internet, so why not just be honest about it? Honesty is what drives Newgarden and his character, B. Happy. A lot of so-called ''interactive'' content is pretty canned; Newgarden toys around with that notion in his series. ''When I was a kid, I had this play telephone,'' Newgarden says. ''You would push a button and Mickey Mouse would say 'Hi.' I'd say 'Hi' back and Mickey Mouse wouldn't respond. It felt like a cheat. The interaction has to be framed in a way so it doesn't seem like a cheat.'' I certainly didn't feel cheated when I made the cute kitty's eyes go bye-bye or when B. Happy banged on the screen, shouting, ''You double-crossed me, computer geek!'' The next episode will be on line Monday. This geek is ready.
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