I know folks around here sometimes like to rag on Joel Spolsky (the popularity of the jumping the shark article comes immediately to mind), but when I was a junior in high school, I had a very similar experience to the one mentioned here.<p>The computer science culture in central Ohio is kind of less than amazing (especially for a varsity athlete type), and I didn't really have any idea of what the good computer science schools were. When I googled around for it, I came across the Perils of Java Schools (<a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchool...</a>).<p>At that point, it struck me that Joel knew a lot more than I did, so I decided to send him an email asking what schools were best. Not only did he answer, but there was actually some correspondence that led to a good short list for me. After being accepted to Carnegie Mellon, MORE correspondence helped me avoid Information Systems (an easier track that the football coach at CMU was trying to get me to pursue). For lack of a better description, Joel Spolsky was the best college guidance counselor I had.<p>I think it's important to keep in mind that, when I asked him for help, I was a slightly above average public high school student in Hilliard, Ohio, so he was just being a really nice guy.
John K. is a genius but he's not as "nice" as this article paints him. He has a blog:<p><a href="http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com" rel="nofollow">http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com</a><p>He's basically a cynical old bastard who hates just about everything about the way cartoons are produced today. (Arrogance in cartooning is measured in nanokricfalusis.) He's also right about most of it: if you've ever seen the garbage produced today like <i>Fairly OddParents</i> or <i>Total Drama Island</i> you'll know what I mean.<p>More likely than not, his outreach toward Amir Avni was more about intervention than fan-friendliness: he wanted to get to a young, promising cartoonist before the Evil Network Execs filled his head with bad ideas.
Just FYI, it looks like John K is doing an IAMA on reddit: <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/aocjg/iamajohnk_ren_and_stimpy_creator/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/aocjg/iamajohnk_ren_an...</a>
I have to credit John K. and his blog for giving me good ideas about drawing. My experiences seem to correlate with his opinion; the bulk of the learning is in making good use of measurement - measurement and references. If I don't do those things, I will get distorted construction, every time. (But I have also no doubt that practice eventually embeds the necessary information in your soul so that you can be "fast/sloppy" and still do OK.)
I'm wondering if we have any other illustration / animation types lurking here at HN and whether they have other suggestions about what to read, watch, etc., if we may want to get a little better at illustration. Any suggestions, guys?