Note, especially, that they aren't recreating their toolchain, tweaking the character design, or trying out new ways of making the show every six days: they've got all that settled, or change it between seasons.
"While you’re doing the first episode, you go, “Oh, this is really working. Let’s let this be the thing that slides through to the next episode.” So we’re reacting to what is working the week before, instead of having some grand design. And then later on, the design starts to reveal itself a little bit."
Is that what makes big companies fail? They plan too much?
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.
I started doing something similar with the small amount of UI work I do, modeled after [1] (a great watch, BTW). For example, my flow for app icons is like so:
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.
Do you have recommendations for any generic tools that can do this for images, artwork, web pages, etc., and allow one to easily view the evolution like a photographer would look at photos captured in an app like Adobe Lightroom or similar? Preferably something that allows annotations and version control so each change is clearer? It'd be great if there are some free tools too. I work on UI very rarely, if at all, but I see value in a workflow like this.
I just do it in Sketch. For me, any evolutionary insights are secondary to shipping, so I'd rather stay on the golden path of tooling than adapt the flow just to see changes. However, it's generally pretty easy to simply zoom out and see your evolution just by looking at multiple artboards at the same time (the changes I'm interested in are more about feel and aesthetics, so I don't really need any pixel level onion-skinnng or anything to compare revisions).
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 was wondering if that pottery class maxim would show up here - it's a good one and I think definitely applies:
>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!
This is probably true for going from novice to mediocre in many things, and there might be some skills where you can become great by constantly starting again.
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.
Having both worked in startup/tech companies and ad agencies, one of the most valuable skills I've learned is being able to decipher and debug someone else's spaghetti code. Clients shift agencies all the time and sometimes you're just given the entire codebase for site, with no documentation and no help offered from the previous agency, and you have to make an update to it or learn how some vital part of it works so you can recreate it in the new site. That's happened to me quite a few times and it made me a better debugger and coder.
There is a difference between writing broken code many times while never learning, and writing broken code once learning why it was broken then starting over and writing good code.
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.
I somewhat disagree. I'm in the process of building my 5th production rails app, and 8th web app (which will be used in production and make a profit). I've gotten ridiculously better at figuring out how to structure the underlying models.
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.
> Then he started throwing away his material every year and creating new material.
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.
Are you sure about that? I remember him doing an "I'm telling you for the last time" tour where he was retiring a lot of stuff. I saw him after that, late 2000s and it was 100% new material.
Its shocking how much South Park affected my life. No other show that long lasting I watched all episodes of and because the focus of the chaacters shifts from the children to the adults it also stays relevant with me as i get older.
If you enjoy South Park and you haven't seen "6 Days to Air" you really need to. I had no idea that the entirety of the episode was created within a week.
I really enjoyed this as well. It's often said that creativity comes from "embracing constraints" and I think it probably really helps the show that they've forced themselves to condense the process so much.
And yet, when it comes to cartoons that have been on the air for multiple decades, they almost always create something more entertaining with a production schedule of six days than The Simpsons can create with a production schedule of six months.
Yeah I still love the show, and even half baked South Park has a lot of laughs and meat to chew on. It's just a shame that a lot of the time it feels like potential was squandered or the episodes resolution is completely out of nowhere.
YMMV, but I don't think it is. It's still running and probably gets decent ratings, but it's not water cooler talk like it used to be, it's not must-see TV among teenagers and twenty-somethings like it used to be, and in many years there haven't been any episodes that were the focus of national attention (like "Best Friends Forever" or "Trapped in the Closet").
I grant that "coolness" is tricky to define, but (if you're not restricting the domain of discourse to a particular group or subculture), I think it has to include either popularity or "outsider-ness". i.e., you can be cool either by being popular or by being controversial enough to get everyone talking about you, even in a negative way.
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.
Regarding the PC Principal arc, I feel like they took an idea for one or two episodes and made it into a season. I didn't really enjoy how the episodes blended together either, but I know a lot of people seems to like it.
I used to love South Park. Now I can barely stand it. Am I getting too old? I rewatch old episodes with pleasure though. It's the new episodes that make me cringe. It used to be about fart jokes and silliness. Now it's all political crap.
I'm the opposite. I wonder how I ever used to find the fart jokes funny. Not saying I totally get on board with the 'political crap', but it's certainly more funny to me. I think my sense of humor has evolved similarly to the way the comedy in this show has changed.
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.
I'm down voting you because I think not only is your assessment wrong, your telling of history is too. One of the first episodes of South Park was a Jesus vs. Santa episode where they fought over the meaning of Christmas.
There was toilet/uncouth humor then along side political/social commentary, and there is basically the same product now.
For me South Park was cool because it was offensive and taboo but it still felt like you were watching something that was smart. It was an adult show aimed at kids and its audience was kids. I don't think its audience is still kids so I doubt one could call it traditionally cool anymore. I don't think anyone I know would keep watching southpark if not for the love of certain characters (Randy, Butters). I feel like the show now just panders to its audience in order to remain relevant these days.
I was unaware of this too until the other night when I looked it up. Apparently the first one was made as an entry into a student film festival. Then a producer saw it and asked them to make another as a gag gift for a friend. That was the birth of the Jesus vs. Santa episode. In the original, the character that looks like Cartman is referred to as "Kenny". He "dies" just like Kenny always did in later episodes.
Same here. Small footnote: I was the one who made the transcription of 1997's Spirit of Xmas (soxmas) which was going around our university at the time. A classmate digitized the videotape we had gotten.
Not my first exposure, but a good story, soon after.
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.
I remember this being my exact thought while watching it. It always seems to manage a sucker punch in for either 'side' of things. Anything which does that is sufficiently rare at this point that it's notable.
Which results basically in "Horseshoe-Theory - The Show". Where the middle way is always the golden way and, by-accident, is aligned with their neo-conservative/libertarian ideals
I think you can make the case Team America ultimately supports American intervention in foreign affairs. See the dicks/pussies/assholes speech with America being the dicks, and ultimately in the right despite some issues.
That's a bit of the stretch considering the majority of the film was basically irreverent to the neoconservative foreign policy of the era.
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.
neo-conservatives and libertarians are nearly polar opposites. Neocons are authoritarian, and have some partial overlaps (in principle at least) with democrats, libertarians are laissez-faire. Libertarians overlap with the "leave my body and my speech alone" democrats and the "leave my wallet and my business alone" republicans
Yeah South Park evolved from a neo-con/libertarian "the solution is the middle way between to over caricaturized extremes" paradise, to a neo-reactionary shitfest.
>"South Park evolved from a neo-con/libertarian [...] paradise, to a neo-reactionary shitfest."
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.
Yes, the show is preachy and often tries to feel superior by shitting on both sides of a debate.
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.
The section of the article you link to seems to indicate that the network (Comedy Central), rather than the show, performed the censorship. If that is true, I see no incongruity in the quoted statement.
I don't like the show - it's devolved into lazy one-sided caricaturing of 'progressive' causes - but the Make Love Not Warcraft episode still holds up as one of the funniest things I've ever seen.
Are you sure that's not a bias speaking? That season was also making fun of Donald Trump, Whole Foods and college jocks. Season before took a gander at Lorde. And so much else.
I don't know how much of the last season you watched, but the show's writers certainly seem to be of the opinion that progressive ideas are preferable to Trumpism.
Also an opinion held by many conservatives. But what else could they say - would anyone air an openly pro-Trump cartoon show on US TV?
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.
If you haven't watched Season 19 (which includes the serial saga with P.C. Principal mentioned in the article) I'd highly recommend it. It really embodies South Park's unique ability to be simultaneously mature and immature. And its ability to be hilariously relevant after all these years while delivering thoughtful social commentary.
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.
I can't believe it's been twenty years, that's insane. Just recently finished The Stick of Truth on PC. Such an enjoyable little RPG. Really felt like you were living in their world.
93 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 160 ms ] threadThere is nothing there that someone else can learn from. Some people simply have a talent at doing certain things.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6_Days_to_Air
Is that what makes big companies fail? They plan too much?
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.
[1] https://vimeo.com/113751583
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T_RZOoVlzc
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.
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.
Just watch the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-zJL9JuOLQ
Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TttI60-mjQ
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.
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.
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.
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.
It is really is a walk down memory lane.