John Kricfalusi, the FM Author of All Kinds of Stuff and a pioneer in Web animation, has been featured in a fascinating in-depth profile and interview on Cold, Hard Flash. Especially interesting to those of us at FM is the discussion of his work with FM advertiser Raketu:

AARON: Your recent collaboration with Raketu created quite the buzz on the internet. Have you heard from the company on how the campaign is working?

JOHN: Well, they told me that since the launch they had multiplied their downloads by a huge percentage, so I figure that's a good sign. I hope to do more cartoons with them. They are a good group. Oliver McIntyre, the marketing director was all over the concept and really wanted to define Raketu as a unique brand. Oliver and I met along with the owner of Raketu, Greg Parker, in New York to go over all the concepts and I kind of wrote them on the spot as they showed me what Raketu was all about.

This is how I would love to work with sponsors. Show me the product, tell me what the selling points are and then let me come up with an entertaining way to pitch it so that the audience actually wants to watch the commercial. That was the concept behind my fake commercials in Ren and Stimpy. Log, Powdered Toast, etc. - I wanted to show that you could make commercials that people would love as much as the show itself.