The Simpsons Cartoon Studio
Reviewed by Ty Brewer
Published by Fox Interactive

Age Group: Age 8 and Up Type: Art & Creativity Price: $45

PC version requires:
486SX 33 8 MB RAM, 8 MB RAM, 2x CD-ROM, Windows 95; Win 3.1; from 640x480x256

Mac version requires:
Version is available.

Description:

The Simpsons may be the best show on TV. While the cartoon characters cause some to believe the show is targeted at children, most kids don't understand the jokes written squarely for an adult audience. As a long time fan of The Simpsons, I was excited to learn of the new entertainment title, The Simpsons Cartoon Studio. With the Cartoon Studio in hand, I set out to create the funniest episode in Simpsons TV history.

Excellent!

The game offers two installations: hard disk or CD. The hard disk installation takes 65MB and you are still required to have the CD to play. The CD install takes only 8MB but all the sound and animation runs from the CD. I tried it both ways and you get a profound improvement by running from the hard disk. The program comes with several pre-made movies so I decided to try a couple out before attempting my own. I became a little suspicious when the movies that came with the program were very, very bad. The movies were all quite short and had little, if any, story line. With the longest lasting approximately 15 seconds I began to wonder if this program could do much. After all, if the people who wrote and released the program can't come up with anything better than this, we're all in trouble.

Don't Have A Cow, Man!

Placing a scene is as easy as clicking the "scene" button and selecting from a variety of choices. Adding props and characters is just as easy. Most of your favorite locations are there: the Simpson's living room, kitchen, the nuclear power plant, etc. You also get scenes such as a river, the surface of an alien planet, and a haunted house. The variety of scenes was quite good and I couldn't think of any I really missed. Almost all the Simpsons characters make an appearance. The Simpson family has the most choices, while some characters, such as Sideshow Bob are represented by only one pose. I found it interesting that aside from the Simpson family, the most poses belong to Principal Skinner, Krusty the Clown, and Nelson. The inclusion of Nelson's 10 frames over Mr. Burn's 3 frames was a little bothersome, but the cast is still adequate.

Act 1

The beginning of The Simpsons TV show is the cast of characters assembling in the living room of the Simpson home. Because they vary this with each episode, I felt this was a good starting point for building my own show. The game comes with two introductory sequences to give you an idea of what can be done. Again, after seeing what the experts had come up with I was very skeptical of what I might do. I started by having the characters run into the living room to sit on the couch, as they always do at the beginning of the TV show.

Dohh!

The problems began immediately. I wanted Homer to sit on the couch as he entered. Alas, there is no pose that allows any character to move from the standing to the sitting position. Worse, Homer doesn't even have a sitting position even if you wanted to start him on the couch. Hmmm... My script needs modifications... Instead of the characters ending up on the couch, I'll just have them enter and leave the scene. This was much easier but I still wanted some action during the scene. After playing around with a few possibilities, I realized something that every TV producer knows. You start with a script, not with an animation.

Back to the Drawing Board

With this in mind I recruited a friend to help me develop a script for our Simpsons episode. Writing a script is no easy task. Sure you can have the same stunts you see every day - Bart shooting Principal Skinner with a sling shot, but where is the original humor in that? Not only do you have to keep the players in character, you have to work with quite limited actions and speeches that come packaged with the program. That means you must be intimately familiar with the entire program before you begin your script. After all, you must know the limitations of the characters so you don't write them doing something not included in the package.

This turned out to be the Achilles heel of the program. By the time you learn the entire cast of characters, their actions, the possible lines, sound effects and scenes, the program has lost its luster. Even after all this, one must become proficient at placing and manipulating the characters. Because each character is animated a certain number of frames, you must practice placing the character so you know what they will do next and how they begin and end their motion. Frustration is when Bart starts to move his legs in a running motion and you must move him across the screen at a pace that coincides with his steps. If you make a mistake you must go back and repeat the whole sequence. In one sequence, Bart scoots across the scene on his skateboard, falls off, then gets back up. Just when you have his motion down for the skating and falling, you discover he is "moon walking" while he moves from the down position to the standing position. Since you can't edit a character once they are placed, you must start with the entire sequence again...and again...and again...

Cut and Print

In the end, the program was very satisfying for one movie. I thoroughly enjoyed using the program up to the point my first scene was completed. After that, I'll probably never use the program again. Not that the program is bad, but you can do only so much with the Simpsons characters and the limitations of the program. What I did like was the wide collection of Simpsons sounds - from Homer's 8 expressions of pain to Smithers' sucking up to Mr. Burns. Unfortunately, these sounds are in a proprietary format (not .wav files) and cannot be used elsewhere. If they had included these sounds as a Windows95 Theme Pack, they might have a hit on their hands.

The game allows you to save your favorite creation and distribute it for free with a runtime player. The player may be downloaded from the Simpson's site on Fox Interactive's web page.

You can download a Mac demo.
You can download a PC demo.

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