Teen Girl Squad

A bit has been said about homestarrunner.com in the course already, but one of its cartoons, “Teen Girl Squad”, is a nice example of digital animation referring to its paper based roots. “Teen Girl Squad” is a cartoon that makes fun of teen angst/high school dramas that appear on television, supposedly written and narrated by one of the sites main characters, Strong Bad. The toons themselves are amusing in their own way, but the interesting thing about them in terms of the course is that they are flash animations done in the style of crude line drawings. The characters are stick figures and the background is ruled refill pad. This kind of lo-fi/no-fi referencing appears throughout the site (Strong Bad occasional uses a ‘light pen’ which is actually a twink pen or vivid marker), but the “Teen Girl Squad” is a nice, clear example of internet nostalgia. You can see the cartoons at www.homestarrunner.com/tgsmenu.html