We’ve recently seen hordes of celebrities and Hollywood royalty flock to lend their vocals to our favourite cartoons. But the mark of true animation domination is when the fourth wall is obliterated by an entirely fan art-based episode.
Enter, Bob Belcher – indisputable blue-collar burger lord and food-pun extraordinaire. With seven solid seasons under his belt, showrunner Loren Bouchard upped the anti and proved Bob’s Burgers is far from falling back into the routine tropes of a long-running animation.
The season premiere ‘Brunchsquatch’ could easily have charged from the gates on a cop-out, hanging on the coattails of the series’ vast voice cast annals. But instead they created a user-generated masterpiece. The way we picture it, Bouchard – in a burst of ingenious creativity – flicked open Tumblr and scooped up a gigantic handful of everyday fan artists, handing them the reigns to one helluva collaborative animation feat. Apparently the producers just opened the floodgates to contributions from hardcore viewers with skilled digits in the cartoon arts… and so the Belcher family went from animation to ‘fanimation’.
The Season 8 premiere pieced together a whopping 62 versions of the whacky Belcher clan to culminate in an entirely fan-art-based episode. While the episode itself didn’t attempt a complex narrative arc, it goes without saying it was an impressive feat. Albeit slightly distracting; as soon as your eyes adjust to the latest anime-esque version of the Belcher fam, it switches to felt-figure stop-motion without warning. Thankfully the storyline was simple enough to follow through the flickering ‘f-art’.
Personally, I gained the most satisfaction from this episode in witnessing how differently each artist experiences the world of Bob’s Burgers. It really cements the idea that we all view life in a different hue, and from a unique perspective. But, unless you’re a wildly talented fan-artist it’s difficult to lay pen to paper and personify the traits we perceive so differently… e.g. Bob’s impressive moustache.
Watch the opening sequence below, and catch the full episode on Fox.